Phenomena and noumena discussions

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According to Kant:

Phenomena: the realm that the mind perceives
Noumena: the realm of ultimate reality

Kant asserted that our knowledge of the world is merely knowledge of the phenomenal realm, and not of the noumenal realm. He believed that from how our mental faculty is structured, that any synthetic a priori knowledge (knowledge such as 5 + 5 = 10 or the sum of all angles in a triangle equals to 180 degree), do not describe the noumenal world or at least we do not know if it describes what the world is actually is, and that the mind supposes that this concept fit the world because it regularly appears in our phenomenal perception of it.

Can anyone can verify or clarify what I just wrote? Thanks. Very Happy

Discussion:

What do you think of Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, and of his saying that knowledge of the noumenal realm is outside the realm of human reason?

My thought:

I think that it is innately impossible to know whether our concept of the world fits the noumena because we would arrive at a point where we have to analyze the credibility of our ability to analyze; thus we would be going in circles and we could not go any further beyond this point.

Therefore, we have to accept certain things in our perception of the world. There is no credible proof to assert that what we are experiencing has no relation or is very deceiving to the nature of the noumena. Such an assertion is self-defeating because in refuting the credibility of our ability to know, it is refuting its own credibility because the argument is also asserting that it knows something to be such.

Keeping that in mind, I think that our phenomena or experience, is a representation or reflection of at least certain parts of the noumena. It is ambiguous to ask what the noumena is "really like," because in experiencing the noumena, there needs to be an observer, and because there is an observer, any information regarding what the noumena is "really like" is a representation of it...

That's all I can argue about right now. Feel free to post your thoughts. Very Happy

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Re: Phenomena and noumena discussions

Ray wrote:

synthetic a priori knowledge (knowledge such as 5 + 5 = 10 or the sum of all angles in a triangle equals to 180 degree)

Technical point: those two examples, "5+5=10" and "sum of all angles, etc." are not, in Kant's terminology, synthetic propositions. They are analytic propositions.

Analytic propositions are those where the the concept of the subject is contained in the concept of the predicate. This is the case in both of your examples: the concept of "10" is inherently part of the concept of "5+5" and vice versa, and the concept of "180 degrees" is inherently part of the concept of "sum of all angles in a triangle" and vice versa. It is impossible to conceive of either of those subjects without including those respective predicates: it is impossible to conceive of the "10" without including as one of its possible definitions "5+5". Mathematical knowledge in general tends to be of the analytic kind.

Synthetic propositions are those in which the concept of the subject is not--or at least not necessarily--contained in the concept of the predicate. An example would be "My car is in the driveway." This is synthetic because the concept of "in the driveway" is not necessarily contained in the concept of "my car." It is possible to conceive of "my car" without including as one of its possible definitions "in the driveway" (i.e. it would still be my car even if it never winds up being parked in that driveway).

According to Kant, anyway. It's been contested. But those are Kant's definitions of synthetic and analytic propositions.

Ordinarily, analytic truths are associated with a priori knowledge while synthetic truths are associated with a posteriori knowledge. The Big Question that Kant poses in the Prolegomena is, "Is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?" (His answer is yes.)

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Thanks for the input.

How come in this website:

philosophy pages

Quote:

Consider, for example, our knowledge that two plus three is equal to five and that the interior angles of any triangle add up to a straight line. These (and similar) truths of mathematics are synthetic judgments, Kant held, since they contribute significantly to our knowledge of the world; the sum of the interior angles is not contained in the concept of a triangle. Yet, clearly, such truths are known a priori, since they apply with strict and universal necessity to all of the objects of our experience, without having been derived from that experience itself.

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Synthetic knowledge I think is simplification i.e. We exclude extraneous matters. We estimate the cost of a car. We only put the dollar amount. We do not include, seat cover, carpet, lights, mirrors, horn, etc.

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IMO We have to decide whether Kants dichotomy of phenomena and noumena is "useful"....and some consideration of the word "use" is called for.
viz
1. Kant "makes sense" because his dichotomy counters the claims of naive realists. Thus we see an illustration of Wittgensteins concept "meaning is use".

2. The dichotomy is "useful" in promoting research on "active perception" and "sociolinguistic conditioning".

However we also need to consider whether the dichotomy is a "straw man". There may be no "ultimate reality". "Noumena" might be rejectable like "ether" was in physics. This is not to imply a solipsistic postion, but to encompass the concept that "observer" and "observed" are merely two sides of the same coin. Such a position is perhaps implied in quantum mechanics.

In essence the dichotomy must be considered in historical context. There are moves to shift the "scientific paradigm" (in the Kuhnian sense) towards an embedded epistemology involving "the observation of observation" (see "second order cybernetics"). Within such a paradigm the dichotomy would break down since "ultimate" would be replaced by "successive levels".

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Ray wrote:

How come in this website:

Quote:
These (and similar) truths of mathematics are synthetic judgments, Kant held, since they contribute significantly to our knowledge of the world...

It's been a while since I've read Kant, but that above passage seems like a misinterpretation to me. It takes much more than "contributing to our knowledge of the world" to make something a synthetic truth. Synthetic truths do do that, certainly, but that alone is not a sufficient condition to make a truth synthetic.

The confusion, I think, is that Kant believed we could know a priori truths synthetically even such these truths (and here we're talking primarily of mathematical truths) seem, by definition, to be analytic. Kant wanted to allow for the possibility that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible; but that claim doesn't mean much if we lose sight of what the word "synthetic" means in the first place, and it doesn't mean what the above passage says it means.

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Hmm, I think you're right. 180 degree is contained within the concept of a triangle, etc.

Fresco, what's this second order cybernetics?

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Ray,

Second order cybernetics is about the observation of observation. (There are many references on Google) It brings together themes like Piagets genetic epistemology and the Santiago theory of cognition where "knowing" and "intelligence" are seen as aspects all "life". A main point ais that systems are embedded in larger systems and we cannot define (reduce) the "inner" system without reference to the "outer" (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts). This is antithetical to Kants dichotomy. The "reality" is the local dynamic interaction of "inner" and "outer", but each "outer process" could be viewed as an "inner process" for a wider level of analysis. This allows for structures ranging from "cell" through "animal" to "planet" and beyond. Reference is made to fractals and catastrophe theory as discursive models in the analysis, thereby avoiding the need for linear models involving "causality".

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That's interesting fresco. I'll look it up on google later.

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Re: Phenomena and noumena discussions

Shapeless wrote:

Technical point: those two examples, "5+5=10" and "sum of all angles, etc." are not, in Kant's terminology, synthetic propositions. They are analytic propositions.

No they're not. They're synthetic.

[i]All mathematical judgments, without exception, are synthetic.[/i] This fact, though incontestably certain and in its consequences very important, has hitherto escaped the notice of those who are engaged in the analysis of human reason, and is, indeed, directly opposed to all their conjectures.... We might, indeed, at first suppose that the proposition 7 & 5 = 12 is a merely analytic proposition, and follows by the principle of contradiction from the concept of a sum of 7 and 5. But if we look more closely we find that the concept of the sum of 7 and 5 contains nothing save the union of the two numbers into one, and in this no thought is being taken as to what that single number may be which combines both. The concept of 12 is by no means already thought in merely thinking this union of 7 and 5; and I may analyse my concept of such a possible sum as long as I please, still I shall never find the 12 in it.Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, part V.

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fresco wrote:

IMO We have to decide whether Kants dichotomy of phenomena and noumena is "useful"....and some consideration of the word "use" is called for.

No we don't and no it isn't. In a discussion regarding Kant's categories of noumena and phenomena, any consideration of the "usefulness" of those categories is completely irrelevant. It would only serve to draw attention away from Kant and toward your tiresome hobbyhorse of non-dualism.

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We'll let Ray be the judge of that !

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Quote:

No they're not. They're synthetic.

Thanks for the link, it's very intriguing. So Kant acknowledged mathematical statements as synthetic. I'm sort of confused now, I think I'll read this more.

A philosopher named Quine says that analytic statements can be shown to be synthetic if the language is rearranged. Can this be a matter of language?

Anyways, I can see how Kant thinks that the union of 7 and 5 does not necessarily show, to a person, of the concept of the number 12. However, I can also see how the meaning of the concept 12 to contain the concepts of a certain number added to another certain number that would give the sum of 12. In other words, I'm confused.

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Ray wrote:

A philosopher named Quine says that analytic statements can be shown to be synthetic if the language is rearranged. Can this be a matter of language?

I've read very little of Quine, so I can't be certain.

Ray wrote:

Anyways, I can see how Kant thinks that the union of 7 and 5 does not necessarily show, to a person, of the concept of the number 12. However, I can also see how the meaning of the concept 12 to contain the concepts of a certain number added to another certain number that would give the sum of 12. In other words, I'm confused.

Kant really doesn't say very much about analytic statements. From the example he gives in part IV of the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason we can get a sense of what he meant.

If I say, for instance, 'All bodies are extended', this is an analytic judgment. For I do not require to go beyond the concept which I connect with 'body' in order to find extension as bound up with it. To meet with this predicate, I have merely to analyse the concept, that is, to become conscious to myself of the manifold which I always think in that concept. The judgment is therefore analytic. But when I say, 'All bodies are heavy', the predicate is something quite different from anything that I think in the mere concept of body in general; and the addition of such a predicate therefore yields a synthetic judgment.Analytic judgments, then, are confined largely to definitions. "All bodies are extended" is analytic because "body" and "extension" are linked conceptually: it is, in other words, impossible to conceive of an "extensionless body." On the other hand, it is possible to conceive of a "weightless body," and so "all bodies are heavy" is a synthetic judgment.

You should also keep in mind that Kant arrived at the idea of noumena in order to address Berkeleyan idealism without falling into Humean skepticism. The Critique of Pure Reason is a little bit easier to understand if you have some knowledge of Berkeley and Hume (and Descartes as well).

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Good explanation Joe.

So an analytic judgment is like saying space is the region between objects. The concept of space contains the concept of a region between objects in itself. It is impossible to think of space without thinking of the region between objects.

The debate now, is if the concept of a number 12 does not contain the concept of the union of the number 5 and 7 or 2 and 10, etc. From the critique, he made a point that the concept of a union between two numbers is not contain within the concept of a number 12.

Hey this makes a lot of sense now.

But, what about the sum of the angles of a triangle? Certainly we can't think of a triangle without visualizing the angles that make up the triangle, but we can think about it without thinking that the union of the angles give a sum of 180 degree, or can we?

Of course in order to think of a triangle we need to think of three connected lines...

Quote:

You should also keep in mind that Kant arrived at the idea of noumena in order to address Berkeleyan idealism without falling into Humean skepticism. The Critique of Pure Reason is a little bit easier to understand if you have some knowledge of Berkeley and Hume (and Descartes as well).

Berkeley the advocate of solipsism?

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Ray,

There is much in the philosophy of mathematics (see Wikpedia)which goes beyond the phenomena-noumena dichotomy. Kant is significant in as much that he established a concept of "active" perception which "structured reality", but he did not get into the "mechanisms" of this activity.Later writers such as Piaget who might be described as a neo-Kantian, argued that such activity was a two way process, rather a mere projection of the a priori. Taking the specific example of the triangle, it is interesting that non-Euclideans who rejected the 180 degree axiom (and indeed the "macro-reality" of the straight line) were instrumental in providing a framework for Einstein's relativity ("space is curved").

The interesting question for me is therefore about the interplay between mathematics and "observation". Kant raises the issue within his contemporary zeitgeisst of Newtonian mechanics and Hume's billiard balls, but "the world" has moved on.

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Ray wrote:

Good explanation Joe.

So an analytic judgment is like saying space is the region between objects. The concept of space contains the concept of a region between objects in itself. It is impossible to think of space without thinking of the region between objects.

Something like that, yes.

Ray wrote:

The debate now, is if the concept of a number 12 does not contain the concept of the union of the number 5 and 7 or 2 and 10, etc. From the critique, he made a point that the concept of a union between two numbers is not contain within the concept of a number 12.

Hey this makes a lot of sense now.

It's clear, from reading The Critique of Pure Reason, that Kant viewed mathematics as just a very elaborate method of finger counting. Since counting one's fingers is a synthetic judgment, all mathematics is synthetic.

Ray wrote:

But, what about the sum of the angles of a triangle? Certainly we can't think of a triangle without visualizing the angles that make up the triangle, but we can think about it without thinking that the union of the angles give a sum of 180 degree, or can we?

Of course in order to think of a triangle we need to think of three connected lines...

I'd guess that Kant would say that the statement "a triangle is a closed, three-sided figure" is analytic, whereas "the interior angles of a triangle equal the sum of two right angles" would be synthetic. For more on Kant and mathematics, you might want to check out this site.

Ray wrote:

Berkeley the advocate of solipsism?

Berkeley was certainly many things, but he wasn't a solipsist.

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fresco wrote:

The interesting question for me....

Once again, fresco attempts to hijack a thread.

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Joe,

Thanks for that reference which agrees with my my general point about zeitgeisst above.

...."The consequences of this view of the synthetic/analytic distinction clearly implies that Kant's views on where the distinction is to be drawn merely reflects the knowledge of his day, and its limitations. But if the a priori synthetic truths condition the possibility of experience, and if the synthetic/analytic line can be shifted, this implies that experience is, in fact, malleable"....

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fresco wrote:

Joe,

Thanks for that reference which agrees with my my general point about zeitgeisst above.

"Zeitgeist," like "paradigm" and "weltanschauung," is the kind of word that people use when they don't have anything to say but want to appear profound when they say it. Of course, the effect is rather diminished if one doesn't know how to spell it correctly.

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