/lit/ - Literature

>>12212320

> the being that has awareness (the consciousness) thinks of itself as a being that, given the fact that everything that is known to it is known by the same being, that is, itself, it must itself be one and not many

Yes, and this one-ness is not necessarily a numerical one-ness (in the way that an individual grain of sand is mathematically single, or a molecule of water is numerically one) but it is rather a one-ness of *function,* a unity of form (in the way that a single wave maintains its form through many molecules of water, or a tornado is a unity of sand-grains *in action* rather than a unity of sand-grains per se (which could just be a heap, and Kant would technically call an "aggregate" rather than a comprehensive unity)).

The reason it's important to emphasize this is that for Kant, we cannot know that the thinker, the soul, is a single, unitary substance; Descartes tried to argue for this, but Kant critiques Descartes' arguments as illusory. We cannot know what our thinking mind is in-itself, we can only recognize the unity of function that appears to us in/as natural experience. This unity of function is logically attributable to our thinking self, but we can't have knowledge penetrating deeper to that thinking self itself.

> reality as it is understood outside must have the same degree of unity by the same principles which govern the inside's self-sameness.

Yes, and "reality as understood outside" is just "reality as appearance." For a mental representation to appear spatially and/or temporally, and to be understood by the logical functions of thinking, is for that mental representation *to be* a real object existing in nature.

> It doesn't mean that the truth which the consciousness derives from its understanding of reality is somehow flawed, distorted, or inaccurate, but instead that it is what the human consciousness is capable of perceiving and interpreting of reality.

Yes. Objective-truth-for-humanity is utterly different from objective-truth-independent-of-humanity AND ALSO the two are completely logically compatible. Demonstrating that this seemingly rigid contradiction is, in truth, not a contradiction is one of Kant's triumphs.

> Therefore, although it might not have a full picture of reality, what it has encountered and closely observed will most likely be well within the confines of what it can think of as truth, and this truth resides all throughout consciousness.

There's nothing that a human can encounter or closely observe apart from the confines of what the human can think of as truth; if we think something is not true, then we cannot also experience it at the same time (maybe we're conscious of experiencing a drawing of the untrue thing, or a dramatic performance or internal fantasy about it). Especially if it is not only empirically untrue, but spatiotemporally and/or logically impossible. The same functions that constitute my mind and its possible experience are common in all human minds.