Today we live in a naturalist society. This is demonstrated by the faith (pun intended) we put into science to be the basis for our knowledge. Anything which is quantifiable and able to be reduced to numbers or otherwise explained by nature is pretty much considered as fact. Nature is explained through scientific methods and logic rather than through concepts which are reasoned or made up for the pure reason of providing an explanation to metaphysical questions. We’ve gone from a teleological world view, a view where there’s purpose, towards a view goverened by the laws of nature. Things are bound by cause and effect-relationships, there’s no purpose.
In an empiricist view of the world, all our knowledge is believed to come from experience. It’s how the world is perceived by our senses, we don’t have any knowledge a priori. What Kant proposed is that instead of our cognition conforming to objects - which would be the empiricist view - the objects are actually conforming to our cognition. What he meant is that instead of the world shaping our knowledge or how we perceive it, we actually do have some innate knowledge of how objects are to be perceived. This pre-existing knowledge is what Kant refers to as faculties of knowledge and forms of intuition. Basically anything that exists in space-time can be perceived with these forms of intuition. This would by extension mean that theoretically it should be possible to gain more knowledge about the world but that we are limited by our forms of intuition.
Knowledge does in a way presuppose knowledge. According to Kant we have our forms of intuition. One thing that is closely linked to knowledge is conception. With knowledge we form new conceptions. For example let’s take the concept of a group. A group is not something that exists in nature, it’s rather a construct or concept made by man. With these concepts we are able to understand nature. One could perhaps think of this as having a lot of filters at different layers of abstraction. New concepts will be learned and placed at the best suited level in the abstraction hierarchy.
Concepts are important for us to understand the world, and by paraphrasing Kant: “perception without conception is blind, conception without perception is empty”. With the first part he means that our senses don’t have any conception by themselves i.e that is our eyes are not processing the information, they merely sense it and pass it through to the brain which store our bank of concepts. The second part could be a bit problematic, of course we need perception as a tool to learn new concepts, but it can also be interpreted as it not being possible to synthesize new knowledge through reasoning (more like an empiricist view). Socrates argument that we “...don’t see and hear with the eyes and the ears, but through them…” is also aligned with the first part of Kant’s argument. Knowledge is not perception, but more like processed perception.
Knowledge according to Kant can be known both a priori and a posteriori. This a priori knowledge obviously contradicts empiricism. Kant makes a distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements. Analytic judgements can be known a priori because the predicate concepts are contained within the subject concepts e.g. “all triangles have three sides”. For synthetic judgements the predicate and subject concepts are only related e.g. “all husbands are happy”.
What has been witnessed a lot during the years are people trying to make up synthetic judgements a priori. This sort of judgements have the potential to be misleading.
It seems you really understood Kants arguments and the surrounding topics. Especially in your first two paragraph you show that you understood the concepts of naturalism and empiricism and how we see them today and how Kant saw them.
SvaraRaderaYour conclusion of that (synthetic judgements a priori can be misleading) is very interesting and seem to somewhat explain what is going wrong with the world lately.
You wrap up Kant's theory about knowledge quite well. Especially your examples give it a more easy access to understanding. I think we all benefited in the lecture a lot of the examples that were posed there.
SvaraRaderaI am somehow not sure if I understood the connection of synthetic judgment and a priori like you. I interpreted that Kant brought up that question for being able to verify or falsify metaphysical questions, since we have no way (maybe not yet) to judge about its truth a posteriori. So it is not necessarily misleading, but has a big potential of gaining more knowledge about the yet unknown.
You seem to have discussed a lot of interesting point of views during your seminar. I do agree with you that we live in a naturalist society, and I wonder, do you think you would say that Kant did the same?
SvaraRaderaYou made a good point in your first post about different camps. I can see the contrast between the two, but I don't know if I'd necessarily say Kant is in the middle as he says that everything perceives is categorised according to our faculties. I would assume that is "camp 2". I wonder if your idea of this has changed after you've had your seminar.
This blogpost present a very good summary of the theme but it would be interesting to read your opinions and how your ideas of knowledge have changed/improved during the week.
I really like your introduction of your blog. I appreciate that you put Kant’s work in a context; it makes it easier to understand. I also think it is interesting that that Kant actually says that we can’t know anything that we don’t experience and organize in our mind. For example metaphysics, we will never know if our ideas about the world are true, for example if God exist or not. However as I understood Kant says that if a statement corresponds to the facts it’s true. And the facts exist no matter of our knowledge of theme. Can we know that our perceptions are correct? It’s interesting to analyze the limits and power of our mind and how we understand our world! Anyway I think you understood the text and concepts very well. Thanks for interesting reading.
SvaraRaderaI like how you explained both Plato and Kant's ideas - in a clear and simple way, which shows depth of understanding. With regard to the Aristotelian view of the world and how it's governed by purpose, and the opposing stance that everything follows the laws of cause and effect, I sometimes question the latter, when I think about the human body, for instance.
SvaraRaderaYes, when you drop a glass on the floor, it breaks according to the laws of cause and effect. But when you look at how the body is structured, the different kinds of cells and tissues, for example, and how they serve a different purpose - like, bone tissue is hard, "for the purpose of" carrying the weight of the muscles, fat and skin, or how we have hair(s) to protect the areas of our body where the skin is most sensitive - you can't help but think that not everything is cause and effect. Or how blind people have much more evolved hearing to compensate for their blindness.
I've read about how every cell and structure in the human body (or the bodies of animals, for that matter) is a certain way so it can fulfill certain fuctions (or, for the sake of argument, purposes) and how together all the cells, tissues, organs and systems make the human body a perfect machine. I think it's worth a thought or two :)
Thanks for the interesting read!
Your first and second blogpost was somewhat similar and your comprehension regarding Platos and Kants approach towards knowledge had not changed that much.
SvaraRaderaSure a group is a construct made by man but the existing objects included in the group would still be there in its physical form, even if we would have changed the definition of it. But supposedly all humans have different comprehension regarding the definition as well, but only in the context of space and time.