A History of Philosophy | 52 Kant's Epistemology

back to last time was purely introductory trying to get a handle on his project and then on some terminology and what we were doing then really covered about the first 10 pages of the selection we have in Kaufman from the critique of pure reason I hope when you're reading you've discovered the similarity don't buy the point in my trying to say that less it helps introduce you to that material today we want to look at his epistemology its theory of knowledge which will cover the two sections of the critique that he labels the transcendental aesthetic and then the transcendental analytic the aesthetic having to do with sense perception and the analytic having to do with understanding it's because of concepts that we have in the understanding that were able to make judgments it's because of the a priori structures of perception that were able to have clear perceptual ideas sense perceptions clear and distinct ideas of that sort so keep that distinction clear you notice that in the transcendental analytic dealing with understanding we're dealing with the Faculty of thinking as distinct from the Faculty of sensing and that I would think is sufficient in itself to distinguish the two his point is that we don't start thinking in generalized or abstract terms about the natural world or the self or even start thinking about God without having at least some input from the Faculty of sensing which precedes understanding so that you find that Kant says that concepts without percepts are empty and percents without concepts a blind you see if a concept is an abstract general idea and we've heard about abstract general ideas from Locke and Berkeley and he'll concepts like cause and effect like substance but those concepts those abstract general concepts are empty you have no content apart from persons that is to say particular sense perceptions but on the other hand percept without concepts a blind musi they they have no meaning they don't know where they're going they don't contribute to anything so we have to not only distinguish the Faculty of sensing from the Faculty of thinking not only distinguish since representations from abstract ideas but we have to recognize that the sense representations a prerequisite for developing abstract ideas they're connected now having said that you can perhaps get a handle on this terminology that I've put over here which he spells out in a particularly dense section you'll see it if you haven't discovered it already where the term and Sean I suppose literally insight is the term that's usually translated intuition where intuition is awareness whatever it is we're directly aware of is known by intuition and of course in the tradition since Locke what were directly aware of is our own ideas as so our intuitions are of ideas or sense perceptions and Shung intuition you'll find that term used throughout the critique keep its awareness in mind it refers to the mental act of being aware conscious off the mental act as distinct from the mental content which is with John Locke called an idea a representation of something external and the act and the content to be distinguished from the faculty the capacity that we have to sense similar cut the faculty Sensibility as the way it's translated which isn't a very good English term considering how we use the word sensible it's not very sensible term in that sense of sensible but I think if you recognize that these three terms have to do with the aesthetic the transcendental aesthetic perception remember that the term aesthetic in in German in fact in most European use refers simply to sense experience not just to the aesthetic in our narrow sense of it the artistic or the beautiful but in the literal sense of the Greek verb I stenum I which the Greeks present realize means to perceive the barbarians pick that up along the way so the transcendental aesthetic they'd nothing to do with the Arts okay so that is distinct from the transcendental analytic fear stunts is the term for understanding reference to the faculty thinking and the Gryff the concept the abstract idea okay so keep that terminology in mind now perhaps that will come clearer as you look at the next piece on the board we're familiar with this rubric ever since Descartes that the mind is immediately aware of its own ideas which are simply subjective representations of external realities purport to be such and this framework is the one of course which Descartes Locke Berkeley all begin with and human a sense the Kant as well if they can't is assuming this rubric which was part of that rationalist tradition in which he was raised you remember the wolf Baumgartner people who were post live knits rationalists in germany it's raised in that tradition but also part of the tradition of hume who awakened him from those dogmatic slumbers so the very project he has is a project that arises within that tradition the problem he's trying to handle is a problem that's posed by that rubric if you like that is to say how do we get the idea of cause and effect now him the empiricist says it is an a priori we don't get any idea of causal connection causal necessity from experience well we get it's the idea of constant conjunction then psychologically we come to think of it as necessary so he's starting with this all right now translate that into what Kant is doing and if what we're talking about is ideas in the sense of sense perceptions then our perceptions of things according to Kant the confluence of two things the raw input raw unprocessed sensory stimuli on the one hand and the form that the the mind gives the Faculty gives to this then is to say John Locke's claim that in sense perception the mind is a blank tablets tabula rasa blank tablet it's false it's not that we have innate ideas like play-doh set or self-evident concepts like they can't thought but it's rather that the mind is sort of pre formed to handle things since early if you want an analogy other than a tabula rasa or a blank cake of wax on which things leave impressions think of a violin case that's really made to fit the violin or think of an ice cube tray better still into which the raw unprocessed sensory input flows and comes out shaped formed so that you can get a mental handle on it so the perceptual experience we actually have what we actually experience is formed structured sense experience that some of our other has come together in unified fashion now notice how far-reaching that is our sense perceptions are itty-bitty things according to Hume that is to say we receive simple impressions beep-beep-beep no connections between them no relationships given they're completely atomistic how then do we perceive those three beeps as one when they're speeded up yeah how do we get from A to C we do nothing and of course the physiology of perception seems to be in terms of stimulus atomistic stimulated the sense organs so in terms of the atomistic nature of sense impressions there is no coherence unity structure order and then of course we have five different senses with no given relationship in the human tradition no given relationship between the eyes and the ears the nose isn't the taste and yet somehow or other wore delicious food all five senses are involved at once the color the smell the texture that you feel if you taste it the sound of it sizzling as it comes to you you see it's all one you ready for it what we have is unified sense experience you see that's why Aristotle talked of a an additional sense the census communis the sense that is in common to all five senses well somehow other count is trying to explain the same sort of thing the cohesion the unification the interrelatedness of all the atomic bits in one more holistic sense experience sense perception is something if the empirical input comes to us an atomistic bombardment one booming buzzing confusion bombarding you every sense somehow rather this gets sorted and ordered so our faculties must provide some sort of structure the filter lens whatever metaphor you want well and the same is true when you come to understanding because the the perceptions that we have provide perceptual experience but how do we get from individual perceptual experiences to general abstract ideas to the sorts of concepts that the understanding works with well he maintains that once again the the mind is so equipped so functions remember that Hume had talked of the soul the minds proclivities the Scottish realists the minds proclivities current is thinking that way too he's talks of fabulous but the mind has has the capacity to provide structural principles that enable us to conceptualize what is going on in the world of perceptual experience and what the understanding does then is to formulate judgments about perceptual experience different kinds of judgments different categories of judgments so you formulate cause old judgments you make qualitative judgments that is to say is everything like this or just some things but you make different kinds of judgments because you've learned to to conceptualize to categorize and the categories are not appear empirically derived that what the mind provides is nothing an experience to provide you with categories in the gain if the notion of categories seems new it ain't remember Aristotle had his categories substance quality etc ten categories of thought ten categories of being corresponding to each other categories are simply ways in which we think so that the mind is not just a random thinker but it's a channeled thinker we think along certain given channels this is the way were made it's not only the Newtonian world of physics that is ordered it's the mental world that is ordered in in fact the order is transferred by can't to the mental world because it turns out that these categories are really Newton's categories Newton's concept so the structure of the Newtonian universe is a structure we have given to it whether that's the way it is there in itself we don't know we've structured the world that way we talk of it in terms of space-time cause effect matter substance so he's working with this Cartesian framework but instead of the mind being passive in the whole business as it was for Locke the mind is the active contributor you see it's the mind that structures experience and thought it's the mind that creates its own meaningful world whether the world as it is in itself is meaningful we don't know their brother time we experience it and think about it it's at least meaningful to us that's why science is possible what science is talking about is the world as we experience it the phenomenal world not necessarily the world as is isn't it south the new world okay now that's intended to tie in this new step today to what we were talking about last Friday does that do it okay questions comments before we look at it in more particulars Ryan minds that have given us categorize in this way we say that these are yeah well you see it is these forms and categories that he says are a priori and a pre or I for him means that they're universal they're not just cultural the universal and they are necessary that is the same we cannot think otherwise there's a logical necessity to so that that simply explains why it is there everybody sees things like differences of individual experience don't change the fact that we all have spatial experience we all think in causal categories that's always there can't avoid why couldn't he'll avoid it yeah okay David yeah yeah that that's a good point to make that where are ELLs the categories for Kant are simply categories of thought for Aristotle they are categories of reality as well as categories of thought so for Aristotle you've got a corner on reality which is why Aristotelian philosophy on through the Middle Ages didn't really have any epistemological problems you see if you've got categories of thought that coincide with the structures of reality then what is rational is real what is real is rational you've got a corner Kant doesn't deny that our categories at the categories of reality he says we've no way of knowing you know how do you know if the tree that falls in the forest when there's nobody around here you know it's the same sort of thing as with both how would you know yes sir right is the same yep yeah yeah so Howard can't respond well I think he'd be surprised that there were non-euclidean geometries I think that would be his first response because non Euclidean geometry is a product of what late 19th century I think I'm right in that lava to ski and romani and geometry which differ from Euclidean in that the fifth postulate is different Euclid's fifth postulate you remember the parallel straight lines never meet well in non-euclidean geometries they either converge or diverge and as a result you get all sorts of queer by Euclidian standards results that are far more useful than Euclidean geometry when it comes to vast reaches of outer space so non Euclidean geometry does have its use when you're dealing with what's called the curvature of space well obviously de currents philosophical method was the method of Euclidean geometry Newtonian physics made use of Euclidean geometry the science of optics which was the moving force in the development of physics on the continent of Europe remember Descartes did work in optics but nodes a ground lenses to earn a living while he applied the methods of geometry to philosophy well what would can't say apart from being surprised I think he would probably respond in one of two ways run he would say all those differences are minor might require some fine-tuning of my categories but that's about all non Euclidean geometry isn't denying such things of substance and cause and effect secondly Kant might say alright then apparently I have to revise my claim that the two forms of sense perception are space and time is a geometry is dealing with space it's the science of space and if you've got a different conception of space in non Euclidean geometry than you do in Euclidean then he's claimed that there is a universal category universal concept rather of space it's got to be changed so I think most people who follow the Kantian line tend to think less about a priori forms of sensibility space and time and to emphasize simply a priori categories of understanding get it as a so that the forms of space and time perhaps learned subsequent neo-kantian thought because there was a neo-kantian movement through the 19th century revived in late 19th century influential on into early 20th century existentialism grew out of it later neocon diems see these categories has learned culturally acquired transmitted learned in the course of experience changing with the course experience Max Weber for instance in the cultural side well in that case what you get is a relative Isaac of the structures of thought and that obviously makes it a lot harder to maintain that there is any objective truth in science because if the categories are culturally influenced you have an even greater problem about identifying any objective points of reference coinciding with me yes and so in that way it's the neo-kantian movement relativizing a pre or i Gribbs that led to the cultural relativism to the relativizing of the notion of truth not just of knowledge and to various kinds of subjectivism in the 20th century which existentialism was one so keep keep that in mind which reminds me I said last time I was going to start today by commenting on the influence of Kant and I guess I forgot about that all right let me just briefly indicate it will pick up on the threads later on Kant's emphasis on human subjectivity and its creative resources that we bring to experience gives a new meaning to the term imagination what cants use of it we'll get into it if not today next time imagination it provided the point of departure for Coleridge in the early romanticists speaking of imaginative expression self-expression in the arms Romanticism there's a result of conti and influence with its emphasis on the creativity of our inner self creative resources of the inner self and if in some kinds of psychology applied to the arts you hear notion of certain universal symbols Universal symbolism certain kinds of depth psychology that's the influence of can't depth psychology generally Freudian Jungian indirectly the influence of Kant certain subjective influences shaping our behaviors and our thoughts German nationalism evil now get over the individualism of the 18th century into a more corporate sense of identity in the 19th century and the inner spirit of that corporate identity has all of the Canty and creative power bursting and 19th century nationalism is indirectly the influence of current expression of romanticism at the national level or a mentor sized view of nation manifest destiny and things of that sort 19th century Romanticism German idealism Hegel suchlike yeah ultimately the real is of the nature of mind creative thoughts really go that idea Kant existentialism yes we live in a world of bare meaningless fact and we have to create our own meanings and our own value our own selves in fact according to Sartre you know you can't read Sartre without hearing faint echoes of Kant that would make him turn over in his grave oh go on to the postmodern movement in our day you see the emphasis on subjectivity that is coming up all over the place so that you have no objective knowledge at all the hermeneutical movement the political correctness movement if the all of that is saying subjective influences subjective influences that began with God poor current he never meant half of that but the evil that men do lives after them the good is oft interred with their bones I think that applies to Kant as well Shakespeare spoke truly about David well it depends what you mean by objective the word objective like the word subjective has at least two different meanings it may mean as it does in Berkeley subjective is what is in your mind that's the way it is it can't it's in your mind an object if what is objective is what is independent of any mind of any knower of any consciousness now the current these are subjective they're not objective categories but I call that metaphysical subjectivity metaphysical objectivity but the other sense of subjectivity and objectivity is more attitudinal what sort of approach do you take what is your stents as you look at something an objective stance is one that is detached Spectator observer see I mean quite objective when I grade your examinations at least I'm trying to be say all the nasty things you like about cards and about me I tried to stand back and be objective on the other hand a subjective stance is one that's involved passionate I care if they now that that is the kicker Guardian sense of subjectivity when kotha God talks of a subjective path he's talking of passion being concerned you come to Christianity you come to Christ by a subjective paths is kid'n good he doesn't mean it's all subjective and relative no he means you can't come without the passion the faith of love of hoped not coming on so distinguish those two senses the attitude at all only ester yes well that's precisely what Kant is saying they're not in the external world with no way of knowing yes well they are subjective in the sense that they are structures built into our perceiving and thinking yes a there already there in that sense you don't have to develop a concept they're already functional they're not innate in in the sense of having an innate idea that you already know and think about independently of experience no you don't have clear and distinct II need ideas recollected under the force of Plato's dialectic no you don't have clear and distinct ideas that become self-evident upon reflection no you only become aware of these in operation so you don't get to them simply introspectively with help of dialectic you get to them by what the transcendental method the transcendental method remember last time what is the transcendental method well it's the method of getting at the transcendental ego the transcendental self what does he mean by transcendental he does not mean transcendent for him he's not being transcendent though once in a while he gets the two words mixed up at least the translations do he means transcendental that is to say the the creative subjective contribution to experience so how do we get at that well the transcendental method you see is an attempt to bracket all of the empirical particulars and to ask what's left did you get that I'm not sure from your faces let me let me get the passage and you can underscore it because it's it's tremendously important to see that method becomes very influential what you want is page 300 and it's yeah 372 first of all the top of the first column even with our experiences different kinds of knowledge a mixed up which must have their origin a priori for even if we remove from experience everything that belongs to the senses that's the particulars there remain nevertheless certain original concepts and certain judgments derived from them which must have had their origin entirely a priori independent of all experience okay now hold that in your mind and maybe with your finger and look at 375 I call a second column and a new paragraph 375 I call all knowledge transcendental which is occupied not so much with objects as with our a pre or icon sense objects okay so it's not going to be a method that talks about the external world but about this a pre or I grid less lanes these subjective structures a system of such concepts could be called transcendental philosophy that'll be a huge undertaking and then on 376 you notice that division 2 is entitled transcendental philosophy and he says it's an idea for a critique of Pure Reason that would trace according to fixed principles a plan that guarantees the completeness and certainty of all parts of which the building consists trying to get at that a pre or ice structure as it were the plan for the building of knowledge the blueprint that objectives and accordingly when you get to elements of transcendentalism transcendental aesthetic is an attempt to apply it now after the initial definitions that I was talking about there on 377 377 the very bottom of the first column you'll find this in a phenomenon there's something that appears to you something you experience I call that which corresponds to its sensation the saint's stimuli its manner but that which causes the manifold matter of the phenomenon to be perceived as arranged in a certain order I call for so form and manner where did he get those terms well you might say he maybe got it from aesthetics and the other sense where you sometimes talk about a painting in terms of its manner and its form but no I think it's really Aristotelian yes see where Aristotle talked of particulars as having form and manner physical particulars Kant is talking not of physical particulars as having form and matter but particular phenomena particular experiences as having formed matter okay so the empirical input that's the matter of it subject matter of it and here's the farm the form and the matter so now what he wants to do is to lay aside to bracket to put out of consideration the matter the content of the experience never mind if it's apple pie plum pie raisin pie or just plain dry bread and leave that out what's the what is it that is the structure of the experience of such things you see nevermind particular colors particular shapes particular smells etc what's the structure the structure of the experience and whatever the kind of perceptual experience is he's after that structure now look at the bottom of 377 that second column around 1/2 way down the column second column if we deduct from the representation from the for Stella you deduct from the representation for Stella what belongs to the thinking of the understanding substances forces the visibility they still remain something of an empirical intuition an empirical intuition the and Shawn namely extension for these belong to pure intuition a priori regardless of what particular form there is how large how small what shape what they all have is spatial extension two dimensional three dimensional spatial extension and so there is a pure not a mixed but a pure intuition a priori without a real object of sense or sensation a pure intuition that exists in the mind is the form of sensibility now the science of all such principles he calls transcendental aesthetic and so top of 378 in transcendental aesthetic we must first isolate sensibility by separating it from the understanding and then we must separate all that belongs to sensation so that nothing remains what the pure intuition the pure form of the phenomena the only thing which sensibility a priori I can supply and it appears that there are two pure forms of since he was in tuition space and time now remember space and time for Newton were objective realities for Kant they are subjective forms of sensibility forms of sense awareness huge change right away he is subjective value thing the space-time structure of things now let me add a footnote that looks on ahead this is going to be very useful to him later on when he's dealing with freedom and determinism in a Newtonian world of space-time causal mechanisms have them to be such a thing as freedom freedom of choice freedom of will easy if the space-time structure is something which is subjective you can have objectively real freedom so his distinction between phenomena and newman a-- appearance and reality makes it possible for him to have real freedom of the will real objective moral of location a real god which would be problematic were it not for the subjectivity of those forms see where he's going yeah he was raised to german pyatters while he didn't remain very pious he at least seems to have retained concern for things like moral law freedom and moral responsibility and a divine moral law and he wants to make him room for that in Newtonian universe a Newtonian universe that is locking everything into causal mechanisms of a material sort the space-time world so if he can argue that that world of physical cause is space-time nature is simply a subjective structure we impose on experience all the rest is possible he said the conclusion of the critique of pure reason is going to be well there's a lot of room to believe other things and in his other two critiques critique of practical reason critique of judgment he goes on to argue many other things well the transcendental method does that clarify Esther you look sort of dazed but let's take it it it does now what he's arguing let's make sure we have it is that space and time and not objective realities now I I suspect that this is the sort of thing that shouldn't take him a surprise because if by space and time you mean Newtonian conceptions of space and time and if you're up to date on your physics then you don't believe that space and time we think of a space and time in terms of modern physics is simply relational possibilities there's no such thing as an infinite expense of empty space that's nothing the only way we can talk meaningfully about space is when there are physical events occurring and there are some sort of relationships that we call spatial relationships between them space is simply an abstraction we're referring to all possible such relationships time isn't a thing it's not made of elastic time isn't a thing it's an abstraction that refers to relationships between events yeah you know perfectly well how the relationship is very young funny time can drag or it can raise that it doesn't philosophy causes or it can stand still yeah there's no such thing as a fixed realm of time well hadn't Berkeley said that from an empirical standpoint you see all right now count is picking up as it were on that and saying well what are space and time they're just subjective structures that we organize experiences with subjective structures Faculty of sensibility is so so made that we experience things sequentially beep-beep you know and you expect it a next one B because we've learned to think sequentially you experience my form of three beep sequential yes and you also know that after those three beeps I gave you up so there it is you think but it's it's our subjective structuring of things in those relationships that he's talking about and any Newtonian conception of time is has no objective counterpart space and time post and you'll find in reading the aesthetics that it's pretty obvious what he's saying look on 378 second column space is not an empirical concept derived from external experience 378 and then number two at the bottom of the second column space is a necessary representation a priori forming the very foundation of external intuitions and a couple of sentences later it's a condition of the possibility of phenomena not a determination produced by phenomena space isn't something produced by the sensory input it is rather what makes sensory input possible it's the precondition the transcendental method is trying to identify the preconditions that make experience possible what are the subjective preconditions that make it possible let's see yeah and then on the next column number four space is not a discursive or general concept of relations of things in general it's not a generalization and empirical generalization it's a pure intuition it has no empirical content and then the conclusions that he draws second column space does not represent inequality of objects by themselves space is nothing but the form of all phenomena of the external senses it's from the human standpoint only that we can speak of space if we drop the subjective condition space means nothing so on 380 he puts it this way bottom of the first column discussions teach the reality the objective validity of space with regards to everything that can come to us externally as an object but the ideality of space with regards to things considered in themselves by a reason independent of the senses now what's he saying well he says it again in another way and this is clearer we maintain the empirical reality of space as far as every possible external experience is concerned yet you really experience things spatially that's the empirical in experience it's real to you in the world as it is for you experience is spatial in the world as it is in itself it's not the empirical reality but then he goes on at the same time it's transcendental ID allottee that's the safe space is nothing if we leave out of consideration possible experiences and accept it as something on which things by themselves are in any way dependent no it's nothing it's simply an ideal of the transcendental mind has in orbit order right it's experience now the same is true almost verbatim with regards to time and after the discussion of time he gets to a more general explanation and on 384 makes his conclusion halfway down the first column time and space two sources of knowledge from which various a priori synthetic cognitions can be derived of this pure mathematics gives a suspended example how come space yeah that's what geometry is about the science of the idea space you see geometry is not about round balls it's about geometrical objects such as circles and spheres it's not about any line or triangle I draw on the board it's about the ideal straight line or triangle a straight line in mathematical definition it has length but no breaks in other words it doesn't exist empirically you couldn't see it a point there's location but no dimensions in geometry a point is not an empirical object points and lines and triangles and circles or spheres are ideal entities thought that don't exist in currently in the physical world so there can be a science of this transcendental tool what about time mathematics of time yeah how about number series sequences number series arithmetic is the science of sequence of time so what then are we going to say about the status of mathematics oh you see philosophy of mathematics is very much involved here Plato had a philosophy of mathematics in which mathematical objects were real objective entities the ideal of equality equal length the ideal of triangle whatever no objective reality two mathematical objects for Kant their concepts Kant is a conceptualist plato was a realist about such things the nominalist will see them simply as dealing with relations between arbitrary ideas defined arbitrarily the conceptualist will see mathematics as dealing with either with dealing with abstract ideas in a universal ones or created ones abstract ideas the nominalist see it dealing simply with the meanings of words and of this day you have those three major traditions and the foundations of mathematics Kant very influential just last week I received a copy of a book from one of our graduates mcdhh Ellefson who teaches philosophy of mathematics at Notre Dame this is his second book it's in the philosophy of mathematics and he's dealing with precisely this kind of question well the transcendental aesthetic a couple of minutes questions then let's call it a day and come back next time to the analytic

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Published: Tue Jun 16 2015