måndag 14 september 2015

Post-seminar - Theme 1

For this first seminar I prepared of course by reding all the reading material, and by reading other works about the material since it didn't always feel evident what information was relevant in the texts. I also attended the lecture which I thought gave a lot of clarification both by putting the texts into a context that made more sense (more sense than simply the name of the theme gave) and by highlighting the important concepts as well as the progress that these texts gave our conception of knowledge.

I felt that I got the most out of this theme in the seminar though. We went through Kant’s reflections in the excerpt of A Critique of Pure Reason very thoroughly and though I felt like I understood most of the important concepts before the seminar, I got out a lot more of it in the seminar.

We discussed synthesized a priori knowledge like the knowledge of maths and how you don’t have to test that 1 + 1 = 2, you can now that that will always be true once you understand the concept of maths. Based on that we started discussing in what way you learn these, and touched upon the categories that Kant described as universal for all people and how we use them to gain knowledge. These categories are the fundamental properties by which we gain knowledge. All people have these a priori knowledge according to Kant.

We did not touch much upon Theaetetus as we saw much more value in Kant’s A Critique of Pure Reason than we did in Theaetetus. In the seminar however, we touched upon how we see the world “through the eyes” rather than “with the eyes” as Socrates states in Theaetetus. That is we cannot perceive the world objectively, our perception will always be be colored by the mind. Our faculties of knowledge limits us from perceving the world objectively. However it is Kant’s belief that we can gain objective knowledge of the external reality, but only by trying to understand how our faculties of knowledge work. This is where Kant’s categories come into place, these are the tools we use to gain knowledge.

One point I think is very interesting which was brought up in the seminar was that truly objective knowledge would be perceiving the world from “God’s point of view”. God’s point of view would be that of complete perception of the external reality and of complete understanding of what is there, i.e. complete a posteriori knowledge. In this way we would perceive the world exactly as it is, but for us that is impossible. We are limited both by our senses and our mind.

9 kommentarer:

  1. Hi Anton,
    thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts! I really enjoyed reading both of your blog posts. You made it very clear and explained it in a very structured way. Regarding the discussion during the seminar, have you considered Kant questioned how knowledge could be structured and not where knowledge might come from? Great Job!

    SvaraRadera
  2. Nice discussion on Kant's theory about knowledge. Your reflection of the seminar was neat and clearly written. Your thoughts on objective knowledge and apriori does inspires me. Good job!

    SvaraRadera
  3. I think your blogposts of the week have been intresting. I think Kant's categories are really instresting, because the claim is that everyone has it. But maybe not in the exacly same way I'm thinking about what you ahve written about 1+1=2 we know it for sure but when it comes to more difficult things everyone can't solve it in the same way but when we apply concepts we can solve it. In other words we in some way learn how to apply these categories..

    SvaraRadera
  4. I really like the structure of your two blog posts and your analytical approach to the subject. You succeeded in explaining me the difficult definition of Kant and Plato and even underlined the connection between these philosophers and their timely deferred theories, something I found particularly difficult. I especially like that you brought up various examples to underline your trains of thought.
    Don't you also think it is crazy that these philosophers wrote such influential texts leaving room for so much discussion and interpretation for millennia after - even as early as 369 B.C.?!

    SvaraRadera
  5. Hi!
    Great blog posts on the first theme, it’s been a real pleasure taking part in your thought process and development in the area! I agree with you that the best way to tackle this sort of philosophical subject, at least for me who’s a newbie, is to actively take part in real discussions (i.e. the seminar) as opposed to simply read texts. Thus I too learned most during this theme from the seminar. You provide a beautiful link between the two texts by Plato and Kant when you discuss Socrates’ statement of perceiving through the eyes rather than with them, and Kant’s notion of our faculties of knowledge limiting us from perceiving the world objectively. However, is it truly so that Kant believes that one can gain “objective knowledge” from understanding our faculties of knowledge? That surely depends on how one would define objectivity though I guess. Since we perceive everything through our faculties of knowledge, which we retrieve from experience, gaining “objective knowledge” would presume that it is objective with a standpoint in these faculties - and not “truly” objective in the sense that they have no a posteriori properties. For instance, to truly gain objective knowledge, one would need to elevate into some sort of deity which could surpass the faculties of knowledge and thereby have a truly uncluttered mind. This you mention in the conclusion of your second post on the theme, though I would’ve liked to see how you attach this reasoning to the notion of Kant’s belief that there exists objective knowledge amongst us humans!

    Great text and a very interesting discussion! Keep up the good work.

    SvaraRadera
  6. Hi Anton!
    Very interesting to read your thoughts on the theme - good job! I especially found the part about truly objective knowledge interesting - knowledge from "God's point of view". I guess this knowledge would be a priori though? I mean, God didn't experience - he just created.
    Keep up the good job!

    SvaraRadera
  7. Hi Anton! Great blog post! I enjoyed how you linked Plato's Theaetetus and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I also liked your quote from Kant's perspective "Our faculties of knowledge limits us from perceiving the world objectively" - I think you great promise and that you understood the texts from theme 1. Looking forward to reading more blog posts from you!

    SvaraRadera
  8. Hi!
    Nice reflection on this theme! I think you did a smart thing by reading the text and then turning to other sources since there were a lot of hard concepts to understand.
    You explain and connect Plato and Kants text in a good way, especially when you connect it to when Kants categories fall into use. It's easy to follow your thoughts and development after this theme. Keep up the good work!

    SvaraRadera