Specters, objects and things.
March 11th, 2010
Object is what we use to denote those real things in space and time, while the specter is what is unreal in space and time. Or: real things can be located in time and space, while specters can only be sighted in time and space. The rainbow is a specter, the rain is an object, and more specifically, the object of experience. On a transcendental level we must confess of the rain drops that they are also specters, and that of the transcendental object that we must posit in order to have experience we can say nothing at all, it is not in time and space (for they are within us in the brainarium with the specters).
Object then needs to be understood of sorts, one of which is the object of experience. The object of experience is what we refer to when we are speaking of the thing on its own (in common talk) or the thing that is “really there”. That’s the “real things” for us. The table, the rain, the moutain,, the dog, etc.
So we dream up this transcendental object and this is an X = nature (per the categories of human understanding) and it serves to unify a diversity.
We have a diversity as a singularity in the look of things, e.g., a face in a cloud, which is only contingent, and then we have the unity which is provided by the concept of the object, e.g., a face as a forehead, etc., and when the two match, the look and the thought, in a unified consciousness (where two diverse things are unified into two parts of one and the same thing), which is a recognition of an object, knowledge.
So we come up with this notion of an object as a thing composed of a multiplicity, like the Big Dipper, and we utilize that concept in order to fashion the “real world” of objects of experience and plucked out of the maze given through the sense impressions. So we take the concept and utilize its form and bring unity to diversity. So we start with just the notion and we add predicates. We add to the transcendental object or thing on its own with the predicates of mathematics and experience.
This means then that the concept of the transcendental object is larger than what is ascribed to it as an object of experience. For if we remove all that space and time and understanding recognize, we still have the thing on its own, the transcendental object = X, as the necessary presupposition for even the first experiences, i.e., that we see things through eyes.
This then will be the way that we can say things about this thing on its own all we want to as long as we don’t do two things: we cannot contradict experience and we cannot contradict ourselves. Otherwise we are able to ascribe to the thing on its own whatever we might dream up, e.g., freedom of will, and were we could say, that a certain leaf did not have to fly away from the branch when it did, but freely chose to and it just happened to be cold and windy. This becomes very important later when we have some reason to assert such an oddity as freedom of will. We will see that it is thoroughly compatible with a natural necessity.
Entry Filed under: Kant
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