Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Being and Time', 'Art' and 'Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic'

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5 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / d. Secondary qualities
I can make no sense of the red experience being similar to the quality in the object [Kant]
     Full Idea: I can make little sense of the assertion that the sensation of red is similar to the property of the vermilion [cinnabar] which excites this sensation in me.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 290)
     A reaction: A sensible remark. In Kant's case it is probably a part of his scepticism that his intuitions reveal anything directly about reality. Locke seems to have thought (reasonably enough) that the experience contains some sort of valid information.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / e. Primary/secondary critique
I count the primary features of things (as well as the secondary ones) as mere appearances [Kant]
     Full Idea: I also count as mere appearances, in addition to [heat, colour, taste], the remaining qualities of bodies which are called primariae, extension, place, and space in general, with all that depends on it (impenetrability or materiality, shape etc.).
     From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 289 n.II)
     A reaction: He sides with Berkeley and Hume against Locke and Boyle. He denies being an idealist (Idea 16923), so it seems to me that Kant might be described as a 'phenomenalist'.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 3. Representation
I can't intuit a present thing in itself, because the properties can't enter my representations [Kant]
     Full Idea: It seems inconceivable how the intuition of a thing that is present should make me know it as it is in itself, for its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 282)
     A reaction: One might compare this with Locke's distinction of primary and secondary, where the primary properties seem to 'migrate into my faculty of representation', but the secondary ones fail to do so. I think I prefer Locke. This idea threatens idealism.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / d. Sense-data problems
There are no raw sense-data - our experiences are of the sound or colour of something [Heidegger]
     Full Idea: We always take a noise as the sound of something; we always take a hue as the color of something. We simply do not experience raw, uninterpreted sense-data - these are the inventions of philosophers.
     From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 207/163-4), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3
     A reaction: This is something like the modern view of sense-data as promoted by John McDowell, rather than the experiential atoms of Russell and Moore. Experience is holistic, but that doesn't mean we can't analyse it into components.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 5. Interpretation
Perceived objects always appear in a context [Heidegger]
     Full Idea: The perceptual 'something' is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a 'field'.
     From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.4), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual'
     A reaction: Sounds like our knowledge of electrons. Nice point. Standard analytic discussions of perceiving a glass always treat it in isolation, when it is on an expensive table near a brandy bottle. Or near a hammer.