Valeria Leycegui Rivera

Introduction to Philosophy

 Kant

Have not found Descartes’ proof of God to be valid in its reasoning

Time and consciousness

Kant wants to demonstrate that there is an external, material world, and that its existence
cannot be doubted. His argument begins as follows: in order for something to exist, it must be
determinable in time.

We can use the word “now” to refer to what is currently happening in our consciousness. But
“now” is not a determinate time or date. Every time I say “now”, consciousness is different.

We cannot experience time itself, directly; rather, we experience time through things that move,
change, or stay the same.

The problem of science

Kant also looked at how science understood the exterior world.

The empiricists, such as John Locke and David Hume, argued that there is no knowledge except
that which comes to us through our experience of the world.

 Our sensibility: the ability to sense things in the world

Space and time cannot be learned about through experience; they are intuitions of the mind

 Our understanding: the ability to think about things

Concepts only apply to things insofar as they are sensed by our minds

*A “thing-in-itself” may have nothing to do with space, time, or any of our concepts. “Things-in-
themselves” are unknowable.

There are two worlds: the world of experience sensed by our bodies and the world as it is in
itself

Intuitions and concepts

Kant split knowledge into intuitions, gained from direct sensibility of the world, and concepts,
which come indirectly from our understanding. Some of our knowledge—both of sensibility and
understanding—comes from empirical evidence, while some is known a priori

 Sensibility: Our ability to be directly acquainted with particular things in space and time,
such as this book you are reading now.

Intuitions: These direct acquaintances he calls

  Understanding: Our ability to have and use concepts. For Kant, a concept is an indirect
acquaintance with things as examples of a type of thing, such as the concept of “book”
in general

In sensibility, there is my intuition of a particular thing in space and time (like the book) and my
intuition of space and time as such (my acquaintance with what space and time are like in
general). In understanding, there is my concept of some type of thing (books) and my concept of
a “thing” as such (substance).

Space and substance

Space is an a priori intuition. In order to learn about things outside of me, I need to know that
they are outside of me.

Kant then turns to proving the existence of a priori concepts, such as substance.

 Variation concerns the properties that things have: for instance, a tree’s leaves may be
green or brown.

 Change is what the tree does: the same tree changes its leaves from green to brown.

To make this distinction is already to use the notion of substance: the tree (as substance)
changes, but the leaves (as the properties of substance) vary.

Time cannot be directly experienced (it is not a thing); rather, we experience time through
things that alter or do not alter, as Kant has already shown.

The limits of knowledge

A philosophical position that asserts that some state or activity of the mind is prior to and more
fundamental than things we experience is called idealism, and Kant calls his own position
“transcendental idealism.

 Phenomenal world: He insists that space, time, and certain concepts are features of the
world we experience

 Noumenal world: Rather than features of the world itself considered separately from
experience

Kant’s claims about a priori knowledge have both positive and negative consequences.

The positive consequence is that the a priori nature of space, time, and certain concepts is what
makes our experience of the world possible and reliable.

On the negative side, certain types of thinking call themselves science and even resemble
science, but fail utterly. This is because they apply to things-in-themselves intuitions about space
and time, or concepts such as substance— which according to Kant must be valid for experience,
but have no validity with respect to things-inthemselves.

Transcendental idealism gives us a much more radical way of understanding the distinction
between ourselves and the external world. What is external to me is interpreted as not just
external to me in space, but external to space itself (and to time, and to all the a priori concepts
that make my experience of the world possible).

And there are two worlds:

 The “world” of experience, which includes both my thoughts and feelings, and also
includes experience of material things such as my body, or books

 The “world” of things-in-themselves, which is precisely not experienced and so not in

any sense known, and which we must constantly strive to avoid fooling ourselves about.

Lasting influence

Kant argues that our experience of the world always involves both, so it is frequently said that
Kant combined rationalism and empiricism.

The fact that Kant locates the a priori even within our intuitions of the world was important for
20th-century

Rationalism Empiricism Transcendental idealism

The rationalists believed that
the use of reason, rather
than experience, leads to
knowledge of objects in the
world.
The empiricists believed that
knowledge comes from our
experience of objects in the
world, rather than our
reason.
Kant’s theory of
transcendental idealism
stated that both reason and
experience were necessary to
understand the world