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Rae Langton

2. Kant believes that humility follows from this fact of receptivity: he believes, as Strawson
has remarked, that our ignorance of things as they are in themselves follows from the fact
that we must be affected by things if we are to achieve knowledge of them. If this is correct,
then our ignorance of things as they are in themselves is not supposed to be a special
consequence of the arguments about space, or time, or the categories: it is supposed to be a
general consequence of the fact that human knowledge is receptive.
5. Receptivity implies that we can have knowledge only of what can affect us. Irreducibility
implies, in Kant’s view, that intrinsic properties cannot affect us.
12-13: There is one world: there are simply, as Kant says with appropriate vagueness, objects,
or things. But there are two, non-overlapping set of properties. Kant speaks in this passage
of the nature that things have in themselves, as he speaks elsewhere of the ‘distinctive and
inner predicates’ of things (A565/B593). The nature things have in themselves is different
from what we encounter when we intuit them: the inner or intrinsic predicates are different
from the pred
icates encountered by us. There is one world, one set of things, but two kinds of properties:
intrinsic properties, and properties that are ‘in opposition’ to the intrinsic, namely relational
properties. The labels ‘phenomena’ and ‘noumena’ seem to label different entities, but really
they label different classes of properties of the same set of entities.
La distinción entre dos tipos de propiedades es una distinción metafísica.
Las cosas que tienen propiedades intrínsecas tienen también propiedades relacionales, o sea
poderes causales que constituyen las apariencias fenoménicas.
13. We can know that there are things that have intrinsic properties without knowing what
those properties are. Knowledge of things as they are in themselves involves the ability to
ascribe ‘distinctive intrinsic predicates’ to a thing. That involves more than simply knowing
that there are things that have intrinsic properties.
Sobre el pasaje de A284/B340 [Concepts of relation presuppose things which are absolutely
[i.e. independently] given, and without these are impossible]]: “Concepts of relation, Kant
says, ‘presuppose things which are absolutely [i.e., independently] given’: that is to say,
concepts of relation presuppose the existence of relata whose existence is independent of the
relation […] Instead of the incoherent idea of an object that is at once in a relation to
something else, and not in a relation to something else, we have the coherent idea of an object
whose existence is independent of its relations to other things. An ‘object in itself’ could exist
even in the absence of those other things. It need not coexist with any other distinct thing: its
existence, let us say, does not imply accompaniment. Its existence is compatible with its
being the only thing: its existence is compatible, let us say, with loneliness” 17.
La idea de la cosa que existe absolutamente e independientemente es la idea de substancia.
La idea de substancia es la idea de algo que contiene propiedades y que no puede nacer por
algo más.
18. […] intrinsic properties are those which do not imply coexistence with any other thing—
they are properties which do not imply accompaniment, and (equivalently) are compatible
with loneliness. Properties which do imply accompaniment, and (equivalently) are
incompatible with loneliness, are the extrinsic, or relational, properties.
19. A subastance is a thing which can exist absolutely, independently of its relations to other
things. A substance is the kind of thing that can exist on its own: it can exist and be lonely.
But nothing can exist without having properties. If a substance can exist on its own, it must
have properties that are compatible with its existence on its own. If a substance can be lonely,
it must have properties compatible with loneliness. So a substance must have intrinsic
properties.
Una cosa en sí es una substancia que tiene propiedades intrínsecas; es algo que existe con
independencia de las relaciones con otras cosas. Un fenómeno es un objeto que mantiene
relaciones con algo más. El mismo objeto puede ser fenómeno y cosa en sí, porque el mismo
objeto que tiene relaciones con otras cosas tiene una naturaleza intrínseca.
19. If we keep the label ‘phenomenon’ for the general case of an object in a relation to
something else […] then ‘appearance’ to a human mind can be thought of as a special case.
An object that is in a relation to human sensibility is an object that is in a relation: and if we
must in general distinguish an object as it is ‘in a relation’, from an object as it is ‘in itself’
(B307), then we must also in this case ‘distinguish this object as appearance’ from the object
‘as object in itself’.

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