BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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THE BODY AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL
For one cannot have sensation outside oneself, but only in oneself,
and the whole of self-consciousness therefore provides nothing other
than merely our own determinations. (A 378)
So assuming that the mind is the only thing of which we have immediate
awareness is not a mistake in itself, according to Kant. However, the
skeptical idealist combines this assumption with other ideas with
disastrous consequences. Among these is the idea that time and space
exist independently of our representations, and consequently, that objects
experienced in time and space exist as such independently of our way of
representing them. This position Kant calls transcendental realism. If this
realism were true, he admits, the existence of objects in space would
indeed be uncertain. Then we would have to make an inference from our
representations of these objects in us to the objects corresponding to
these representations as they exist independently of our representations.
But as such inferences are an easy prey to skepticism, no knowledge of
these objects, considered independently of our representations, would be
secure.
If we let outer objects count as things in themselves, then it is
absolutely impossible to comprehend how we are to acquire cognition
of their reality outside us, since we base this merely on the
representation, which is in us. (A 378)
However, transcendental realism does not hold, Kant argues. Space
exists only as the form of our intuition, and objects in time and space
(what we usually call external objects) are known to us only in intuition.
Thus, it is wrong to regard these objects, qua experienced, as external to
the mind. Our awareness of them is just as immediate and direct as is the
mind itself. Consequently, we should reject the idea that we have some
sort of privileged knowledge of the mind that does not apply also to
objects intuited in space. We have no more reason to doubt the existence
of objects in space, qua experienced, than we have to doubt the existence
of the mind itself.
I am no more necessitated to draw inferences in respect of the reality
of external objects than I am in regard to the reality of the objects of
my inner sense (my thoughts), for in both cases they are nothing but
representations, the immediate perception (consciousness) of which is
at the same time a sufficient proof of their reality. (A 371)
So contrary to what someone might believe, according to Kant the idea
that what we call external objects are through and through