By Kant's definitions of "transcendental realism" and "transcendental idealism," they are inconsistent. If transcendental idealism is true, in which case our minds make us think about things-in-themselves as having properties that they don't really have, then we don't have unmediated epistemological access to the true natures of things-in-themselves, which is to say that transcendental realism is false.

As for whether "the intersubjectivity constituted out of empirical idealism create[s] a type of transcendental realism," Kant agrees; but the realism is of the phenomenal world, not of the noumenal world, and so it's not what Kant means by "transcendental realism." Suppose we call your kind of transcendental realism "transcental realism kind #2," and call Kant's kind of transcendental realism "transcendental realism kind #1." Then transcendental realism kind #1 is inconsistent with transcendental idealism, regardless of whether transcendental realism kind #2 is true.

With that said, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Every time I try to figure out what Kant is saying, I start second-guessing myself.

I would agree about an inter-subjective TranscendentAL Idealism, but this position is different from Transcendent Realism, which is not compatible with Transcendental Idealism as argued by James Glindeland. By the way, a similar compatibility is defended by Max Velmans in http://cogprints.org/238/1/199801005.html

If the critique of transcendental realism is simply the recognition that we do not have unmitigated access to the world as it is in itself anyone who thinks it through will I believe subscribe to that critique. All human knowledge we know anything about is "all to human". Even contemporary physicists are constantly coming up with a kind of sense of "What are things REALLY made of?" TR is a no-brain er. But it is worth taking into account that it is a no-brain er. It's a recognition of our epistemic limitation.

On the other hand, Kant's Noumena as I understand it, is simply the unknown. When Mathew speaks of the phenomenal as empirical idealist existence it seems that he is attributing that to Kant. I have some sympathy with that accusation but I know that Kant would horrified to find that it might be true. For ironically empirical idealism has more than a suspicious Berkely-an sound to it. Kant regarded that kind of idealism a monstrosity.

I myself have little problem with any of that anymore because I believe that everything that is, is real but in different ways. Myths are real myths, dreams are real dreams, One really does win or lose a game, even if a game is not an object, it is not something one can pick up or ask what it is made of. There is an important sense in which winning and loosing are subjective. What kind of reality is the game, if it is not an inter-subjective phenomenon, or maybe preferably in my opinion, an inter-subjective reality, like a conversation, or a communal celebration or a...... .

William Springer, I also agree with you. I have claimed that there are three fundamental aspects of reality, the physical/chemical/biological, the formal/informational and the mental/conscious ones. They are aspects of the same reality, not three separate worlds as in Karl Popper`s philosophy. Knowledge about all three is based on the first-person perspective or on phenomenal experiences in the sense of Kant. The third-person perspective of science is a social construction from the first-person perspective of the individuals, which is constrained by experimental, technological, ethical and aesthetical factors.

Matthew asks: "As soon as he puts the thought to paper, and write a symbol to be interpreted by another, does he not instantiate an existence that he previously refuted?" I think Kant would answer that all the ink marks and the paper on which the marks are made are part of the empirical world in which we find ourselves in. It's the common sense world that everyone is interacting with. He does not refute the existence of this world at all. And this is the difference between his position and Berkeley's as William points out. What he refutes, on the contrary, is the notion that we can know anything of the world *as it is in itself.* For that would entail the kind of skeptical position that Hume is driving at. From the standpoint of the world as it is in itself, we then are in no position to guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow because all we know is that it has always risen in the past but that, as Hume famously points out, has no necessary bearing on whether it will rise tomorrow or not.

In order to combat Hume's skeptical position, Kant finds it necessary to introduce the "Copernican Revolution" where the representations constitute the world as we know it rather than the other way round. But this constitution is not of the Berkeleyan kind. Instead it is the condition of possibility that makes the world as we know it possible in the first place. One cannot start talking or writing about the world unless the world itself is made knowable to us by virtue of this conceptual apparatus, and this apparatus for Kant is always a priori. It has to be there before we can even start conceptualizing about the empirical world. Then Berkeley's idealism comes later, because it assumes the position that representations come after the empirical world.

Soraj I am perplexed by your observation "From the standpoint of the world as it is in itself, we then are in no position to guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow because all we know is that it has always risen in the past but that, as Hume famously points out, has no necessary bearing on whether it will rise tomorrow or not." First of all I don't understand what a standpoint of the world as it is in itself means. But let that pass. Ass for Hume's skepticism based on that example I want your comment on my following remark: Humans are naturally aware of night and day and they see the sun rising and falling when there is no obstruction. They notice eventually that people die and eventually realize that that is what happens almost or for the most part because they use their ability to make generalizations. The only thing that Hume leaves out is intelligence. Normal adult Human perception is almost always rational

Another only remotely relevant point: Humans have learned in the last five hundred have acquired compelling rational conviction that it does not really rise or fall. The earth spins daily on its axis and the sun naturally appears to rise and fall. Does Kant have such things in mind when he speaks of the phenomenal world? Is that related in any way to Kant's Copernican revolution? Was Hume prudent in using that regularity as good example of alleged unwarranted generalization? A bit messy, but interesting, no?

William, I don't have the text of the CPR with me at the moment, but I remember that the Copernican Revolution is such that instead of having our concepts conforming to things, why don't we let things conforming to concepts instead. I think Kant is making a hypothesis: What if we let things conform to concepts, would that enable us to answer Hume's skepticism? And the whole of the first Critique is, I think, the result.

So from the standpoint of things as they are in themselves, I mean the position where concepts conform to things - something that is assumed by empiricists such as Berkeley and Hume. Having concepts conforming to things is a basis for the inductive position. We observe the sun rises everyday in the east, then we form a generalization and predict that tomorrow will be the same as today. But as Hume brilliantly argues, the most we can rely on to justify the prediction is our own habit, not something that would satisfy Kant. What he is after is *apodicity* - it's not enough that we habitually form a generalization, we have to know for certain. And for Kant the way toward doing that is through the transcendental argument

Soraj: I think most philosophers would agree with you when you write:" But as Hume brilliantly argues, the most we can rely on to justify the prediction (that the sun will rise tomorrow) is our own habit, not something that would satisfy Kant." But I have always wondered why it was not enough to point out that Hume is treating perception as devoid of rationality when in fact that the only kind of perception that normal adult humans have is perception shot through with reason, however primitive it might be.

I think you are right that Kant is "after apodicity" which is a logician's intrusion on normal rationality. I cannot be absolutely sure that the sun will rise tomorrow because it is CONCEIVABLE that it will not. But I would be IRRATIONAL to take it seriously that it MIGHT not. And I don't have to have absolute certainty in order to know that it will not, unless I am a the logician or mathematician who thinks that know means absolutely certain.

By the way it was not a very good example of a reliable generalization since we rational creatures now know that the sun does not rise or go down. We spin and the sun seems to rise and go down. Or should we philosophers say it does rise and go down phenomenally and the REASON why it is such a reliable phenomenal experience is because the earth really does spin and it seems to rise and fall? Or are these facts not relevant to the issue?

William, I often talk about these issues with my students and my favorite example is that there might be a gamma ray burst somewhere in the neighborhood of our galaxy and the ray shoots straight toward earth. Since the ray travels at the speed of light we have no way to detect it before it hits earth, by which time we can see the ray at the same time as it destroys the earth since it's so powerful. So yes it is conceivable that tonight the ray might hit us and there will be no tomorrow. But of course chances of that actually happening is pretty remote.

I think if we raise the gamma ray burst issue to Kant, he would agree with the possibility however remote. What he is after, however, is a way to conceptualize the world such that events there do not happen just by habit or custom. It is true that empirically speaking things that have happened so regularly can turn out to be different, but Kant's project is one where he tries to find a "secure foundation" for our empirical knowledge. And the idea is that it is as secure as our a priori concepts take it to be.

So back to Mathew's original question. Here the gamma ray burst obviously belongs to the empirical side of things, but our *conception" of the ray - that it is *something* that travels in time and space - depends already on these a priori concepts of a thing and space and time (Kant calls the latter two "formal intuitions.")

Soraj. When we say things like "our conception of the ray--something that travels in itme and space" depends on a priori concepts , I am confused mostly because the ray is something real that we have discovered, and though we make a mistake when we think we know everything about it, we have no rational grounds for believing that it will not function with utmost regularity. But this also seems obvious-- its regularity is not apodictic--only concepts can be apodicitic. Would it be a contradiction to say that the universe has already ceased to exist and we don't know it? That is the kind of jesting that philosophers can engage in.

I hope that I am intruding on you by the following request. I wlil NOT take it amiss if you decline.

I would be very grateful if you would read my Essay on Existential Space. It is a comparison of Merleau-Ponty's notion of lived space and Kant's examination of the same issue. Since you are well informed about Kant it will be familiar territory, and I think you might find that it is a very significant critique of Kant's position. What would please me greatly would be that you could UNDERMINE my argument and then I will understand better why my colleagues just scratch their heads when they read it. Then I can put it to rest and not bother anyone with it anymore. It is on my profile in researchgate, but I don't know how you can to access it. If you cannot access it I would gladly send you a copy to your internet address if you are interested.

Hi William, yes I see your paper and will download it very soon. The ray is of course real and if the scientists are right we'll all be fried if it hits us. Yet we still have to think about it, putting it somewhere within our conceptual domain, so to speak. And I think that's Kant point. The animals will be fried too although apparently they don't have the conceptual apparatus that we have.

With regard to intersubjectivity, I think one must keep in mind that Kant has a Cartesian "starting point" when it comes to the analysis of consciousness and experience. How is it possible, what are the conditions that must hold in order, that a mind experiences a mind-independent object? Starting from this point, I think the problem of other minds becomes an empirical problem, i.e. recognition of another mind will hinge upon a judgment regarding certain evidence.

Transcendental realism is framed in the first Critique in terms of views regarding the nature of space (and time). Kant casts Newton as regarding space as a real independently existing thing; he casts Leibniz as regarding space as reducible to a mere relational property among things. Kant's argument is that neither of these positions can be maintained. An experiencing mind requires a way of ordering what is given to it before it can distinguish these things from itself and from each other. Neither Newton's view nor Leibniz's allows for this condition to be satisfied. The mind requires, he argues, a "form of sensibility": a way of ordering input distinct from the mind's own ordering abilities (conceptual and inferential abilities associated with the mind as "intellect") if the mind is to have access to it at all. According to the argument in the Transcendental Aesthetic, in order to receive sensible input from things the mind must have ways or forms of receiving (as dispositional capacities) that, when operative, present what is given such that what is presented may be (conceptually) distinguished as distinct from the mind and as distinct from each other. In us, this condition is met by these capacities presenting things in space and time. Thus that things appear in space and time is a requirement we impose. Space and time are forms of experience that we bring to the table. Nothing could appear otherwise, so these forms are universal and thus "objective" in that sense. As for the things as they are in themselves, since our only access to them is via experience of them in space and time, we can affirm nothing about them as they are considered independently of how they appear in space and time, since the very idea of "as they are in themselves" abstracts from our means of access. So transcendental realism, since it misses this point about our receptive condition of access, thus in one way or another believing we have cognitive access to things as they are in themselves, is a specific set of positions that Kant clearly wants to reject. From his point of view, they miscast the relationship between the mind, its powers of accessing the "external," and the world.

To further comment on Kant's criticism of the alternative (transcendental realist) views, if space were a real thing in which objects reside, how, he would ask, do we come to comprehend the order of things in space? He would reject the idea of direct perception on grounds that many do today. Essentially, direct perception theory leaves out the role of comprehending in the comprehending of the order of things in space. We don't simply occupy space with other things, we (also) experience them. He regards experience of objects as impossible to explain in terms of a mere passive reception alone. What it takes to judge WHAT is the source of the content of experience is missing from that picture, (the picture associated with Newton). If space were merely a relational properly among things (as in Leibniz), then space would be a thoroughgoing conceptual (interpretive) overlay contributed by the mind. But this reduces to an uncritical idealism, since all the parts of any object are in space. This view would be consistent with a kind of conceptualism for which there would be no epistemic role for what is received in perception (though perception may certainly have, on this view, a merely causal role). Here there is no pre-relational (nonconceptual) presentation to which order may be attributed. The very ordering criterion is subverted.

We don't merely receive, and we don't fill in all the content of experience (conceptually) from mere causal "impingements." A capacity for a presentational ordering, pre-conceptually, is required. This presentational role is the role of sensibility and intuition in Kant, and this role directly implies transcendental idealism.

Having just reread this thread, I would make one further comment. I think William and Soraj hover over more common ground than may at first be apparent. The suggestion by William that at the core of Kant's criticism of Hume is the charge that reasons are not causes (nor mere associations). Associationism can give no accounting of the rational features of our (mental) activity. Thus, the "phenomena" of propositions, meaning, inference and truth-value are left without explanation. (Some have argued for a similar charge against physicalism. The charge against Hume targets mere associations, against physicalists, causes.)  The principled introduction of these features into empirical thought, the topic Soraj broaches, is made by Kant by means of certain apriori categories of empirical thought, including cause, substance, etc. (The apriori status of the categories of judgment is the avenue for bring reason to bear on the empirical.) These provide the framework for cognizing (engaging these rational features with respect to) a possible empirical object. Judgments regarding causes have an apriori "pedigree" that makes them prima facie claims about the real world. So causes are empirically real, for Kant. Yet the epistemic status of any particular sort of causal relation, e.g. between the sun and the dawn, can only ever be probable, even for Kant. We must think in terms of causes. His argument is meant to show that causes are empirically real. Yet, he maintains, our conclusions regarding particular causal relations must always be provisional, as provisional as our best science. What we can be certain of is THAT the world is causally ordered.