[MD] Kant's Motorcycle

[Ham Priday]

Hi Micah --

> Please explain Kant's "noumenal world".
> The things that are NOT perceived by
> man, and how he knows of this reality?

Kant's distinguishes 'Ding an sich' [the thing-in-itself] or Noumenon that
we can not know from 'Erscheinung', the phenomenon that we observe as an
event or physical manifestation.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the 'Critique', Kant argues that
sensibility is the understanding's means of accessing objects.  The reason
synthetic a priori judgments are possible in geometry, for example, is that
space is an a priori form of sensibility.  That is, we can know the claims
of geometry with a priori certainty (which we do) only if experiencing
objects in space is the necessary mode of our experience.  Without a spatial
representation, our sensations are undifferentiated and we cannot ascribe
properties to particular objects.  Time is also necessary as a form or
condition of our intuitions of objects.  The idea of time itself cannot be
gathered from experience because succession and simultaneity of objects, the
phenomena that would indicate the passage of time, would be impossible to
represent if we did not already possess the capacity to represent objects in
time.

A very clear presentation of this argument [largely a critique of Hume] is
accessible at
http://www.london-oratory.org/philosophy/philosophies/epistemology/trancendental/body_trancendental.html
under the title "Kant's Trancendental Idealism".  (I don't know why the word
"transcendental" is misspelled.)  I've copied the most relevant paragraphs
below:

"...Hume argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot empirically derive our
concepts of causation, substance, self, identity, and so forth.  What Hume
had failed to see, Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making
judgments about objects, to which Hume would assent, presupposes the
possession of these fundamental concepts.  Hume had argued for a sort of
associationism to explain how we arrive at causal beliefs.  My idea of a
moving cue ball, becomes associated with my idea of the eight ball that is
struck and falls into the pocket.  Under the right circumstances, repeated
impressions of the second following the first produces a belief in me that
the first causes the second.

"The problem that Kant points out is that a Humean association of ideas
already presupposes that we can conceive of identical, persistent objects
that have regular, predictable, causal behavior.  And being able to conceive
of objects in this rich sense presupposes that the mind makes several a
priori contributions.  I must be able to separate the objects from each
other in my sensations, and from my sensations of myself.  I must be able to
attribute properties to the objects.  I must be able to conceive of an
external world with its own course of events that is separate from the
stream of perceptions in my consciousness.  These components of experience
cannot be found in experience because they constitute it.  The mind's a
priori conceptual contribution to experience can be enumerated by a special
set of concepts that make all other empirical concepts and judgments
possible.  These concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are only
manifest as the form which particular judgments of objects take.  Kant
believes that formal logic has already revealed what the fundamental
categories of thought are.  The special set of concepts is Kant's Table of
Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with a few revisions:

 Of Quantity
 Unity
 Plurality
 Totality

 Of Quality
 Reality
 Negation
 Limitation

 Of Reality
 Inherence and Subsistence
 Causality and Dependence
 Community

 Of Modality
 Possibility-Impossibility
 Existence-Nonexistence
 Necessity-Contingency

"While Kant does not give a formal derivation of it, he believes that this
is the complete and necessary list of the a priori contributions that the
understanding brings to its judgments of the world.  Every judgment that the
understanding can make must fall under the table of categories.  And
subsuming spatiotemporal sensations under the formal structure of the
categories makes judgments, and ultimately knowledge, of empirical objects
possible."

I hope this helps you.  It was quite helpful to me.

Regards,
Ham