Beginner's Guide to Kant's Metaphysics & Epistemology | Philosophy Tube

how do you acquire knowledge there are lots of things that you think you know but how did you get to know them seems like kind of an important question after all if a dodgy email scammer told you they could for definite make you a millionaire overnight if you just give them your bank details you might be a little skeptical where you get your information really matters in the 18th century there were two camps of philosophers on one side you had the empiricists who thought that if you want to get knowledge you have to experience the world if you want to know how big elephants are or how hot the Sun is you have to go and check maybe do an experiment or take a measurement on the other side you had the rationalists who thought that the only way to get real knowledge was to figure it out you can know without doing any kind of experiment that two and two makes four and that all bachelors are unmarried those things are certain those are the sorts of things the rationalists thought were knowledge their reasoning was that your senses can deceive you if you do an experiment or take a measurement you could be hallucinating or you could have got it wrong that's why they thought real knowledge had to have the kind of certainty that these ideas do into the middle of this debate between the rationalists and the empiricists came Immanuel Kant who kind of took a middle road Kant thought that there were some concepts you have in your head that you couldn't have got by experiencing the world but you also couldn't have just sat down and figured them out either take the concept of space for instance as in distance between objects you rely on that concept a lot when you're walking around the world imagine a baby experiencing the world for the first time they couldn't go oh that object is over there and I'm over here so there must be space in between because in order to say that object is over there you must already have the concept of space in your head you couldn't have gotten it by experiencing the world but at the same time you couldn't have just sat down and figured it out either it's not like 2 + 2 is 4 or all bachelors are unmarried there's nothing definitionally true about space so what Kant realized was that some concepts like space he also included number and time must be built into us from the beginning our brains must be hardwired to experience the world in that way as soon as the baby is experiencing anything they're experiencing it spatially these synthetic a priori concepts as he called them must be a condition of having a mind all Minds have them this might all seem a little bit overwhelming and technical so I like to explain it using Pokemon you can go out into the world and capture new knowledge you can experience food and music and love and gain knowledge about those things but you always get a starter Pokemon and a few pokeballs to get you on your way and you can't begin your journey towards being a Pokemon master until you've picked your starter so your synthetic a priori concepts or like your starter Pokemon this is called a transcendental argument now Kant loves to throw around the word transcendental but they'll be scared of it a transcendental argument is when we say ok we do things like this so whatever the background conditions are that are necessary for us to do those things those conditions must be true transcendent in this case just means going beyond what we have in front of us so Kant thought that some concepts like space and time were built into you as a condition of having a mind and we have to experience the world like that but and go with me here if you have to experience the world in those ways then how do you know that the world is really like that you're synthetic a priori concepts are like a pair of glasses that you can never take off so how do you know that space and time and all that are really part of the world and not just in your head what would the world of Pokemon be like if you never became a pokemon trainer you just experienced it directly and this leads us to one of can'ts most famous and important bits of philosophy he takes the whole world and divides it into two halves on one hand you've got the world as we experience it he called that the phenomenal world but on the other hand you've got the world as it is in itself independent of anybody's experience he called that the new Menaul world and we can never experience the nominal world because as soon as you experience something it's part of the phenomenal world the new monell world might not have space and time and all the things that are so fundamental to the way we experience the phenomenal world it might have them but it might not this distinction between the new model and the phenomenal world is key to understanding so much of can'ts work particularly what he had to say about freewill and God which don't worry I won't bother you with that today so just remember certain ways of obtaining knowledge are built into you so knowledge is as much a feature of you as it is a representation of the world what do you think do human beings have synthetic a priori concepts leave me a comment telling me what you thought and for more philosophical videos don't forget to subscribe and if you'd like to support me bringing education to YouTube you can find philosophy tube on patreon this episode was filmed in YouTube space London as part of YouTube's next up creator camp massive thank you to fill from the Phil green show to Maggie from red Ted art and to bird keeper Toby for being in it with me you can find links to all of their channels below

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Views: 190,964

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Keywords: philosophy, kant, immanuel kant, metaphysics, noumenal world, critique of pure reason, phenomenal world, logic, reason, mind, education, school, Olly Lennard, Oliver Lennard, Philosophy Tube, empiricism, rationalism, perception

Id: vaYVQMpkTYQ

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Fri May 13 2016