This seems to bury any hope for understanding the "x" itself, but I have a nagging suspicion. The Evolutionary idea of "survival of the fittest" may be tinting this thought, but it seems strange that there could be a mind whose appearances do not correlate with reality. Would it not make sense to say that our concepts do indeed correspond with "x", and this gives us the ability to successfully navigate reality? We seem relatively able to live, and does this not suggest some functional success of our mental action?
The above paragraph is, of course, loaded with empirical observations and therefore rooted in the a priori concepts of the categories. So really, it gets me nowhere and I am more confused.
Any thoughts?
The overlap between human and animal worlds is interesting here, because it points common sense to assume a common underlying X which is the cause of our ideas of it, OR it indicates key features of the subjective constitution of appearances is common to us and such animals.
ReplyDeleteBut without some contrasting intelligence whose perspective on the world we can at least guess at, the whole question is impossible to pose. After all, all that Kant changes is what we can claim about the ultimate nature of the world, not the practical, empirical reality of it. Even the dogmatic metaphysical (i.e. christian or platonic, etc.) realist describes the true nature of the world as something hidden behind the world - and they have no better way of explaining how we know it.
Though we do have a priori concepts that condition appearance and not the things-in-themselves, our a priori concepts condition the form of judgments and intuitions, not their content.
ReplyDeleteWould it be safe, then, to make an analogy to translation? Take, for example, a block of hieroglyphics that is translated into spoken english. The spatial form of the hieroglyphics is removed, leaving the meaning, and the meaning is converted into the temporal form of spoken english. The actual physical pictures or sounds are not the content, but the form; the meaning lies "behind" the form. Perhaps, then, the thing-in-itself is the underlying "meaning" that is merely "translated" into the "language" of space and time.
(I understand this is a very naive view of how language works, and only brought it up to make an analogy.)