Immanuel Kant

Kant
Rationalism & Empiricism
1724 - 1804

General

* Born in Konisbourg and never left during his lifetime.
* He had a very strict routine by which locals could set their watches by.
* Considered bright and dapper, he never ate alone. However, despite being a brilliant lecturer and good conversationalist, he was an appalling writer who was nearly impossible to understand.
* His key works, although highly original, they were very difficult to understand
- Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
- Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
- Critique of Judgement (1790)
- Fundamental Principle of Metaphysics of Ethics (1785)

How do we know?

• Most believed the greatest significant limit on what we can knowis wha there is available to us to be perceived.
• Kant argued like Locke, believing that it was also subjet to our 'bodily apparatus', which were the brain as well as the five senses and our nervous system.
• This meant we were also limited by what we are able to apprehend.
• It also means that the nature of this apparatus limits itself. Ie: an eye cannot hear or a tongue listen.
• If we do not have the means of detecting something we will remain ignorant of it's existence. Therefore as far as we know anything can exist only we have no way to know whether it does or not.
• He argued that ther were two limits therefore:
1. what exists
2. our bodily apparatus
• He said that what we experience is not necessarily the same as what does exist independently of us and that what is delivered to us by our consciousness is a representation of the products of our apparatus' functions. Therefore there is a difference between what there is (reality) and what we are feeling/seeing. Ie. 'Ce n'est pas une pipe'
• He also said that objects exist only exist in the apparatus therefore cannot be 'like' other objects as this means they are independent of experience (no synaesthesia). This also meant that everything was subject dependent and no matter how detailed the description it was NOT the thing itself.
• This he called the phenomenal world.

Order out of Chaos

• Kant believed that the world was not chaotic or jumbled but was made up of lots of different orders.
• He believed objects existed side by side in 3D space and all attracted one another in accordance with gravity. Then then said that movements and processes took place in the 4th Dimension of time.
• He said MOST are causally connected and therefore interact in an orderly/predictable ways which are expressible via maths.
• Therefore he said it was fundamental of our world that material objects exist in a causal manner within the space-time framework.
• He said we cannot conceive of anything specific as existing without its being.
• Thus there are CATAGORIES OF UNDERSTANDING as we cannot conceive with causes which are needed for us to understand anything. But also we cannot conceive of an object as existing other than in space.
• Space and Time are forms of out sensibilities and thus the framework of what is intelligible to out senses.

NB. CHARACTERISTICS OF EXPERIENCE are not categories of things are they exist independently of being experienced.

Familiar Ideas

• Kant said that religious context makes ideas easier to grasp as they are already familiar.
• The idea that the material world is not the only world is a factor present in most religions and this second level of reality is outside space and time. This was important to acknowledge because we as humans can only experience the first of these levels not the second (or any others)
• This grounds the whole of these arguments in philosophical and rational arguments without positing a God, soul or any appeal to faith. Thus a non-religious person with no belief in God or the soul could regard himself as having good reasons for believing in it.
• He believed that the fundamentals of religion could be proved true through rational argument alone. Notably he said that 'It is thoroughly necessary to be convinced of God's existence, it is not quite so necessary that one should demonstrate it.'

Problems with Free Will

• Kant believed that the key to knowledge and to understanding the material world was SCIENCE. All the constitution and movement of material objects has been placed into our hands, therefore, by science. This meant that we could come to a state of complete knowledge.
• PROBLEM: we as human being are material beings existing in time and space so are our movements entirely subject to scientific laws? If we are then there can be no free will.
• Kant said that we DO have free will and that it is demonstrable. This is because he said that these acts of free will did not take place in the phenomenal world where scientific laws applied but in the noumenal world to which scientific understanding cannot reach.
• Actual demonstration was not a demonstration at all. The mere fact that we cannot accept that we do no have free will proves it for us.
• It is an empirical fact that we have moral concepts such as what is 'good' and 'right' and what we 'ought' to do, as well as moral convictions and that we cannot disregard these convictions even when we try to or want to.
• For these convictions to have any content, meaning or application then we must have a choice whether or not to do something.
• It that choice did not exist then it would be false to say we have a choice at all. Therefore morality would be an empty illusion and to recommend a choice of action would be meaningless.

The Basis of Ethics

• Determinism as applied to humans means to be committed to consequence.
• But it is impossible to be determinist as it is impossible not to feel outrage or unhappiness at being treated badly or brutally.
• Thus we cannot but believe in free will, even if only sometimes.
• This means that therefore some movements of material objects in space are not determined by science.
• This also means that we cannot argue that only the empirical world exists.
• Kant's philosophy is mostly to do with reconciling this concept that there are two realms, the one for morality and the one of science.
• Morality he thus argued can only be possible for rational creatures as only those that are capable of understanding reasons for and against doing something can conceive the notion of moral and immoral.
• A VALID reason for a moral action rather than an immoral action is UNIVERSAL, he said, as morality is not a matter of taste despite differing in judgements.
o It is not valid for a boy say he can shoot a man because he was sleeping on his doorstep if he says another boy cannot shoot a man for sleeping on his doorstep.
o If it is right for one then it must be right for another person in the same circumstances.
• This means that just as the empirical world is governed by scientific laws that have universal application so do moral laws.
• These considerations lead to Kant's CATEGORICAL IMPERITIVE as the fundamental rule for morality.

Act only according to maxims which you can will also to be universal laws.

Proof of God?

• Kant's arguments say we cannot know for certain anything incomprehensible to our bodily apparatus.
• This means that we can have no knowledge of God because our apparatus can give us no apprehension for Him.
• But it does not rule him out on says we CANNOT be certain.
• He demolished 'proofs' for God though said he could never be proved or disproved.