Schopenhauer's metaphysics: the problem

[username]

We cannot use logic to talk about 'the thing in itself', because logic requires spatio-temporal individuation (there is no logic without individuation). Time and space are conditions of our possible experience of the world, and it is illegitimate to extend them to what lies beyond our possible experience.

Therefore we remain stuck with Kant, and cannot talk about what the thing in itself is.

[Simon Adams]

But in the first person case, surely you know something of the ‘thing in itself’ ?

[AshvinP]

We cannot use logic to talk about 'the thing in itself', because logic requires spatio-temporal individuation (there is no logic without individuation). Time and space are conditions of our possible experience of the world, and it is illegitimate to extend them to what lies beyond our possible experience.

Therefore we remain stuck with Kant, and cannot talk about what the thing in itself is.

Check my essay out for a critique of Kant's epistemology - Res Ipsa Loquitur - Kant vs. the World.

[Soul_of_Shu]

We cannot use logic to talk about 'the thing in itself', because logic requires spatio-temporal individuation (there is no logic without individuation). Time and space are conditions of our possible experience of the world, and it is illegitimate to extend them to what lies beyond our possible experience.

Therefore we remain stuck with Kant, and cannot talk about what the thing in itself is.

I concur, only in that the languaging in this case is still referring to thing-ness, and so is misleading, when it should actually refer to its formless aspect. Nonetheless, one knows that aspect by virtue of it also being of one's very essence. So insofar as talking about it presumes the knowing of it, and language is how one communicates, that is what is used however inadequate it may be.

[AshvinP]

We cannot use logic to talk about 'the thing in itself', because logic requires spatio-temporal individuation (there is no logic without individuation). Time and space are conditions of our possible experience of the world, and it is illegitimate to extend them to what lies beyond our possible experience.

Therefore we remain stuck with Kant, and cannot talk about what the thing in itself is.

I concur, only in that the languaging in this case is still referring to thing-ness, and so is misleading, when it should actually refer to its formless aspect. Nonetheless, one knows that aspect by virtue of it also being of one's very essence. So insofar as talking about it presumes the knowing of it, and language is how one communicates, that is what is used however inadequate it may be.

Indeed. Under idealism much of these ontic-epistemic conundrums are eliminated, but unfortunately many idealists still fail to recognize that. As Steiner put it, there is no empirical reason to divide a "thing-in-itself" from a "thing-for-us".

A thing is a unity for our reason and the separation into “thing-in-itself” and “thing-for-us” is a product of our intellect. It will not do, therefore, to say that what is attributed to a thing in one connection can be denied it in other connections. For, whether I look at the same thing one time from this point of view and another time from that: it is after all still a unified whole...

The method must therefore consist in our answering the question, with respect to each thing: What part does it have in the unified world of ideas; what place does it occupy in the ideal picture that I make for myself of the world? When I have understood this, when I have recognized how a thing connects itself with my ideas, then my need for knowledge is satisfied. There is only one thing that is not satisfying to my need for knowledge: when a thing confronts me that does not want to connect anywhere with the view I hold of things.

The ideal discomfort must be overcome that stems from the fact that there is something or other of which I must say to myself: I see that it is there; when I approach it, it faces me like a question mark; but I find nowhere, within the harmony of my thoughts, the point at that I can incorporate it; the questions I must ask upon seeing it remain unanswered, no matter how I twist and turn my system of thoughts.

[Peter Jones]

We cannot use logic to talk about 'the thing in itself', because logic requires spatio-temporal individuation (there is no logic without individuation). Time and space are conditions of our possible experience of the world, and it is illegitimate to extend them to what lies beyond our possible experience.

Therefore we remain stuck with Kant, and cannot talk about what the thing in itself is.

The phrase 'thing-in-itself- is clumsy and misleading. It presupposes the existence of things. I'd prefer to say things are empty. Meister Eckhart dismisses things as 'literally nothing', in which case there is no thing to have a thing-in-itself. For the Perennial philosophy nothing really exists and things that seem to exist are void and empty.

If we're speaking of Tao, Brahman or Ultimate Reality then what you say would be both correct and incorrect. Lao Tsu reminds us that there are always two ways of looking at these issues. He says the Tao cannot be spoken, but also that we must speak about it. It is just that we must speak about it as something we cannot speak about .

This is easy enough as long as we know why we cannot speak about it. Ultimate Reality lies beyond the categories of thought thus well beyond language, but this is a very precise definition of an utterly unique phenomenon so we are able to speak about it with no great difficulty.

Thus we can and cannot speak of Tao, and this preserves Lao Tsu's rule that true words seem paradoxical.

if you're trying to do better than Kant then I'd advise you to forget all about the 'thing-in-itself' and take the leap into mysticism. Kant was not in a position to do this. He could only show that analysis leads to its door. Today we have the internet.

The point is simply that if want to know what the word 'Tao' means and realise (as opposed to calculate) the voidness of Kantian phenomena then we must do so in our own direct experience, for no tower of logic can reach up as far as Heaven. As you point out, a phenomenon with no positive attributes lies beyond the distinctions necessary for dialectical logic. It cannot be thought or imagined.

But we can happily speak about it. To suppose we are stuck with Kant is to suppose that mysticism is a lot of nonsense. For the mystic philosopher Kant is the starting point for an investigation, not the end. There would be nothing to be learned form Kant. The Upanishads long-go tell us, 'The voidness of one thing is the voidness of all'. This is what Kant worked out using his intellect, for it is just a matter of logic, but the successful mystic doesn't have to work it out for it is a known fact.

You say the Ultimate lies beyond all experience. This is the case, but perhaps not for the reason you imagine. An experience implies an experiencer and this is two things. But there are not two things. Knowledge of the Ultimate must transcends experience and be found in the identity of knower and known, which is a not an intellectual path but a process of self-realisation. This brings 'knowledge-by-identity or what Merryl-Wolff calls 'introception'. This process allows us to know more than Kant dreamed of, and more than most scholastic philosophers even find plausible.

And a lot of it can be explained by speaking about the unspeakable Ultimate.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Lao Tsu reminds us that there are always two ways of looking at these issues. He says the Tao cannot be spoken, but also that we must speak about it. It is just that we must speak about it as something we cannot speak about .

Indeed, as the Tao Te Ching states right up front in its opening lines, "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao", yet clearly this doesn't preclude what can be told, since it then goes on for 80 more chapters doing just that.

[Shaibei]

Following the above, I will quote from the words of philosopher Hugo Bergman:

Our mind is a finite, discursive mind, that is, our mind 'begins in the middle and ends in the middle', as Shlomo Maimon writes. The treasure of truths, which we have acquired for ourselves, is always surrounded by the 'aura' (Husserl: Hof) of the unknown.

Our minds advance by division and analysis, and gather the individual facts, to form from them one whole. But this totality, which our minds attain, will always be a partial totality, which propels the mind forward towards new problems, new contradictions, which it must solve. The mind strives for the totality that surrounds everything. Meaning: our mind, which is limited by nature, strives to be the mind that knows everything. This is the goal of science. It wants to achieve the whole truth, but it cannot encompass it. Man's property and destiny are perspectives, parts, of the infinite.

....Inevitably every person thinks that his partial point of view is the real point of view, and any angle of view that is not his is incorrect, because it is different from his point of view, limited by limits other than the limits that reduce him ...
Overcoming these limits will not be done by repealing the law of contradiction , As Hegel thought. Only another kind of consciousness, which is for the time being avoided by man, could have overcome these limits. Whereas the repeal of the law of contradiction would have brought upon us a clutter of arbitrary sentences. Everything was justified, and everything was allowed.
This, then, is the goal to which our consciousness aspires. But can we, with the help of our knowledge, create for ourselves an idea of ​​this purpose? We can do this only by depriving the only cognition known to us - the human cognition - of all its characteristic defects and trying, by this negation, to create for us, indirectly, a concept of cognition towards which we go in the process of consciousness.

This concept of complete and perfect cognition will therefore be a concept of 'non-human cognition', and since we have no knowledge of other cognition outside of human cognition, perhaps someone will try to formulate: 'cognition that is not a cognition', thereby producing - so to speak - a concept containing contradiction In it. But it is clear that this contradiction is imaginary and we are not allowed to say that the concept of 'knowing everything' contradicts itself.

We may assume, that after the negation of all human predicates, there must inevitably remain a notion of consciousness.
But we, by the means of our human cognition, cannot attain this concept of direct attainment, and yet to create some notion of this
cognition which is a necessity to us, we remove from the concept of cognition known to us all the features which characterize it. We use
contradiction as a means of expression, to express a concept, which we will not be able to achieve directly, with the help of thinking devices
available to us and with the help of the concepts that are our property, and to express it to the same extent as possible. We therefore seriously
claim that the concept contains a contradiction, but the contradiction is used by us psychologically or methodically, to bring about attainment
and expression indirectly, that which cannot be achieved and expressed directly

It is interesting that Bergman, who was a friend of Rudolf Steiner and mentions his name in several articles, did not mention him in his book "Introduction to Epistemology ." Instead he devoted an entire chapter to the formulation of 13 points explaining the limitations of knowledge.

[Peter Jones]

Lao Tsu reminds us that there are always two ways of looking at these issues. He says the Tao cannot be spoken, but also that we must speak about it. It is just that we must speak about it as something we cannot speak about .

Indeed, as the Tao Te Ching states right up front in its opening lines, "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao", yet clearly this doesn't preclude what can be told, since it then goes on for 80 more chapters doing just that.

Exactly. Excuse me if what I said came across as patronising.

[AshvinP]

Following the above, I will quote from the words of philosopher Hugo Bergman:
...
It is interesting that Bergman, who was a friend of Rudolf Steiner and mentions his name in several articles, did not mention him in his book "Introduction to Epistemology ." Instead he devoted an entire chapter to the formulation of 13 points explaining the limitations of knowledge.

I had a hard time following what Berman was saying there... but it does sound in opposite to Steiner's epistemology. The latter is laid out pretty clearly in his Philosophy of Freedom. A key realization is that our human experience-perspective should not be divided from the 'objects' of our knowledge i.e. we should avoid dualism and Kantian epistemology, which is such a powerful force that many idealists (like Kant) will start their inquiries from the dualist perspective without even knowing. Maybe you can assess to what extent Bergman and Maimon align with the below perspective.

Are There Limits to Knowledge?

We have established that the elements for the explanation of reality are to be found in the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. It is due, as we have seen, to our organization that the full, complete reality, including our own selves as subjects, appears at first as a duality. The act of knowing overcomes this duality by fusing the two elements of reality, the percept and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world presents itself to us, before it has taken on its true nature through our knowing it, “the world of appearance,” in contrast to the unified whole composed of percept and concept. We can then say: The world is given to us as a duality, and knowledge transforms it into a unity. A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a monistic philosophy, or monism. Opposed to this is the two-world theory, or dualism. The latter does not assume just that there are two sides of a single reality which are kept apart merely by our organization, but that there are two worlds absolutely distinct from one another. It then tries to find in one of these two worlds the principles for the explanation of the other.

Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds standing apart and opposed... It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the perceptual object and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into philosophy, and which, to the present day, we have not succeeded in eradicating.
...
It follows from the concept of the act of knowing as we have defined it, that one cannot speak of limits to knowledge. Knowing is not a concern of the world in general, but an affair which man must settle for himself. Things demand no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which can be discovered through thinking. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Egohood confronts them, grasping at first only that part of them we have called percepts. Within our Egohood, however, lies the power to discover the other part of the reality as well. Only when the Egohood has taken the two elements of reality which are indivisibly united in the world and has combined them also for itself, is our thirst for knowledge satisfied — the I has then arrived at the reality once more.

Thus the conditions necessary for an act of knowledge to take place are there through the I and for the I. The I sets itself the problems of knowledge; and moreover it takes them from an element that is absolutely clear and transparent in itself: the element of thinking. If we set ourselves questions which we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets us the questions, but we ourselves.

I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question was taken.

In our knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of percepts, conditioned by place, time, and our subjective organization, is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to the totality of the universe. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, with both of which I am well acquainted. Here one cannot speak of a limit to knowledge. It may be that, at any particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving the things involved. What is not found today, however, may be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perception and thinking.