Repository | Book | Chapter

Ryall here argues that it is not our observational "faculties' which inform the movements of bodies but the movements of bodies which inform our observations. These non-empirical motions, therefore and as admitted by Kant, occur in a manner that is "contradictory to the senses yet true" (B xxii). That something is the case yet it "contradicts the senses' might stand as a succinct definitio for independent reality; so how does it happen that we appear to remain at rest while it is "the entire celestial host" (B xvi) which instead appears to revolve about us? On the basis of these "parallel" and parallax effects, it is shown to be impossible for observers to "render," in a cognitively constructive sense, their true motion as physical beings.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-56771-6_3

Full citation: