{"id":2005,"date":"2022-06-04T15:44:04","date_gmt":"2022-06-04T15:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/06\/04\/hume-and-kant-on-sense-perception\/"},"modified":"2022-06-04T15:44:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-04T15:44:04","slug":"hume-and-kant-on-sense-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/06\/04\/hume-and-kant-on-sense-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Hume and Kant on Sense Perception"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another round with Ed Buckner who writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Meanwhile I continue to struggle through Kant, and I point out what seems<\/em> to be a fundamental and insuperable difficulty below. (I may be wrong).<\/span><\/p>\n

Start with Hume, and with what he means by \u2018impressions\u2019. As I write, I am looking at what I take to be<\/em> the black surface of my desk. Note \u201cwhat I take to be\u201d. Assume that what I take to be the surface is<\/em> the surface. But what then does Hume mean by an \u2018impression\u2019? He says \u201cThose perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions<\/em>; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul\u201d. Ideas are \u2018the faint images\u2019 of the impressions in thinking and reasoning.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not clear at all. By \u2018impression\u2019 Hume means either that which I (perhaps wrongly) take to be the surface of the desk, or something else. Suppose the former. Hume makes it clear that the impression makes its appearance in<\/em> the soul, and it is clear from everything he says later that an impression is a mental item. But the desk is not a mental item, hence the surface of the desk is not a mental item. Which is absurd.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or he means the latter. Then the \u2018impression\u2019 must be something other<\/em> than what I take to be the surface of the desk. But I am aware of no such thing. In looking at the desk I am aware of nothing corresponding to a perception which enters \u201cwith force and violence\u201d. Nor, when I shut my eyes and think of the surface of the desk, am I aware of anything but a faint memory of seeing the surface itself, rather than the faint image of any \u2018impression\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

So both interpretations are problematic. Either my desk and its surface are mental items, which is absurd. Or it is impossible to say what Hume means by \u2018impression\u2019. So Hume\u2019s position makes no sense.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I agree with the above analysis. It is clear and convincing. We can also display the problem in my preferred way as an aporetic polyad, in this case a tetrad:<\/span><\/p>\n

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1) Impressions are mental items.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) The surfaces of physical things are not mental items.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) What we know when we have sensory knowledge are impressions.<\/span><\/p>\n

4) We have sensory knowledge of the surfaces of physical things.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These propositions are collectively inconsistent.  So at least one of them must be rejected. As I read Hume, he is committed to (1), (3), and (4), and so he must reject  (2). But this leads to a subjective idealism that both Ed and I find intolerable.  No physical thing such as Ed's desk is a bundle of sense impressions.  Sense impressions are 'in the mind' and no desk or part thereof is in anyone's mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Humean solution is worse than the problem.  Another solution is to reject (3). One might hold a representational theory of mind according to which what we know via the outer senses are, in the typical non-illusory cases,  mind-independent things and some of their parts, but we know them via<\/em> mental representations.  Enter the epistemic intermediary: contents in the mind mediate between mind and external thing.  <\/span><\/p>\n

There are other putative solutions such as Husserl's and Butchvarov's. They too have their difficulties. I won't go into them because Ed hasn't read these philosophers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The next question is whether Kant\u2019s position makes any sense, given that his position here seems closely connected with that of Hume. He speaks of \u2018sensible sensations\u2019, \u2018the world of the senses\u2019, \u2018the field of appearances\u2019 etc etc. What does he mean by these terms? Does he mean the sorts of things that e.g. I take to be parts of material objects? But then it seems to follow from everything else he says that either material objects are mental items, or that I am wrong in thinking that what I take to be part of a material object, is in fact such. Both positions are absurd.<\/span><\/p>\n

Have I misunderstood Kant? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To assimilate Kant to Hume is a mistake. There are many crucial differences between the two. For one thing, Kant is not a subjective idealist. He does not hold that physical things are bundles of impressions.  He would reject (3) in the tetrad above.  To explain this is impossible in a few sentences.  I refer Ed to Kant's Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772<\/a> which may help. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is also the following excerpt from a different entry<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
Kant<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
I think Ed is wrong above about Kant.  For Kant, the pure is the opposite of the empirical. Every concept is either pure or empirical and no concept is both. A pure concept is one that is not drawn from experience, ein solcher der nicht von der Erfahrung abgezogen ist<\/em>, but originates from the understanding in respect of both form and content, sondern auch dem Inhalte nach aus dem Verstande entspringt<\/em>. The form of all concepts, including pure concepts, arises from reflexion Reflexion, <\/em>and thus from the understanding. Empirical concepts arise from the senses, entspringen aus den Sinnen<\/em>,  by comparison of the objects of experience. Their content comes from the senses, and their form of universality, Form der Allgemeinheit<\/em>, alone from the understanding.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
If Buckner is telling us that Kant's pure-empirical distinction runs parallel to Zabarella's first intention-second intention distinction, then that can't be right. For Zabarella's animal<\/em> and human being<\/em>, which are first intentions for him, count as empirical concepts for Kant. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Any comparison of Zabarella (1533-1589) the Aristotelian and Kant is bound to be fraught with difficulty because of the transcendental-subjective turn of modern philosophy commencing with Descartes (1596-1650).  For Aristotle, the categories are categories of a real world independent of  our understanding; for Kant, the categories are precisely categories of the understanding (Verstandeskategorien<\/em>) grounded in the understanding both in their form and in their content.  The categories of Aristotle are thus objective, categories belonging to a world to be understood, and not subjective, categories whereby a mind understands the world.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Pure Concepts of Reason as Limit Concepts<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Kant also speaks in his Logic and elsewhere of Ideas which are pure concepts of reason, Vernunft<\/em>, and not of understanding, Verstand<\/em>. Die Idee ist ein Vernunftbegriff deren Gegenstand gar nicht in der Erfahrug kann angetroffen werden. <\/em>(Logik<\/em>, sec. 3)  The objects of these pure concepts of reason cannot be known by us because our form of intuition, Anschauung<\/em>, is sensible, not intellectual. We can know only phenomena, not noumena. Among these Ideas, which are plainly limit concepts, are God, the soul, the world-whole, and freedom. And they are not merely negative limit concepts. Free will, for example, is objectively real despite its not being obejctively knowable. But more on this later.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another round with Ed Buckner who writes, Meanwhile I continue to struggle through Kant, and I point out what seems to be a fundamental and insuperable difficulty below. (I may be wrong). Start with Hume, and with what he means by \u2018impressions\u2019. As I write, I am looking at what I take to be the black surface of … Continue reading “Hume and Kant on Sense Perception”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,270],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hume","category-kant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}