Musing about the “brainarium” and the “thing on its own”.
October 29, 2009
Speaking of the brainarium
My friend wants to refute my point which, as usual, is not clear to the uninitiated, and does so by comparing a tree and the picture of the tree, as though to show that the image was an exact match with the original, and so we can expect that the images we have are an exact match with the original also, and so can be taken for the original.
And that is exactly the point: we distinguish the picture of the tree from the tree by saying that it is smooth and slick while the tree is rough. But that does not give us the tree. We should rather consider that at the beginning, upon first sighting, all we could do is speak of the picture and the tree as both equally objects on their own. But we don’t do that. We don’t lump the picture and the tree into two examples of the concept of tree, but rather recognize that one is the tree and the other is an image of that tree. And so we have to provide an object ourselves, namely the tree as a thing on its own. This tree continues to exist, we say, and what we see are images of that tree on our retina (in the brainarium), and which tree does not go in and out of existence as their image does. So we move up now from the photo to the picture in the brainarium and we declare that to be an image of a real object, the tree out in space and time before my open or closed eyes.
This is how we distinguish the rainbow from the rain, where the former is simply a sighting in a perceiver and does not exist of itself independently out in space as a thing in the rain; but that is exactly how we consider the rain to exist, independently of us and out there in space and to be located in that space (which is not true of the rainbow, i.e., it cannot be located).
And so what we do is to recognize the specter/appearance/Erscheinung and we do that by conceiving of a real object, an object on its own, and locating that in space and then having the specter be just that, a specter or an image of a real object (for the dream is also spectral).
So, back to my friend, what we really see in his example is the assumption of Kant’s deductions, i.e., Kant explains how it is that we could unite the picture and the tree as picture of the tree and tree, so that they were not only very similar, but that the picture is the representation of the tree, i.e., it stands for the tree. Kant undertakes to explain how my friend is able to make an otherwise very curious observation, the tree and the picture of the tree and not two trees which resemble each other greatly. So two ways of looking at the picture and the tree: they are two things; or they are one and the same thing, seen from a different perspective, on the one hand the actual (a priori conceived) tree and on the other hand a representation of that very tree, and thus not a different thing at all.
Kant, seeking to be a good scientist, wants to be clear. There are these two ways of considering the matter: two things or one thing (and its representation). The human opts for the second and therefore lives in a world of really existing things external to us and where there are representations of these real things in our eye. And obviously, given the option, the only way the second take is possible is by us having dreamed up an object to be the real object, and it is by means of this that we are able to distinguish something different which is nevertheless the same thing, namely a representation of that thing. For all we know the animal may consider the picture of a tree and the tree as two different things, like the tree and a bottle of soda pop.
So this way is possible, Kant teaches, by means of this object as a thing on its own that we dream up with our imagination as directed by our capacity for connections we call understanding. We have to dream it up first in order to be able to realize that what we see is not a thing on its own, but merely a specter in our eye which can also represent that thing on its own.
So it is via the recognition of the image that we can say that we have set the foundations for all human experience and science. Generally speaking the object on the retina is a specter, but it is called an image if it reflects a real object in space.
The interesting thing for me about Kant here is that when you consider that the entire world that we see about us is in the brainarium, that means that the space and time in which we see these external objects are also in the brainarium. And so what we do is this. We dream up this real external world (per the Deduction of the Categories) and recognize it as such and then are able to distinguish and recognize our own brainarium, i.e., that all objects appearing to us are specters. But this external world is simply dreamed up, though also objectively for all human experience and science, and is then seen and looked at as real, whereby then we distinguish the object from the representation of an object. But what this means, since it ultimately is dreamed up, while we can say much about it with respect to human perception, e.g., that this and that are here and there, we actually, on a deeper, pre-experience level, can say nothing at all about what might really exist and be present, even in some other dimension. So, for example, if we had a fancy, we could assert that we were surrounded by angels who could not be sensed, and that would be ok as far as speculation might want to go, but totally useless for science, for the object of science is not the thing on its own, but the object of experience which is to represent the thing on its own, but can do so only additively, and not by subtraction. I may say about the thing all that experience reveals to me, but these pronouncement are only additive, and what the thing on its own may be, what its dimensions may be, this is totally unknown to me and of no use to experience and science. In other words and in short, human science is directed at the brainarium and it stops there. What might be apart from the brainarium is of no interest. For example an object might appear as necessitated by natural causation in the brainarium, and there is no quarrel, but then apart from the brainarium I might assert that is a free being, able to start series of himself independently of all natural causation, and that is not a contradiction, but rather different objects: the object of experience of the brainarium, and the thing on its own and considered coincidentally with science, but independently of that science. One is in the brainarium, the other is out of the brainarium, but that is a mere nothingness and thus not understandable. The one is the object of science, the other pre-science and mythical and arbitrary.
Filed under: Kant