h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Noggin:

As an atheist I find myself coming to the conclusion that Kant's concern with metaphysics is simply a reflection of the religious belief system of Christianity. I'm beginning to think that his metaphysics is an attempt at finding philosophical justification for soul and God not to mention heaven and hell.

When Kant made an allowance for 'Finite Rational Beings' other than man...do you suppose he was thinking of what now could be called 'Roswellian Extraterrestrials' or simply Cherubim and Seraphim?

Hi Cryptodoxic.

In the last analysis I think there's a lot of truth in this contention (although Kant was certainly also wrestling with some genuine philosophical problems in the wake of Hume and Leibniz.) As I suggest in the entry the notion of the noumenal self was used by Kant as the home or locus of freewill and to justify his ethics, but I think this is a fundamental mistake, and that the noumenal self may be more properly equated with the physical processes that gives rise to the phenomenal self - the "I" that we all experience.

I can't say for sure whether Kant had anything specific in mind with talk of finite rational beings or whether this was an abstraction designed to show that humans were not *necessarily* unique in this respect.

Noggin

Hello Noggin:

I like the thought that relative to FRBs other than man Kant was just being thorough.