It doesn't matter that we can't 'see' them directly like the transparent table, we see an effect that implies the existence of an object. We assert that a quark is an 'object' because we can perform certain (highly technical) actions and produce consistent with the model that defined quarks.The cup not falling as a phenomenal experience that points to the existence of an object. If we were to make a table out of a perfectly transparent material, we could still assert it was an object, because we could still place a cup on it without the cup falling to the floor. We assert that a table is an 'object' because we can place a cup on it, and the cup won't fall through to the floor (as opposed to, say, a hologram of a table).We cannot see the particles directly, but we can see indirectly see effects on the world that we can attribute to these particles within this model, Therefore the particles are phenomena. When we talk about subatomic particles - proteins, electrons, neutrons, quarks, or what you will - we are applying concepts defined within a model that largely works to describe the events we see. The key to this problem is that the physical sciences produce models of the world they do not access the world as such. (Rorty on Quine in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature for a more readable and less technical rendering of the point.) But my overall point is just that there's a lot more to Kantian metaphysics than a surface reading of the phenomenal/noumenal distinction. And also Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (that explodes Kantianism as much as anything does, at the analytic/synthetic distinction pivot-point of his theoretical edifice). I recommend Robert Brandom's reading of Kant and Hegel. The Ding-an-Sich concept isn't transformed by contemporary science it's transformed by Hegel, who tries to demonstrate that it's not a thing that exists but a thing in us that defines our investigations of existing things (much like your sentiment that we just keep exploring and finding out more). I don't think he considered his metaphysics a necessary and hitherto missing piece for the continuing progress of science I think he considered it a pat on science's back.īut the lasting value of Kant's metaphysics is most evident in what future philosophers have developed off of it. Kant's project was more "grounding" science than inventing something beyond the reach of science with the agenda of keeping philosophy above science (although a case can certainly be made for the latter). "Kant had no knowledge of contemporary science" is I think a more accurate statement than "Kant had no knowledge of modern science," because "modern" science" generally refers to science since the scientific revolution of Newton and his approximate contemporaries in other fields of empirical inquiry.
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