GE
This is nice and clear., I might finally understand Kant! Can I pull it apart a bit to see what you think?
I'm basically a Kantian. I take there to be 3 "first-order" categories of existents, of "real" things. Only one of them is "fundamental," or primitive, i.e., not reducible to the other two or to anything else:...........
1. Phenomena (the contents of experience), including percepts and their properties, feelings, moods, thoughts, ideas, memories, etc. This is the "fundamental" one, and the only one I'd call "ontologically real" (the other two are only "theoretically real"). Entities in this category are the only ones of whose existence we can be certain pre-theoretically, a priori, i.e., about which we can have no Cartesian doubt. If I see a tree I may wonder what is causing that percept, why I'm experiencing what I'm experiencing, but I can't doubt that I'm having the experience.
2. An external realm of existents (which may be singular rather than plural). This is Kant's noumena. This is a postulated realm which, though the postulate is created by minds and thus is dependent upon them, is independent of minds per the postulate. So if we accept the postulate we accept the existence of an independent external world of some sort. We are forced (so to speak) to this postulate because our minds are, per Kant, "programmed" to demand causes for effects --- that is what "explanation" is --- and hence we demand some cause(s) for the phenomena of experience, i.e., for our own existence. Since none is to be found within experience, we must assume some outside cause for it --- an external world of some sort.
3. Conceptual constructs. This one embraces everything else we take to be "real," to exist, everything from rocks and trees and cats and other people to electrons, quarks, and "quantum foam." These are entities we invent in order to usefully explain our experiences (what we observe, feel, remember, and so on), to provide causes for them ---a useful explanation being one which allows us to predict and manipulate those experiences, to control them to some extent, and to communicate about them. In its totality it amounts to a coherent conceptual model of the noumena, a "possible noumena," or of an aspect or portion of the noumena. Though we can never know just how accurately or completely this model represents the noumena, we allow it to "stand in" for the noumena as long as it and the entities it defines prove useful in predicting and controlling experience.
In short, except for phenomena, which are the only existents of which we can be apodicticly certain, "reality" is whatever we say it is --- provided what we say exists has some explanatory or communicative utility.
I'm basically a Kantian. I take there to be 3 "first-order" categories of existents, of "real" things. Only one of them is "fundamental," or primitive, i.e., not reducible to the other two or to anything else:....I think we need to distinguish between epistemological 'reducibility' and ontological reducibility from the outset. Number 1 is the only category which is epistemologically certain ('irreducible') right? I know for certain my conscious experience exists. Also note - not minds generally, (other minds are part of the content of my experience whose independent ontological reality can be doubted) just my own first person pov experiential states.
In short, except for phenomena, which are the only existents of which we can be apodicticly certain, "reality" is whatever we say it is --- provided what we say exists has some explanatory or communicative utility.
So number 2 is a postulated realm of ontologically real stuff, which exists independently of me experiencing it.
But here's a blurring of epistemology and ontology I think -
This is Kant's noumena. This is a postulated realm which, though the postulate is created by minds and thus is dependent upon them, is independent of minds per the postulate.This world is epistemologically 'dependent'/doubtable, but if the postulate is correct, not ontologically dependent, yes? There is an actual state of affairs where-by all that exists is my experience, OR a world exists independently of my experience. And Kant is postulating the ontologically existing world really exists.
3 then assumes the postulate to be true, a world 'out there' does ontologically exist as an actual state of affairs, and goes on to consider what we can epistemologically know about that world. And there is doubt there too, about how comprehensively and accurately we subjects in that world can know it via our experiential interactions with it. [And evidence supports the idea that we create experiential useful models, 'Darwinian Fictions' which comprise solid tables, colours, sounds, and patterns which we conceptually theorise as cause and effect, lawlike forces, bounded by reason, logic. Which are rooted in limited and flawed experiential representations of the reality].
So my summary would be something like -
1. The only thing I can directly know for certain to exist is my own experience.
2. The content of my experience presents a coherent, complex world from a specific first person point of view, located in a specific body moving through a physical world of space and time, and also including other similarly experiencing subjects.
3. If I assume the content of my experience represents something ontologically real 'out there', then I can share notes with other minded subjects to create a model of our shared world as we experience it. Inter-subjectively reliably agreeing on third-person observable/measurable/physical aspects of that world, and conceptually theorising from those observations. [This is the basis for the scientific physicalist model of the world].
4. This process of shared model building itself has come to suggest we are limited and flawed observers and thinkers, who construct flawed and limited experiential models of the world, which can't ultimately be tested against reality. But can be reliably and usefully coherent, consistent and predictive, suggesting some correlation with the actual reality.