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i have been interested in "the problem of affection" in Transcendental Idealism for a while now and a possible solution came to my mind, Kant says that TIT Causes our Phenomena as if TIT (Thing-in-Themselves) plays an active role here and can generate a cause and our mind is a passive receiver:
(TIT---->our Mind---->Phenomena)
what suddenly came to my mind is, can't we reverse this? as:
(TIT<------our Mind) then (our Mind----->Phenomena)
in this case we are not claiming TIT has the category of causality, a mistake that kant made and the passive nature of our mind changes to an active role; our mind has access to TIT and tries to interpret it

when i use the word "interpret", i mean the mind might try to apply the categories to TIT but it fails since TIT is uncognizable, but the fact remains that our mind did try to interpret it because our mind has access to TIT and from this interpretation our Sensibility is able to produce the Intuition (probably on its own)

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  • Could you please clarify your passage on Kant. It would help my understanding if you give precise references to the work of Kant, at least concerning thing-in-itself, mind, phenomena, Transcendental Idealism. Thanks.
    – Jo Wehler
    Commented Jul 12 at 10:23

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I think you're right. Let's say something bumps your hand in the dark. The sensation is processed unconsciously, so a priori as far as conscious apperception is concerned. You already have the idea that there might be ropes around, and the sensation feels just like a rope, so you're pretty sure it's a rope, a phenomenon in general.

There is still the possibility that is may not be exactly a rope so you leave open the possibility of thing-in-itself. After all, someone else might tell you it's a snake. Many people could have their own phenomenal ideas of what the thing is, but still no-one knows what the thing-in-itself is. So the thing-in-itself is your construct so that you don't close off the possibility that the phenomenon, as you see it, may not be the whole story.

Mind----->Phenomena
Mind----->TIT

No-one ever sees the elephant. There's no way to say it exists. It might not even be an elephant.

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Image from The Blind Men and the Elephant: A Metaphor to Illuminate the Role of Researchers and Reviewers in Social Science

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