It seems to me that all of Kant's arguments are founded upon the grounds that the ONLY thing humans receive from objects is their appearance. This is expressed well enough at the conclusion of the A Deduction: "For the reason that our knowledge has to deal solely with appearances, the possibility of which lies in ourselves, and the connection and unity of which (in the representation of an object) are to be met with only in ourselves." From this premise Kant freely asserts the 'exaggerated and absurd' conclusion that "the understanding is itself the source of the laws of nature." [A 127]
I am wondering if this premise, namely, that appearance is all we receive of objects, and that therefore we can never reach or know the thing in itself (the =x), is the entire foundation of Kant's Critique, and if one wished to challenge Kant's arguments one would perhaps endeavor to explain how we do indeed have some contact with objects in themselves, therefore proving that appearances do not have to conform to our intuition, sensibility, apperception, etc.
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we do not receive appearances - we make them out of what we receive. i.e. the understandings categories are conditions of appearance.
ReplyDeleteto the second paragraph:
ReplyDeletein my opinion, yes and yes.
One might be able to make the arguement that while there is no reason to believe that the world outside of appearance is not like the world we experience, we have reason to believe that the world behind our sense experience is similar to our experience; i think that both occams razor and coherentist theory support that claim.
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