Class synopsis 3/14

In class Monday we continued discussing Kant. We started off by discussing how Kant was not strict on either rationalism or empiricism, but said that there must be a balance of both. This was referred as the overcoming of dichotomy. Part of Kant's philosophy is that the mind is an actively involved.

We also discussed the two main questions Kant posed: "Is it possible to know what is ultimately real" and "Is Metaphysics even possible". To put these two questions into one, Kant asks "Are synthetic, a priori judgements about noumena possible?". He answered this in looking at what that means in three ways. The first way was the aspects of reality, or noumena vs. phenomena. The thing itself vs. how it appears. The second way was ways of knowing, apriori vs. a posteri. Without experience vs. through experience, and is it possible to know reality without experience. Dr. Layne explained it that a posteri is based upon experience, how things appear or noumena, so if we want to have knowledge of noumena it must be a priori. The thrid way which was kinds of propositions, synthetic vs. analytic. The example given was how the statement "pen is red" synthesizes two different concepts and therefore is informative and in contrast the statement "a bachelor is an unmarried man" is the same concept expressed two different ways so nothing is learned.

Someone then asked if Kant ever answered is question can we get to Noumena, which the answer is no. That led us into Kant's Categories of Perception, which is what we answer instead of getting noumena. According to Kant we only experience the world through a particular group of categories: time and space. Even if we think of a place without these two they still exist and are experienced in our mind therefore they must be something constructed by our mind. Another category is cause/effect, where Kant agreed with Hume in that we never directly experience cause & effect.