Philosophers

Is it possible to read Kant as holding a position that does not reject the existence of a reality external to mind while maintaining that we can only know representations of that reality not reality as it exists in itself?

Comments

It is common to interpret Kant as insisting that the objects we observe in space and time exist independently of any particular observation we make of them,but also insisting that space and time are forms that we impose on our experience rather than characteristics of reality as it exists in itself. Likewise, it is common to read Kant as insisting that causal relations exist independently of any particular observation we may make, but also insisting that causal ordering is something that we impose on our experience rather than something that is present in reality in itself. These contrasting claims are reflected in Kant's famous distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal, and in his endorsement of empirical realism and transcendental idealism.

Whether Kant's position is a consistent position is a topic of much dispute. It is common to invoke the image of colored glasses to explain how he can insist that what we see is independent of ourselves but how we see it depends on our own activities and capacities (our glasses). The problem with this image of colored glasses is that the objects viewed through glasses are still in space and time, and still causally related to one another; if you strip these features from the objects in front of the glasses, it seems impossible to understand what is left. Kant himself emphasizes the impossibility of understanding reality as it exists in itself (the noumenal world) but he thinks that we have good reason to think that such a world exists.

There is nothing inconsistent about believing in a world that is independent of our representations and believing that we require certain sorts of representations in order to have knowledge of the world. It would be inconsistent, though, to think that we can know anything about the world apart from our representations -- including knowledge of whether it is or is not in space and time, or whether it is or is not governed by causality.

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