The Non-Identity of Appearances and Things in Themselves

• Published in: Noûs (Bloomington, Indiana) Vol. 48; no. 1; pp. 106 - 136
• Main Author: Stang, Nicholas F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2014; Wiley Blackwell
• Subjects: Armor; Cognition; Definite descriptions; Empirical knowledge; Indiscernibility; Intuition; Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804); Metaphysics; Monism; Philosophical object; Philosophy; Thing in itself
• ISSN: 0029-4624; 1468-0068
• DOI: 10.1111/nous.12056

According to the 'One Object' reading of Kant's transcendental idealism, the distinction between the appearance and the thing in itself is not a distinction between two objects, but between two ways of considering one and the same object. On the 'Metaphysical' version of the One Object reading, it is a distinction between two kinds of properties possessed by one and the same object. Consequently, the Metaphysical One Object view holds that a given appearance, an empirical object, is numerically identical to the thing in itself that appears as that object. I raise various indiscernibility arguments against that view; because an appearance has different spatiotemporal and modal properties than a thing in itself, no appearance can be identical to a thing in itself. I point out that these arguments are similar to arguments against Monism, the view that material objects are numerically identical to the matter of which they are made. I outline some strategies Monists have developed to respond to these indiscernibility arguments and then develop parallel responses on behalf of the Metaphysical One Object view. However, I then raise another indiscernibility argument, to which, I argue, the Metaphysical One Object view cannot respond, even using the resources I have developed thus far. I develop a modified version of the Metaphysical One Object view that can respond to this new indiscernibility argument, but, I argue, this modified version of the One Object view is only a terminological variant of the Two Object view. When the Metaphysical One Object view is fully thought through it becomes the Two Object view. I conclude that Kantian appearances are not numerically identical to the things in themselves that appear to us.