Immanuel Kant

1
Immanuel Kant

• 1.Background
• 2. The Critical Philosophy

2
Germany before the French Revolution

• From early Renaissance, southern Germany had been
  mining center of the continent.
• Central Germany the early center of Printing
  industry and watch and fine instrument
  manufacture.
• In spite of commerce along some of the rivers and
  sea coast Germany especially northern and
  eastern Germany primarily a food producing region
  predominantly rural.

3
German Higher education in 18th century

• Decentralized significant fraction of the 300
  different political units (governed by princes)
  have higher educational institutions but except
  for a very few underfunded, small, dominated by
  Cameral sciences -- i.e. political economy, law
  to train government officials
• Small including Goettingen, Konigsberg, Jena,
  later, Berlin, are larger and become dominated by
  more traditional philosophy faculties

4
Immanuel Kant (1724-1803)

• There is a tradition of education interested in
  technological issues in Germany during the 18th
  C but In their mature works neither Kant nor
  Goethe show any interest in it they initiate a
  purely academic tradition. I will be
  concentrating on this tradition because of long
  term significance may not have been numerically
  dominant at any time in fact probably was not.
• Into 21st century Germany still has 2 tier
  educational system Technishe hochschulen
  Universities students Tracked as early as our
  middle schools.

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Kants Early Career

• Studies Newtonian Natural philosophy
• In 1740s 50s publishes primarily in mechanics
  and cosmology A General Natural History of the
  Heavens (1755) first evolutionary theory in
  cosmology --sees development over time.
• Also interested in broad issues in philosophy of
  science mathematics
• Rationalist notion of science taken from
  Leibniz and others

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Kantian notion of science

• From older tradition comes notion that scientific
  knowledge should possess apodictic i.e.
  absolute certainty.
• In a way a reversion to obsolete vision except
  still held by some French advocates of rational
  mechanics. i.e. Lagrange
• Works with Leibnizian logical dichotomies
• Analytic vs Synthetic
• A-priori vs A-posteriori

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Kantian science -2

• Kant admits Humes claim that a-posteriori claims
  can never be certain (the problem of induction).
• At the same time he admits that analytic
  statements cannot add to our knowledge.
• So if scientific statements exist they must be
  both a-priori and synthetic. Kant says that he
  can produce at least 2 from geometry and the
  universal law of gravitation.

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Kant-Science-3

• In The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and The
  Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783) Kant
  seeks to understand the conditions under which
  a-priori, synthetic knowledge might exist.
• He concludes that the necessary conditions are
  that are minds must contribute something in the
  construction of natural knowledge that adds to
  the pure existence of things-in-themselves.
• First, our faculty of sensibility or intuition,
  which provides the raw materials for scientific
  knowledge, structures our experiences or
  perceptions in certain ways in particular it
  organizes external appearances spatially and
  internal experiences sequentially we say
  temporally. Space and time might not be
  features of the world which exist independent of
  our experiences of it indeed relativity theory
  says that space time are not independent of one
  another but Kantians, probably correctly, would
  argue that we cannot experience space and time
  except as separately.
• Use Gunther Stent Frog vision analogy

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Kant Science -4

• The faculty of cognition or understanding
  stipulates both the logical forms of
  relationships among concepts and the categories.
• i.e. relationships must be non-contradictory if
  true, they cannot also be false.
• 12 categories of experience include existence,
  substance, cause, etc.
• Because the mind structures experience The
  understanding does not extract its laws from, but
  prescribes them to, nature.

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Kantian (largely unintended) encouragement of
subjective element in science

• Note Kant does not argue for a role for
  individual variation in experience or for
  cultural concerns his notion of subjectivity
  limited to what is common to all humans.
• Others extend the warrant to impose our thoughts
  on nature in a variety of ways i.e. William
  Rowan Hamilton -- Kantian influence very strong
  Algebra as the science of pure time, geometry
  as the science of pure space, attempt to
  integrate them through 4 dimensional Quaternion
  system combining spatial and temporal elements.

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Kant relation between phenomenal and noumenal
worlds

• Because phenomena must be experienced as causal
• and
• Because our internal experience (which involves
  morality and religion) includes freedom
• It must be true that moral and religious
  experience is independent of phenomena
• So science and religion can neither support one
  another nor contradict one another.

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Kant on the dynamical nature of matter

• Metaphysical foundations of natural philosophy
  (1785)
• Matter defined by resistance to penetration (i.e.
  repulsive force)
• Attractive forces must also exist or matter would
  disburse to infinity
• No other kinds of force can be demonstrated
• So all forces are manifestations of attraction
  and repulsion

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A related dynamical theory of matter
14
Back to the problems of unification

• Discomfort over separation of phenomenal and
  noumenal worlds leads to varieties of German
  Idealist (first) and Materialist (later)
  philosophies.
• Discomfort over separation between natural
  science (dynamics) and empirical forms of natural
  knowledge Discussed in Critique of Judgment
  (1790)

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Purposiveness --Teleology

• No a-priori way to unify experiences (George
  Berkeleys problem)
• Faculty of judgment imposes a subjective unity
  not needed to make experience possible, as
  faculties of sensation and cognition are but
  necessary to integrate experience into a unified
  whole (cosmos, not chaos) so has a regulative
  function.
• Uses notion of purposiveness or design so all
  things work together.

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Kant life sciences

• Two kinds of purposiveness external (how
  machines come about the way elements of an
  artistic whole are integrated by the artist) --
  internal, which is how Kant insists living
  entities must be understood.
• One formulation organisms must be understood as
  both ends and means, or any organism is both
  cause and effect of itself. (4-15)
• The Bildungstrieb and persistence (not origin)
  of vitalism in German Life Sciences