Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: Transcendental Idealism



Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: Transcendental Idealism

Kant—

▪ attempts to explain which aspects of our knowledge are a priori and which are a posteriori

▪ “. . . though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience.”

2 Aspects of Knowledge:

1. content—a posteriori knowledge: received by the mind in experience

2. form—a priori knowledge: imposed by the mind on experience

Content—sense-data: colors, sounds, smells, tastes, touch

Form—spatiality, temporality, causality, objecthood, unity of

consciousness, “categories of understanding” (e.g., quality,

quantity, identity)

“Copernican revolution in knowledge”—With respect to knowledge, the

world conforms to the mind and not vice-versa.

Kant attempts to avoid Hume’s skepticism in the following respects:

▪ The mind is an active participant in the knowing process rather than a passive recipient of sense-data

▪ The mind actively orders and organizes our sense-experience in accordance with a priori concepts and categories—time, space, causality, etc.

▪ The self, causality, ordinary objects are aspects of the mind’s ordering and organizing of our experience.

Noumena and Phenomena:

▪ Noumena—“things in themselves,” the world “behind” our experience, cannot be known

▪ Phenomena—things as they occur in our experience, consists both form and content, can be known

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