- In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?
In the former case, where all our cognition must conform to objects, it is implied that we cannot think of anything outside of what we have experienced (a posteriori), only being able to think of what has been experienced and amalgamations of those experiences/objects.
In the latter case, where objects must conform to our cognition, we are — as Kant says — able to establish something about objects before they are given to us (a priori) because all attributes of the objects are given to them from our cognition. We have knowledge of all the attributes in us and just apply them to objects, making them conform to our cognition.
What he says is: since metaphysics hasn’t been able to enter upon the secure course of a science (unlike mathematics and natural science) under the presupposition that our cognition must conform to objects, something has to be changed. To imitate how mathematics and natural science entered the secure course of a science he is proposing a way to bring about a revolution all at once for metaphysics, just like what happened for the other two sciences.
He likens his proposition of assuming that objects must conform to our cognition with how Copernicus solved the explanation of celestial motions when he instead of “assuming that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest.”
- At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?
The eyes and ears are just two examples of the tools we use to perceive our surroundings; all information that is gathered by and passes through those tools must then be processed by our brain where it is filtered by what we have experienced before and made to fit into the mental models we have created for ourselves.
Socrates’ argument is directed towards empiricism because what we experience is distorted by the processing of the information, and therefore our knowledge of what we perceive is not entirely gained a posteriori, but in a large part a priori. In empiricism, sensory experience is the only or main way of getting knowledge of something; but as Socrates says, sensory experience is subjective. He exemplifies this with one man thinking something is hot while another thinking it is cold, or that he will be considered shorter within a year by Theaetetus, not because of losing in height, but because Theaetetus will have become taller. Other examples include the duck-rabbit, black-blue/white-gold dress etc. that were brought up in the first lecture.
Great explanation of "a priori"! I also think that your reflections of Kant's text are good, but you should think about tense. Cause now you write in present perfect while you should write in past tense, since the Copernical revolution was a long time ago. But like I said, great reflections! :)
ReplyDeleteThe duck-rabbit and the other examples could be described with some more words, but it's good that you use the lecture as a source of information. It would've been nice with some kind of conclusion in the end of that second answer, since it's a question you're trying to answer. Good job though!