Thursday, February 26, 2009
From 2/25: Transcendental Idealism
Now that we've taken our first - and rather large - step into Kant's metaphysics, it should prove helpful to reflect on Kant's overall project. Is synthetic a priori knowledge really possible? Is his response to Hume adequate? Is he right to think of philosophy as a critique (or reigning in) of reason? And finally, is the world really something of our own, mental making? Much to think about here - perhaps enough to force us out of bed at 4:55 every morning!
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2 comments:
First off, any type of thinking will never force me out of bed at 4:55. That is just awful and unnecessary. The thought of it makes me cringe. I think it is possible to have synthetic a priori knowledge. His example of 5+7=12 tries to explain that synthetic a prior thinking is possible because we have to be able to understand what 5,7, and 12 are first before we can analyze the mathematical problem. According to his logic all a priori knowledge has to be learned first, making all a priori knowledge synthetic. This means that a priori knowledge by itself is not possible. An infant doesn’t know how to count, it must learn and experience it for itself. There is knowledge outside of us that exists without us knowing like 7+5=12 but we still have to learn what 5, 7 and 12 are before we can analyze the mathematical problem. We must even learn language before we can understand the word bachelor. And once we understand bachelor we will understand that all bachelors are single. Everything we know is learned, so according to Kant everything has to be synthetic a priori knowledge.
last class we discussed realism versus idealism and the philosophers that follow it. I found idealism to be very interesting because it is something that is infinitely imaginative. It also ade me think of the matrix. But the main question idealism makes me ask is: Am I seeing the same exact thing my neighbor is seeing? What if they are seeing something different, but have been seeing it differently their entire lives and therefore are accustomed to it? How can we guarantee that we all see the same exact colors and shapes and objects? so as you can see idealism is obviously a source of never-ending wonder. We also touched upon a priori and a posteriori as well as synthetic and analytic knowledge. It made me raise the question whether synthetic knowledge is always based upon laws that are applied universally such as gravity?
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