The red thread through both texts is
the quest for a definition of knowledge. While Plato’s Theaetetus dialogue does not reach a conclusion on what knowledge
is, it reaches conclusions on what knowledge is not. In the text Theaetetus
proposes to Socrates that knowledge is sense perception. However, if knowledge
is perception, then how can knowledge be detained for example if one would
close their eyes and ears? Having memory of what is known proves that
perception cannot be knowledge since we can know something even when we do not
perceive it.
In more recent times, Immanuel Kant
wrote his Critique of Pure Reason, which also strives to learn something new
about the nature of knowledge. Kant relates a distinction between two types of
knowledge: a priori knowledge, which
is a form of universal knowledge independent of our experiences, such as
knowledge of mathematics, and a
posteriori knowledge, which is knowledge we gain from experience, such as
the taste of sugar. A posteriori knowledge is closely related to empiricism, concepts formed from our
experiences.
When Kant states that we must turn
around and stop assuming that our cognition must conform to objects and instead
assume that objects conform to our cognition, I believe he means that our
sensory perceptions of the external reality need to be understood as being
translated by our minds. That objects in the external reality cannot be perceived
in an absolute way no matter how much we try, they will always be distorted in
some way by the mind based on our previous experiences. To get some true
information about these objects from the external reality, we need to know how
our cognition translates the information we perceive.
It is Kant’s belief that to reach
new knowledge in the field of metaphysics, the science beyond the senses, we must approach knowledge from a
new perspective where we instead focus on how the mind treats the information
we receive through our senses. This relates very much to Socrates dissection of
knowledge in Theaetetus where he states that we do not see “with”, but instead “through”
the eyes and ears. I think this goes along the lines of Kant’s reasoning where
we acknowledge that sensory perception is inseparable with our cognition and
that we cannot perceive anything without in some way shaping it in our mind.
This is related to empiricism because our mind shapes the information we receive
from our senses based on our previous experience, the a posteriori knowledge.
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