Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: the two worlds hypothesis

Philosophy does not, and should not, have to be about rocket science — about mystifying and bedazzling and manipulating people with ideas that are above and beyond the grasp of normal comprehension. And when philosophy starts to go this way — to alienate itself from the common people, in ways that are similar and different to the way that politics can and does alienate itself from the common people, then it becomes the job of certain people — I will list William James as an example — to bring philosophy back to earth again, and within reach of the common man (and woman — lest I be accused of being sexist here).

Kant’s classic philosophical treatise — The Critique of Pure Reason — did create a ‘Copernican revolution’ in Western philosophy in that it subjectified rather objectified philosophy. Rather than being solely concerned with searching for ‘epistemological truth’, philosophers now had to concern themselves with the fallibility of the instrument philosphers were using in their search for ‘objective truth’. This instrument was man’s ‘mind’ and as soon as philosophers started to take a serious look at the weaknesses, limitations, fallibilities, and vulnerablilites of man’s mind, philosophers had to take a huge, skeptical step backwards and realize that there would be no arrival date any time soon — if ever — at any type of ‘epistemological knowledge’ that anyone could call ‘objective truth’. And if anyone had any kind of serious doubts about the validity of what Kant was saying, Nietzsche took Kant to the extreme and logically annhilated practically every form of human knowledge (except his own of course). In this respect, we could say that Kant opened the modern day door for the both philosophy of the ‘dialectic’ and the philosophy of ‘deconstruction’ which Hegel ran with (claiming rightly or wrongly that the dialectic could overcome man’s Kantian epistemological weaknesses and limitations — and thus, still get us to ‘Absolute Knowledge and Truth’ — whereas, Nietzsche basically returned to Kantian 101 Epistemology and wrote: ‘There is no such thing as fact (or truth), only interpretation’.

Part of ‘deconstructing’ someone or some idea (in layman’s terms ‘deconstruction’ is more or less tantamount to ‘diaagreeing’ with and ‘criticizing’ someone or some idea) requires a ‘proper interpretation’ of that which one is setting about to ‘deconstruct’. Based on what I have read this morning off the internet (Wikipedia — The Free Encyclopedia) — and this came as news to me, there is a disagreement among Kantian scholars revolving around two conflicting statements that Kant made. Firstly, there is the ‘two world interpretation’ which until today was the only Kantian interpretation that I knew about. This suggests that we live in two different worlds — a ‘noumenal’ world which is the ‘world of objects’ that exist beyond the limitations and capabilities of our senses. Then there is the second world that we are much more familiar with — our ‘phenomenal’ world — which is the world as we understand it through our sensual-perceptive interpretations, our acts of logic (and illogic), distinction, associations, causality, time and space, conceptual formulations and generalizations, and other classification categories. This is the world according to the ‘sensory-perceptual-interpretive-evaluative glasses’ that we wear each day to meet the world — and the other world, the noumenal ‘objective’ world apart from, and beyond, our senses is a world that we will basically never be able to ‘know’. (So much for the pursuit of ‘truth’ and ‘objective knowledge’.)

The second interpretation of Kant is one that I have a hard time believing and taking seriously because it flat out contradicts the first interpretation and I can’t believe that Kant would have contradicted himself in this fashion. This interpretation is based on the fact that…’Kant however also speaks of the thing in itself or transcendental object as a product of the (human) understanding as it attempts to conceive of objects in abstraction from the conditions of sensibility. Following this thought, interpreters have argued that the thing in itself does not represent a separate ontological domain but simply a way of considering objects by means of the understanding alone.’ I flat out dismiss this interpretation because here he would be completely reversing and confusing the respective meanings of the distinctive categories ‘noumenal’ and ‘phenomenal’ that made him famous. There is no ‘Copernican revolution’ in this interpretation, and indeed, it sounds like a second rendition of Plato’s theory of ‘The Forms’ which is not what I believe Kant had in mind by his concept of ‘noumenal (thing-in-itself or objective) world’. If Kant was going to argue that the noumenal world existed beyond the capability and limitation of man’s senses and conceptualization process, how could he have the nerve or stupidity to turn around and say something like ‘the noumenal world represents a world that exists at a level (or attempted level) of human understanding at its pinnacle, abstractive height.’ This makes no sense to me — and again, sounds more like Plato than Kant. Again, this proposition — or its interpretation — is no Copernican revolution but rather represents a confusion in my mind of the distinction that Kant was trying to make.

So let’s go back to Interpetation 1. Much of the controversy and potential unclarity of this proposition hinges around a semantic interpretation of the word ‘know’. What does it mean to ‘know’ someone or something? I think that what Kant should have said is that we cannot ‘perfectly know’ our noumenal world — but we can know it ‘imperfectly’. This modified epistemological statement would have cost much less grief in the philosophical world and would have prevented many philosophers, scientists, Enlightenment idealists, and lay persons alike from wanting to jump off the tallest buildings they had back then (or to pull all their investments out of the stock market and their savings out of the bank — neither of which they likely had back then. Did they have banks in the 1700s?)

This newly modified and reconstructed Kantian interpretation that I am launching here looks at the senses as being basically like ‘bridges’ or ‘portholes’ between the outside world and us. There is a ‘contact boundary’ between the outside world and ourselves with our senses playing an essential life-preserving and life-enhancing role at the point of contact. My finger touches the keyboard I am typing on, and at this point of contact there is both a bridge and a boundary between the outside world and myself, my body. If I touch the desk with my finger and I touch it hard, the friction, pressure, and resistance at the point of contact become more intense signalling stronger messages back to my brain based on the level and type of contact between the desk and me.

Do I, or can I, ‘know’ the desk? Certainly — I do, and I can — imperfectly, relative to the limitation of my senses, particularly my eyes (which are becoming worse and worse sensory instruments as I age) as far as the ‘look’ of the desk is concerned. As far as the ‘structure’ and the ‘underlying dynamic process’ of the desk, this information is even harder to get at, harder to learn, requiring greater and greater knowledge of ‘physics’ and ‘energy concepts’ (depending on just how ‘perfectionistic’ we want to get in our ‘knowledge’ of the desk), and this knowledge in itself — available to us through centuries of epistemological evolution in this area — is itself imperfective relative to the limitations of how far epistemological evolution has gotten, and how far, it still has to go in this areas of human epistemological evolution. Who can tell in this regard to what extent our knowledge will ever be ‘complete’ or ‘incomplete’, ‘perfect’ or ‘imperfect’. There will likely always be room in human evolution for more and better epistemological knowledge. We can always view the subject of human epistemology as being either ‘half full’ or ‘half empty’ — or anywhere else along the continuum between empty and full. Who will every know when our ‘epistemological glass’ is full? God? What is He or She or It going to do — tell us to stop searching for Truth and Perfection because we have already gotten there? I would imagine that anyone reading this essay will not be around to witness that moment — indeed, I doubt that moment will ever come. Perhaps it is man’s curse that he will always be imperfect — while still striving for perfection. Why else would I spend more than half of my life time trying to build this philosophical monstrosity? A will to create? Probably. A will to be more ‘epistemologically and philosophically perfect tomorrow than I am today? Probably. A ‘Will to Power’ as Nietzsche would say, or as my email friend Paul would say, a will to see my individual philosophy become recognized and esteemed social philosophy? In this regard, are my goals narcissistic and egotistical? Definitely, at least in part.

Let us come to a final conclusion about the pursuit of knowledge — specifically, it is not a useless pursuit, indeed, it is essential to our continued and enhanced existence, even if we never do achieve ‘perfection’, which we probably never will (and as I said, who would even know when we got there?) But still, this demands the belief that our ‘enhanced phenomenal knowledge’ is getting us closer to a better understanding of our ‘noumenal, thing-in-itself-objective’ world. If someone wanted to write a biography of me, they could start by asking my girlfriend or my parents or my brother and sister, or my friends, or my work colleagues — what I am like. But the best biography would probably be written by some writer who asked all of those people what I was like, and then maybe interviewed me too (not that I would necessarily tell the writer the truth).

My point here, is that epistemologically — and politically — we lost something when we lost the spirit and the ideals of the Enlightenment. I am not saying that other philosophical evolutionary developments after the Enlightenment were not important because they were, and indeed we will discuss many of these evolutionary developments. But what I am saying, is that we both won and lost something in the Kantian Copernican epistemological revolution. And more than anything, what we lost was mainly the high-spirited epistemological, scientific, ethical, and political idealism of the time. After Kant, we became an epistemologically and an ethically jaded Western world. Like a betrayed lover who has lost his or her naive, innocent belief in love, we as a Western World lost our naive, innocent belief in Objective Truth. And that, my friends, was — and is — at least partly a Greek or Nietzschean tragedy.

*DGBN, Sept. 15th, 2006.
David Gordon Bain,