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.

[Mal Enor]

Me: does the author appear to understand the distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal in kantian philosophy?

Google Bard: Yes, I think the author does understand the distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal in Kantian philosophy. They correctly state that the noumenal is the "thing-in-itself" that is unknowable, while the phenomenal is the world of appearances that we can know through our senses. They also correctly state that Kant believed that our knowledge of the phenomenal world is limited by the categories of our understanding, which are innate structures of the mind.

However, there are a few areas where the author's understanding of Kant's views could be improved. First, they seem to suggest that the noumenal and the phenomenal are two completely separate worlds, when in fact Kant believed that they are intimately related. The noumenal is the ground of the phenomenal, and the phenomenal is the only way we can access the noumenal. Second, they seem to suggest that the categories of the understanding are fixed and immutable, when in fact Kant believed that they are open to revision and change.

Overall, I think the author does a good job of summarizing Kant's views on the noumenal and phenomenal. However, there are a few areas where their understanding could be improved.

[Mal Enor]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2018 at 5:36:00 PM UTC-6, ibsh...@gmail.com wrote:

Me: did kant state that the senses are imprecise?

Google Bard: Kant did not state that the senses are imprecise. He believed that the senses are reliable in providing us with information about the world, but that they are not able to give us knowledge of the noumenal world. The noumenal world is the world of things-in-themselves, which is unknowable to us. We can only know the phenomenal world, which is the world of appearances as they are presented to us through our senses.

Kant believed that the senses are limited in what they can perceive, and that we can only know the world as it appears to us, not as it is in itself. This means that our knowledge of the world is always provisional and incomplete. However, Kant also argued that we have certain innate concepts, such as space, time, and causality, that we use to organize our experience of the world. These concepts are not derived from experience, but are part of the structure of our minds. They allow us to make sense of the world and to have knowledge of it.

So, while Kant did not believe that the senses are imprecise, he did believe that they are limited in what they can perceive. We can only know the world as it appears to us, not as it is in itself.