username wrote: ↑Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:14 pm
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.