The first topic we had to cover in our blogpost was quite challenging. Especially if you never had philosophy in school or university. To try understanding Kant in the beginning was really demanding. Especially because of the language he used. Looking back after a week with a lecture about this topic and group discussions, I think I understand both texts from Kant and Plato much better. Although the main focus of both lecture and group discussion was set on Kant.
When I take a look at my first blogpost I see that I tried to understand and explain the right things, but didn‘t really see through the whole topic. Mostly because I missed background information about the positioning of "Critique of Pure Reason" in a historcial context and the other contents covered in the book. In the lecture we heard about these things and it gave us more clearity about Kant and his thoughts about knowledge. As he says there is a priori and a posteriori. I understood right in the first post that a priori means gaining knowledge (or verify/falsify it) prior to sense experience, just through our thoughts and theoretical understanding of the world. It is also called analytical judgement. A posteriori covers knowledge gained after sense experience and is decribed as sythetic judgement. The importance of these judgemental differences I didn‘t capture in the first blogpost.
Now Kant‘s question is if systhetic judgement is possible a priori, for example when it comes to metaphysics. According to him it should be possible just through pure reason. His assumption is that everything should be definable by the Faculties of Knowledge. In contrary to previous philosophers he is of the opinion that the human is capable of understanding the world as it is. In advance the perspective was common that the world is different as it is as we perceive it. Our knowledge was seen as only a part of the reality in the construct of a god-centered knowledge. According to that it wouldn‘t be possible for us to receive objectivity about the world as it is. This state is covered by him in the first part of the quotation: "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."
His solution to find out more about the truth or falsity of metaphysical theories is to "assume that objects must conform to our cognition". So to assume that objects do conform to our faculties of knowledge. This goes along with the Copernican Revolution, as I mentioned already in the last blogpost. My problem then was that I just thought it would be a shift of perspectives.
Moreover we learned in the lecture about gaining knowledge through perceptin and conception. About this our teacher said "Perception without conception is blind, conception without perception is empty."
This goes into the same direction as Socrates thoughts, that we don‘t understand with, but through our senses. The sense impression, or perception of the senses, is not giving us knowledge. Just through organising it according to our faculties of knowledge and interpreting it according to pure reason we might understand. Platos thoughts already went into the direction of Kant‘s thoughts, but he couldn‘t express it properly.
When I take a look at my first blogpost I see that I tried to understand and explain the right things, but didn‘t really see through the whole topic. Mostly because I missed background information about the positioning of "Critique of Pure Reason" in a historcial context and the other contents covered in the book. In the lecture we heard about these things and it gave us more clearity about Kant and his thoughts about knowledge. As he says there is a priori and a posteriori. I understood right in the first post that a priori means gaining knowledge (or verify/falsify it) prior to sense experience, just through our thoughts and theoretical understanding of the world. It is also called analytical judgement. A posteriori covers knowledge gained after sense experience and is decribed as sythetic judgement. The importance of these judgemental differences I didn‘t capture in the first blogpost.
Now Kant‘s question is if systhetic judgement is possible a priori, for example when it comes to metaphysics. According to him it should be possible just through pure reason. His assumption is that everything should be definable by the Faculties of Knowledge. In contrary to previous philosophers he is of the opinion that the human is capable of understanding the world as it is. In advance the perspective was common that the world is different as it is as we perceive it. Our knowledge was seen as only a part of the reality in the construct of a god-centered knowledge. According to that it wouldn‘t be possible for us to receive objectivity about the world as it is. This state is covered by him in the first part of the quotation: "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."
His solution to find out more about the truth or falsity of metaphysical theories is to "assume that objects must conform to our cognition". So to assume that objects do conform to our faculties of knowledge. This goes along with the Copernican Revolution, as I mentioned already in the last blogpost. My problem then was that I just thought it would be a shift of perspectives.
Moreover we learned in the lecture about gaining knowledge through perceptin and conception. About this our teacher said "Perception without conception is blind, conception without perception is empty."
This goes into the same direction as Socrates thoughts, that we don‘t understand with, but through our senses. The sense impression, or perception of the senses, is not giving us knowledge. Just through organising it according to our faculties of knowledge and interpreting it according to pure reason we might understand. Platos thoughts already went into the direction of Kant‘s thoughts, but he couldn‘t express it properly.
I have to agree with the complicity of understanding Kant. Even with some background google and a lot of discussion with other students it is hard to understand his intention. Even now I am still not really confident whether I understood him correctly. His new formed words as well as the highly complicated sentences made it really hard to understand the concept behind his writing.
AntwortenLöschenYour realization of his significance in regards to the time of writing is very interesting. I think you have a good point here, especially in connection with your sentence "My problem then was that I just thought it would be a shift of perspectives.".
I think though that exactly this shift of perspective is one of his significant impacts. Maybe not in a perspective as we revolve around the sun and not vice versa, but that there might be another truth out there, then what the "elders" and the church are telling the people. For the first time they started to think for themselves and question whether what they heard every Sunday was actually the truth.
Hi,
AntwortenLöschenI've read your first blog post and must say that was a great idea - to give explanations of the terms from Oxford Dictionary as the text looks a way more readable and apprehensible.
The understanding of the historical conditions of the times of Plato and Kant also helped me a lot: I realized what seems obvious for us nowadays (evaluation of any situation from the own perspective - so called "judgemental thinking" and, therefore, attempts to separate facts and opinions in media) was a news for the people in the XVIII century. That's why, probably, Kant's work was recognized such an important text completely dedicated to the theory of knowledge.
I think you're first blogpost was rather clear and that you seem to have understood the texts pretty well. In addition to that, it is also interesting to follow your discussion regarding the additional concepts e.g. posteriori and the faculties of knowledge and the comparison between Kant and Socrates.
AntwortenLöschenI agree with you about the texts being hard to understand, and as you mention, especially if you haven't studied philosophy before. As engineering-students you are not used to study these kinds of questions. I can relate to a lot of the things you mention in your reflection and it seems like we have had quite a similar journey during this first theme. When I wrote my first blogpost I also did not put the topic in a wider picture, for example reflecting on the historical context that certainly had an impact of the texts. I think your reflection shows that you have learned and gained much insights of the philosophical thinking during this theme. Good work!
AntwortenLöschenI think this first very unpleasant encounter with philosophy taught us an important lesson - we asbolutely have to be familiar with the times and the social context of whatever reading we have, as well as try to find out some biographical information about the author. Otherwise, we're just taking guesses, and not very good ones :)
AntwortenLöschenIt was interesting how you acknowledged Kants text in another context after the lecture with analytical and synthetic judgement.
AntwortenLöschenYou seem to have comprehended the main concept of Kant as if we humans only organize our impressions according our faculties and we can not comprehend anything beyond our reason. Than we could never gain knowledge outside our reason. Question is if we expand our reason. And if we can’t, that is a bit depressing.