1. A quote a found of importance in Kant's writing is when he stated, " Deceitful as this misuse is...To keep yourself from it and confine the categories within the bounds of experience, it won’t do merely to resolve in advance to be on your guard against doing so. What you need is scientific instruction...and even then it takes hard work." (Kant 50) I found this important because it summarizes Kant's philosophy on how to acquire knowledge. We can see in this quote how Kant is skeptical on our knowledge of things by describing how to avoid deceitfulness as hard work. He expresses how scientific instruction is what you need to avoid this but even then it is hard work. 2. Another quote that stood out to me in this reading is when Kant stated, "The cosmological Idea is the most remarkable product of pure reason in its transcendent use." (Kant 52) I found this important because here, Kant expresses the importance of the cosmological idea. Kant believes it is so important in philosophy because it stays within the realms of the senses, leaving less room for error.
On page 55 under note '53' when Kant states "In the first (the mathematical) class of antinomies the falsehood of the assumed proposition consisted in taking contradictory items (appearance, thing in itself) to be harmoniously compatible within a single concept. In the second (dynamic) proposition consists in taking a consistent pair of propositions to be mutually contradictory. Thus, in the first class of antinomies the opposed assertions were both false, while in the second class the two propositions- which are treated as opposed to one another through mere misunderstanding-may both be true" I find this interesting because appearances it seems as Kant is calling that sense deceiving. That certain pairs of propositions are contradictory, so why does our brain associate things that are contradictory if it is false?
When Kant states "But in that case the cause must have its effectiveness in a manner that doesn't place it in time; so it can't be an appearance, and must be regarded as a thing in itself, with only its effects being appearances. If we can without contradiction think of beings of the understanding- choices, decisions, etc, ass exerting such an influence on appearances, than that enables us to have the second part of the following two- part story." I am confused as to what he means. Are appearances negative or are they the synthetic a prior truths that need to happen and work in corresponding with freedom to paint a bigger picture of judgement?
1. On page 52, section 49, Kant states the question, "Does experience carry with it sure criteria to distinguish it from imagination?" He then goes on answering this question stating, "Doubts about this are easy to dispose of. We dispose of them in ordinary life every time we investigate how appearances in both space and time are connected according to universal laws of experience: when the representation of outer things agrees thoroughly with those laws, we can't doubt that they constitute truthful experience." From what I understand Kant is stating that when we ask whether such a thing as a mind-independent world exists, then we are going outside of our possible perception and thus will never be Abel to definitively answer such a question.
2. I still find myself struggling to make heads or tails of Kant when it comes to his writing. However, I feel as though at the start of today's assigned excerpt from the Prolegomena Kant is stating that the questions involved in metaphysics for the most part lie entirely outside the scope of our understanding. Therefore, while we can correctly use pure reason to supply ideas about these sorts of question, we are incapable or having definitive answers from this ideas. These ideas then can at best point us in the right direction but they can not solve our metaphysical problems with any sort of definitiveness.
1. Kant talks about the distinction between pure reason and understanding, as he believes that people always confuses both terms and use them as synonyms when, according to him, they are different. For Kant, understanding holds the concepts that can be applied to experience, whereas reason is not directed toward experience, but rather tries to make experience complete by giving all experiences meaning. (45-48)
2. Kant talks about God, “We are perfectly free to predicate of this original being a causality through reason in respect of the world, thus moving on to theism; and this doesn’t oblige us to attribute this kind of causally powerful reason to the original being itself, as a property attached to it” (67). We should not assume the properties of a thing because we cannot attribute properties or qualities to something beyond experience, and God would be a supreme being that we do not have direct experience to, therefore we can only assume the existence of the being, as we can experience the world and attribute its existence or order to a supreme being. This does not provide qualities or attributes to the supreme being itself, but just assumes a relation between the being and the world.
1. Kant states that we must have distinct ideas when it comes to describing what metaphysics is. To me, having these experiences or life moments can help describing what metaphysics is. Kant explains “Every particular experience is only a part of the whole domain of experience; but the absolute whole of all possible experience is not itself an experience, yet it is something to think about, as a problem” (45). Here, it seems that Kant is trying to say if you have a bad experience with something, its not going to stay that way forever.
2. The way Kant talked about nature was the almost similar to how Aristotle describes nature. Kant states “Nature takes us upwards from sensibility to understanding” (71). You can’t understand nature without seeing how it forms and grows.
I think the way Kant approaches the subject of the self in regards to the feeling of “I” is particularly effective. As I understand it, there are parallels to how our senses inform us of the external world and give us the idea (although we can not confirm it metaphysically) of external things. Just as that happens, so do our internal sensations inform us of the self or soul, although we still cannot be sure of it metaphysically.
I think it is perfectly in character for Kant to focus on how our understanding of the facts about the world are not as clear cut they seem. He says that assumptions we make regarding claims that are not based on experience are often misguided and confused.
1. I don't think Kant thinks sensory data is demonically deceptive, but rather there is an implicit antimony between our experience of the world and as it is. He takes his predecessors route in eliminating those instances where we can dismiss as hallucination and imagination, and upon inspection, understand that they are just appearances (p. 52). I happen to think that Kant's neumonal realm, which lies outside perception, does not directly involve human agency except at a scientific level. The pragmatism of Sextus Empiricus seems to be a more worldly-situated philosophy, however.
2. The thing-in-itself in interesting insofar as it Kant explicitly states that human reason cannot attain it nor include it in our conceptual categories of understanding. Funny that Kant never carried this philosophy by reading and studying the mystics who, exercising beyond language and expression, came to know the Absolute itself. This would seem to confirm Kants notion that we never categorize it, but experience it. Noumena posits a limit.
1.) Personally I find Kants take on metaphysics to be incredibly refreshing "For how can we tell from experience whether the world has lasted from eternity or had a beginning, whether matter is infinitely divisible or consists of simple parts?" This is something I have articulated in my own thinking for some time, and find it interesting that its origin is in Kant. I agree with this notion that metaphysics is largely impossible.
2.) However I disagree with the notion that the idea of God, and Religion itself is a pragmatic one. Even when one is aware of the complete lack of evidence for a metaphysical claim, the notion that there is god, and that certain religions are a better way of life than others still leads to ideological conflict. I am not opposed to ideological conflict in general, as I see it and its expressions in warfare and difference as one of the chief engines of historical progress. However the ideological differences between faiths is so minute that little progress can come from this kind of conflict, and it really just becomes a senseless point of contention and destruction.
1. A quote a found of importance in Kant's writing is when he stated, " Deceitful as this misuse is...To keep yourself from it and confine the categories within the bounds of experience, it won’t do merely to resolve in advance to be on your guard against doing so. What you need is scientific instruction...and even then it takes hard work." (Kant 50) I found this important because it summarizes Kant's philosophy on how to acquire knowledge. We can see in this quote how Kant is skeptical on our knowledge of things by describing how to avoid deceitfulness as hard work. He expresses how scientific instruction is what you need to avoid this but even then it is hard work.
ReplyDelete2. Another quote that stood out to me in this reading is when Kant stated, "The cosmological Idea is the most remarkable product of pure reason in its transcendent use." (Kant 52) I found this important because here, Kant expresses the importance of the cosmological idea. Kant believes it is so important in philosophy because it stays within the realms of the senses, leaving less room for error.
On page 55 under note '53' when Kant states "In the first (the mathematical) class of antinomies the falsehood of the assumed proposition consisted in taking contradictory items (appearance, thing in itself) to be harmoniously compatible within a single concept. In the second (dynamic) proposition consists in taking a consistent pair of propositions to be mutually contradictory. Thus, in the first class of antinomies the opposed assertions were both false, while in the second class the two propositions- which are treated as opposed to one another through mere misunderstanding-may both be true" I find this interesting because appearances it seems as Kant is calling that sense deceiving. That certain pairs of propositions are contradictory, so why does our brain associate things that are contradictory if it is false?
ReplyDeleteWhen Kant states "But in that case the cause must have its effectiveness in a manner that doesn't place it in time; so it can't be an appearance, and must be regarded as a thing in itself, with only its effects being appearances. If we can without contradiction think of beings of the understanding- choices, decisions, etc, ass exerting such an influence on appearances, than that enables us to have the second part of the following two- part story." I am confused as to what he means. Are appearances negative or are they the synthetic a prior truths that need to happen and work in corresponding with freedom to paint a bigger picture of judgement?
1. On page 52, section 49, Kant states the question, "Does experience carry with it sure criteria to distinguish it from imagination?" He then goes on answering this question stating, "Doubts about this are easy to dispose of. We dispose of them in ordinary life every time we investigate how appearances in both space and time are connected according to universal laws of experience: when the representation of outer things agrees thoroughly with those laws, we can't doubt that they constitute truthful experience." From what I understand Kant is stating that when we ask whether such a thing as a mind-independent world exists, then we are going outside of our possible perception and thus will never be Abel to definitively answer such a question.
ReplyDelete2. I still find myself struggling to make heads or tails of Kant when it comes to his writing. However, I feel as though at the start of today's assigned excerpt from the Prolegomena Kant is stating that the questions involved in metaphysics for the most part lie entirely outside the scope of our understanding. Therefore, while we can correctly use pure reason to supply ideas about these sorts of question, we are incapable or having definitive answers from this ideas. These ideas then can at best point us in the right direction but they can not solve our metaphysical problems with any sort of definitiveness.
1. Kant talks about the distinction between pure reason and understanding, as he believes that people always confuses both terms and use them as synonyms when, according to him, they are different. For Kant, understanding holds the concepts that can be applied to experience, whereas reason is not directed toward experience, but rather tries to make experience complete by giving all experiences meaning. (45-48)
ReplyDelete2. Kant talks about God, “We are perfectly free to predicate of this original being a causality through reason in respect of the world, thus moving on to theism; and this doesn’t oblige us to attribute this kind of causally powerful reason to the original being itself, as a property attached to it” (67). We should not assume the properties of a thing because we cannot attribute properties or qualities to something beyond experience, and God would be a supreme being that we do not have direct experience to, therefore we can only assume the existence of the being, as we can experience the world and attribute its existence or order to a supreme being. This does not provide qualities or attributes to the supreme being itself, but just assumes a relation between the being and the world.
1. Kant states that we must have distinct ideas when it comes to describing what metaphysics is. To me, having these experiences or life moments can help describing what metaphysics is. Kant explains “Every particular experience is only a part of the whole domain of experience; but the absolute whole of all possible experience is not itself an experience, yet it is something to think about, as a problem” (45). Here, it seems that Kant is trying to say if you have a bad experience with something, its not going to stay that way forever.
ReplyDelete2. The way Kant talked about nature was the almost similar to how Aristotle describes nature. Kant states “Nature takes us upwards from sensibility to understanding” (71). You can’t understand nature without seeing how it forms and grows.
I think the way Kant approaches the subject of the self in regards to the feeling of “I” is particularly effective. As I understand it, there are parallels to how our senses inform us of the external world and give us the idea (although we can not confirm it metaphysically) of external things. Just as that happens, so do our internal sensations inform us of the self or soul, although we still cannot be sure of it metaphysically.
ReplyDeleteI think it is perfectly in character for Kant to focus on how our understanding of the facts about the world are not as clear cut they seem. He says that assumptions we make regarding claims that are not based on experience are often misguided and confused.
1. I don't think Kant thinks sensory data is demonically deceptive, but rather there is an implicit antimony between our experience of the world and as it is. He takes his predecessors route in eliminating those instances where we can dismiss as hallucination and imagination, and upon inspection, understand that they are just appearances (p. 52). I happen to think that Kant's neumonal realm, which lies outside perception, does not directly involve human agency except at a scientific level. The pragmatism of Sextus Empiricus seems to be a more worldly-situated philosophy, however.
ReplyDelete2. The thing-in-itself in interesting insofar as it Kant explicitly states that human reason cannot attain it nor include it in our conceptual categories of understanding. Funny that Kant never carried this philosophy by reading and studying the mystics who, exercising beyond language and expression, came to know the Absolute itself. This would seem to confirm Kants notion that we never categorize it, but experience it. Noumena posits a limit.
1.) Personally I find Kants take on metaphysics to be incredibly refreshing "For how can we tell from experience whether the
ReplyDeleteworld has lasted from eternity or had a beginning, whether
matter is infinitely divisible or consists of simple parts?" This is something I have articulated in my own thinking for some time, and find it interesting that its origin is in Kant. I agree with this notion that metaphysics is largely impossible.
2.) However I disagree with the notion that the idea of God, and Religion itself is a pragmatic one. Even when one is aware of the complete lack of evidence for a metaphysical claim, the notion that there is god, and that certain religions are a better way of life than others still leads to ideological conflict. I am not opposed to ideological conflict in general, as I see it and its expressions in warfare and difference as one of the chief engines of historical progress. However the ideological differences between faiths is so minute that little progress can come from this kind of conflict, and it really just becomes a senseless point of contention and destruction.