This post is a continuation of a multi-part series that began here.
Many philosophers patrol the armistice line between realism and anti-realism. These philosophers optimistically claim that there is a substantive disagreement between the schools.
Some of these philosophers might be described as hybrid theorists, owing to their acceptance of both realism and anti-realism, albeit in different senses. These philosophers have noticed that the conditions of presumption and modesty are not very clear. They contend that our cognitive abilities have limits, and the degree of access we have to the world must be held up against the horizon-line of our abilities.
This is how I think we should read Kant. He made the distinction between phenomena and noumena (thing-in-itself), and argued that powers of reason could be used to access the former but not the latter. In his way of speaking, noumena could only be contemplated by speculative reason, even though such speculations held no potential for vindication. In other words, the noumenal realm is mind-independent, in that it transcends the evidence accessible to our cognitive powers, while phenomena are mind-dependent.
Other hybrid theorists suggest that there might also be different ways of construing the meaning of “the world”. In effect, such forms of thought would argue that there are two interacting worlds. I think Descartes’s substance dualism might be cited as an example.
The Kantian and Cartesian views are remarkable because they are optimistic about the use of the realism/anti-realism language, at least once one accepts the nuances they want to add to our conceptions of modesty and presumption. The conviction in favor of the preservation of the realism/antirealism debate is given succinct expression by Wright: “If anything is distinctive of philosophical enquiry, it is the attempt to understand the relation between human thought and the world… If our successors come to reject not the details but the very issue of the contemporary debate concerning realism, it will be because they have rejected philosophy itself.” (1)
But other philosophers have outright rejected the distinction by arguing that we can’t make much sense of what the debate amounts to. Rosen explains, “… after a point, when every attempt to say just what the issue is has come up empty, we have no real choice but to conclude that despite all the wonderful, suggestive imagery, there is ultimately nothing in the neighborhood to discuss.” There can be many kinds of failures at articulation. If the debate, for example, rests upon a misguided use of language (as Wittgenstein insisted), or a muddled understanding of how metaphysical access fits with the substance of the world, or a bogus distinction between appearance and reality (as Rorty claimed), then we ought to abandon all hope of progress towards enlightenment on the issue. At its most extreme, pessimism results in theory quietism, and indifference towards generic realist/anti-realist debates. Whether or not this amounts to a “rejection of philosophy itself” remains to be seen.
I count myself among the pessimists. In order to argue for quietism, in the sense of indifference towards any generic claims about realism, I am interested in exploring the very slight role that immodesty plays in George Berkeley’s anti-realism. That is to say, I wish to show that, as far as human knowledge of truth and meaning are concerned, he is a realist.
It goes without saying that, as far as the broad caricature of Berkelean idealism goes, objects are dependent upon the operations of the understanding and ideas before the mind (dependent on the mind). Berkeley is at his clearest at the outset of the Principles, when he writes: “It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination”. (89) So Berkeley, when reduced to slogan form, can be considered immodest. But there is no question that he would support explication of what the knowing subject happens to be. For “…all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence, without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit.” (91)
Berkeley chooses John Locke’s realism as a central target. Specifically, Berkeley argues against Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities. For Berkeley, the distinction between these qualities raises the question of how ideas (secondary qualities) could resemble insensible material things (primary qualities), which cannot be given a credible answer. Hence, the distinction acts as a wedge that can be exploited by the skeptic. So, again, it would seem logical to characterize Berkeley as an anti-realist. He does, after all, abhor the idea of material substances, lurking beneath our sensations like the dullest of ghosts.
Yet this surface anti-realism is merely apparent. A.C. Grayling comments, “Berkeley’s denial of the existence of matter is not a denial of the existence of the external world and the physical objects it contains, such as tables and chairs, mountains and trees. Nor does Berkeley hold that the world exists only because it is thought of by any one or more finite minds. In one sense of the term ”realist”, indeed, Berkeley is a realist, in holding that the existence of the physical world is independent of finite minds, individually or collectively.” (Grayling:168) The fact that Grayling takes pains to talk about realism in terms of finite minds, we can infer that the phrase “independent of the mind” need not be ambiguous about the knowing subject.
The debates that have informed present-day arguments on realism/anti-realism have rested upon different philosophical ways of speaking about the phrase “independent of the mind”. Hence, the denial of modesty is ambiguous unless the definite article is replaced by reference to the kind of knowing subject. If we try to fill in the gaps, we find that there are at the very least three kinds of immodesty: dependence upon our collective of minds, dependence on an individual mind, and dependence on the divine mind. In Berkeley, and in scholarly commentaries on Berkeley, we find explicit illustrations of this threefold distinction. We shall examine each in turn.
Berkeley’s arguments frequently seem to begin from an individualistic point of view. This is evidenced by constant explicit personal references, marked by phrases like “for my part”, “I sense”, and so forth. This is just to say that he chooses a phenomenal examination of the objects of his senses as his provisional starting point. Such a strategy is to be expected of philosophers that have proceeded in the wake of the Cartesian method. Yet he frequently leans away from the egocentric and into the social by explicitly leaving the ultimate verdict up to the audience, and by advertising himself as being of one mind with the “vulgar”. He continually asks the reader to troll their own thoughts and put his claims to the test of their own experience.
But, of course, this starting point is merely provisional. For it is also common knowledge that Berkeley believed that objects, like the tree in the yard, had an quality of “outness” that persisted even when we were not attending to it. As he puts it in the Second Dialogue (through the mouth of Philonous): “…I conclude, not that [sensible things] have no real existence, but that seeing they depend not on my thought, and have an existence distinct from being perceived by me, there must be some other mind wherein they exist.” (Berkeley, 202; emphasis his) We are left, at the very least, with individualistic realism.
Where he drew upon his individual experience for the purposes of explaining that real things must be comprehended by cognitive powers, we fnd him abandoning his own experience in application to his metaphysics. In that way, the tree in the yard continues to exist in such a way that transcends his evidence for it. The passage continues: “As sure therefore as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent spirit who contains and supports it.” So Berkeley’s anti-realism is only relative to the divine knower.
So far, we have looked at the objectivity of truth relative to individuals, and relative to the divine. But we have left out two other issues: the objectivity of meaning, and the collective as a knowing subject. That’s saving the best for last. After all, if it turns out that Berkeley thinks that we have no collective access to the world, then we will have found some grounds for saying that Berkeley is an anti-realist about human knowledge. But if we can’t make that claim, then the whole debate over realism and anti-realism ends up being vapid pontification over God’s ideas.
Whereas, musing over God’s ideas is about as worthwhile as asking the question, “How now Brown Cow?”; and whereas, the realism/anti-realism debate is a keystone to philosophy; we must be resolved to face the possibility that, if Berkeley is not an anti-realist about collective access to the world, we will have shown that much of philosophy is absurd.
“In other words, the noumenal realm is mind-independent, in that it transcends the evidence accessible to our cognitive powers, while phenomena are mind-dependent.”
Backwards. The noumenal realm is not “mind independent” at all - it’s a speculative idea produced by reason running away with itself - it’s ability to apply to its own concepts the operations that it can properly apply to objects of possible experience. To say that the noumenal is a “mind independent” realm is to confuse Kant with Plato.
The noumenal realm contains “idea” (concepts for which no “apparence can be found in which they may be represented in concreto”A567/B595) and “ideals”(have practical power (as “regulative principles) grounding the possibility for the perfection of certain actions”A569/B597).
Both idea and ideal are a fortiori “mind dependant”, in that they find their genesis in the operation of speculative reason!
On the other hand, “phenomena” are less mind dependant, in that they are the product of the operation of reason on intuition which gives rise to an appearance. So, any phenomena is contingent on not only the mind, but on extra mental intuition, i.e. the stuff of experience.
This is why it is proper to say Kant believes in the “reality of the external world”, and this talk of “realism” is a product of bad (non-German) philosophy.
Tristan, it seems to me that you’ve muddled presumption with modesty. :P If I really took your claims at face value, then I’d have to say you’re confusing Kant with Berkeley!
Things-in-themselves are not accessible except through speculative reason, hence we don’t presume access. But phenomena are accessible through the intuition, so we do presume access. On the other hand, things-in-themselves exist apart from us (hence modesty), while phenomena do not (hence immodesty). If the whole world died, do you think that Kant would say that things-in-themselves would cease to exist?
Ben,
There is no question of “accessing” things-in-themselves - that question is incoherent for Kant. “Thing-in-itself”, for Kant, is just an idea in my head. It has no mind-independent existence. It’s quite clear, if you look my citations, that the idea of thing-in-itself serves a regulative role for humans both in reason and in practical action (to be precise, there it is called the “ideal”). But it’s “just an idea” - it is not an object of possible cognition, and therefore, does not “exist”.
As for phenomena, we don’t “access” phenomena through intuition. Intuition is worked on by the categories to produce appearance, or “phenomena”.
Just read the book.
For the Greeks, well at least Plato and Aristotle, we do access “things in themselves”, although we need to re-understand what the term means.
For Aristotle, what it means to “know” the CN tower, for example, is to “have” the CN tower in your head - formally. The formal “CN tower” is what makes the CN tower the CN tower. Without its form, it’s just mush - matter, potency, “could be something, but isn’t yet”.
So, when you know “the CN tower”, you really know the thing “in itself” - because the thing “itself” is really something formal, and “intuition” (noesis) is a property of humans whereby something formal out there can get in your head (by looking at it, studying it, etc…)
The only difference, as far as I understood from Gerson, between Plato and Aristotle here - is that for Plato the form has a more perfected existence than it finds in objects - the “form itself”, i.e. the form world. But you can’t really get to that, unless you’re willing to spend years learning geometry, etc…
Kant is more similar to Plato in that the form/idea/ideal plays a regulative role - it’s something you try to approach. But, it’s still very different because in Kant the regulative ideal or speculative idea is something produced by reason’s operating on itself, whereas for Plato it is something genuinely external to my cognitive apparatus.
Tristan, I think you’ve misrepresented your own point. There most certainly *is* a question, for Kant, whether or not we access things-in-themselves. That’s the reason he discusses noumena in positive and negative senses. There is certainly the *question* — and he answers by saying, “No, no access”.
That’s just to agree with something like your reading, that it’s a regulative ideal. But there are two points worth making here. First, you’re right to draw my attention back to the problematical and speculative profile of the concept of noumena, and his denial of it as transcendental. Second, and more importantly for my sub-argument — noumena is a necessary posit, not just a bedtime story. We need to suppose it in order to establish the limits of sensibility.
But what does that come to? Well, on the one hand, we are compelled to understand the content of the negative conception of the noumena as “an unknown something” (his words). That sounds like modesty to me. Yet — and I admit confusion here — we are also supposed to think of noumena as a “void space” (again, his words). That makes it sound immodest. The outcome of the characterization seems to depend on which passage we favor.
“There most certainly *is* a question, for Kant, whether or not we access things-in-themselves.”
Are you going to back this up?
Aside from my summary, you mean? The relevant chapter I’m referring to in my quotations above is titled “Of the Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena”.
So far, Benjamin, I’m afraid I find most of your writing opaque, I’m sorry to say, and it is not clear, after having made a beginning with Crispin Wright, and saying that we were going to use him as a guide, that you have really done much more with him. In fact, your first essay is a bit of one off right at the moment, and this one is beginning to look the same way.
You are not making clear connnexions between the different kinds of realism, non-realism, and anti-realism there can be, whether these are epistemological questions or ontological ones, or something in between. Are you talking about a theory of perception, or about how we can come to justify our claims to know, or do you want to develop a theory of truth? It’s not clear. Perhaps if you were to classify them carefully, and then less flamboyantly to address where they fit into the scheme of contemporary epistemology or ontology, then it might be easier to see what you really want to emphasise. It’s certainly difficult to have a conversation based on what you have written so far, which is what I thought blog posts were for.
This latest digression on noumena (which is plural, by the way), is really hunting the snark, unless you want to put it into some relationship with the question about realism that you are intending to address. One problem with the idea of noumena is that Kant never seems to have considered the development of, say, particle physics, where theoretical entities are neither noumena nor phenomena, and yet they are, in some sense, intelligible beings (Verstandeswesen). But for Kant ein Verstandeswesen, an intelligible entity, is simply the concept of something in general, which only has an application in cojunction with the manifold of intuition. Does Kant’s universe allow for some sort of deductive entities, or is he really trapped within the limits of perception? I don’t remember. It’s a long time since I did this stuff, but I think you might help out by making it clear what you want to be discussing.
Interestingly, Berkeley might have a more powerful theory than Kant here, since Berkeley isn’t restricted to the manifold of intuition as Kant is. (His New Theory of Vision, as I recall, is a wonderful example of a kind of intuitive psychology of perception, of how the visible world is built up from calculations based on the way things in the visual field are related to each other, very much as Chris Frith unfolds it in his rather wonderful little book, Making up the Mind.) But in what sense is all this addressing your original questions which seemed to be haring off after Wright’s idea that ‘truth’ is somehow systematically ambiguous or at least multiple in meaning? Are you doing epistemology or ontology? And, having made a choice, what is it that you want to say? So far I have no idea.
I’m sorry, I can’t find any citations of Kant above. But, if we look at your summery:
“He made the distinction between phenomena and noumena (thing-in-itself), and argued that powers of reason could be used to access the former but not the latter. ”
“… the noumenal realm is mind-independent, in that it transcends the evidence accessible to our cognitive powers, while phenomena are mind-dependent.”
By this logic, everything that exceeds the “powers of reason” is mind-independent. First off, the powers of reason can’t access anything; they can only work on data given in intuition. This is made clear in the chapter you refer to:
“all concepts and with them all principles, however a priori they might be, are nevertheless related to empirical intuitions, i.e. to data for possible experience. Without this they have no objective validity at all” A239/B298)”
That aside, the fact that the noumenal exceeds the “power of reason” does not make it mind-independent, anymore than unicorns or a non-existent planet (I can’t remember Quine’s example) are “mind independent”. In fact, when you are talking about something that doesn’t exist, like for instance, the noumenal or unicorns, it doesn’t make any sense to call them “mind independent”, because the only reality they have is as an idea produced by the mind.
For your position to be correct, you’d need to show that Kant believes the noumenal realm exists, and yet we somehow can’t access it. This would be strange on account of his understanding of existence - which excludes that which is not a possible object of experience.
I realize many people interpret Kant differently, but unless you actually want to argue for the very strange “dual world” interpretation of Kant, you can’t just assert it - as it is for the most part belied by the text.
Eric, it’s epistemology. Specifically, human epistemology.
Here’s the structure so far. It’s all in there, if you do a close reading, but it doesn’t hurt to extract it and I am certainly happy to do so. Hopefully this make it easier to see how things hang together.
In the present posts I began to show that there aren’t any general claims about truth (and later, meaning). Hence, the conclusion, which has not been supported yet, is that:
Both (1) and (2) draw upon Wright, and have been cited in that way. That’s how he’s indispensable.
In the second part, I have begun trying to show (4). Here’s how:
I have not yet talked about the collective, which will come in the third part. Nor have I talked about realism about meaning, which is also forthcoming.
I agree that discussing noumena is hunting snipe, but Tristan was interested in talking about it, so we have been. As you put it, that is what blogs are for. As an aside, I think your comment about pluralization of noumena is in error. We can’t fit noumena into any categories, including that of number. So it’s a matter of no significance whether or not we pluralize it or treat it as a singular. That’s also why we find Kant flipping back and forth between noumenon and noumena in the text: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/cprrn10.txt
Hopefully that clears things up enough to make things intelligible.
Edited Friday July 23@ 8:30. Only typography changed, for clarity; otherwise, content preserved.
I thought that Kant didn’t go for either the real or anti-real distinction because they are both transcendentally real views. He was concerned about the transcendentally real and ideal distinction. Everyone except Kant (and Wittgenstein…) is a transcendental realist (things are the source of their own appearance).
Kant’s transcendentally ideal phenemona were no more or less than what they appear as. Hence phenomena are empty, but only in the sense that they have no hidden, inner, transcendentally real, properties.
And regarding noumena, they are not objects except by phenomenal proxy. This isn’t mysterious - the physical limits that define objects are not given by matter itself, but by non-physical, non-material frameworks. For example, the brain isn’t an object (or object in itself) insofar as it is constructed from reports of our experience.
Tristan, yes, but take a close look at the quote you’re giving. True, the concept of noumena has no objective validity — meaning it has no determinate contents, because it is divorced from the categories and alienated from all possible application to human experience. That doesn’t mean that there is no noumena, it just means that it is a problematic concept, and underneath it there might be either the “unknown something” or the “void space”. (Incidentally, those were the initial quotes that I’ve been trying to draw your attention to. Just do a search on the e-text I linked above in reply to Eric.)
Yet we are absolutely forced to posit noumena, hell or high water. “The doctrine of sensibility is also the doctrine of noumena in the negative sense, that is, of things which the understanding is obliged to cogitate apart from any relation to our mode of intuition”. Why are we obliged to posit them? In order to distinguish understanding from the intuitive sensibility. Hence, the “conception [of the noumena] is necessary to restrain sensuous intuition within the bounds of phenomena, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensuous cognition; for things in themselves, which lie beyond its province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that this cognition does not extend its application to all that the understanding thinks.” And so on throughout that chapter.
You raise an interesting point about fictional entities. If it turns out that noumena are just compelling bedtime stories, useful fictions, then it looks like Kant is not just a skeptic about that realm — he would be an error theorist about it. But that seems like a pretty implausible way of reading him, given how much he equivocates (”unknown something” v. “void space”), and given that his equivocation is on principled grounds (the problematic but non-contradictory nature of concepts given in speculative reason).
John, oh for sure, he’s a form of transcendental idealist, and not a transcendental realist. A transcendental realist would be absolutely committed to the existence of noumena — they would adopt something like the positive thesis I alluded to in my comments to Tristan above, and which Kant rejects.
What I have trouble with is the kind of over-idealistic certainty that people like Tristan seem to want to attribute to Kant’s views towards noumena. We haven’t got much basis for saying that noumena are all in the head. We don’t know. It’s either unknown something, or void space. The ontology is up for grabs.
A better way of looking at Kant is as a skeptic towards things-in-themselves. But “skeptic”, as I understand the term in Wright’s scheme, is one who possesses modesty but denies presumption. That’s why, with Wright, I talk about “independent of the mind” as meaning “independent of the evidence accessible to the mind”. However hard we might find it to fit the pathologically ambiguous notion of “independent of the mind” to Kant’s take on noumena, we should not find it at all difficult to fit the notion of “independent of the evidence” to those views.
Benjamin. Thanks for the detail, which I will look at presently. For now, just a note. When I said that ‘noumena’ is plural, I meant the word. The singular is ‘noumenon’. That’s all I meant.
Ah! Of course — sorry if I slipped up on grammar somewhere. (I ust 2 spel gud.)
I think the bedtime stories analogy is strong. The noumena are not contingent bedtime stories - but necessary ones, required to, as you cite:
“restrain sensuous intuition within the bounds of phenomena, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensuous cognition; for things in themselves, which lie beyond its province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that this cognition does not extend its application to all that the understanding thinks.”
But, we are not forced to posit a “realm” in which they exist independent of our mind. They are just concepts, natural consequences of the structure of reason, and the natural propensity of reason to apply itself to inappropriate objects, i.e. its own structures rather than an object of possible cognition.
They are only “limit concepts” - they have no realm of their own. For them to have a “realm” they would have to be objective - actually that’s wrong. They would have to be subjective, in the old sense of hypokeimenon - “that which lies at the base”. They would be a subject which is not an object for us (not over-against us).
But they are not subjects - they are properties of reason. The existence they have is not mind-independent, but a fortiori mind-dependant. Just as mind-dependant as bedtime stories. But unlike bedtime stories, they are necessary.
Then again - some people think that certain bedtime stories are necessary. Jordan Peterson posits that the Genesis story might be as old as our ability to tell stories at all, and might in essence be a description of our basic experience of reality - which is not contingent, but dependant on the kinds of minds that we have, and the kind of world we live in.
From what I can see of this discussion, so far, is that it is typical philosophical discussion that a realist would say is an idealist discussion about realism.
Realism, at least in its modern manifestation, (lets move on from whatever Aristotle, Hegel, or Kant did or didn’t say about realism), come out of a new left marxism (Roy Bhaksar, Habermas,etc) that is an attempt to reintroduce Marx’s unification of theory and practice through human praxis.
Realism, today, is about the human abilities to work with and change a current world which is not of our own making. Realism is a consequence of our ability to correctly think ideally about our current existence and then work to successful change our current existence. Realism is human praxis.
I haven’t made any claims about what Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, or Kant “said about realism”.
Tristan, I don’t know about that. Take: “But it at the same time prescribes limits to itself, for it confesses itself unable to cognize these by means of the categories, and hence is compelled to cogitate them merely as an unknown something.” Compelled to cogitate the unknown something, the man says. That’s why I continue to resist your slide into empirical idealism.
Incidentally, I should not have used the misleading word, “realm”. I used it in a standard metaphorical sort of way, not in a serious one. You are right to pick up on that. It is better suited to discussions of, say, Descartes.
Also, it may help to keep in mind the comment I made to John. “Independent of the mind” is very equivocal. I’ve been using it, as Wright did, to mean independent of the evidence accessible to the mind. This is not a completely faultless move, since it fudges the line between presumption and modesty, but that’s what I wrote so I’m sticking to it.
Calvin, while that may be interesting, you’d have to show how these other forms of realism depart from Wright’s schema.
The basic problem for both Wright’s and your “schema” is that they claim that “realism” is based on a separation between our mind and things that exist outside of our mind. On this basis, realism is just another form of idealism because it is an idea in our mind.
Consistent realism is based on acknowledging that we exist along with the rest of the universe and that our minds and the minds of other creatures are not separate from this existence. The idealistic separation between the mind and things that exist outside of the mind is an ideology that has been used, at least since Descartes, to support an imperialist human “scientific” approach to the rest of the universe.
Modern realism is the interaction of our mind and body and the minds and bodies of all other creatures and things. It is the interaction that continues to create new things from existing things in evolutionary and revolutionary ways.
Realism is
Calvin. Confused. Dualism is not the same as idealism, and does not lead to idealism. Idealism is monistic — it says, things just are ideas. Dualism says, things are distinct from ideas. They’re incompatible doctrines, so you can’t infer one from the other.
[...] In part 2, I began to show how the antecedent in (3) is correct. There aren’t any general claims to argue about in the classic debates. I began this argument: [...]
Noumena aren’t hidden. We can see “them” directly, with our eyes. They are Kant’s manifold (of experience) prior to the limits (categories) which we place upon it - limits which define or set the limits of our objects. Noumenon is the highly visible, easily hearable, phenomenal world before the imposition of form.
And yet: “void space”, “unknown something”, etc.
Benjamin, the confusion is being created by the structure of your argument about what realism is. By using concepts such as “modesty”,”presumption”,”truth”,”meaning”, etc., you end up making realism into a form of idealism.
Calvin, I don’t know why you are thinking that, as no-one else has had the problem as you’ve phrased it. The condition of modesty, or mind-independence, is what guarantees that realism is not just an idea for the realists.
Also, as I mentioned, your understanding of what “idealism” means appears to be idiosyncratic. This is going to impede discussion if you leave it unattended.
So until you clear these things up, I’m not sure what I can say to help you.
The difficulty is you want to treat realism as a language game of some sort.
Realism is not a language game because language is always ideal because it is ideas or names that we put to things.
If you take a look at critical or transcendental realism (Tony Lawson, Roy Bhaskar) you may understand where I am coming from.
Lawson states that transcendental realism “rejects the need to elaborate (strict) event regularities….it construes science as a fallible social process which is primarily concerned to identify and understand structures, powers, mechanisms and their tendencies that have produced, or contributed in a significant way to the production of some identified phenonemon of interest….operative in open and closed systems alike.”
That’s going to be part of the conclusion, yes, at least if we’re trying to salvage something from the moderns. But it’s a conclusion, not a premise. If you want to criticize my argument, or compare other positions to it, then you need to criticize the argument first.
And even so, I’ve given a hint in the latest post that there’s a way out of that conclusion — the presumption of atheism. But that’s going to involve taking a step away from the classic debates.
A void is just as easily experienced as a cluster of objects; in fact, a void is a necessary condition of a cluster of objects.
Kant’s noumenon is Wittgenstein’s unsayable, both of which are immediately given to us.
Here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand how noumena, in your view, must be identical with the unity of apperception. Unlike the unity, noumena are a highly unnatural abstract posit, which we indulge when we try to do the impossible (for Kant) — that is, when we think of things without application to the sensible intuition. They are cognized “solely through the pure understanding” (his words). You can’t get any farther away from sensibility if you tried!
The comparison to Wittgenstein’s Tractarian view would be interesting. However, I’ve heard that what we cannot speak, we must be silent, soooo… [crickets]
As Kant says (to the effect that) we must assume that there is an object that lies behind phenomenal objects/appearances (or however he puts it) to give them their meaning or sensible presence. This object cannot be represented in phenomenal syntax (sensibility).
Likewise, we must assume that the syntax of Tractarian language has an object lying behind it that gives the syntactical elements their meaning. This object cannot be represented in Tractarian syntax.
Now, Kant does not want to provide us with unfamiliar items so he calls “things in themselves” “objects” - because we all know what an object is. Likewise, Wittgenstein calls his “object” the “unsayable” - because we all know that there are some things that cannot be put into words.
Kant and Wittgenstein are transcendental idealists because they acknowledge that there are things afoot in the world that are responsible for things, but that these things afoot cannot be represented by the things they are responsible for. They are either “shown” (Wittgenstein), or made apparant to the understanding (Kant).
As far as Kant goes, that sounds right. But it’s at odds with your previous view.
The comparison to Wittgenstein is interesting. I don’t know what to think about it — but on first blush, categories like “transcendental idealism” don’t seem to fit.
[...] In part 2 and part 3, I began to show how the antecedent in (3) is correct. There aren’t any general claims to argue about in the classic debates. I began this argument: [...]