From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   The empiricist approach to discerning reality is making sense of evidence that   
   has been gleaned from the senses. Some philosophers – such as Kant –   
   challenged this approach. They stated such things as that senses are   
   imprecise, and that (in Kant)    
   they only see the appearance of things – the “phenomenal” - but fail to   
   see the things in themselves – the “noumenal.”   
      
   I want to make sense of the whole thing.   
      
   Now the senses are actually not imprecise. Incomplete yes, but imprecise no.   
   We do not see the radio waves or the infrared radiation; we see the visible   
   light. However the information that I get from seeing the visible light is not   
   an erroneous one. If I    
   see you, I am certain that I am actually seeing you – both the phenomenal   
   you and the noumenal you. I can from this be certain that you are not Adolf   
   Hitler.   
      
   In many cases, the things as they appear are very much the things as they are.   
   If I am beholding an apple, I can be sure that I am holding an apple and not a   
   frog. In this case the noumenal and the phenomenal are the same thing; and   
   senses very much are    
   a valid guide to reality.   
      
   Where Kant does have a point is in understanding people. People are very   
   different inside from how they are on the outside. What a person looks like   
   through the visual sense says absolutely nothing about the person's character   
   or predispositions. In case    
   of people, the Kantian argument has quite a lot of validity. To understand the   
   person in-himself takes much different skills from discerning him in   
   appearance. In this situation, the noumenal and the phenomenal very much   
   differ from one another; and it    
   takes different skills to understand each.   
      
   The empiricist view works with most of non-human reality. With human reality,   
   Kant has a point. Do not discard physics or mathematics because of its   
   empiricist origins. Do not judge what a person is on the inside from what he   
   is on the outside. There is    
   a place for both approaches, and it is instructive of all intelligence to   
   recognize which – and where – to apply.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)