What causes "salutary effect on humans" is a "culprit"?
Yup. Because it is a delusion. A useful delusion is still a delusion.
Wow, you are even willing to remotely consider overwhelming evidence although it contradicts your ideology. You're the true thinker!
What is it that you think is my ideology? Communist? Anarchist? Libertarian? Liberal? When did politics come into this discussion? I have never stated in this thread what ideology, if any, that I subscribe to. You are veering way off course.
What is that? You're defining an unknown by another unknown!
You are defining it by what makes you, or a majority of people, happy. Are you a utilitarian?
Since you have obviously not looked into this problem (intellectual lazyness?)
You are such a friendly chap aren't you? Are you this pleasant when not hiding behind your keyboard?
let me present to you the truth model I think is closest to your mindset:
Correspondence theory of truth
The correspondence theory of truth states that something (for example, a proposition or statement or sentence) is rendered true by the existence of a fact with corresponding elements and a similar structure. The theory maintains that the truth or falsity of a statement is determined only by how it relates to the world, and whether it accurately describes (i.e., corresponds with) that world. The theory presupposes an objective world and is therefore antagonistic to theories that problematise objectivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_theory_of_truth
This model supports an objective reality and assumes that (human!) statements are true when they accurately represent that reality.
Good?
Your problem is, you don't know Kant. And how he slaughtered this nonsense with crystal clear, relentless logic:
"Truth is said to consist in the agreement of knowledge with the object. According to this mere verbal definition, then, my knowledge, in order to be true, must agree with the object. Now, I can only compare the object with my knowledge by this means, namely, by taking knowledge of it. My knowledge, then, is to be verified by itself, which is far from being sufficient for truth. For as the object is external to me, and the knowledge is in me, I can only judge whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge of the object. 
[Kant - you're
da man!]
... this account of truth was as if a man before a judicial tribunal should make a statement, and appeal in support of it to a witness whom no one knows, but who defends his own credibility by saying that the man who had called him as a witness is an honourable man. "
You're dusted. Try next.
I'll see your Kant and raise you one Hegel. He claimed to definitely overcome the Subject/Object problem. He says of his system:
"
In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the system itself, everything turns on grasping and expressing the True, not only as Substance, but equally as Subject."
He would seem to agree with Kant's criticism of empiricism here:
“It is not difficult to see that the way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear. A table of contents is all that it offers, the content itself it does not offer at all."
But then he has this to say about synthetic truth:
“
The pedantry and pomposity of science are not to be replaced by the non-method of pre-sentiment and inspiration, or by the arbitrariness of prophetic utterance, both of which despise not only scientific pomposity, but scientific procedure of all kinds."
Sound familiar? I think Herr Hegel may have your truth model pegged.
Hegel claimed to have a system that could reveal Absolute Knowledge by successfully merging Subject and Object. I, however, make no such claims. I actually agree much more with Kant, as you have partially observed. I agree that empiricism is fallible...I simply think it is the best we can do.
I'm not sure Kant agrees with you though, because...
There is no such thing. There is only empirical reality of .. reality. Truth is an intersubjective agreement between humans in how far a human proportion reflects reality in a good way.
I defined Truth in a quasi-Hegelian or perhaps quasi-Platonic sense - i.e., the essence of what is, separate from all subjectivity. Or, as you put it, "the empirical reality of...reality" I then said that complete knowledge of this was not possible to achieve, but that the evidence-based paradigm was the best we can do.
I am quite aware that we impose our categories of understanding onto what is. My claim is that the evidence-based paradigm results in the smallest degree of imposition. Through your interpretation of Kant, you seem to be saying that it is not possible to make claims of that nature at all - i.e., that the claim itself is an imposition of the categories of understanding onto reality, therefore we should just go with what makes us happy, or reflects reality "in a good way".
Are you sure that Kant allows you to do this? There is one thing that we may be able to use to determine which approach imposes the least onto reality and is most successful in reflecting what is -
results.
And by results, I don't mean the happy-happy-joy-joy of god-belief or any of the social-bonding group benefits it may confer. I mean the successful ongoing conquest of nature, the results of which you can see all around you.
You start to get a glimpse that "truth" is not within nature, but within human's minds.
You reveal yourself as a relativist and a nihilist. I don't think this is a Kantian perspective at all.
Truth
is within nature, but we may never be capable of fully uncovering it. There is an objective universe about which we can make true statements. The means to do this is empirical science, Kant or no Kant, although we will likely never reveal truth in its entirety. Faith does not have this capacity in even the smallest degree.
