The Thoughts Of Kant Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Russell (1961: 680):

[For Kant] Things in themselves, which are the causes of our sensations, are unknowable; they are not in space or time, they are not substances, nor can they be described by any of these other general concepts which Kant calls 'categories'.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, there is a distinction between perceptual experience and our construal of that experience as meaning.  Things are not 'things' until /unless they are construed as (those categories of) meaning, mentally or verbally.  By the same token, space and time are not 'space' and 'time' until/unless they are construed as (those categories of) meaning, mentally or verbally.  Contra Kant, it is precisely by construing experience as such meanings that experience is described and knowable.  This is not to deny experience, merely to distinguish it from its semiotic construal as things, space and time.