“Perception without conception is blind. Conception without perception is empty”
These are my reflections from the first seminar:
I had a hard time understanding the text Critique of Pure Reason in the beginning. After the lecture and seminar with Johan, Kant’s text became more clear, and it also became more clear what kind of knowledge the text was about. I think at first, I had a very vague understanding about knowledge, "Well, it is something that you know, can learn, can perceive etc" I thought, and nothing more to it. My thoughts were similar to Theaetetus thoughts in Plato's text. Knowledge is, science, geometry and making shoes. "Ok, smart guy, I can agree with that" I thought. But it turns out that knowledge is so much more..
In the seminar we focused on Kant’s text and we discussed the difference between synthetic and analytic judgements. The analytic judgement is a priori, where the knowledge in independent of experience, ie. “every body has extension” while synthetic judgement is a posteriori, which means that the truth can only be gained by investigating if something is true. Kant asks himself How is it possible to gain knowledge about the world a priori? His conclusion is that it’s impossible. But! He discusses: Let us assume that our faculties of knowledge do not conform to objects, but that objects conform to our faculties of knowledge. With this he means, that we can not know anything about the world in itself. We only know the representation of the world and you cannot gain experience about it objectively. But what we do know, is the inherent knowledge of the world. For example, if it’s raining outside, we know there is a possibility that it could not be raining. But to understand that it is raining outside we need to be aware of the time and space, and our forms of intuition. Another example Johan brought up at the seminar was that if I see a book, and it is black. That is not enough sense to actually know anything about the book. The book has to have certain form including ie. other qualities. The book is just a substance with different qualities, but the form has to be there. Johan said that the perception has to be formed, structured in a certain way and that we know nothing about the object, in itself. Kant was an empirical realist and transcendental realist. The transcendentalism allows the subject to be fully aware of all the limitations in their mind. One may then adapt their cognition to understand things. And get knowledge about how the world actually exists.
In the seminar we focused on Kant’s text and we discussed the difference between synthetic and analytic judgements. The analytic judgement is a priori, where the knowledge in independent of experience, ie. “every body has extension” while synthetic judgement is a posteriori, which means that the truth can only be gained by investigating if something is true. Kant asks himself How is it possible to gain knowledge about the world a priori? His conclusion is that it’s impossible. But! He discusses: Let us assume that our faculties of knowledge do not conform to objects, but that objects conform to our faculties of knowledge. With this he means, that we can not know anything about the world in itself. We only know the representation of the world and you cannot gain experience about it objectively. But what we do know, is the inherent knowledge of the world. For example, if it’s raining outside, we know there is a possibility that it could not be raining. But to understand that it is raining outside we need to be aware of the time and space, and our forms of intuition. Another example Johan brought up at the seminar was that if I see a book, and it is black. That is not enough sense to actually know anything about the book. The book has to have certain form including ie. other qualities. The book is just a substance with different qualities, but the form has to be there. Johan said that the perception has to be formed, structured in a certain way and that we know nothing about the object, in itself. Kant was an empirical realist and transcendental realist. The transcendentalism allows the subject to be fully aware of all the limitations in their mind. One may then adapt their cognition to understand things. And get knowledge about how the world actually exists.
Later on, we discussed Plato’s text and Socrates argument that we do not see with our senses but through our senses. The similarity between Kant and Socrates argument is that knowledge is perception. We discussed if an infant could see through its eyes and perceive its surroundings. We discussed that maybe a baby can see but not look, and with their hearing, they can hear, but not listen. I think that the eyes are still just a tool to help you perceive things, but being aware and interpret what you see, comes from your mind and conscious. There are twelve categories of understanding and probably your mind arrange what you see, in a particular category. And that is how you understand the things you see. We also discussed how a baby could feel hunger if they do not perceive senses. I think that due to our ancestors we have inherent the sense of survival, and that we need food to survive. So even if a baby do not know he/she is hungry, its body longs for food, to survive.
Hej
SvaraRaderaJag får intrycket att du tyckte det var en givande och lärorikt diskussion. Roligt att texterna blev mer begripliga efteråt.
Leif
Hi Hannah,
SvaraRaderaWe also discussed weather a child can see or not for a long time during the seminar. If I remember it right we ended up that discussing stating that babies "can hear but that can't listen". But in the same time I agree with you. I also believe that human beings have inherent the sense of survival and congenital needs and therefor a baby know when its hungry.
Interesting thought about feelings in a baby. In my reflection I talked about if a baby really sees if he doesn't know what he sees. Is he really seeing then? But your example with instincts is interesting because babies have reflexes like taking the mothers breast, grab a finger, close the nose under water and so on. So maybe we are "programmed" already before we are born. So then how much of our experiences and actions are real and how much is instincts? Are some of our feelings and actions programmed inside of us?
SvaraRaderaHi very good reflection you have there, I know that understanding this topic is not an easy task, however I notice how you managed to understand the main topics of different authors. For me, Kant was the most difficult to understand and I had to read the text several times to get a better idea of what he wanted to transmit and apparently we both understand (at least I think so).
SvaraRaderaI find it very interesting to think about as newborns perceive things and the world, and specially your reflection of how exist a possibility that due to our ancestors we have inherent senses of survival. It's a different way to understand how an infant percieve the world, I am not an expert on the subject but it sounds logical your thinking and it is possible that from the moment of our birth and we inherited some "knowledge" related to our survival instincts .
Isaac Rondon