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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that We cannot know anything about things in themselves other than the bare fact that they exist independently of our representations.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.The very act of positing things-in-themselves as causally affecting sensibility already applies the category of causality beyond possible experience.
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    • 2.If causality is a form of representation that cannot apply to things-in-themselves, then Kant's own account of how appearances arise is incoherent.
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    • 3.Therefore the boundary between appearances and things-in-themselves cannot be drawn in the way the claim requires, undermining the epistemic limit it asserts.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Peirce and the pragmatist tradition argue that successful long-run scientific inquiry converges on truths that constrain and are constrained by mind-independent reality.
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    • 2.If our representational practices systematically track structural features of reality through predictive success, we have inferential access to more than bare existence.
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    • 3.Structural realists like Worrall independently support this: what we know of things-in-themselves is their relational-mathematical structure, not mere existence.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Our most fundamental ways of representing things (space and time) cannot be true of things in themselves.
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    • 2.Knowledge of things requires that our representational forms apply to those things.
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    • 3.If our representational forms do not apply to things in themselves, those things are cognitively inaccessible beyond their bare existence.
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    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.