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Transcendental Idealism: the view that the world of spatio-temporal
objects is transcendentally ideal and empirically real. Think of the
transcendental/empirical distinction is one between perspectives: from the
transcendental perspective (the perspective independent of any individual
human) the world of spatio-temporal objects is partly determined by our
conceptual and epistemological requirements; but from the empirical perspective
(the perspective of individual human beings) world of spatio-temporal objects
exist independently of us.
Given that understanding of Transcendental Idealism, what is
Transcendental Realism ?
Notice the distinctions in the Introduction: The Idea of
a Transcendental Logic:
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B 75 (p. 653) "Let us give the name sensibility to our mind's receptivity [i.e., to its ability] , to receive representations insofar as it is affected in some manner. The understanding, by contrast, is our faculty for producing representations ourselves, i.e., our spontaneity of cognition."
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"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts
are blind."
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"The understanding cannot intuit anything, and the senses cannot think anything.
Only through their union can cognition arise. . . "
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Chapter II: The Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding
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B118 (p. 659) " We already have, at this point, two types of concepts that, while being wholly different in kind, do yet agree inasmuch as both of them refer to objects completely a priori: namely, on the one hand, the concepts of space and time as forms of sensibility; and, on the other hand, the categories as concepts of the understnading. To attempt an empirical deduction of these two types of concept would be a futile job. For what is distinctive in their nature is precisely the fact that they refer to their objects without having borrowed anything from experience in order to represent these objects. Hence if a deduction of these concepts is needed, then it must always be transcendental."
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Does a "transcendental deduction" thereby justify the employment
of those concepts?
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A simplified version of Kant's transcendental
deduction:
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I have a unified consciousness of a manifold of
experience.
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That unified consciousness requires the experience of an objective
world and the distinction between my self and the objective
world.
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But all of that requires that the mind imposes an order on
the experience.
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Therefore, the mind imposed order is guaranteed to hold in
the world of appearances.
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SECOND ANALOGY: Principle of Succession in Time, in Accordance
with the Law of Causality
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All alterations take place in conformity with the law of the
connection of cause and effect.
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My unified consciousness requires that I have experiences of
objectivity.
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My experiences of objectivity require that there is a distinction
between a subjective temporal order and an objective temporal order.
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That distinction requires a causal order in the world of appearances
(succession according to a rule).
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So there is a causal order in the world of
appearances.
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