Why couldn't Kant see: if phenomena aren't real, & noumena unknowable, reason is not "pure" or "practical"?

Question

I have seen points of what I am asking in each of the 1st 3 answers. But I believe Reason deals with phenemena, and that noumena, unknowable, do not exist. Kant was saying since we cannot know the unknowable, "pure" reason is no better than "practical" reason. He was making an excuse with the whole set of books to explain that he could not explain what cannot be explained. It cannot be explained because, given time, we can know everything--just look at what quantum physics has given us. Did we know this during Kant's lifetime? Modern science "sees" things from the point of mathematics, then sets out to find a way to turn this formerly unknowable thing into something knowable. THAT is practical reason. So, why did Kant try to prove Man's mind is impotent by creating a "straw -non-phemenon" if it was not to explain his own deficiency in learning to see things that formerly could not be seen?

So far, none of the answers meets my criteria for a solid, understanding answer. Sorry, guys. Someone else like to try? Kant DID believe phenomena to be unreal, mere "images" of the noumenal "reality" that was the essence of phenomena. Like Socrates and Plato, he believed we could not believe our eyes. Our eyes never lie, but our minds do not always grasp the essence OF WHAT WE DO SEE. What is beneath the vision may or may not be important, but it is never "unknowable."

Answer 1

Because phenomena and reason have little to do with each other.

Reason only needs itself to exist. Phenomenons need believers to validate their existence.

Sunshine does not need validation. Believing that a Deity created sunshine does. It's really that simple. Kant was often full of crapola but on this he was on point.

Answer 2

I don't think Kant believed that phenomena isn't real or that Noumea is unknowable. Phenomena is the result of us applying categories of human understanding (space and time) to the Noumea.
Space and time are not characteristics of the outside world- they are "tools" that we use to understand the world.
Phenomena could be considered "unreal" only in the sense that the characteristics that we perceive are not characteristics of the things themselves. Noumea could be considered "unknowable" only in the sense that we cannot imagine anything outside of our "tools" of space and time. This doesn't mean that anything is unreal or not knowable. It just means that our perception is not the final word on what something is.

Answer 3

Many accuse Kant of making a useless distinction because we can never know what we do not know and he did not know alot of things we now know. I personally like the distinction because I think of it as a moving boundary that expands as we use reason to see behind appearances(aka phenomena) to develop a fuller understanding of the nature and identity of all that exists. Kant's metaphysical dualism goes back to Plato's theory of knowledge and metaphysics as set forth in Plato's analogy of the prisoners in the cave.

" problems that must be sorted out with Kant are at the same time formidable. Most important is the confusion that results from Kant mixing together two entirely different theories in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). The first theory is that the fundamental activity of the mind, called "synthesis," is an activity of thought that applies certain concepts to a previously given perceptual datum from experience. It is upon this theory that the Critique of Pure Reason was planned with its fundamental division between the "Transcendental Aesthetic," about the conditions of perception (what Kant called empirical "intuition"), and the "Transcendental Logic," about the conditions of thought. Thus, Kant still says, as late as page 91 of the first edition ("A"), "But since intuition [Anschauung] stands in no need whatsoever of the functions of thought, appearances [Erscheinungen] would none the less present objects to our intuition" (A 90-91, Norman Kemp Smith translation, 1929, St. Martin's, 1965), without, that is, any need for mental synthesis.

However, right in the middle of his subsequent argument for why cerain(sic) concepts would be necessary and known a priori with respect to experience (the "Transcendental Deduction"), Kant realized that "synthesis" would have to produce, not just a structure of thought, but the entire structure of consciousness within which perception also occurs. Thus he says, "What is first given to us is appearance. When combined with consciousness [Bewußtsein], it is called perception [Wahrnehmung]" (A 119-120). It is the structure of consciousness, through synthesis, that turns "appearances" into objects and perceptions, without which they would be nothing. Consequently Kant made synthesis a function of imagination rather than thought, as a bridge between thought and perception, though this creates its own confusions (it still depends on the forms of thought and is still treated in the Logic). This move occurred because Kant hit upon the idea that synthesis produced the unity that we actually find in "apperception," i.e. in the unity of consciousness -- everything I know, think, see, feel, remember, etc. belongs to my consciousness in one temporal stream of experience. Synthesis therefore brings things into consciousness, making it possible for us to subsequently recognize that our consciousness exists and that there are things in it. Hume had described the result as "something betwixt unity and number," since it is paradoxically one thing and many things all at the same time."

Answer 4

Phenomenal world as well as Noumenal world, both are real. To knwo Phenomenal world practical REason will do , but to Know noumenal world, the world which is 'necessarily unknown and unknowable, Pure reason is needed!

The role of Kant was to demostrate the omnipotence of 'reason' as a rationalist and that is that.