the thing-in-itself

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

This will be a brief writing about objects.

The concepts of objects and their typical thought pattern preceeds the sciences.
The idea of an object was invented long before the microscope.
This means that originally objects were not reducable to smaller objects,
but now that we have some tools of science, the meaning of objects has changed.

What would be the thing-in-itself, if such a thing even existed?
Could we immagine something impossible, and if so, would we immagine the thing-in-itself without ever witnessing it?
Objects can now be reduced to molecules, and those molecules reduced to space and magnetic fields.
This meas that although a certain class of similar objects can appear, the reduced fundamental basis of those objects looks much different.
Because a molecule is reduced to empty space, objects are neither solid nor appearant according to modern science.

We only see in terms of a relative conglomoration. We see the globs of atoms and how they relate to eachother,
but there is no thing-in-itself seen outside of these boundries. Our perception to knowledge depends upon comparing one memory to another,
therefor we percieve reality as a sequential process of objects and events. The thing-in-itself would be what? Would it be timeless, spaceless, formless? How vastly uncommon and unknowable could it really be? But even more importantly, do we even need the thing-in-itself?

I will exclude the Noumanon, because i don’t believe in consciousness existing independant from the senses.
If there is a Noumanon, it is the sensing of the senses, how one sense senses itself.

A question if the thing-in-itself would be, how nimble does one assume reality is?
How can reality escape all of the senses and all of the men on earth?
Are we dealing with a vast dead mass of energy, when we consider reality, or are we dealing with something else?
How do we know that the thing-in-itself actually exists, if it supposedly exists outside of the reach of the senses?
Because this, like God, is impossible to directly proove, one can assume that the thing-in-itself was a mental contraption built by metaphysics.
All the known unknowables are like this, impossible to know, yet claimed to exist. This is a self-contradiction.
We can ignore that metaphysical mess, though, because we have senses that we can use. We have time which we can spend.

I will claim that when we view the quanta we are viewing the thing-in-itself.
That’s all i have to say, for now, but i will reply to any questions/ideas.

2

And yet others may argue that the Higgs Boson is the ultimate find, everything else is just ordering (don’t get me started on codes and general relativity).

At this time I simply crouch in the fetal position and suck on my thumb, while tending to my headache.

3

This is a really interesting insight. Maybe you know of the famous question “what is it like to be a bat”? The question is situated as part of a debate about materialism, but if we put that aside for a minute - we always answer “what is it like” questions by referring to something else. Q: What do snakes taste like? A: Snakes taste like chicken. So if every what is it like question can only be answered through reference to something else, is there an original non-referential experience that all other experiences ultimately refer to? Or, is there a non-referential aspect to any and all experiences? That’s an interesting question to me.

I don’t think so, personally.

4

Sandy beat me to it. If they discover the Higgs Boson, they have reached the theoretical end of the first Leggo, which might be called the thing-in-itself. But with a “particularness” of a trillionth of a second, I don’t think it becomes useful except as the identifier of the beginning of the causal chain. While it’s discovery may explain all sorts of unanswered questions, I’m less sure that it changes anything materially.

Personally, I’m waiting for the discovery of dilithium crystals. Warp 7 would be an awesome experience. :smiley:

5

Music to my ears, Dan~. I can’t help but think you’re going to to some Quantum Metaphysics next.

Hope so.

That stuff rocks.

6

What’s it like to die? :stuck_out_tongue:

The question is only as answerable as the answerer is articulate. As long as you have a good range of experiences, there are things that are like other things - not exactly like, but like enough to “get” the resemblance. What does chicken taste like? Snake. If snake were a common experience and chicken not, it would happen this way around. Point is, it’s a two-way thing.

I think all (sensory) experiences have a non-referential aspect, which is maybe why we tend to say “like” rather than “the same as”. Ultimately, we only have faith and ‘common sense’ that my experience of chicken’s taste is similar to yours, at least insofar as it is elicited in similar measure by a given food.

We don’t - can’t - have any direct experience of the smallest building blocks, whatever they may be. The “thing” of a thing-in-itself is all in our mind; we cope.

7

Everything is reducible to energy.When the mind can recognise a purpose to a specific bunch of energy, then that bunch of energy becomes a thing-in-itself.In other words, the mind makes things become things-in-themselves, before recognition they are just part of the whole.

8

I hate to give an answer like this, but my opinion is: Yes and no.

We obviously don’t need the thing-in-itself to exist, live, or propagate knowledge considering that we’ve managed thus far without any absolute conclusion about the thing-in-itself.

However, belief in the thing-in-itself may be necessary if for no other reason than consistency. To hold something as a thing-in-itself is to essentially regard that ‘thing’ as an assumption upon which other conclusions or assumptions may be drawn.

To consider our origins, for example – a majority of people look to a ‘thing-in-itself’ type of concept. God, or whatever it is people believe, is considered the beginning; made of nothing and a result of nothing - a thing-in-itself. From him, all things perpetuate through causality (as the common perception would seem to dictate). But the belief in something totally independent holds a larger implication; namely that there exists something inherently superior, insofar as this “thing” is not privy to the same rules of nature that governs all else we know (as we perceive anyway). Now there is an implication that something can transcend natural, human experience and perception.

The need for a belief in the thing-in-itself seems to ultimately lead to morality.

9

I think there’s a unique aspect to all experiences. Not all experiences can be referential.
I also think that all experiences ultimately refer to being, or something like being, the process of living.

10

If that seemingly amoral concept becomes or leads to morality, then why should it?
People can have morality without metaphysics.

11

Only_Humean and Dan~,

I agree with you both - those questions seem to be fairly easily answered by using common sense and some simple logic. There must be a fresh (non-referential) aspect to all experience. But the reason I like those questions is that since we’re talking about experiences, we’re in a sense forced to look at experience experientially, if we’re to answer those questions honestly.

If we ask what something is like, we are forced to pay attention to what we are experiencing. But the question itself can get in the way, as the experience itself is non-referential. So if we never let go of the need to constantly reference what is other than what it is, we never really get to the bottom of it. What does chicken really taste like? Can that experience be pinned down in some way? Can it be captured in a sense? Personally, when I undertake a little exercise like that, it seems that there’s something a bit unreal about the whole thing.

And not that there’s necessarily a bottom mind you, since no experience (or thing, or length of time) is ever discrete.

In the same way, we may conceive of some “building block” or quanta or qualia or something with Planck’s name as a prefix, but like Only_Humean I don’t think these are really “things-in-themselves” in the classical sense. They are scientific entities, not metaphysical or ontological entities.

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… which is sad, on reflection, as it’s the only Real bit of the whole questioning process. I understand what you’re saying :slight_smile:

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And I you!

14

I totally agree and have spent much time on this board debating whether morality needs a metaphysical grounding. People can be moral without, but metaphysics seems a common grounds for moral justification (on a massive scale).

The concept of the thing-in-itself seems, to me, to suggest that–

  1. Either objectivity is dictated by something superior and transcendental; or
  2. Objectivity exists in a way that seems inexplicable or incomprehensible to us.

The result of the former being a belief that morals are to be dictated and adhered to, and the result of the latter being that we need moral structure to survive in an unforgiving and unpredictable environment.

If something exists independent of observation, I think we’d naturally form beliefs as to why/how. To me, this would certainly affect morality – or even our perception of moral purpose.

I’m not saying that the concept must lead to morality, just that beliefs regarding the thing-in-itself serve as a source for moral grounding.

In short, I think the seemingly amoral concept births and/or shapes moral conception. Not so much by choice, as an ‘ought to’ kind of situation; but naturally in that beliefs often outweigh reality.

15

Question: How is a thing-in-itself discovered?

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Statik - there’s another possibility. That “objectivity”, used this way, is merely a fiction.

17

In that case, I’d still hold to my original thought I suppose. The objectivity, in this context, need not truly exist for people to function; however, the belief - even if fiction - seems pretty necessary.

We relate to our environment to understand aspects of it, even going so far as to give human characteristics to objects or other living things. In order to relate, we need something to relate to – something dependable and consistent. So, for example, even if I realize how little I know about my own nature, I still have to treat myself as a reference point. Seems kind of like a pseudo-thing-in-itself…

As with the example “snakes taste like chicken”, the same kind of ‘reference point’ is established even though it may be, and likely is, fiction. It just seems like an assumption for the sake of utility (like most other assumptions). Chickens don’t look, smell, or taste universally alike, but we accept the chicken as a kind of temporary (“pseudo”) thing-in-itself so we can relate.

I mean, just working in a corporate environment - doing IT support (which I fucking hate) - I can tell you that a user’s perception is THE problem 80% of the time, but I have to resort to object references to walk them through a solution. When I tell someone, as an example, “click the icon that looks like a checker board”, I’m using the assumption that checker boards are objectively the same regardless of perspective. I know that very well isn’t the case, but i wouldn’t get far by telling the user his/her perception is causing the error. The error seems the same to everyone who views it, so that computer and it’s processes seem objectively independent of observation. That obviously isn’t the case, but treating it as such serves a purpose.

In the same sense, quanta isn’t described in terms of something undiscovered up to that point, like calling them “galactic units”. We just relate it to energy because we experience energy – it is a term so ambiguous as to be seemingly universal. Perhaps what we perceive as interactions, or interconnectivity, on this level are actually functions of a larger process rather than of the smallest possible processes. That is to say, perhaps quanta does not naturally form something cohesive (like Voltron), but is rather pulled into something cohesive by something on a larger scale (like building a house of Legos).

I really hope I’m not derailing the shit out of this thread as I’m beginning to question my own conception of the thing-in-itself at this point (even though I’ve looked up the concept 10+ times now to verify). If I am way off base or stating the obvious, please feel free to delete this…

18

Sometimes we can know things without directly experiencing them.

When we see two cars collide and get smashed, we can then assume that trucks will also get smashed if they collide, even if we’ve never seen trucks collide.
This kind of deduction lets us know things without direct experience.
With time and experience we learn that allot of things exist outside of our sense-capacity. Then from this deduction we can estimate that the true nature of many things can’t be precieved. The issue of accuracy hinges on what things exactly are outside of our mental limits and what things are not.

Hopefully that answers your question a bit.

19

I understand deductive reasoning, but your example is still a comparison. It is a projection of a known (similar) experience. That would seem to rule out a thing-in itself which disappears the moment there is any comparison to anything else. While we can propose a thing-in-itself, I see no way to “know” or recognize such a thing. We are a comparison/contrast organism. It is the sin qua non of apprehending anything. We “experience” but the tiniest focus points of the field at any moment. To suggest that what I do not focus on may qualify as “thing-in-itself” relies more on mysticism than metaphysical considerations. This leads us toward the foundation of religion and not necessarily understanding or knowing.

20

Statik -

Well, perhaps I miss the sense in which we are using the word. Usually, the thing-in-itself is the thing that we would perceive if our perceptions weren’t inherently erroneous. Or something like that. I will admit I never really got the concept. Our perceptions are imprecise - perhaps incomplete. But there is no reason to think they are erroneous. Let’s talk about ordinary perception - what we can see, for instance, without any considerations about a thing-in-itself. If we see only an elephant’s ass, we aren’t seeing the whole elephant. But we are still seeing an elephant’s ass. What we do see is, well, correct. Seeing the entire elephant doesn’t stop shit from coming out its ass. It doesn’t make it an elephant’s ear, or its leg. It’s still an ass.

The idea that the elephant-in-itself is qualitatively different than what we perceive seems just a little made-up to me.

We can do a chemical analysis of the ass. So, we know more about it. But do we know something that then contradicts its assness? I don’t think we do.

Now, to the question of “Does the elephant really exist?” - why would we think otherwise? Because the possibility that it doesn’t exist is there? Fun and games.

And this foes back to Dan~'s original point - what would this thing-in-itself be? Not an elephant’s ass? Okay - then what? Just anything? If Kant didn’t know, and he clearly didn’t, how am I supposed to know?