Lightness and Brightness and Other Confusions

er of mental categories perceptions are intuitively structured into objective
experience of objects arranged under concepts. (Kant 2004, p 193–197). Kant
says that “concepts without perceptions are empty; perceptions without concepts
are blind.” (Kant 2004, p 156). We cannot know what objects may be in
themselves apart from "our mode of perceiving them." (Kant 2004, p 125).
Sense qualities – for example colour, sound, etc. – and the unknown matter
of the world together form what Kant calls ‘content’ (Inhalt) and this content
is given its mental (human) form by our inner categories and analytic abilities.
(Liedman 2006, pp 233–236). Experience of colour and light are subordinate
to apprehension of space. According to C. D. BROAD 17 human beings
can in Kant be seen as “centres of innate systems of spatial references, of
which they are perpetually and immediately aware.” (Broad 1979, p 22).
To Kant colour and light are primarily perceptual links between an outer
reality and the inner world; colour and light have no meaning until they have
found a given position in space and time and in an inner conceptual structure,
and thereby become logically integrated parts of an individually experienced
world as a whole.
EDMUND HUSSERL 18 and the phenomenology he presents connect to this perspective.
His project is to bring about a strictly scientific epistemology based
on human consciousness and mere phenomena. According to Husserl we
have only direct access to accidental and individual experiences (phenomena);
these alone can be taken as a pretext for an epistemology on scientific
ground. (Husserl 1989, p 45). Hence Husserl’s standpoint is quite the contrary
to the positivist scientific view, which implies that the only veritable is
the outer ‘objective’ world.
Knowledge as part of the world
MARTIN HEIDEGGER 19 claims – in contrast to Husserl – that it is not possible to
understand how the world gets a meaning if we do not find out how human
beings exist in the world, because this is what influences how the world is
perceived. To Heidegger the human world is a complex of meanings. It is not
enough to look at the world: meaning originates in human interaction with
the world around, when using the world. (Heidegger 1986, p 69). From epistemological
reasons Husserl reduces his descriptions to man himself and to
his individual consciousness: he sets a limit to the external objective world.
Heidegger moves this limit “out into” the surrounding world.
17
American philosopher, 1887–1971
18
German philosopher, 1859–1938
19
German philosopher, 1889–1976
20