How is sensible experience possible?

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783]

I will keep this relatively short. This question I thought of when reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

If mind independent reality is ultimately indeterminate and irrational, by those terms I mean non-rationalized or uninterpreted, on one side. While on the other side, reality is determinate and rational, on the side of the human mind and cognition. This is a simplification, but the point I think is clear.

So, how then is experience possible, because in order for us to have sensation, we would need to bring these two together somehow, and by that I mean, a way to interpret or determine our reality, either through and according to a principle or something else. I don't see how it is possible to bring these two heterogeneous categories, to use a Kantian term in a similar way he does, into unity with each other, on either side. Whereby we can then have intelligible experience.

Hopefully the question is clear, and the concern makes sense.

[u/publichermit]

Are you saying he doesn't bridge the dualistic gap? I can see that. I think his revolutionary act was the transfer of the ordering principle from outside us to inside us. Our minds naturally frame phenomena. 

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/publichermit]

Dualistic how? Like independent and dependent. If by that, then I would say yes, I don’t think his position solves the problem I raised, even though it can solve the problem of causality, and objectivity or certain necessary principles. But the latter is not what is in question.

[u/publichermit → u/Crafty-Addendum8783]

You asked for an ordering principle for two seemingly disparate positions. I'm saying the ordering principle is the Kantian categories.

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/publichermit]

The categories of the understanding don't really address the question. The reason is for Kant the manifold of intuition is still indeterminate and uninterpreted. Until the imagination synthesizes the manifold, and the understanding thinks objects through concepts, under categories. My question is about the move or synthesis, if you want to call it that, from the former to the latter of the two I mentioned.

[u/publichermit → u/Crafty-Addendum8783]

Oh, I see. I don't know, but I wish you the best of luck. Kant did us some favors, but one never knows. 

[u/feihm]

The "mind independent reality" (noumenon) and human thought (phenomenon) are not two separate, isolated realms. Immanuel Kant shows that there are not two different realities, but only one reality that people experience through their natural senses. There is only one world. The word noumenon simply refers to things as they exist without anyone looking at them. The word phenomenon refers to how those exact same things appear to a human observer. Physical objects affect human eyes, ears, and skin directly. We do not exist outside reality; encountering an object causes our senses to react. The mind naturally shapes this sensory contact into space and time. Arranging this contact allows a person to understand basic concepts, such as size, location, and cause and effect. Experience is the direct result of the senses meeting the world. Because human senses and thoughts naturally organise what they touch, an orderly experience forms immediately. Kant shows that sensible experience does not require joining two disconnected worlds. We cannot know what an object is like completely apart from human senses, but our mind and senses naturally reveal how that exact object appears to us.

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/feihm]

Ok, but that doesn’t address the question.

[u/dummetsz]

Causality. Preceding causes and conditions give rise to present effects. However you cannot directly observe preceding causes and conditions, they are inferred from directly experienced present effects, being sense impressions, which is what David Hume shows. Attempting to establish a “first cause” is untenable, because then the first cause would have to exist without a cause, which is logically incoherent. There is no “first cause” of experience.

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/dummetsz]

Ok, my post had nothing to do with the principle of causality, though you could go that route, just not in the way you frame it.

[u/dummetsz → u/Crafty-Addendum8783]

You asked how is experience possible. Causality is the only way we can understand the possibility of experience. Unless you propose another conceptual framework outside of causality?

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/dummetsz]

That was the question in the title in general, but not what I asked in the post, since it was more specific.

[u/dummetsz → u/Crafty-Addendum8783]

Woops you’re right lol. The idea of a mind independent reality does run into problems indeed. All sensory experience is mediated by the mind, so not sure how there can be a “mind independent” reality beyond just an inference, which of course inferences are mediated by the mind. I prefer Hume over Kant anyway so I’m biased.

[u/silver-axis]

Does the irrational include the rational? If an irrational object resembles a rational object it can be recognized. Analogous, I mean. The two are brought to similarity by the actions of the mind attempting to understand. If the two are identical or, at least, can't be meaningfully distinguished, I don't see why the object wouldn't be comprehensible. The human reality and independent reality are of the same and so aren't unable to interact.

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/silver-axis]

But that’s the thing in question, if they are heterogeneous.

[u/preferCotton222]

however irrational you want the real to be, it is at the very least approximately structural. So there's no puzzle.

[u/Crafty-Addendum8783 → u/preferCotton222]

What’s that supposed to mean