Kant in note I on page 20 talks about pure mathematics and how specifically pure geometry and how when we apply our senses to objects we do not represent them not as they are within themselves but only as they would appear. However, later in that paragraph Kant states "Outer appearances are possible only through sensibility, the form of which is the basis for geometry; so outer appearances must conform to what geometry says about them." This confuses me because our senses and just sensibility in general differs based on a single individual, and geometry is looked at with a universal law/ rules that are the same.
"Still, some principles of this general physics are strictly universal, for instance the propositions ‘Substance is permanent’ and ‘Everything that happens is determined by a cause according to constant laws’. These really are universal laws of nature that we can know a priori. So pure natural science does exist..."(25). I like that Kant does support sciences i.e physics and wants to ask questions about the possibility of the existence of pure natural science. I also do agree with the statement that substance is permanent.
1. Kant explains “the form of my sensibility is available to me in advance of any of the impressions in which I am affected by objects” (18). He introduces the term sensible intuitions, which would explain why we can intuit things a priori, as he believes that these a priori knowledge is actually the way objects appear to us through the senses, contrarily to be the objects themselves. Nevertheless, it is confusing because our senses might deceive us many times, and this idea allows mathematics to be relative, as each individual experiences and senses differently certain aspects of the world. Does this mean that the senses of every individual identify mathematics in the same way, according to Kant?
2. Kant talks about subjectivity and objectivity in the second part. I think he answers a lot of my questions when he gives the examples on page 28, while he explains the difference between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. He concludes that “when I say that air is elastic, this starts out as a judgment of perception, which merely connects two of my sensations to one another. But if I mean it as a judgment of experience, I require that this connection be universally valid” (28). As a result, those connections that come from pure concepts of understanding let some parts of reality such as mathematics to be certain or universal.
1. Kant, for the first half of the reading, applies his concept of the a priori to make a case for how a philosophy of action would look like (p. 25-28). Collective perception entails universal validity, which seems to be only possible with 'natural law' as a pre-given. This priori is independent of experience and includes such abstract concepts such as space and time. Through his thorough investigation, he finds reason, contra Hume, to assume causality to be a known property of experience.
2. Because things like gravity and causality, as well as mathematics (p.30), are regarded as intuitive and play according to the structures of experience, Kant argues that the thing-in-itself is a concept even science cannot get after despite being objectively valid. Instead, through his distinction between 'judgements of perception' and judgements of experience, science would be best focus on explaining laws that conform (or we conform) to our experience.
1. Kant explains how we are able to understand the nature of things whe he writes "My understanding has an effect on how things appear to me, but it can’t dictate what things are like in themselves. They don’t have to conform to it; so if I am to know about things in themselves, my understanding must conform to them, ·not vice versa·. That means that I couldn’t know about them until they had somehow been presented to me; which is to say that I couldn’t know them a priori, (25) I like this perspective of things. It seems reasonable to believe that the reality of things cannot be limited to the ways in which we as humans perceive them. I like that Kant distinguishes between reality and reality as we perceive it. 2. Kant writes, "The perceivable world is all we have to concern ourselves with. If we tried to learn about things that couldn’t be objects of experience, we would have to think about them through concepts that couldn’t be illustrated or cashed out in terms of any possible experience. Such concepts would be empty; we ·could play around with them in our minds, but· we could never know whether they applied to anything rather than being mere fictions contrived by us,"(26) I think there is some truth in this because what is fiction will remain fiction. However, I don't think we should dismiss the fact that we have the ability to create ideas in our heads that are not represented in reality. I don't think we would get very far if we only absorbed the information that reality gave us and never tried to think abstractly.
1. A passage I found of importance in Kant's writing is when he states, "The most I can do is to have in my mind my representations of them; but that means that I am taking in the thing not as it is in itself but as I perceive and think about it."(Kant 17) In this quote we can see similarities in Kant's and Hume's ideas regrading the existence of perceptions. Here, Kant explains how when observing an object, he is not perceiving its true essence but the representation he has gathered through his perception of the object. 2.Another passage I found of importance in Kant's writing is when he states, "Now, space and time are the two intuitions on which pure mathematics bases all its judgments that present themselves as certain and necessary. Pure mathematics must construct its concepts on the basis of pure intuition." (Kant 18) I found this important because this writing is answering the question 'how is pure mathematics possible' and this quote by Kant, explains the role space and time play in mathematics. Kant describes time and space has intuitions and according to Kant, pure intuition is what constructs pure mathematics.
1. In class on Monday before break we talked about Kant's notion of synthetic a priori knowledge. We said that this sort of knowledge was similar to innate ideas but it was not the same as them. In order to further this distinction we said that synthetic a priori knowledge is not a mode of the mind but is instead a cognitive structure. At the time I didn't really quite understand what this had meant, however, after reading the first page of our assigned reading for today I think I have a better grasp on this notion.
2. On page 16 Kant asks the question "Mathematical propositions are pure products of reason, yet they are thoroughly synthetic. How can human reason create such knowledge wholly a priori? Doesn't our mathematical faculty, which isn't and can't be based on experience, presuppose some basis for a priori knowledge? This basis must lie deeply hidden, but we might be able to discover it through its effects -- i.e. through our mathematical knowledge -- if we can track down that knowledge's sources (16). This passage sets the stage for Kant's discussion regarding how synthetic a priori knowledge differs from innate ideas -- i.e. that they are a result of our cognitive structure, not a mode of it.
Kant immediately distinguishes between two definitions of nature, and accepts that he will need to use both. This is not unheard of, but it is also not typical practice for a philosopher to embrace multiple definitions of the same word without renaming one of the definitions to refer to another thing entirely (to avoid confusion. I suspect that this means it is important for Kant to maintain that these are both NATURE, and not some other thing.
Kant also distinguishes between various kinds of judgement, both those based on experience and those that he deems empirical. I understand his desire to categorize empirical judgements as those based on senses alone, but I am not totally clear on how a pure concept really influences a sensory observation to be objective. I don’t think he means that we can consider them objective on a pragmatic basis, but that something about them actually pertains to Truth about the universe.
1.) Kants unique style of rationalism is a breath of fresh air in the context of the western philosophical cannon. I find the notion of the transcendental part of this philosophy immensely interesting and conceptually rich. "Hence the pure concepts of the understanding have absolutely no meaning if they are pulled away from objects of experience and applied to things in themselves (noumena)." It is almost as if this idea of transcendence implies that while reality is expressed in dualism, it is ultimately one. Perhaps this is projecting my own philosophy onto this.
2.) Ultimately it seems as if Kant thinks that logic is kind of a stagnant thing. I cant help but find myself in disagreement with this. Clearly it has been the case that throughout history ideas of logic and reason have changed and evolved as humans gained better meta-cognitive insight into the mechanisms of mind themselves."Beyond the bounds of experience they are arbitrary connections with no objective reality: there is no a priori guarantee that they apply to anything, and no examples can be given of their applicability to objects." While the object is nothing without the concept, the reason that we use to understand concepts, and create concepts is far from being understood.
Kant in note I on page 20 talks about pure mathematics and how specifically pure geometry and how when we apply our senses to objects we do not represent them not as they are within themselves but only as they would appear. However, later in that paragraph Kant states "Outer appearances are possible only through sensibility, the form of which is the basis for geometry; so outer appearances must conform to what geometry says about them." This confuses me because our senses and just sensibility in general differs based on a single individual, and geometry is looked at with a universal law/ rules that are the same.
ReplyDelete"Still, some principles of this general physics are strictly universal, for instance the propositions ‘Substance is permanent’ and ‘Everything that happens is determined by a cause according to constant laws’. These really are universal laws of nature that we can know a priori. So pure natural science does exist..."(25). I like that Kant does support sciences i.e physics and wants to ask questions about the possibility of the existence of pure natural science. I also do agree with the statement that substance is permanent.
1. Kant explains “the form of my sensibility is available to me in advance of any of the impressions in which I am affected by objects” (18). He introduces the term sensible intuitions, which would explain why we can intuit things a priori, as he believes that these a priori knowledge is actually the way objects appear to us through the senses, contrarily to be the objects themselves. Nevertheless, it is confusing because our senses might deceive us many times, and this idea allows mathematics to be relative, as each individual experiences and senses differently certain aspects of the world. Does this mean that the senses of every individual identify mathematics in the same way, according to Kant?
ReplyDelete2. Kant talks about subjectivity and objectivity in the second part. I think he answers a lot of my questions when he gives the examples on page 28, while he explains the difference between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. He concludes that “when I say that air is elastic, this starts out as a judgment of perception, which merely connects two of my sensations to one another. But if I mean it as a judgment of experience, I require that this connection be universally valid” (28). As a result, those connections that come from pure concepts of understanding let some parts of reality such as mathematics to be certain or universal.
1. Kant, for the first half of the reading, applies his concept of the a priori to make a case for how a philosophy of action would look like (p. 25-28). Collective perception entails universal validity, which seems to be only possible with 'natural law' as a pre-given. This priori is independent of experience and includes such abstract concepts such as space and time. Through his thorough investigation, he finds reason, contra Hume, to assume causality to be a known property of experience.
ReplyDelete2. Because things like gravity and causality, as well as mathematics (p.30), are regarded as intuitive and play according to the structures of experience, Kant argues that the thing-in-itself is a concept even science cannot get after despite being objectively valid. Instead, through his distinction between 'judgements of perception' and judgements of experience, science would be best focus on explaining laws that conform (or we conform) to our experience.
1. Kant explains how we are able to understand the nature of things whe he writes "My understanding has an effect on how things appear to me, but it can’t dictate what things are like in themselves. They don’t have to conform to it; so if I am to know about things in themselves, my understanding must conform to them, ·not vice versa·. That means that I couldn’t know about them until they had somehow been presented to me; which is to say that I couldn’t know them a priori, (25) I like this perspective of things. It seems reasonable to believe that the reality of things cannot be limited to the ways in which we as humans perceive them. I like that Kant distinguishes between reality and reality as we perceive it.
ReplyDelete2. Kant writes, "The perceivable world is all we have to concern ourselves with. If we tried to learn about things that couldn’t be objects of experience, we would have to think about them through concepts that couldn’t be illustrated or cashed out in terms of any possible experience. Such concepts would be empty; we ·could play around with them in our minds, but· we could never know whether they applied to anything rather than being mere fictions contrived by us,"(26) I think there is some truth in this because what is fiction will remain fiction. However, I don't think we should dismiss the fact that we have the ability to create ideas in our heads that are not represented in reality. I don't think we would get very far if we only absorbed the information that reality gave us and never tried to think abstractly.
1. A passage I found of importance in Kant's writing is when he states, "The most I can do is to have in my mind my representations of them; but that means that I am taking in the thing not as it is in itself but as I perceive and think about it."(Kant 17) In this quote we can see similarities in Kant's and Hume's ideas regrading the existence of perceptions. Here, Kant explains how when observing an object, he is not perceiving its true essence but the representation he has gathered through his perception of the object.
ReplyDelete2.Another passage I found of importance in Kant's writing is when he states, "Now, space and time are the two intuitions on which pure mathematics bases all its judgments that present themselves as certain and necessary. Pure mathematics must construct its concepts on the basis of pure intuition." (Kant 18) I found this important because this writing is answering the question 'how is pure mathematics possible' and this quote by Kant, explains the role space and time play in mathematics. Kant describes time and space has intuitions and according to Kant, pure intuition is what constructs pure mathematics.
1. In class on Monday before break we talked about Kant's notion of synthetic a priori knowledge. We said that this sort of knowledge was similar to innate ideas but it was not the same as them. In order to further this distinction we said that synthetic a priori knowledge is not a mode of the mind but is instead a cognitive structure. At the time I didn't really quite understand what this had meant, however, after reading the first page of our assigned reading for today I think I have a better grasp on this notion.
ReplyDelete2. On page 16 Kant asks the question "Mathematical propositions are pure products of reason, yet they are thoroughly synthetic. How can human reason create such knowledge wholly a priori? Doesn't our mathematical faculty, which isn't and can't be based on experience, presuppose some basis for a priori knowledge? This basis must lie deeply hidden, but we might be able to discover it through its effects -- i.e. through our mathematical knowledge -- if we can track down that knowledge's sources (16). This passage sets the stage for Kant's discussion regarding how synthetic a priori knowledge differs from innate ideas -- i.e. that they are a result of our cognitive structure, not a mode of it.
Kant immediately distinguishes between two definitions of nature, and accepts that he will need to use both. This is not unheard of, but it is also not typical practice for a philosopher to embrace multiple definitions of the same word without renaming one of the definitions to refer to another thing entirely (to avoid confusion. I suspect that this means it is important for Kant to maintain that these are both NATURE, and not some other thing.
ReplyDeleteKant also distinguishes between various kinds of judgement, both those based on experience and those that he deems empirical. I understand his desire to categorize empirical judgements as those based on senses alone, but I am not totally clear on how a pure concept really influences a sensory observation to be objective. I don’t think he means that we can consider them objective on a pragmatic basis, but that something about them actually pertains to Truth about the universe.
1.) Kants unique style of rationalism is a breath of fresh air in the context of the western philosophical cannon. I find the notion of the transcendental part of this philosophy immensely interesting and conceptually rich. "Hence the pure concepts of the understanding have absolutely no meaning if they are pulled away from objects of experience and applied to things in themselves (noumena)." It is almost as if this idea of transcendence implies that while reality is expressed in dualism, it is ultimately one. Perhaps this is projecting my own philosophy onto this.
ReplyDelete2.) Ultimately it seems as if Kant thinks that logic is kind of a stagnant thing. I cant help but find myself in disagreement with this. Clearly it has been the case that throughout history ideas of logic and reason have changed and evolved as humans gained better meta-cognitive insight into the mechanisms of mind themselves."Beyond the bounds of experience they are arbitrary connections with no objective reality: there is no a priori guarantee that they
apply to anything, and no examples can be given of their
applicability to objects." While the object is nothing without the concept, the reason that we use to understand concepts, and create concepts is far from being understood.