Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

 

Key Kantian Insight: Mind is NOT passive in experience, but rather active.  Mind constructs experience out of the raw sense data that the world provides.  (Sometimes referred to as Kant’s Copernican Revolution in Epistemology.  Rather than asking “How does knowledge impress itself onto mind?” (passive metaphor) Kant asks “How does mind construct knowledge?”

 

We do not have access to the world as it exists in-itself (what Kant refers to as Neumena), since all human experience is mediated by the active application of concepts (categorizing) of mind.

 

We can and do have precise knowledge of the world as organized and interpreted by human cognition (what Kant refers to as Phenomena).

 

It is necessary to see human experiences as have different content, but a consistent Form.  If we were to abstract all content from human experience we would arrive at the pure form of experience. 

 

Think of it a blank template into which mind pours all sensory information and thus arrives at a coherent experience. 

 

Alternatively think of my (very old, MS DOS based) Miallist program that can organize records according to one and only one pattern.  Thus I have knowledge of how my 100th record and any other record will look (in broad outline) that is a priori (that is may knowledge is not grounded in the particular experience of my 100th record).

 

Though I don’t know what the CONTENT of the record is, I know the form because when I am referring to this program’s records, I am referring to products of its organizing function which does not/ cannot change.

 

Kant is very specific about what these forms and categories of experience are, but I’ll only refer to a few for illustration purposes.

 

Space and Time are the two pure forms of experience according to Kant.

 

All human experience will/ must conform to 3 dimensional Euclidian Space.

All human experience will/ must conform to uni-directional time.  (Past to present to future).

 

Initial Objections:

 

Objection: Einstein talks about warped space where the shortest distance between two points is NOT a straight line.

 

Response:  But even Einstein cautions us, don’t try to picture this.

 

Objection: We can imagine (maybe achieve) time travel.

 

Response: But our experiences will still be “forward.” (First I did, then I did, then ....)

 

Objection: Mystics talk about experience where “space and time drop away and all is one and time is unreal”

 

Response: Yes, well, even they claim that such experiences are “ineffable.”  They may well be unintelligible as well, just as Kant suggests.  It is a controversial matter what if any knowledge one can get out of such experiences.

 

Ramifications:

 

·         There is epistemological justification for Causality

 

Human cognition always organizes human experience of the world according to the concept of causality.  Therefore we can be certain a priori that all human experience will have/must have the same basic character since human cognition can only organize it one way.  In particular, we can be certain the every effect will have a cause since this is the way our minds always puts it together for us.

 

·         (Traditional) Metaphysics is impossible.

 

To conceive of reality (much less talk or speculate about) reality outside of space and time or "transcendent reality" is impossible, because, necessarily, any such conception would use human concepts and thus be mediated by mind.

 

These mediating concepts are perfectly serviceable for the constitution and organization of human experience, but inapplicable for gaining immediate knowledge of things-in-themselves.  Hence we cannot have theoretical knowledge of the way things "really exist" apart from human experience or consciousness of them.

 

·         Freewill

 

Dilemma:

 

There is a curious (seeming) inconsistency between theoretical reason and practical reason. Theoretical reason (science) sees reality as a seamless series of causes and effects (determinism), moral reason does not. Any judgements of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness require the concepts of free agency and moral responsibility for personal choices. To judge a moral agent for his or her actions, one must presuppose that the action was uncompelled by prior event. 

 

In short, making sense of Moral Experience (and corresponding moral judgements) requires precisely the sort of personal free agency that casual determinism denies.

 

Kant’s Resolution:

 

Unconditioned causes, necessary for moral judgement, never occur nor can they occur in the world as we experience it  (i.e. the phenomenal reality: reality as cognized by human minds).   However we have no theoretical evidence (nor could we) for or against the claim that causal determinism is true of reality independent of human cognition (things-in-themselves, Noumenal Reality).

 

For all we know, causal determinism is not true of things-in-themselves.  Furthermore, given the “freewill” is a necessary presupposition for rational moral experience (the only alternative to absurdity) we have moral reason (though not evidence) to believe in (have faith in?) freewill.

 

 

 

Sense moral experience only makes sense on the presumption of freewill, we therefore have moral reason to believe a metaphysical, a claim about things-in-themselves (i.e. that we have free will) since there is no theoretical evidence against free will and it is the only rational alternative to absurd moral judgements.

 

But for Kant moral/practical reason is the only vehicle we have to speculate and draw conclusions about transcendent reality (things-in-themselves).  He believed that the existence of things like God, freedom, and the soul which could neither be proved nor disproved by theoretical (pure) reason, were necessary postulates of practical reason (systematic moral experience).  From a practical (moral law) point of view, it makes much more sense to accent to the existence of God, freedom and immortality then to deny them or to remain agnostic.

 

Opens the door to Radical Relativism:

 

Kant believed that our (human) empirical knowledge was universal (NOT RELATIVE) because the pure forms of experience and the categories of thought were universal for all humans. Therefore, he could believe that what is true for one human is true for all human. 

 

(Now God or aliens from another planet may have very different forms of experience and thus different knowledge and truths, but the human task of inquiry doesn’t involve them- yet at least.  But these are merely speculative concerns, not practical ones about which scientists need to worry.)

 

BUT....one might object to Kant’s view.   For instance, what if we do NOT all put the world  together in basically the same way (e.g. woman according to a female template, men according to a male template)?  If “Men are from mars and women are from Venus” then we are not experiencing the same worlds because we’re building our worlds with the same input but according to different templates.  We are, in a very real sense, living in different worlds, and truth must be relativized to groups of cognizers.  Rather than univalent, truth becomes bivalent or, perhaps, multivalent.  It is potentially as multifaceted as there are minds, and no basis would exist for claiming that any worldview was privileged among the plurality.