Topics Philosophers

Question If we are to agree with Kant that "the things which we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them as being," wouldn't this leave us suspended in an anthropomorphic description of reality, in which what reality itself is, is forever beyond our knowledge? Wouldn't this also suggest that because we comprehend ourselves as individuals, we place this comprehension as a mirror in front of our eyes, and so conceive nature and reality in individual terms?

Accepted:
July 23, 2009

Comments

There are several different ways to read the sentence that you quote from Kant:

1. The way that we experience things as being is totally unlike the way things really are.

2. The way that we experience things as being is somewhat different from the way things really are.

3. The way that we experience things as being is a product of the way things really are and the way we are -- factors that cannot be understood in isolation.

4. There are no things in themselves, just things in our experience.

It is only the first reading that leaves reality "forever beyond our knowledge", as you say. Reading #2 allows us partial knowledge of things in themselves, and reading #3 grants us a modified knowledge of things in themselves. Reading #4 dismisses the very possibility of things that are beyond the reach of experience.

When we experience ourselves or objects as "individuals", we make distinctions between people or objects that may not accurately represent the world as it is in itself. But, again, this may be due to the fact that (1) there are no distinctions in the world as it really is, (2) the distinctions we make are only a subset of the distinctions that exist in the world as it really it, (3) the distinctions we make are the joint result of what is subjective and what is objective, with no way to pry the two apart, or (4) there is no-thing that can count as a world apart from the distinctions that we make.