![]() ![]() Maybe the search for indubitable foundations (innate ideas, sense data) is itself flawed. When asked why languages are structured in certain ways, some theorists claim that the brain and our neural networks form the "deep grammar" of what things mean. ![]() If Kant is right, then why do cultures seem to differ on the categories of understanding? One possible is that even though the categories seem to vary, such differences are due only to differences in the "surface grammar" of language, the ways in which things are understood as meaningful.In short, if we are limited to phenomena (things as they appear), either we will never know if our ideas are true or we have to redefine what truth is. Kant's solution means that we will never know if our ideas about the world are true or it means that we have to redefine reality as that which we experience rather than that which experience represents.We can never know anything about things we do not experience and organize in terms of the mind's structure-for example, God, soul, and other metaphysical topics and that seems a shame. Reason provides the structure or form of what we know, the senses provide the content. Knowledge is possible because it is about how things appear to us, not about how things are in themselves. We can be said to know things about the world, then, not because we somehow step outside of our minds to compare what we experience with some reality outside of it, but rather because the world we know is always already organized according to a certain fixed (innate) pattern that is the mind. There can be no knowledge without sensation, but sense data cannot alone provide knowledge either. That is, whenever we think about anything, we have to think about it in certain ways (for example, as having causes, as existing or not existing, as being one thing or many things, as being real or imaginary, as being something that has to exist or doesn't have to exist), not because that is the way the world is, but rather because that is the way that our minds order experience. All rational beings think the world in terms of space, time, and categories such as cause and effect, substance, unity, plurality, necessity, possibility, and reality. Instead, we know about the world insofar as we experience it according to the unchanging and universally shared structure of mind. If there are such judgments, then how are they possible? Kant's answer: the rationalists are right in saying that we can know about things in the world with certainty and the empiricists are right in saying that such knowledge cannot be limited merely to truths by definition nor can it be provided by experience. Such propositions are universal and necessary (and thus a priori ) even though they could not have been known from experience and they would be synthetic a priori judgments. But this does not mean that all synthetic judgments are a posteriori judgments, since in mathematical and geometrical judgments, the predicate is not contained in the subject (e.g., the concept 12 is not contained either in 7, 5, +, =, or even in their combination nor does the concept "shortest distance between two points" contain the idea of a straight line). ![]() What Kant proposes is this: Surely all a posteriori judgments are synthetic judgments, since any judgment based solely on experience cannot be derived merely by understanding the meaning of the subject. The debate between empiricists and rationalists prompts Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to highlight differences between the kinds of statements, judgments, or propositions that guide the discussion.įor Kant, the distinctions between analytic and synthetic and a priori and a posteriori judgments must be kept separate, because it is possible for some judgments to be synthetic and a priori at the same time. Epistemology: Kant and Truth Notes for PHIL 251: Intro ![]()
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