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das ding an sich
what does it mean?

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das ding an sich
lobo_oscuro
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Posted 08/01/09 - 04:52 PM:
Subject: das ding an sich 		quote post
#1
Hi Everyone

As the title implies, what does "the thing in itself" mean? And could you kindly explain to me as if I was a 5 year old thanks
Je pense donc je suis - Rene Decartes
Crackers
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Posted 08/01/09 - 05:17 PM:
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#2
Examine how you interact with your computer with your senses, intuitions and perceptions.
Now imagine a blind man sat next to you and imagine how he interacts with the computer in this way (with his senses etc.)
Now imagine a man who's just absorbed a considerable amount of LSD and imagine how he interacts with the computer in this way.
Imagine a dog and an insect doing the same.

Now imagine what it's like when nobody is around to observe the computer. The-thing-in-itself is what the object is as opposed to an observers experience of it.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/noumena wrote:

noumena
-noun

1. the object, itself inaccessible to experience, to which a phenomenon is referred for the basis or cause of its sense content.
2. a thing in itself, as distinguished from a phenomenon or thing as it appears.
3. Kantianism. something that can be the object only of a purely intellectual, nonsensuous intuition.


http://mw1.meriam-webster.com/dictionary/noumenon wrote:

noumenon
-noun

a posited object or event as it appears in itself independent of perception by the senses.


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phenomena wrote:

phenomena
-noun

4. Philosophy.
a. an appearance or immediate object of awareness in experience.
b. Kantianism. a thing as it appears to and is constructed by the mind, as distinguished from a noumenon, or thing-in-itself.




Edited by Crackers on 08/01/09 - 05:58 PM
mikelepore
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Posted 08/01/09 - 09:19 PM:
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#3
When I read _Critique of Pure Reason_ it seemed to me that Kant was saying the mind is like a filing cabinet with the files pre-labeled. The mind has files labeled time and space, motion, increase and decrease, cause and effect, possibility and necessity, etc. Kant called these the categories. He identified exactly twelve major categories, and he claimed that he was certain that his list of them was complete because he could look into his own mind and verify that he had accounted for all of them. The categories are fixed and hard-wired into everyone's brain. Information comes in through the senses and goes right into these categories. These categories make up the limited vocabulary of everything that we are capable of perceiving and thinking. The categories are the only available building blocks of thought. Therefore we can't know the thing in itself. We only know how a perceived object has left its trace on our mental apparatus, which has limitations. That's the gist of about 500 pages of reading!
Schlitz
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Posted 08/21/09 - 11:29 PM:
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lobo_obscuro,

As a 5 year-old, you should know that it actually turns out that 'thing-in-itself' means 'thing' if it means anything at all.
mutemaler
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Posted 08/22/09 - 03:22 PM:
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#5
lobo_oscuro wrote:
...As the title implies, what does "the thing in itself" mean? And could you kindly explain to me as if I was a 5 year old thanks

I'll take a slightly opposing view to the indoctrinates. I don't think it means much at all, except a few thousand years of wasted effort. If only we in our tradition had started from relation instead of some particulate universe (populated with "objects with properties"), then it could have been so obvious that there can be nothing in isolation.

Wait, there you have it. The Ding an sich is nothing!

Exit, stage left!
MarchHare
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Posted 09/02/09 - 03:44 PM:
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#6
mutemaler wrote:

Wait, there you have it. The Ding an sich is nothing!


I seem to remember Hegel saying something similar: nothing is a thing in itself.
Doubt requires a reason to doubt.

Nothing is immune from potential doubt.

The correct response to a question isn't always to try to give the question's answer.
mutemaler
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Posted 09/06/09 - 09:47 PM:
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#7
MarchHare wrote:

I seem to remember Hegel saying something similar: nothing is a thing in itself.

And here I would have put him down somewhere with Plato. I feel a lot more empathy for the planet Pluto actually, what a horrible thing to do to a perfectly good planet, just reclassify it out of 'existence' like that.

***

Somewhere along the line I think I decided that what we call the properties (of the so-called objects with properties) are better seen as the sum of all other relation. In a practical sense the sum of 'neighboring' relation (with neighboring in the sense of relational proximity, not necessarily the familiar spatial or temporal proximity). Think more in terms of constellations, of relation.

(about relational proximity, a simple example: a gamma ray passes right through us; we might see this as couldn't be 'closer' in terms of time and space, but it is a relational structure of a very low order, and couldn't be further away from the relational order of a person for example, something along those lines).

A worldview which essentially asserts an "ultimate" reality which is static and unchanging is all a bit suspect to me, I am afraid. To the extent it is useful, use it, but don't make it dogma (oops, too late).


Edited by mutemaler on 09/06/09 - 10:02 PM
Lord Drivel
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Posted 09/27/09 - 12:18 AM:
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#8
The thing in itself is 'represented' in our universe, according to Schopenhauer (after Kant), through modes of time, space, and causality, which latter are a priori knowledge hard wired into the brain; but even this representation can only be experienced by a subject in relation to an object, so that the representation can never exist on its own independently of an observer, which was Schopenhauer's own unique contribution. Some have postulated that this gives rise to each individual living in his or her own solipsistic universe, which is immediately extinguished the moment the observer is extinguished.

Closely related to this concept of representation are the Platonic Forms, which can also be described as a representation of the IDEAS, another expression for the thing in itself. Plato said we experience reality as if living in a cave, and what we see are mere shadows on the walls. To experience the real object we need to emerge from the cave into the light, and only very few are capable of doing that.

Even earlier than Plato we see in the Aryan Upanishads of the Vedantic scripts the concept of the Veil of Maya, which is a world of illusion concealing the true reality, and which we are all caught up in seemingly inextricably life after life in Samsara, unless able to achieve Moksha and attain release. This evolved into Hindu philosophy and eventually Buddhism.

Edited by Lord Drivel on 09/27/09 - 05:04 AM
mutemaler
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Posted 09/27/09 - 03:20 AM:
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#9
Lord Drivel wrote:
The thing in itself is 'represented' in our universe, according to Schopenhauer (after Kant), through modes of time, space, and causality, which latter are a priori knowledge hard wired into the brain; but even this representation can only be experienced by a subject in relation to an object, so that the representation can never exist on its own independently of an observer, which was Schopenhauer's own unique contribution. Some have postulated that this gives rise to each individual living in his or her own solipsistic universe, which is immediately extinguished the moment the observer is extinguished.

Closely related to this concept of representation are the Platonic Forms, which can also be described as a representation of the IDEAS, another expression for the thing in itself. Plato said we experience reality as if living in a cave, and what we see are mere shadows on the walls. To experience the real object we need to emerge from the cave into the light, and only very few are capable of doing that.

Even earlier than Plato we see in the Aryan Upanishads of the Vedantic scripts the concept of the Veil of Maya, which is a world of illusion concealing the true reality, and which we are all caught up in seemingly inextricably life after life in Samsara, unless able to achieve Moksha and attain release. This evolved into Hindu philosophy and eventually Buddhism.

But that is where I have to depart from our larger western tradition (the indo-european), this very notion of a single "real reality behind our illusion". And I don't even bother to limit this to a human thing, it is not about our perception (reality-making), I just don't think that it makes sense to speak of any referenced, referencing, and reference point as being separable entities, that together these build a reality, one among limitless.

If one persists on speaking of a "true" reality in this sense, and I am forced to speak in (somewhat) his terms, I will say that the universe is realities (he would say illusions) CLEAR THROUGH (there is no so-called objective, indeed no backdrop at all), deny the kind of "one true" reality of which he speaks. We are part of the whole, the universe-plus (as are all living beings, all inanimate points of reference for that matter), not separate from it.
Lord Drivel
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Posted 09/27/09 - 05:23 AM:
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#10
I certainly do not purport to know, and being a sceptic by nature actually hold no view on this matter any more than I do on God or after lives or what have you, and would under no circumstances resort to belief, which is really just an abject form of surrender, or you could say a refusal to think any further. Nevertheless the various theories have a sort of poetic beauty and elegance about them, awakening us sceptics all the more to the matter of how little in fact we do know, and our ridiculous smugness that as the Noble Naked Ape somehow we think we can know everything!
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