Empiricism And Kant

[ibsh...@gmail.com]

The empiricist approach to discerning reality is making sense of evidence that has been gleaned from the senses. Some philosophers – such as Kant – challenged this approach. They stated such things as that senses are imprecise, and that (in Kant) they only see the appearance of things – the “phenomenal” - but fail to see the things in themselves – the “noumenal.”

I want to make sense of the whole thing.

Now the senses are actually not imprecise. Incomplete yes, but imprecise no. We do not see the radio waves or the infrared radiation; we see the visible light. However the information that I get from seeing the visible light is not an erroneous one. If I see you, I am fairly certain that I am actually seeing you – both the phenomenal you and the noumenal you. I can from this make an educated guess that you are not Adolf Hitler.

In many cases, the things as they appear are very much the things as they are. If I am beholding an apple, I can be sure that I am holding an apple and not a frog. In this case the noumenal and the phenomenal are the same thing; and senses very much are a valid guide to reality.

Where Kant does have a point is in understanding people. People are very different inside from how they are on the outside. What a person looks like through the visual sense says absolutely nothing about the person's character or predispositions. In case of people, the Kantian argument has quite a lot of validity even if it is not conclusively correct. To understand the person in-himself takes much different skills from discerning him in appearance. In this situation, the noumenal and the phenomenal very much differ from one another; and it takes different skills to understand each.

The empiricist view works with most of non-human reality. With human reality, Kant has a point. Do not discard physics or mathematics because of its empiricist origins. Do not judge what a person is on the inside from what he is on the outside. There is a place for both approaches, and it is instructive of all intelligence to recognize which – and where – to apply.

https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought

[Jeffrey Rubard]

A very standard dogma, over the years: "Kant is not an empiricist".
"But Kant is concerned with nothing but the foundations of empirical knowledge!"
Maybe... the empiricists were concerned with something else too, though?

Jeffrey Rubard (who didn't think that one up)

[Ron Elam]

Can you show me where Kant said the senses are "imprecise"?

[Ron Elam]

Kant was a scientist who wrote about the structure of the cosmos. He also gave lectures on geography. So I'd say he was definitely concerned with empirical.

[Jeffrey Rubard]

This is "dumb", in the usual acceptation of that phrase.

[Ron Elam]

What the fuck? This site not being monitored doesn't give you an excuse to be rude. Your comment was dumb. Kant was an empirical realist therefore a transcendental idealist. They are two sides of the same coin.

My God, you are worthless scum.

[Jeffrey Rubard]

A German phrase to know: "Oh mein Herz". A "polite" way of saying "your opinion just doesn't matter to me".

[Jeffrey Rubard]

"But that's not what it says."
Yeah, right.

[Verena]

ibsh...@gmail.com schrieb am Mittwoch, 20. Juni 2018 um 01:50:06 UTC+2:
> The empiricist approach to discerning reality is making sense of evidence that has been gleaned from the senses. Some philosophers – such as Kant – challenged this approach. They stated such things as that senses are imprecise,

Kant neither questions the pre -scientific nor scientific experience (on the contrary!) - that is not the starting point of his criticism. But he criticizes that empiricism overlooks the fact that the empirical world (the world of phenomena) is not simply given, but is already the subject-related product of a variety of synthesis.

> and that (in Kant) they only see the appearance of things – the “phenomenal” - but fail to see the things in themselves – the “noumenal.”

Yes.

>
> I want to make sense of the whole thing.
>
> Now the senses are actually not imprecise. Incomplete yes, but imprecise no. We do not see the radio waves or the infrared radiation; we see the visible light. However the information that I get from seeing the visible light is not an erroneous one. If I see you, I am fairly certain that I am actually seeing you – both the phenomenal you and the noumenal you. I can from this make an educated guess that you are not Adolf Hitler.
> In many cases, the things as they appear are very much the things as they are. If I am beholding an apple, I can be sure that I am holding an apple and not a frog.

I think Kant would hardly contradict you so far.

> In this case the noumenal and the phenomenal are the same thing;

No!
Kant believes that we cannot know anything about things in itself. (That, what you probably mean by "noumenal".)

> and senses very much are a valid guide to reality.

Yes, but the senses alone only give a partly incoherent and unordered "chaos" of disparate sensory data, in which only the mind brings coherence, unity and order:
"Wenn aber gleich alle unsere Erkenntnis mit der Erfahrung anhebt, so entspringt sie darum doch nicht eben alle aus der Erfahrung. Denn es könnte wohl sein, daß selbst unsere Erfahrungserkenntnis ein Zusammengesetztes aus dem sei, was wir durch Eindrücke empfangen, und dem, was unser eigenes Erkenntnisvermögen (durch sinnliche Eindrücke bloß veranlaßt) aus sich selbst hergibt, ..."
"But even if all of our knowledge begins with experience, it does not all spring from experience. For it could well be that even our knowledge of experience is a composite of what we receive through impressions and what our own faculty of cognition [the mind] ... yields of itself ..."

[Jeffrey Rubard]

Thank you for the insights.