I'll agree that it's a provocative interpretation. However, let's look at it...Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 4:29 amDid you read Kant's CPR thoroughly?Wizard22 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 12:23 pmOn the contrary, to Kant, the thing-in-itself is the only thing that can possibly be real.Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 4:23 amTo insist a thing-in-itself exists are a real thing is delusional, but nevertheless the thing-in-itself can be thought and can be at most a useful illusion.
Kant is claimed by some to the be the father of cognitive science [based on his principles of cognition], but the 'thing-in-itself' itself has no relevance to the anti-realist version of cognitive science.
Because it is the Synthesis between sensory perception and "thingness"/Being/Becoming.
The Synthesis is experienced as Cognition.
Show me the texts that Kant asserted the thing-in-itself is the only thing that can possibly be real as opposed to the objective reality of phenomena.[/u]
1) Appearance (Erscheinung) means the way SOMETHING seems to be. I could also have written 'something SEEMS to be.' The concept presumes the existence of the noumenon. We can only know the appearances, not the real thing.
2)
You cannot talk about X being the cause of Y and deny the existence of X if Y exists. Appearanced are caused by noumena. So, noumena are presumed to exist by Kant.In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant repeatedly characterizes the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich or noumenon) in such terms as “the non-sensible cause” of representations or as “the purely intelligible cause” of appearances (CPuR, A494 = B522). Again and again he employs the language of causal efficacy with regard to things-inthemselves. Thus he speaks of “the representations through which they [things-in-themselves] affect us” (CPuR, A190 = B235; italics added) and elsewhere says that while things-in-themselves “can never be known by us except as they affect us” (Grundlegung, p. 452, Akad.; italics added) they nevertheless represent “a transcendental object, which is the cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance” (CPuR, A288 = B344; italics added). Accordingly Kant writes in the Prolegomena:
The juxtaposition of X with its appearances generally grants the former reality and the latter seeming. Appearance vs. Reality. There are a number of other quotes in the CPR that imply or require the existence of noumena which are juxtaposed with phenomena.
Another way to come at this would be to point out that
it was a mere appearance
makes sense
It was a mere reality
does not.
So, one can make a reasonable argument that Atla is correct.
On the other hand, as with many philosopher, there are a number of interpretations of Kant, even on this issue.
One can find support for various positions.
But I don't think we can rule out Atla's position.
Further...regardless we still have to think for ourselves. Kant is not the Bible however much fun hermeneutics is.
In any case, it is justified in saying that Appearances (or Erscheinung) is a pejorative term, ontologically speaking that is.