Since there is a lot in the post, I will get back to it in detail later. What Kant did was establish a framework for certainty in the empirical sciences, while leaving room for rational religious belief. The appearance of things is shaped by the way in which we experience objects. Because the rational categories (quantity, quality, modality, relation) are implicit when we experience an object, they are embedded in the appearance of things. Thus, we are guaranteed that the empirical world is accessible to rational inquiry. Kant frames his view this way:"Concepts without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind".
Ideas like God are noumenal, that is, they are not empirically verifiable, although reasonable speculations about the "things in themselves". As such, they can command our assent strictly through their "fittingness", given our moral framework.
By making the distinction between the world as appearance and the world "in itself", Kant can at once affirm Newtonian mechanics and strict causality, and at the same time affirm free will, since appearance and reality can differ.
Overall, like many intellectuals in the Enlightenment, he was a Deist.......... |
