Epistemology: Kant II

1
Epistemology Kant (II)

• Introduction to Philosophy
• Weber State University
• Spring 2007

2
Are the Categories separable from sense
experience?

• No, they cannot be used apart from sensible
  intuitions to give us knowledge of objects
  because the Categories are merely forms of
  thought.

3
A Comparison

• One may compare the Categories to mathematical
  functions, e.g., x2
• Until some number is given for x, we have no
  object.
• If a content for x is supplied, say 2 or 3, then
  an object is specified in these cases the
  numbers 4 or 9.
• The x is an operator, the function of which is to
  unite in one consciousness the manifold given in
  intuition.

4
How do we know that x is an object?

• If a certain manifold of sensations is given, our
  possession of the concept substance allows us
  to produce the thought of a book.
• A different manifold of sensations produces the
  thought of a printing press.
• And the category of causation allows us to
  think a causal relation between the two.
• Objects, thus, are the result of the application
  of the categories as operators to some sensible
  material.

5
Avoiding Illusions

• A concept is just a formal rule for structuring
  some material.
• The material is supplied by our intuitions.
• Without sensible intuitions, there are no
  objects.
• If it seems as though there could be objects,
  this is an illusion.

6
How so?

• For example, the category of substance is not
  inherently limited to the objects of sensory
  experience or to space and time.
• It seems we can have the idea of a nonmaterial,
  nonspatial, nontemporal substance.
• But this, according to Kant, is profoundly
  illusory because the concept substance is not a
  complete concept in its own right. It is only a
  kind of rule for organizing some content or
  other.

7
Phenomenon v. Noumenon

• Phenomenon the way that things appear to us.
• Noumenon something as it is in itself.

8
The Noumenon is purely illusory

• We cannot know the way things are in themselves
  apart from the way they appear to us.
• The concept of noumenon has negative meaning, in
  that, it reminds us that there are things we
  cannot know namely what the things affecting
  our sensibility are really like (if by really
  we mean what they are like independently of our
  intuitions of them).

9
Kants System

• Understanding and sensibility, with us, can
  determine objects only when they are employed in
  conjunction. When we separate them, we have
  intuitions without concepts, or concepts without
  intuitions in both cases, representations which
  we are not in a position to apply to any
  determinate object. (CPR, 274)