Totalitarianist

Is the existence of things-in-themselves self-contradictory, since things-in-themselves are non-ideas to which, therefore, no idea, e.g. existence, can apply? I think so, yet some materialists accept the thing-in-itself doctrine.
Engels said:

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our sense-perception. If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail. But, if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is proof positive that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality outside ourselves."

When Kant says "experience" he means all possible experience, i.e. "the world". Hence "the identity of knowing and being". But that subject and object are two sides of the same reality is employed by both materialists and idealists.

The objective idealists and the materialists both, in some ways, seem correct to me. The arguments on both sides range from convincing to weak.

Can anyone help me to decide? Which do you think is true and why -- materialism or idealism?

Mat Wilder

I'm still trying to work this one out myself, but I'm leaning towards materialism. I mean, why even posit that there is this thing-in-itself if we can know nothing about it? What evidence do we have that a thing-in-itself is different than a thing-as-it-appears-to-us? We get by well enough, which makes me think that what we see is what there is.

Totalitarianist

It is of logical necessity that the thing-in-itself does not exist, which (I think) leads one to either idealism or materialism, both of which have very strong arguments.

Mat Wilder

I definitely need to read more by and about Wittgenstein, but I think he would argue that the debate over such a thing is incoherent. I know this isn't at all helpful, but could be a starting point for further study into this problem.

Totalitarianist

Wittgenstein twice refuted himself: he refuted his own Tractatus in that same Tractatus and once again in Philosophical Investigations (or whatever it is called).

Mat Wilder

Um, I have read the Philosophical Investigations and he did indeed refute the Tractatus . But the Tractatus refuting itself? That is something new to me (and to all of the commentators I have read)! What on earth are you basing that statement on?

Totalitarianist

"Refute" is a bad word, but he believed that he was wrong in his Tractatus in PI. As for the Tractatus, he says knowledge cannot be expressed in words; he then tells us about this knowledge in words.

Keith Russell

Totalitarianist said:
It is of logical necessity that the thing-in-itself does not exist.

Could you please explain the logic involved in arriving at that conclusion?

(And, are you sure you don't simply mean that one cannot use logic to prove that the thing-in-and-of-itself exists?)

Keith.

Totalitarianist

The thing-in-itself exists outside the mind. No concept can apply to it, since all concepts are of the mind. "Existence" is a concept. Therefore, "existence" cannot apply to the thing-in-itself. "Cause" is a concept. Apparently the thing-in-itself is the cause of our ideas. Again, since no concept can apply to the thing-in-itself, the thing-in-itself does not cause our ideas.

There are various other refuations. The first one was first used in (I think) 1710 by Berkely. Kant ignored them (apparently); the subsequent Idealists refuted Kant with them. Materialists and Idealists alike accept that the thing-in-itself is a self-contradictory thought. That is another way of saying that they accept that fact that it does not exist.

the_cave

I wouldn't say that Wittgenstein says that knowledge can't be expressed in words. I think what he means at the end of the Tractatus is that metaphysics is impossible; yet that itself is a metaphysical statement. The solution to the paradox is then to abandon it.

I have begun to wonder over the years whether there weren't one thing-in-itself after all; namely, the entire cosmos. Truly knowing it would also necessitate simultaneously knowing our knowing--and then knowing that knowing, and so on ad infinitum. Which might be impossible. Yet clearly, such knowledge would exist, even though it could technically never know itself, at the very moment it is knowing. In other words, we're doomed to always be one step ahead of ourselves.