display all the ideas for this combination of texts
12 ideas
| 5601 | There are possible inhabitants of the moon, but they are just possible experiences [Kant] |
| Full Idea: That there could be inhabitants of the moon, even though no human being has ever perceived them, must of course be admitted; but this means only that in the possible progress of experience we could encounter them. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B521/A493) | |
| A reaction: This seems a fairly precise statement of phenomenalism (compare A.J. Ayer's Idea 5170). Kant calls himself a 'transcendental idealist', which seems something like a true idealist who acknowledges Humean 'natural beliefs' in reality. |
| 22003 | We have no sensual experience of time and space, so they must be 'ideal' [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Time and space, Kant concluded, were 'ideal' since they could not be objects of direct sensory experience, and therefore had to be available only as 'pure' representations. ...Hence time and space were not 'objects' out there in the world. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: Put like this it sounds like a crazy application of empiricism, but demanding that space and time are experienced by the 'senses'. Can't we way that we experience them, but not through any particular sense? Kant at his most idealist. |
| 21456 | Objects having to be experiencable is not the same as full idealism [Gardner on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Being subject to the condition of experienceability - that is, necessarily related in some manner to intuition - is not the same as being composed of experiences in any sense (and particularly Berkeley's sense). | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 08 'Non-phenom' | |
| A reaction: This is Gardner's best explanation of why Kant is definitely not a Berkeleyan idealist (who claims objects ARE conscious experiences) |
| 21446 | If we disappeared, then all relations of objects, and time and space themselves, disappear too [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If we remove our own subject ...then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B059/A42) | |
| A reaction: Apart from over-cautious 'as appearances', this seems like simple Berkleyean idealism, and hence rather silly. The first commitment of realism (mine, anyway) is that at least time and space would survive our disappearance. |
| 6909 | In Kantian idealism, objects fit understanding, not vice versa [Kant, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: In Kantian idealism, the objects conform to the understanding, and not the understanding to the objects. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
| A reaction: This labels Kant as an idealist, but he was also a realist (of a very minimal sort). Modern cognitive science shows clearly that Kant is at least partially correct. Personally I think I see squares as square because they are square. |
| 6910 | Kant's idealism is a limited idealism based on the viewpoint of empiricism [Kant, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Kant's idealism is a limited idealism - idealism based on the viewpoint of empiricism. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
| A reaction: This would place Kant as closer to Berkeley than to Hegel. Good for Kant, I say. He had the good sense to see that the crucial challenge to understanding is that offered by David Hume. |
| 21440 | For Kant experience is either structured like reality, or generates reality's structure [Kant, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: On the analytic interpretation of Kant (by Strawson) ...the structure of experience ultimately reduces to the structure of what is experienced. ...In the idealist view (of D. Heinrich) experience itself has an inherent structure. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 02 'Interpretations' | |
| A reaction: Gardner thinks Strawson has got it wrong, and makes a good case for his view. Strawson's view sounds more like the empiricist view of concepts. I prefer that view, but I doubt whether it is Kant's. |
| 22006 | The concepts that make judgeable experiences possible are created spontaneously [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: The concepts that make sensory experience possible are not innate, but are generated by the spontaneity of the human mind itself as it shapes our experiences in to judgemental form. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: Pinkard emphasises this creative spontaneity of the mind as a key idea in Kant, and in the generation that followed him. An account is needed of how the spontaneity matches reality, rather than being private. What about words (like 'telephone'). |
| 21442 | 'Transcendental' cognition concerns what can be known a priori of its mode [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I call all cognition 'transcendental' that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B025/A11) | |
| A reaction: Kant thinks this enquiry is a highly rational affair, but it sounds more like hopeful introspective psychology to me. If you find some prerequisites for an activity, how do you know there aren't others you have missed? |
| 5568 | We cannot know things in themselves, but are confined to appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We have no insight into the possibility of noumena (things in themselves), and the domain outside the sphere of appearances is empty (for us). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B310/A255) | |
| A reaction: Yet another philosopher confusing ontology and epistemology! Every day we go beyond our experiences by inference (smoke means fire). Metaphysics is the inference of the nature of things in themselves, from within our prison of appearances. |
| 5581 | We have proved that bodies are appearances of the outer senses, not things in themselves [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the transcendental aesthetic we have undeniably proved that bodies are mere appearances of our outer senses, and not things in themselves. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A357) | |
| A reaction: This seems a strongly idealistic remark, which is a bit qualified when he talks of the existence of the unknowable 'noumenon' behind appearances, and he rejects idealism when he labels it a 'paralogism' at A367, preferring 'transcendental idealism'. |
| 21956 | Everything we intuit is merely a representation, with no external existence (Transcendental Idealism) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We have proved that everything intuited in space or time, hence all possible objects of experience, are nothing but appearances, mere representations, which ...have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. I call this Transcendental Idealism. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B519/A491) | |
| A reaction: It is only 'transcendental' idealism because it is what can be learned from deconstructing our own cognition, while remaining neutral (I assume) about whether the things-in-themselves are mere ideas. He is notoriousy ambivalent. |