Key to understanding Kant

We are confronted with appearances, but we can't tell by looking whether these appearances are real things on their own and existing on their own physically just as we see them (growing smaller in the distance); or whether they are merely representations of things. There is nothing whatsoever in all the appearances that would suggest appearances and not things on their own. Appearances are a constant, like the space and time whenever we look and like the light in the refrigerator when we open the door (and so appears to be always on). And so there is nothing given that could ever suggest in any way that things do not as they appear and that these appearances do not express reality, and indeed are all reality. E.g., there is nothing to suggest that trees don't get physically smaller as they, as the appearances of the tree obviously do at a distance.

This then obviously means that the “real” object that these appearances represent is something that we humans have dreamed up (for all that is ever given to us in experience is the appearance). That is the metaphysical deduction of the categories of understanding (our means for mental connections), showing that our view of the world (recognition that appearances are not things) could not have been obtained through any experience or exposure whatsoever.

In the transcendental deduction we conceive of the thing on its own and we call it (and here we have to be careful in our speech) the object of experience, and mean by that that it is what is “really there” such that we are able to recognize the brainarium world and the appearances of that world. Basically we conceive of this thing on its own in order to explain and connect the appearances. We undertake experiments and come to realize that the real tree remains always the same and it is only the appearances that are changing based on our perspective (getting smaller at a distance).

Now here is where it can get murky. The object of experience is what we mean in common talk when we speak of the thing on its own, what is really there in objective time and space apart from our (personal) brainarium. What we are doing is dreaming up a giant brainarium as an objective thing on its own so that we are able to grasp and recognize our own personal brainarium. And so this objective world that we recognize as a fact is nothing more than a projection of our own brainarium, and our own thinking about our own brainarium and its appearances.

Kant uses the rain and the rainbow to demonstrate this point here. In our common talk we speak of the rainbow as an appearance and the rain as the thing on its own. But in transcendental parlance we realize that the rain that we are speaking of is the “object of experience”, i.e., our own contribution and which reflects the make up of our connective understanding. And so it is not the thing on its own when conceived of as independent of the human brainarium in general, but always only the object of experience (a conception). The thing on its own, the raindrops on their own, even the particles of the drop on their own, are merely appearances in our brainarium, and indeed even the space and time in which these drops fall are modifications of our brainarium and have no existence apart from our looking.

So we have three objects in general. The appearances, the object of experience by means of which we recognize our own brainarium and point of view, and finally the thing on its own which we recognize only as an existence, but not at all what it might be apart from the human brainarium.

When we keep this distinction in mind we are able to tackle the antinomies of pure reason. We look (scientifically) at the appearances as all determined totally by laws of nature (ultimately application our own categories of understanding). Here we are thinking of the object of experience, and so of course it is always subject to laws of nature. For that is what we mean with the object of experience.

At the same time we can also think of the thing on its own and in that wise are able to dream up an intelligible existence which is free of all the limitations of the brainarium world and which can act independently of the laws of nature. This can be done as a sheer fiction just to argue the point. A leaf, for example, can be considered as a thing on its own and thus as free and thus which freely chooses to fall at a time which just also happens to be when it is cold and windy. For all that is said when promoting this arbitrary notion of freedom is that what happened did not have to happen. And this does not contradict the laws of science's nature, for all we are saying is that the leaf chose to fall and did not have to, and not that the leaf did not actually fall (which would be a contradiction of the appearances and of science).

And so the object of experience and the thing on its own are two different conceptions, and are confused in common understanding, but are distinct in the transcendental consideration and without contradiction.

The object of experience is what is commonly and scientifically understood as what is “really there now”, and is a representation in the brainarium. The thing on its own is “really” but without the “there now”, for the “there” and the “now” are simply ways of our looking (which is always empirical) and are projections of our brainarium. The thing on its own is what is real without being looked at or even been imagined as being looked at. As soon as we imagine we are looking at it (or anything), we are confronted with an appearance in the imagination. And so if we picture anything at all when asked to imagine a real thing, we are only picturing the object of experience and never the thing on its own.

Briefly then: we are confronted with appearances (in the brainarium), and conceive of the thing on its own (in order to recognize the appearances as mere representations) and end up with the object of experience (conceived of as apart from the individual bainarium) and can only think, but not express, the thing on its own. The primary confusion or illusion is the identification and treatment of these latter two terms as synonyms.