@voidere,
Quote:G H and fresco, thanks for those illuminate answers. I myself found assumptions from Schopenhauer that Kant was apparently thinking of "Engelchen", little angels without body, and therefore without physical necessities in the Kingdom of Ends.
Yes, either in or on the edges of Kant's practical / moral philosophy, the lingering Scholastic / Christian traditions could still cling to an assortment of useful (to them) symbols for beings that possessed an intellectual intuition. Even though Kant discarded Plato's contention that humans had a pre-natal intuition of an intelligible world (thus limiting us to only a sensible intuition), he nevertheless allowed the possibility of such an intellectual intuition in other beings (especially a "First Being"). But these noumenal "thinking" entities are not referred to positively in the context of his theoretical philosophy, and would merely have grounds to be argued for in his practical philosophy (never proven).
Indeed, although a human can prescribe itself in the latter context (above) as having freedom or autonomy from the empirical world -- that is, the human portrayed as a thing in itself from the perspective of an intellectual intuition -- a human still lacks the capacity to "know" itself in such a non-spatiotemporal manner of making noumena "real" or "giving" a noumenon. It is therefore stuck with verification of its thoughts (self) only in the introspective sense and extrospectively as a body existing in causal, lawfully organized connections with other phenomena (the mind/matter dichotomy of experience [
inner sense; outer sense ]).
Kant ... "For the reason mentioned before,
the latter [intellectual] intuition seems only to belong to the First Being, and never to one which is dependent [as depicted in experience], both in its existence and its intuition (which intuition [sensible intuition] determines its existence with reference to given objects) . This latter remark, however, must only be taken as
an illustration of our æsthetic theory, and
not as a proof." --
Critique of Pure Reason; SUPPLEMENT XI, iv; Friedrich Max Muller translation
. . . . .
"For appearance can be nothing by itself, outside our mode of representation. Unless, therefore, we are to move constantly in a circle, the word appearance must be recognised as already indicating a relation to something, the immediate [representation of which is, indeed, sensible, but which, even apart from the constitution of our sensibility (upon which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something in itself, that is, an object independent of sensibility.
If, therefore, we should attempt to apply the categories to objects which are not viewed as being appearances, we should have to postulate an intuition other than the sensible, and the object would thus be a noumenon in the positive sense. Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories can never extend further than to the objects of experience. Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding to the sensible entities;
there may also be intelligible entities to which our sensible faculty of intuition has no relation whatsoever; but our concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition, could not in the least apply to them.
That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon' must be understood as being such only in a negative sense. If I remove from empirical knowledge all thought (through categories), no knowledge of any object remains. For through mere [sensible] intuition nothing at all is thought, and the fact that this affection of sensibility is in me does not [by itself] amount to a relation of such representation to any object. But if, on the other hand, I leave aside all intuition, the form of thought still remains [the categories of the Understanding]. There thus results the concept of a noumenon. It is not of anything, but signifies only the thought of something in general, in which I abstract from everything that belongs to the form of sensible intuition. But in order that a noumenon may signify a true object, distinguishable from all phenomena, it is not enough that I free my thought from all conditions of sensible intuition;
I must likewise have ground for assuming another kind of intuition, different from the sensible, in which such an [intelligible] object may be given. For otherwise my thought, while indeed without contradictions, is none the less empty.
We have not, indeed, been able to prove that sensible intuition is the only possible intuition, but only that it is so for us. But neither have we been able to prove that another kind of intuition is possible. That is, the mode of determining an object for the manifold of a possible intuition. The categories accordingly extend further than sensible intuition, since they think objects in general, without regard to the special mode (the sensibility) in which they may be given. But they do not thereby determine a greater sphere of objects.
For we cannot assume that such [noumenal] objects can be given, without presupposing the possibility of another kind of intuition than the sensible; and we are by no means justified in so doing." --
Critique of Pure Reason; p. 269-271; Norman Kemp Smith translation
. . . . .
"Now,
in order to know ourselves, we require, besides the act of thinking, which brings the manifold of every possible intuition to the unity of apperception, a definite kind of intuition also by which that manifold is given, and thus, though my own existence is not phenomenal (much less a mere illusion), yet the determination of my existence can only take place according to the form of the internal sense, and in that special manner in which the manifold, which I connect, is given in the internal intuition.
This shows that I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself. The consciousness of oneself is therefore very far from being a knowledge of oneself, in spite of all the categories which constitute the thinking of an object in general, by means of the connection of the manifold in an apperception. As for the knowledge of an object different from myself I require, besides the thinking of an object in general (in a category), an intuition also, to determine that general concept, I require for the knowledge of my own self, besides consciousness, or besides my thinking myself, an intuition also of the manifold in me, to determine that thought. I exist, therefore, as such an intelligence, which is simply conscious of its power of connection, but with respect to the manifold that has to be connected, is subject to a limiting condition which is called the internal sense, according to which that connection can only become perceptible in relations of time, which lie entirely outside the concepts of the understanding [i.e., belongs to the sensibility]. Such an intelligence, therefore, can only know itself as it appears to itself in an intuition (which cannot be intellectual and given by the understanding itself), and not as it would know itself,
if its intuition were intellectual." ----
Critique of Pure Reason; Supplement XIII, 25; Friedrich Max Muller translation
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