The Unknowable Thing-in-Itself

“Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Hume: The Destroyer of Reality
Certain factions of Eighteenth Century Enlightenment were committed to the idea the world was wholly phenomenal in nature, and we can have certain knowledge of it without appealing to innate mental concepts or a transcendental God. At the time, many philosophers believed the mind was a blank slate upon which experience wrote: matter (the external world) shaped mind. Bishop Berkeley drove the first nail into the coffin of this enterprise by arguing the mind, as a demonstrated ontological fact, could have no certain knowledge of anything beyond its own thoughts. David Hume drove the last nail in when, doing Berkeley one better, he extended the argument to say what the mind knew was hardly certain itself.

Hume’s great insight was this: though phenomenon A and phenomenon B are assumed to exist by observation, the necessary connection between them in a cause and effect relationship cannot be shown to be a phenomenon by observation. In other words, unlike object A and object B, necessary connection is not itself an object C for inspection: something we can touch with our fingers. When object A strikes object B and object B rolling away is judged to be the resulting effect of object A and object B being in close proximity, we are only assuming this as a mental exercise. We see only two objects on the table—nothing more. That rolling away should follow striking is only an idea in our brains: a habitual assumption we insert between the objects that is not a property of the objects themselves.

Hume, with this full-stop insight, took empiricism to its logical limits; and using only logic and observation, he had left nothing behind that logic or observation could redeem. If one insists the world of experience shapes reason, and reality is out there before it is in our heads, then it should be a simple process of cataloging what is out there and connecting the dots. Even if this were the case in theory, it is not the way the mind works in practice, for the mind routinely assumes things to be true before it endeavors to provide the proof. It is the riddle of how do you get there from here without first assuming that there is a there there to get to.

The curtain came crashing down on the Enlightenment.

Immanuel Kant, awakened from his “dogmatic slumber” by this compelling argument, sought to rescue the foundations of knowledge for science by taking up the challenge posed by Hume’s acid test empiricism. Yet what he proposed not so much countered Hume as clarified the boundaries between what can be known and what cannot be known about our causal world.

Immanuel Kant

How Do We Know What We Know?
For Hume, there were only two types of knowledge: a priori and a posteriori. A priori knowledge means “prior to experience,” which translates as residing in the mind. A posteriori knowledge means “after experience,” A priori knowledge is comprised of self-evident axioms that do not require experience to form a judgment on their truthfulness, as with mathematical axioms: 2 + 3 = 5, for example. A posteriori truths, by comparison, require experience to form a judgment: Some birds fly south for the winter. Whereas the first type of knowledge is true by powers of deduction alone, the second type of knowledge, being rooted to mere sensation in experience by Hume’s estimation, may lead one to a serviceable assumption, but there is nothing certain or necessary in this assumption: Just because some birds fly south this winter is no predictor about any bird flying south next winter. For the sake of being unbendingly consistent, Hume is less than thorough in his rush to a conclusion, which Kant demonstrates by adding two more categories to our knowledge: namely, analytic and synthetic knowledge.

With analytic knowledge, the predicate (answer) is always in the subject (question), as with the proposition: All bachelors are unmarried (bachelor means unmarried). Analytic propositions are categorically true as self-naming definitions, which for Kant included words that renamed concepts but not arithmetic, since numbers and their functions are distinct ideas: “5” is not renamed in “2 + 3 ”, as “2”, “+”, “3”, and “=” differ as concepts.

With synthetic knowledge, the predicate is not in the subject: All bachelors are unhappy (bachelor does not means unhappy). If the predicate is not in the subject, then there are only two places it can be sought: either in the mind or in experience.

As analytic determinations are self-naming and require no experiential component, Kant regarded analytic a posteriori knowledge to be self-contradictory and undeserving of further investigation. Beyond this, analytic a priori knowledge (knowledge that is true by definition) changes nothing about the nature of self-evident axioms, and synthetic a posteriori knowledge (knowledge that is true by experience) changes nothing about the nature of firsthand matters-of-fact. However, positing the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge (knowledge that exists in the mind prior to and independent of experience) does raise issues about the nature of understanding itself. Before Kant, it was presumed the form of our understanding was in the substance of our understanding. Yet how is this demonstrated by mere sensation since, as Hume contends, there can never be anything other than impression generated by mere sensation in our minds?

To make an inference from experience about a future event, we must first admit the answer is not in the question, as the answer does not presently exist: i.e., it can only be observed in the future. Since this entails time, and space, to establish a cause, we are assuming not only causation in making our inference but also space and time. If we extend Hume’s argument, these sensibilities must be fictions, too. However, though one can entertain the notion there is no necessity in causation, this feat is more difficult to pull off with space and time, since we are constantly making calculations and judgments about them that prefigure any active act of assuming their existence. No, there must be something real about space and time, and causation as well—if not as things-in-themselves that have the reality of objects, then as preconditions to every experience where objects are involved.

Know It When You See It
We therefore bring synthetic a priori categories for thinking to everything we encounter, and these blueprints* necessarily prefigure the operations of the mind in order to find dogmatic root in the mind. In other words, these ideas are transcendental, for originating in the mind, they give sensate reality the appearance of objectivity without having the quality of object-ness themselves. We apprehend space and time as having reality in absence of having physical proof for their existence. In Kantian terms they are only ideas. Thus, everything existing in experience requires something beyond experience to possess the character of being real, and from this unity in experience all knowledge about experience flows.

With synthetic a priori knowledge, Kant linked space to geometry, time (succession) to arithmetic, and causation to the physical sciences. In each case he argued the given area of knowledge required a form of synthetic intuition that must prefigure all-possible experience and all-possible knowledge. Hence, concepts like necessary connection were not habitual assumptions but in fact wired into the mind. More than that, not only was causation wired in the mind, but as space and time were as necessary as causation, they too were wired in the mind. Space is our outer intuition and time is our inner intuition, and both are required to make causation, and the world causation reveals, intelligible. Inescapably, Kant concluded that, outside our mind’s structured sensibility, space, time, and causation can have no reality-in-themselves. Though space and time can be said to have reality within phenomenal experience, this is only granted as a precondition of the mind. This precondition is therefore transcendental and idea and not real in the physical sense.

This is demonstrated by the nature of infinity, which, along with finitude, we ascribe as characteristics to space and time. Yet infinity can only prefigure space and time in sensibility—it cannot be shown to exist in space and time through sensibility. In other words: How can space and time go on without end? How can space and time have an end? How can reality have a first cause? These questions are nonsensical because they highlight the divide between what can exist in the mind as ideas (space, time, causation, and infinity) yet can never be show to exist in experience as phenomenal objects. Phenomenon C, to return to our original Humean illustration, is indeed not an object for inspection: it exists only in the mind.

“The difficulty, as Kant saw it, is in assuming infinities have actual reality in our received world. Infinities have actuality in mathematics, as with sets and whole numbers, but they do not have sensate reality. One could potentially count forever, or infinitely half distances, as with Zeno’s Paradox, but the tasks could never be completed in actuality. If something has no beginning, middle, or end, it has no boundaries; and if it has no boundaries, it can have no identity in the world of things. In short, a box cannot both have actual reality and have no sides. Kant concluded that what we suppose to be given to us in sense perception (space, time, and causation) exist only in the mind as modes of sensibility.

We cannot apply these concepts, or understand the world within these concepts, without first having a presuppositionless context in which to make them intelligible: namely, the ideation of infinity. This presuppositionless context is transcendentally idea in origin and not physical, since it cannot be deduced as a thing-into-itself from either logic (non-paradoxical as a concept) or from direct experience (non-relational as a thing).” ~from Omar's letter, Chapter Six of An Aversion to Ladders

(*Among those who agree with Kant is Noam Chomsky, who argues, through his concept of universal grammar, the mechanics of language are built into the mind.)

The Unknowable Thing-in-Itself
On first pass, it would appear Kant is siding with the rationalists by saying mind reveals the world of matter. However, though ideas in the mind must prefigure matter in experience, ideas cannot be true-in-themselves simply because of their location. They must correspond to something real outside the mind. This is where the noumenal realm comes in to validate our empirical experience of phenomena in the world. Mind is only the imposition of a state upon something that is, in itself, identical with phenomenon, yet as a tradeoff cannot be known by itself as mind: That is, mind is the eye that sees everything but itself, and in absence of this eye’s point of view, mind becomes the everything it supposes to be something other than itself, which, of course, cannot be pictured.

Because of this state of affairs, Kant concluded that the world of appearances, as delivered to us by way of synthetic a priori knowledge, cannot be the same thing as reality as it exists in itself, since our mind cannot think outside its spatial/temporal/causal box of understanding to comprehend total reality. He called this in-essence state the noumenon, or unknowable thing-in-itself.

Mind/Matter Duality in the Kantian/Schopenhauerean System: Phenomenal reality, as a construct, is perceived as something extending outside the mind, while simultaneously possessing duration inside mind. Time, providing inner cohesion to this construction, as well as the very notion of the mind that perceives, is the linchpin, and with its removal, the perceived duality between mind and matter evaporates. With duality removed, our whole concept of phenomenal reality ceases to exist, leaving us with reality as it exists in itself, which cannot be envisioned as an idea.

An Illustration of Kant’s Thing-in-Itself from An Aversion to Ladders
“Omar, in perfunctory fashion, put his coffee down and pulled his chair close to Emma’s.

She was surprised by his intrusion into her personal space.

'A long time ago,' he began, 'there was a philosopher named Immanuel Kant, who had perhaps the single greatest insight ever had by anybody thinking about the world in empirical terms. Let me explain it this way: You see this cup of coffee in front of you?' He pushed his mug near her. 'Well, the only way you can interact with this coffee is through your senses. Right? In no other way can you physically relate to it.' Omar unexpectedly caressed Emma’s lips with his thumb.

She jerked.

He continued, 'You can taste bitter with your mouth, but bitter in-and-of-itself is not a cup of coffee.' He then stroked her eyelid with his thumb. 'You can see brown, but brown in-and-of-itself is not a cup of coffee.' He finally took her hand.

(A little too firm for her liking.)

'You can feel warmth, but warmth in-and-of-itself is not a cup of coffee. So, I ask you, if all of these things—which are the only things you can ever possibly experience—are not a cup of coffee, then where is the cup of coffee as it exists as a thing-in-itself?'

Emma, realizing she was asked a question, looked puzzled. 'In all of them?'

Omar let go of her hand. 'This is your understanding, but not your experience. Your experience is only particular sensations, like bitter, brown, and warm. So where do all these particular sensations come together to make a cup of coffee?'

She was on the spot. 'In our minds?'

'Exactly. The cup of coffee, as it exists as an object, is only an idea in your mind. Reality as we understand it is only a collection of ideas assembled in our head. However, the thing-in-itself, the metaphysical essence of the cup of coffee, to which the bitter, brown, and warm are attached, cannot be experienced outside its idea because it cannot be absorbed as a totality through any one portal of our senses.'

Emma looked skeptical, but went along.

Omar explained, 'Ultimate reality, of which this cup of coffee is only an idealized representation, cannot be directly experienced as it exists in itself. In other words, you can’t get there from here. Another way of looking at it is this: If reality were a beverage, you would err in believing it has an inherent shape simply because you experience it in a coffee cup.' ” ~from Chapter Twenty-three of An Aversion to Ladders

Kant’s Legacy of World-Strangeness
The Enlightenment strove to remove the transcendental dimension from the debate, and Kant, by paradoxical means of giving knowledge certainty by denying it objectivity, had shown that without a transcendental format in the mind that prefigures experience, experience, and any debate arising within it, could not occur. In envisioning his noumenon, Kant endeavored to save empirical science with a panacea, yet science has had little use for his unifying black box. What he could not envision was the inevitable limitations of science, the utter complexity of the world as it appears to us, and the ever-growing reach of this theoretical noumenon to penetrate into every facet of existence.

In wanting to blend a priori rationalism and a posteriori empiricism, and consequently resolve the contradictions posed by each, the German philosopher from Königsberg barely comprehended what he created. He had slyly settled the debate between Newton and Leibnitz. Where the former had argued space and time were absolute things-in-themselves, and the latter had argued they had no reality at all, Kant split the difference by granting absoluteness to space and time only as realities of the mind, not of matter. Yet he feared the interpretation of his philosophy would align him more with the radical subjectivism of Bishop Berkeley (reality is all mind) than with the soberer account of reality offered up by John Locke (reality is all matter). As a disciple of logic, he had little faith in where his logic had led him, and so timidly retreated from the counter-intuitive implications of his noumenal aspect to reality.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer never forgave him for this, and it was left to him to save Kant from Kant, and Kant from his critics. In not shrinking from the bold vision, he finished the work his predecessor had started; and in so doing linked Kant to Eastern thought, provided a more nuanced view of synthetic intuition that fleshed out the arts and humanities, and strengthened Kant’s precepts through his own program that made their combined insights relevant in subsequent discoveries in mathematics and science. (6/19/10)

Giving Hume His Due
However, before totally discarding Hume, he is given a last word:

Kant had striven to save truth for science by erecting a wall between the phenomenal and noumenal realms, yet this wall, by the simple prospect of its existence, did not give synthetic knowledge any greater degree of certainty. The value in Kant’s insight lay in his determination that understanding exists first in the mind and then in experience. This is not a stamp of authority. It is a demonstration of the elastic nature inherent in intuition for constructing its own understanding.

Hume’s skepticism cannot be completely eradicated as a result, only faulted for failing to give a full account of the intuition that led to it. (6/19/10)

Logic versus Intuition
For Kant, the thing-in-itself was unknowable by our synthetic understanding in both a priori and a posteriori knowledge, though it is fair to say the inscrutability of infinity, as something that can be constructed in thought and idea but not demonstrated to exist in experience, is a clue to the true ontological nature of reality. Infinity, as a metaphorical device, is not simply an expression of incalculable limitlessness,* but it is symbolic of the nature of all irreconcilable paradox in logic and experience.

The logical empiricists, from Frege to Russell, rejected Kant’s concept of synthetic a priori knowledge. They were positivistic, believing rational assertions can have the weight of empirical evidence because they can be proven true by either mathematical or scientific proof. This belief notwithstanding, their analysis gave rise to paradox that—far from refuting Kant—added credence to his view.

Take, for example, Russell’s classification of paradoxes on how to define a container in relation to its contents: A set is something that contains numbers, yet as a defining rule to determine its contents, the set cannot be counted as part of its own contents. If it were indistinguishable from its contents, then there would be no boundary to define anything within a boundary. This quandary arises because of the limits of analytical logic. Sets as distinct ideas, or numbers as distinct ideas within a set, are transcendental. This means they are synthetic in our intellect and not simple matters of predicate-in-subject tautology. The truth and conviction we affix to tautology is underwritten first by intuition, not logic. With self-naming logic, we attempt to validate through analysis what was first in the mind as a hunch.

By insisting arithmetic relied on analytic and not synthetic proof, the logical empiricists were committed to a project that eventually ran aground with the arrival of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem,* where it was shown that a mathematical system of any complexity generates proofs that can neither be proved nor disproved within the system. This theorem went some ways towards vindicating Kant’s original view that arithmetic sprang from synthetic intuition.

The blindside prevalent in rational mathematics and logic can be found in the empirical sciences as well, though here Kant is less rejected and more ignored. (My following collection of entries in the next section will examine the empirical sciences in detail.)

(*In calculus, infinity is checked with a limit. However, this workable fix does not resolve the enigma.)

(*Another example of logical indeterminacy is Turning’s Halting Problem in computational science, where a programmed machine must decide whether to run forever or turn off after an input. This problem cannot be solved with an algorithm.) (6/19/10)

A Whole Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
“Analysis is the synthesis of the whole which it divides, and synthesis the analysis of the whole which it constructs ” ~F. H. Bradley

Addressing our larger metaphysical dilemma, a whole is greater than the sum of its parts in a way that is impossible to quantify, which makes it directly unknowable as a quantity. Yet this is not the end of understanding but the beginning of an understanding that has little to do with quantity and everything to do with quality. As one set of questions leave off in the mind another commences in what can best be described as our differently-abled faculties.

Kant himself believed in God, yet saw our mind’s epistemological framework for understanding reality through transcendental ideation as lending no evidence to any argument for God’s Existence. It could not be argued God had infinite spatial or temporal dimensionality since space and time could not apply to anything other than our received world of experience. Kant, anticipating Kierkegaard, believed God could have no foundation in reason since reason applied only to matters of empirical inquiry. God required faith.

As empirical demonstration, I agree with Kant, but I will later argue his concept of intuition is far too inflexible, as his own belief in God contradicts his assertion. Additionally, reasonable arguments for God’s Existence can be made by novel applications of reason, where what reason cannot uncover is reason enough to allow for the possibility of God. (6/19/10)

Going Forward: Origins of My Philosophy
The German Idealists (namely, Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling) rejected Kant’s idea of a noumenal realm, and with it its capacity to underwrite an empirical view of reality. They preserved Kant’s idea that our ideas are innate and shape experience. They also followed his example of poor writing, as Kant was given to logic chopping and excessive jargon. The path they chose was therefore rationalistic. From Fichte’s idea we freely create the world through our ideas to Hegel’s concept ideas shape the world through us, ideas are, by the judgment of idealists, the fundamental substance of reality.

Schopenhauer was a lone wolf in going the other way, as he sought to ground Kant’s brand of empiricism in a world shortly to be revolutionized by science. What Kant and Schopenhauer did not anticipate was the essential empirical ideas of their day (those of Newton) were not so much to be built upon in the future as displaced. Popper and others in the philosophy of science maintained the transcendental distinction introduced by Kant (knowledge originates in the mind), yet rejected his noumenon for different reasons than had the Idealists: i.e., no idea, no matter how serviceable in empirical science, can be declared absolute by virtue of revelation.

Bryan Magee is the beginning of my journey with Kant and Schopenhauer, and he pointed out the impossibility of explaining reality via realism (with or without a transcendental distinction), and how a noumenon, far from being pure invention, accounts for unanswerable questions that science and the philosophy of science have no interest in.

And as far as what science is interested in: John Horgan, in his excellent book, The End of Science, has taken the skeptical view that theoretical science, having reached a period of diminishing empirical returns, is likely nearing its end.

This is where I pick up the thread. I believe in the noumenon as postulated by Kant and improved by Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, I reject Kant’s assertion the noumenal realm is entirely unknowable. Yet against Schopenhauer—and as demonstrated by his divided mind on the subject—I believe reality has purpose and value, and that purpose and value, originating with the noumenon, is synonymous with God or something very much like God. With the Idealists, I believe our ideas do not simply inform the nature of physical world but also reveal something ontological about their own nature. Whether through scientific inquiry or artistic creation, these ideas endeavor to complete the Noumenal Ideal as a project in terrestrial memory, and as indestructible matter/energy can only be conversed as it changes states, so too no idea born to eternity is lost to eternity.

Coming up: The following section, as mentioned, will deal with the limits of rationalism and empiricism via science. After this, I will return to Kant and especially Schopenhauer to flesh out the role perception plays in our intuition and understanding of the world. Building on this, the first section about God gives examples of divine clues. I proceed to construct my own version of Transcendental Idealism before returning to the topic of God, where I address our relationship to God as well as construct metaphysical analogies for His Existence. Lastly, I deal with a variety of subjects and provide a transcendental slant for them, including truth, beauty, coincidence, and the Sublime. (6/25/10)