But we have to live as though we do. :^)
That's a little joke I guess.
Kant elaborated the distinction between phenomenon — an existent object of sense perception — and noumenon — the way the object actually is, "in itself;" or in more philosophical terminology, in its substance.
Evidently he was inspired to do this by David Hume, who had the temerity to suggest that the only things that the mind can "possess" are perceptions of reality, but never reality as it is "in itself."
Another way to put it, human sense perception can acquire and register only "images" of reality, never the reality itself. That is, the phenomenon in se. The skepticism of Hume raises the issue of on what ground can humans say that their perceptions actually match up with actual reality — that is, phenomenal reality as we encounter it in experience. Hume notices there is no purely logical connection here. The only connection seems to come from human experience — i.e., from habit and custom.
Anyhoot, Kant evidently noticed that part of reality, which recedes from methods of direct proof. That would be the "thing in itself" of which perception can be no more than an image: The "original" can never be directly captured by the mind, only its "photograph."
But Hume evidently also notices that human beings continue to think and live as if phenomena and noumena coalesce in actual human experience.
So far, that looks like a good bet to me. :^)
I suppose I’m trying to get at the difference between Kant’s “transcendental idealism” and Hegel’s “absolute idealism”.
One of the side effects of Kant’s idealism was wrought in the Lutheran theologian Schleiermacher. Reacting to Kant’s idealism he reduces God to Natural Law.
Here’s how Kevin Van Hoozer summarizes Schleiermacher’s position: “Yet few modern theolgoians are happy to construe the God/world relation in terms of divine intervention. Schleiermacher influenced a whole theological tradition when he judged it a mistake to see God as overriding or supplementing natural causes, for to think of God in terms of exercising efficient causality is to think of God in terms appropriate to creatures: ‘It can never be necessary in the interest of religion so to interpret a fact that its dependence on God absolutely excludes its being conditioned by the system of Nature’”.
(Tyndale Bulletin 49.2 (1998))
Thus it seems the reaction to idealism in some theology is that God is reduced to merely Natural Law. Schleiermacher is the father of liberal Protestant pantheistic theology of which Obama drinks.
Platonic?
Plato and his ideal sphere somewhere . . . his ideal perfect chair somewhere etc. etc.
I think it is
unarguable that
1. we all have perceptual bias--inescapable perceptual distortion bias.
2. that from some hypothesized yet also--certainly from the Christian perspective--REALalistic perspective of God . . . God's angelic hosts . . . or even, one might say . . . God's master computer hardware observer drones . . . THERE IS SOME OBJECTIVE REALITY that does not suffer from perceptual distortion and bias.
3. However, the latter, has a bit of a problem with TIME in the equation. What IS or WAS at that moment is MOST PROBABLY altered the next moment or given sufficient moments . . . depending on a list of partially unknown variables.
4. Hume, Hegel, and all the other nihilistic pontificals ad nauseum . . . seem to have been in a hell fostered rush to push God out of the equation. Given that God was/is by definition infinite . . . and largely empirically unknowable in strict RELIGION OF SCIENCE TERMS--it was a nice trick to define reality as only that which is empirically provable.
4.1 However, interestingly, Satre was closer than he might have realized . . . to reality--when he asserted that for the finite to have meaning--it must have a connection to the INFINITE. He just never connected to the INFINITE himself, as far as we know.
5. However, they spoke too soon. They could not anticipate quantum physics and the observer problem. They still had the insane 'luxury' of pretending that there COULD BE a
TRULY OBJECTIVE, TRULY EMPIRICAL PERSPECTIVE in this time/space dimension.
6. I think there's another uppity miscalculation on the part of such hell fostered mentalities and perspectives. They are most rattled by MIRACLES. Certainly hell is familiar with the equation that less faith equal less miracles. So, in a sense, it's a tidy little way to decrease miracles--trash faith.
7. However, God IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN I-AM . . . and is quite delighted to sabotage such presumptions on the part of the finite and particularly on the part of hell. However, He is also usually loathe to drop HIS MIRACLES into a laboratory--particularly on 'scholarly' 'RELIGION OF SCIENCE' COMMAND.
8. Yet, satan's goons do capture a lot of unsuspecting folks into a mentality that trashes their faith. FAITH--the critical currency and critical structure of God's multiverse.
9. Oddly and flabbergastingly, he gets them to put their FAITH into something
--far more finite,
--far more silly,
--far more irrational,
--far more UNEMPIRICAL,
--far more unverifiable,
--far more unfounded . . .
. . . a philosophy that quickly ties itself in a Gordian Knot of self-obliterating descriptions, premises, definitions and foundations.
10. They know to some degree that there's no such thing as an objective observer. Yet, they go merrily on PRETENDING that they with their super narrow, super rigid, super UN-REAListic biases are MORE objective than God. I'm sure He's impressed.
The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
The fool has said in his heart, there is nothing knowable outside our little fantasies about reality.
When IN REALITY, there's little knowable WITHIN their fantasies about reality.