Hey, I'm not a Kantian, but I recommend a work by Arthur Schopenhauer which directly addresses your questions (and who IMO is, like Solomon Maimon or Witty, a much more consistent, lucid, 'Kantian' than Kant himself). "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy (Appendix)", volume one of The World As Will and Representation, and which is further outlined in this wiki.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood to potentially have any kind of physical form (waves, for instance) which we cannot apprehend directly? Or is the use of the word ‘physical’ here entirely superfluous? — Tom Storm

I wouldn't call myself a Kantian, although I hope I understand some aspects of his philosophy.

The distinction he makes is between 'things as they appear to us' - as phenomena - and 'as they are in themselves' (the infamous ding an sich) which is often equated with the noumena. However opinion is divided as to whether 'the noumena' and 'things in themselves' really are synonymous - this is one of the things Schopenhauer criticized, saying he used both terms inconsistently.

Generally the distinction of phenomena and noumena is a form of the age-old distinction between appearance and reality which goes back to Plato and before. However Kant's approach is different to Plato's, even though it draws on it. Kant's original dissertation was on the Platonic forms, but later he repudiated the accepted understanding of their meaning.

So as to whether the noumenal can have physical form - it seems an odd question. Maybe someone else can answer that.

Following Kant, we obviously construct the phenomenal world we know out of the noumenal world in some way - presumably from the sensations which present themselves to our consciousness. Is there any simple way of describing how this is might be understood to actually work? — Tom Storm

It's never struck me as that difficult to grasp. Kant characterizes thinking as a form of synthesis - “the act of putting different representations together, and grasping what is manifold in them in one cognition” (A77/B103); it is a process that “gathers the elements for cognition, and unites them to form a certain content” (A78/B103). Part of those contents comprises sensory data - what is seen, heard, felt etc - which is then combined with the categories of the understanding (judgements of quantity, quality, modality, relation) which together produces a unified understanding both intellectual/rational and sensory/empirical. This was distinguished from either the empiricists (all knowledge comes from experience) and the rationalists (true knowledge is grounded in innate ideas) by combining elements from both. 'Concepts without percepts are blind, percepts without concepts are empty'. (That's what your fantastically elaborated hominid brain does with all that processing power. It creates a world, the only one you'll ever know.)

(I should maybe mention the first exposure I had to Kant was through T R V Murti The Central Philosophy of Buddhism which has extensive comparisons with the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism and idealist philosophies. As many have commented, there are a lot of parallels between philosophical idealism and Buddhist and Hindu non-dualist philosophy. But in Buddhism that is elaborated through meditation which is a discipline of getting direct insight into the way the mind constructs the world. Murti's book is unfashionable nowadays but it helped me find a way in to that understanding.)

In describing the noumenal world (which we do not know in any way) Kant seems to be saying that there is a real world (the world therefore is not entirely a product of our minds) but we are unable to perceive it directly. — Tom Storm

I don't think Kant posits that as a kind of stark dualism. I also don't think he ever says that the world is 'entirely a product of our minds'. He criticized Berkeley on exactly those grounds. I think he says, we don't see things 'how they truly are' but how they appear to us, as the kinds of beings we are, with the kinds of perceptual categories and faculties we have.

Incidentally I'm puzzled by Kant's attitude to the noumenal. Actually, and tip of the hat to 180's mention there, Schop. says something highly prescient, in my view:

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearance. — Schopenhauer

My understanding is that 'noumenal' properly means 'object of nous' i.e. object of pure reason, like a mathematical proof or geometricl or logical axiom, however Kant doesn't see it that way. I think that's what Schop. is criticizing. I'm studying Schopenhauer's metaphysics at the moment and trying to get more clarity around this point.

Basic request to Kantians: Explain even a single concept that isn't the Hypothetical Imperative.

I don't think I have anything to offer, but I'll be reading along. Good idea for a thread.

Lol, this sentence pretty much sums up Kant's approach at ethics, except reorganized into unreadable, carefully fabricated terms that convey as little meaning as possible, so as to not have disclosed any evidence for having contributed nothing to the field.

This and your previous post are interesting and well-written. My plan is to learn everything I need to know about Kant without ever reading another word by him. After that, let's go on to all the rest of the pantheon.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood to potentially have any kind of physical form — Tom Storm

Long story short, in Kant.....yes.

Kantian epistemology is a system, with integrated functions. When you ask if something can be understood, you are bypassing those functions in the system by which physical objects are represented through the senses. As such, thinking a physical form is possible, but that in itself can never be sufficient to establish the reality, and therefore the experience, of a corresponding physical object.

On the other hand, asking about a noumenal world in general presupposes it, in which case the ask becomes....can the physical forms of noumena be understood. Now the answer is incomprehensible, insofar as only real physical objects which affect the senses can be intuited, and these, being phenomena, as arrangement or synthesis of object matter into a logical form, are for that reason, not noumena but actual objects of knowledge. It is quite absurd, and mutually destructive, to attempt the cognition, and thereby the experience of two entirely different kinds of worlds at the same time under the same conditions.

End game: in Kant, there is no such thing as a noumenal world, as far as the human cognitive system is concerned. If there is one, merely from logical non-contradiction, our system does not admit the possibility of the experience of its constituency.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood.... — Tom Storm

I think so, if at the same time it's understood to be his model for his world. In a manner akin to how Newton is understood. But before going even that far, in order to judge Kant, you have to read him and understand what you're reading. Much is said about the difficulty of reading Kant, but it mostly just is not that difficult, period (at least in good translation). Far too many people in effect say, "I don't understand it, therefore I must be right and Kant wrong." Except that most do not admit that they do not understand, but instead claim that they do while at the same time giving clear evidence that they do not. Strange when Kant was in his lifetime regarded as a giant, and still is.

A difference between Newton and Kant is that Newton is in places wrong, but close enough to be useful. Kant on the other hand as I read him took pains and went to great lengths to confine his thinking to areas where he was right, even if difficult, even if his conclusions non-intuitive. Or another example from Euclid and parallel lines. Parallel lines can indeed meet, just not in Euclidean space.

But these examples merely illustrative of how Kant is to be approached, which is first to be read and what he wrote understood, lest questioning/criticism not be of him, but of some straw version, thus being at best an irrelevant exercise.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood to potentially have any kind of physical form (waves, for instance) which we cannot apprehend directly? Or is the use of the word ‘physical’ here entirely superfluous? — Tom Storm

Are you sure this is coherent? Is there any part or aspect of the noumenal world directly apprehensible? Of course this gets into exactly what is meant by apprehended. My own way of thinking about it is to ask about that tree in your local park if ever you saw it. And of course the answers are a) of course, every time I look at it, and b) never did and never will. And a key to understanding Kant is coming to terms with b) and understanding how that can be. So my take on your question is that your question needs some work.

Is there any simple way of describing how this is might be understood to actually work? — Tom Storm

"Might be understood"? Sure, Kant's way. "Actually"? Do you mean how the brain works? I think not, and maybe never. Or do you mean is there some Intro. to Phil. 101 way to understand it? Maybe, as with the tree, what actually of or from the tree is incident on you that enables - or constitutes ground - for you to even suppose that you "see" it?

Could dying then be taken as an example of receiving direct feedback from the noumenal world? — Tom Storm

"Direct" feedback? What exactly does that mean? And of course by "dying" do you mean something other from and different from living? And to be sure, you can "take" whatever you like, but for present relevance your take must accord with Kant. On my reading, nothing "direct" from the noumenal world but that is not first kneaded and baked into a perception, and perception is all you get, from the noumenal world.

Incidentally I'm puzzled by Kant's attitude to the noumenal. — Wayfarer

“.....I can think what I please, provided only I do not contradict myself; that is, provided my conception is a possible thought....”

“....understanding may be represented as (...) a faculty of thought....”

“....Now as the understanding possesses no other fundamental conceptions besides the categories, it takes for granted that an object considered as a thing in itself must be capable of being thought by means of these pure conceptions, and is thereby led to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible existence, a something out of the sphere of our sensibility, for a determinate conception of an existence which we can cognize in some way or other by means of the understanding...”

That I can think whatever I want is the same as saying understanding can conceive whatever it wants. But consistency within the Kantian system cannot grant understanding powers of experience on its own accord, for if such were the case, there would be no need for the affects of objects on sensibility. So there is understanding that facilitates experience, and the same understanding that denies it. How that can happen, and maintain the explanatory predicates, however speculative they may be, of the system as a whole, is explained with noumena.
———-

whether 'the noumena' and 'things in themselves' really are synonymous - this is one of the things Schopenhauer criticized, saying he used both terms inconsistently. — Wayfarer

The criticism is warranted. Nonetheless, the Kantian text in which noumena are explicitly defined, distinguishes them from the physically real ding an sich. The thing-in-itself resides in the empirical world of things, noumena reside in the intelligible world of conceptions, but those without object or functionality belonging to them.

An elementary particle is a phainomenon. Understanding how it is to be one a noumenon. We can describe how it interacts with other particles in spacetime, as a phainomenon, but the particle an Sich can only be known as a noumenon.


I think Kant means something along the following lines. If you put yourself in a particle's shoes it depends on the particles around you how you feel, and basically there is the feeling of to be with them or not to be with them (that's the question...). At the most fundamental level, massless charges feel so attracted by each other that they only can exist in massive triplets, which can have color and electric charge. The further colored triplets (quarks) are apart, the stronger they feel one another pull. Colorless states like protons, neutrons, electrons, and neutrinos are formed. An electron (a triplet of massless particles feeling hyperbolically attracted) has a will, a primordial consciousness, to be with, say, a proton. They reach out to other charged particles, and reaches out to an oppositely charged proton because it wants to be together with it. But how does that feel? An electron feels pure love for the proton and pure hate for another electron. The latter interaction mixes up the identities of both electrons. What love is supposed to do is actually achieved by hate on the fundamental level!
So fundamentally there are love and hate only. Without further embellishments. Love and hate defined as longing to be or not longing to be with other particles. There is no deeper reason for this primordial love affairs. You can describe them by in physical terms, like charge, emission and absorption of virtual particles in spacetime, but in doing so you don't really understand the nature of the fundamental states of (love) affairs. Two oppositely electrically charged particles literally feel attracted. They run towards each other but can't kiss as they combine in a neutral state in which they get close but never touch (real touching is achieved in the depths of black holes, but as soon as zillions of particles kiss simultaneously they get annihilated by negative energy particles, negative love, that is, so the perfect kiss only lasts the blink of an eye...).
The electron hops around the proton nervously, longing for the kiss. The proton watches amused and realizes he needs the electron just as much as she needs him. Only interference by other charges outside can end their happy relation. A rapid evil expansion of the space between them has the same disastrous consequence. So even if one happy pair has survived all universal turmoil, the evil expansion, speeding up and up, will break them up eventually. But... an electron and three quarks (uud) contain unequal amounts of matter and antimatter, so luckily for the electron and proton, this only happens in fairy tales with no happy ending. Imagine a single lonely electron looking for a lonely single proton in a vast inflating space... Reaching out in vain...

So what can we learn from this? Love is a noumenal entity, the expression and description by means of spacetime, charge, mediating fields, etcetera, the phainomenon counterpart. The phainomenon cannot be used to explain the noumenon. Matter cannot explain consciousness.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood to potentially have any kind of physical form (waves, for instance) which we cannot apprehend directly? Or is the use of the word ‘physical’ here entirely superfluous? — Tom Storm

Not physical, no. But not mental either.

It's unknown grounds, according to him. One can read him as a neutral monist in this respect.

Thanks. For a very useful primer have a read of The Continuing Relevance of Immanuel Kant, Emrys Westacott.

One amongst a number of salient points:

Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble.

I am trying to understand an essential difference between Kant's version of idealism and versions of idealism which came before him. Berkeley would be the most prominent example for my purposes. — Tom Storm

I am not sure how this observation fits in to the project of understanding Kant, but Berkeley can be read as the ultimate empiricist rather than as an idealist.
If one's ideas about causality have no bearing on what is outside of experience, then they cannot confirm or deny anything beyond it. The skepticism of Hume becomes an implacable barrier. It is like Hume on crack, to borrow a phrase.

Can Kant’s noumenal world to be understood to potentially have any kind of physical form (waves, for instance) which we cannot apprehend directly? Or is the use of the word ‘physical’ here entirely superfluous? — Tom Storm

No. The noumenal world, according to Kant, transcends both (the forms of) space & time. So, again, it can’t be, in any sense of the word, “physical” like a wave; because, although waves may be incapable of being pinned-down to a point, they nevertheless extend through multiple points in space. Thus the word “physical” isn’t superfluous, as in it being unnecessary due to redundancy, but it’s altogether illegitimate when speaking of noumena in Kantianism.

Following Kant, we obviously construct the phenomenal world we know out of the noumenal world in some way - presumably from the sensations which present themselves to our consciousness. Is there any simple way of describing how this is might be understood to actually work? — Tom Storm

To be clear, we don’t construct the phenomenal world out of the noumenal world, according to Kant; that is, noumena aren’t themselves the materials, i.e., the “matter” of appearances, that compose the phenomenal world. All of this is done/works by representing, or arranging under certain relations, such materials with respect to the a-priori forms of the sensibility & the understanding, i.e., with respect to space & time & the categories.

Could dying then be taken as an example of receiving direct feedback from the noumenal world? — Tom Storm

Whether in this life, or the hereafter, Kant maintains that we can never have any kind of experience of noumena or things-in-themselves.

“It is indeed even then inconceivable how the intuition of a present thing should make me know a thing as it is in itself, as its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation.”

... Arthur Schopenhauer... (and who IMO is, ..., a much more consistent, lucid, 'Kantian' than Kant himself). — 180 Proof

... & so he’d style himself to be (no offense, but you’d have to be unfamiliar with both of their philosophies in order to say something like that). Yet, I’m interested, how do you figure?

Schopenhauer’s philosophy has many inconsistencies with Kantianism (not to mention self-contradictions).

Firstly, he speaks of the “will” passing into the forms of space & time, or the “objectification of the will.” Yet this is inadmissible, as no thing-in-itself can enter into the forms of space & time, in Kantianism. That’s one inconsistency.

Secondly, he attributes causality to the “will,” or to something that’s independent of the subject; that is to say, he gives causality a transcendent application to something besides phenomena. This is also inadmissible, since causality is a mental category that’s only applicable to phenomena, in Kantianism. That’s another inconsistency.

Thirdly, he claims that the “will” can be known by means of our inner-consciousness; but whatever appears internally to us, must do so under the form of time; he therefore equates (temporal) phenomena with what’s supposed to be independent of such a form. This is, as well, inadmissible, because no phenomena can be equated with any thing-in-itself, in Kantianism. Thus, another inconsistency.

Schopenhauer is so inferior to Kant that I feel sorry for anyone who thinks otherwise (& this is coming from someone who read Schopenhauer way before ever opening a page of Kant).

(That's what your fantastically elaborated hominid brain does with all that processing power. It creates a world, the only one you'll ever know.) — Wayfarer

If the pure forms & the pure concepts are possessed a-priori, then how can then the brain, which we experience a-posteriori to occupy space, be their subject? Surely the subject of the pure forms & concepts can’t be derived from, or inhere in, what’s experienced to occupy space a-posteriori; since it’s the very condition of such a thing. To equate the brain with the subject of the pure forms & concepts, by which the phenomenal world is constructed, is a misrepresentation or distortion of Kant’s philosophy.

Wow, a rich load of replies, thanks all.

Thanks and very interesting. Welcome.

Cheers - will try to source this. A problem for me is time for reading.

Thanks - too much fuckign reading. That's the problem.. What's the definition of a philosopher - one who can't stop reading....

Apologies, no idea what you were saying - when 'spacetime' enters a reply I generally experience a collapse of my wave function..

"Direct" feedback? What exactly does that mean? And of course by "dying" do you mean something other from and different from living? — tim wood

Thanks Tim. I was being playful about the potential interrelationship of both realms at the point of death. Is death part of the phenomenal world? How does it relate to the noumenal world? That kind of thing. I guess it isn't.

End game: in Kant, there is no such thing as a noumenal world, as far as the human cognitive system is concerned. If there is one, merely from logical non-contradiction, our system does not admit the possibility of the experience of its constituency. — Mww

Yes, I kind of figured this might be it. I've found I get nowhere in life without asking obvious questions. Thank's also for your thoughtful answers.

Goodness. You may be right about that.

the distinction he makes is between 'things as they appear to us' - as phenomena - and 'as they are in themselves' (the infamous ding an sich) which is often equated with the noumena. However opinion is divided as to whether 'the noumena' and 'things in themselves' really are synonymous - this is one of the things Schopenhauer criticized, saying he used both terms inconsistently. — Wayfarer

Good - thanks. What I need is a basic primer that articulates this in summary. I am not really a detail guy (and certainly no philosopher). My overall reason for asking all this is simply that Kant is influential and many projects have reacted against his ideas. I am also interested in getting more understanding of the the various versions of idealism posited. I was wondering if the noumenal world was Kant's philosophic construction of something like the realm of quantum waves. But I am no QM wanker...

Apologies, no idea what you were saying - when 'spacetime' enters a reply I generally experience a collapse of my wave function.. — Tom Storm

Space is exactly what Kant was wrong about. There don't exist left and right handed gloves in an infinite empty space. And they certainly are not the same as he assumes. Space is an objective phainomenon. We are the noumena in it. Wiggling through half lit shadows, trying to balance in vain, and fighting the great Noun to no avail...

Noumenal for Kant would be what Lucy Allais describes as "intelligibelia". There are positive and negative conceptions of the noumena, on this reading.

Positive noumena would include things like Leibnizian monads or Cartesian souls, things which we don't know if knowledge of them is even possible, nor how we could cognize them.

She says: "Understood in the negative sense, the concept [of noumena] simply involves thinking about spatio-temporal objects of our experience and abstracting what we know about the through the senses."

Schopenhauer is so inferior to Kant ... — Mental Forms

You're certainly entitled to that "opinon".

What I need is a basic primer that articulates this in summary. — Tom Storm

That's what I linked the Westacott article for. I know Kant is a lot of f****ing reading but that article is about 2,200 words and an excellent primer, by a philosophy prof. (If you want, here's a decent edition of the entire Critique of Pure Reason.)

To equate the brain with the subject of the pure forms & concepts, by which the phenomenal world is constructed, is a misrepresentation or distortion of Kant’s philosophy. — Mental Forms

It was a paranthetical comment, not representative of what I think Kant says, but suggestive of an important point in its own right.

The distinction he makes is between 'things as they appear to us' - as phenomena - and 'as they are in themselves' (the infamous ding an sich) which is often equated with the noumena. However opinion is divided as to whether 'the noumena' and 'things in themselves' really are synonymous - this is one of the things Schopenhauer criticized, saying he used both terms inconsistently. — Wayfarer

The way I see it, more or less irrelevant etymologies aside, is that Kant uses the term "noumenal" to denote what we might think of as the 'non or extra-phenomenal' reality of things (what they are over and above their (possible) appearances).

Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant in this, is that in calling the noumenal "things in themselves" he contradicts his denial that they could be spatio-temporal entities, since there can be no "things" without difference and no difference without spatial and temporal separation.

I think the entry on nouemenon in Wikipedia is significant -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon - particularly this passage:

The Greek word νοούμενoν nooúmenon (plural νοούμενα nooúmena) is the neuter middle-passive present participle of νοεῖν noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word νοῦς noûs, an Attic contracted form of νόος nóos[a] "perception, understanding, mind."[3][4] A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought".

Regarding the equivalent concepts in Plato, Ted Honderich writes: "Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses... This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy."

That is preserved and developed in later hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism. Schopenhauer says this was 'overlooked' by Kant (in this post). I'm still trying to get to the bottom of that subject. I bought the kindle edition of Kant's Theory of Normativity, Konstantin Pollok which explores this in more depth.

Bonus quote:

.'...we may be sorrrounded by objects, but even while cognizing them, reason is the origin of something that is neither reducible to nor derives from them in any sense. In other words, reason generates a cognition, and a cognition regarding nature is above nature. In a cognition, reason transcends nature in one of two ways: by rising above our natural cognition and making, for example, universal and necessary claims in theoretical and practical matters not determined by nature, nor by assuming an impersonal objective perspective that remains irreducible to the individual I.'

The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy, Alfredo Ferrarin

Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant in this, is that in calling the noumenal "things in themselves" he contradicts his denial that they could be spatio-temporal entities, since there can be no "things" without difference and no difference without spatial and temporal separation. — Janus

:up:

I was going to stay out of active participation in this thread because I'm not really familiar with Kant and I don't want to skew the discussion toward my own non-standard way of seeing this issue. But since @Wayfarer mentioned Buddhism and there seems to be a multiplicity of views of what Kant meant, I'll toss this in quickly but won't follow up unless someone else is interested.

You've shown an interest in Taoism in past threads, so I know you're at least familiar with the idea of the Tao. The first time I came across Kant's noumena, the similarities between that and Lao Tzu's idea struck me, although there are clearly differences. I'm not the first person to see that similarity, although it is clear Kant was not influenced by eastern philosophies.

To simplify, the Tao is what there was before there were people to see it and talk about it. But of course, that's not right, because, to Lao Tzu, before oneness was divided into a multiplicity, those things in a sense didn't exist. The Tao is called "non-being" and the multiplicity is called "being." It can't be conceptualized. It can't be spoken. Conceptualizing it is what turns the one into a multiplicity. This came to mind again when reading Mww's post:

On the other hand, asking about a noumenal world in general presupposes it, in which case the ask becomes....can the physical forms of noumena be understood. Now the answer is incomprehensible, insofar as only real physical objects which affect the senses can be intuited, and these, being phenomena, as arrangement or synthesis of object matter into a logical form, are for that reason, not noumena but actual objects of knowledge. It is quite absurd, and mutually destructive, to attempt the cognition, and thereby the experience of two entirely different kinds of worlds at the same time under the same conditions. — Mww

Don't worry, Mww, I'm not assuming you agree with my way of seeing things, but I think you get at something basic.

Also, I really like this:

But in Buddhism that is elaborated through meditation which is a discipline of getting direct insight into the way the mind constructs the world. — Wayfarer

I had never thought of it in those terms, but it has the ring of truth.

The Tao is called "non-being" and the multiplicity is called "being." It can't be conceptualized. It can't be spoken. Conceptualizing it is what turns the one into a multiplicity. — T Clark

There are many such similarities and parallels explored in comparative religion and cultural history. 'The noumenal' is a cross-cultural conception (with the caveat that it ought not to be confused with 'the numinous' which comes from a different root even if the meanings somewhat overlap.) But I think you could argue that the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal is reflected in the distinction between the (nameless) Tao and the 'ten thousand things' in Taoist or Chinese philosophy (allowing for many other differences characteristic of the two divergent cultures).

But in Buddhism that is elaborated through meditation which is a discipline of getting direct insight into the way the mind constructs the world.
— Wayfarer

I had never thought of it in those terms, but it has the ring of truth. — T Clark

One of Kant's key insights is that we're not the passive recipients of sensations but knowledge is in part constituted by a priori or transcendental factors (contributed by the mind itself) imposed upon the data of experience 1.

As for the book I mentioned on the comparison of Kant and Buddhist philosophy see this chapter.

For me the ancient Greek conception of noumena is so different from Kant's that I think it is irrelevant. I don't see a problem with Kant using the term in his own way, and I see no warrant for criticism of his use of the term per se. Schopenhauer's criticism is for another reason than the use of the term as I outlined above.

If the term is used to denote the Platonic forms the same criticism applies, since there are different forms, but then as far as I know it wasn't explicit in Plato that the forms do not exist in time and space (of some unknown ideal kind presumably).

That's what I linked the Westacott article for. I know Kant is a lot of f****ing reading but that article is about 2,200 words and an excellent primer, by a philosophy prof. (If you want, here's a decent edition of the entire Critique of Pure Reason.) — Wayfarer

Thanks, will read the article as soon as I can. I have, over time, read a number of papers on Kant and some slabs of the Critique. I am left with some basic questions and I wanted to hear from others.

To simplify, the Tao is what there was before there were people to see it and talk about it. But of course, that's not right, because, to Lao Tzu, before oneness was divided into a multiplicity, those things in a sense didn't exist. — T Clark

You may well be onto something and thanks. I fear I am one of those people who just can't discern all that much from those sorts of ideas. To me it all reads like cross word clues in search of a word that hasn't been coined yet. But I'm happy to keep looking into it. Is there a specific reference in the Tao you can point to that resonates with any aspect of Kant, or are you talking more in terms of tone of the work itself?

“It is indeed even then inconceivable how the intuition of a present thing should make me know a thing as it is in itself, as its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation.” — Mental Forms

I think this line, despite the new questions it generates, probably answers all my original questions.

One of Kant's key insights is that we're not the passive recipients of sensations but knowledge is in part constituted by a priori or transcendental factors (contributed by the mind itself) imposed upon the data of experience 1. — Wayfarer

Yes, this is indeed an even more fascinating area of Kant - the preconditions which make intelligibility and knowledge possible...

One of Kant's key insights is that we're not the passive recipients of sensations but knowledge is in part constituted by a priori or transcendental factors (contributed by the mind itself) imposed upon the data of experience — Wayfarer

When I started the "My favorite verses of the Tao Te Ching" thread about a year ago, I found myself dealing with the question of what my relationship with the Tao could be, given that I can't talk about it or understand it. Your thoughts about meditation feel like an insight into how that might work.

As for a priori factors, I am of two minds. First, I am skeptical of claims to a priori status. It is too often used to avoid having to justify beliefs. On the other hand, it's clear our minds are not blank slates. Human capacities for dealing with language, numbers, and even moral judgements have been shown to have a basis that is not dependent, or at least not only dependent, on experience. Not just our minds, but our eyes, ears, tongues, noses, and skin appear to have sensitivities consistent with categorization and classification of the oneness of the world into all the abundance we experience.