You Kant Comprehend Objects

Immanuel Kant, like many other great philosophers throughout history, philosophized on the connection between the mind and the physical world.  The avenues for obtaining knowledge have always faced critical review from the philosophical community.  Experience played a critical role in all past theories on knowledge and continues to remain central in current and likely future discussions.  The issue that arose with experience, as skeptics have pointed out, was that personal experience was subjective to the person gaining said experience.  There was and is a fundamental disconnect between one’s own mind and the thoughts of any other human being.  It was impossible to confirm that an individual’s perception of the world matched perfectly or similarly with the perception of the other members of society.  Disconnection in individual human experience presented a great challenge to the acceptance of experience as the core method of obtaining knowledge.  Nonskeptical philosophers, such as Kant, sought theories that would circumvent the problems with shared human experience.  In 1781, Kant published The Critique of Pure Reason, which would go on to become one of the most influential philosophical texts in history.  Kant theorized in his text that the attainment of new knowledge required the use of a priori concepts applied to individual perceptions and experiences.  Reasoning deduced from a priori knowledge led Kant to the conclusion that all experiences were simply appearances shaped by the human mind, including the concepts of space and time.

The controversial theory, termed transcendental idealism, was a central component of The Critique of Pure Reason.  In order to better analyze Kant’s thesis, it was important to properly conceptualize transcendental discussions.  The general concept for such theories involves a basic two item statement.  One item was stated as conditional for the existence or truth of the second item, for example, gravity was conditional to the existence of weight.  The philosopher may then infer that if weight indeed existed, then gravity, as a necessary condition for weight, exists as well.  Although various philosophers had made claims in a fashion similar to the transcendental style, Kant was generally credited with creating the central examples of this specific type of argument (Robert).  Transcendental arguments were used to refute skeptical claims about knowledge, and questions about a person’s ability to attain knowledge at all.  The second claim in the argument was associated with a topic that was expected to be generally accepted.  Thus when a skeptic wished to question the first claim, the accepted second claim would deny the attempted skeptical examination of the first (Robert).  Transcendental claims were turned into arguments that were expected to be effective in protecting nonskeptical claims about knowledge.

Kant used the general style of the transcendental argument to construct his theory defining the visceral world as a purely appearance-based landscape.  Philosophers had long struggled with proofs for the existence of the external world.  This often left philosophers and scholars alike with the acceptance of external objects based not on logic but on faith.  Kant had never been a supporter of such acceptance, and stated that “it was a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us… should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof” (Robert).  Idealism on the subject came from scholars like Descartes, who was skeptical as to the existence of external objects in general, and felt that proof of such existence was outside the scope of philosophical thinking.  Descartes style of idealism took for granted the real nature of mental states, and that these states followed a specific order in time (Robert).  Kant wished to expand the acceptance of mental states into a proof of the existence of the external world.  He saw a person’s awareness of the progression of time, at least mentally, as irrefutable proof that experiences followed a temporal order.  Kant used the a priori awareness of permanence, in combination with the acceptance of temporal thinking, to prove that one’s experiences in an external world are real since permanence was not an inherent quality of the self and could not come from prior awareness.

Although Kant believes that peoples’ experiences in the world were real, he argued that these experiences were wholly subjective to the subject.  He thus stated that all experiences were mere appearances, shaped by the individual human mind and that even the time he used in his previous proof was subjective to human thought.  Kant believed that while the external world existed, the human concept of time and objects would be entirely different without the existence of the human mind.  The thought process removed all objects in the traditional sense and stated that intuition “is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us” (Rohlf).  Kant theorized that without the human mind and thoughts, the concepts of space and time would cease to exist, at least in the sense that we interpret and understand them.  Although he believed that space and time were simply expansions of human intuition, he stated that they were “empirically real, which means that “everything that can come before us externally as an object” is in both space and time” (Rohlf).  Objects were seen to exist in space and time despite the fact that space and time were purely subjective concepts.  Kant’s statements on space and time were difficult to interpret and gave rise to various conclusions based off of his writings.

The central interpretation during Kant’s time was the two-objects interpretation.  Two forms of an object existed, one that was shaped purely by human interpretation, aka the appearance, and one that truly existed in the world outside of human interaction.  Although the two objects interpretation was the most widely understood during Kant’s time, it was also the easiest to critique.  Many concepts utilized in Kant’s arguments suffered from a lack of clarity and sometimes appeared to overlap in terms of their ability to prove various concepts.  Kant used transcendental concepts, such as their existence in space and time, to prove the existence of objects.  Problems arose with the interpretation since Kant’s transcendental idealism stated that space and time were themselves purely subjective concepts.  The progression of time was a priori knowledge, while simultaneously being a subjective interpretation.  Without the human understanding of space and time, it was hard to conceptualize how the world would progress in such a way as to allow the correct interpretation of external objects in that time like item.  Even granting that Kant proved that objects do in fact exist in the external world did not solve all issues with such confusing overlaps.  

Intuition was thrown into question within Kant’s theories, as he formulated that human intuitions about the external world were appearances, and were thus subjective like all other human experiences with the external world.  Here wording and the understanding of language came into question.  It was hard to accept a priori truths without the existence of human intuition as an item that could be attributed to all people, as a priori was strikingly close to intuitive in terms of meaning.  The grounding for Kant’s proof of external objects came from a priori truths about those objects continued existence in the now undefined space and time concept.  With intuition being subjected to the interpretations of all people, it was difficult to understand how external objects could exist outside of human interpretation.  The proof for real empirical objects in the world was derived from the use of a priori yet personal truths.  On the fundamental level, there was confusion over how a person could only understand the appearances of objects, yet somehow know that they existed absent from subjective interpretation.  The issue was summarized by Jacobi, who stated that “without that presupposition [of things in themselves] I could not enter into the system, but with it I could not stay within it” (Jacobi 1787, 336)” (Rohlf).  The distinction between acceptable use of intuition and the point at which all objects were appearances was quite difficult to define.

Although various discussions arose over the applicability of Kant’s theory, the arguments did not necessarily remove all meaning from his postulations.  The raw concept of human interpretation being the cause of objects as appearances in the external world did not seem wholly unacceptable.  It was beneficial to attempt to interpret the attainment of knowledge with consideration of the fact that it was impossible to gain direct access into the mind of another person.  In some way, one’s own subjective nature must shape the world in which they live.  If all humans utilized conceptualized the objects of the world in exactly the same way then disagreements simply would not exist.  With respect to the language, a priori was interpreted to be different from intuitive, despite similarities.  Thus it was possible for Kant to better prop up his proof of the existence of external objects that existed outside of human conception of the world.  The use of a priori knowledge was supported by their perceived necessity in understanding objects.  While the acceptance of the system may be subject to criticism, Kant focused on the application of the system to the understanding of real objects (Watson).  A priori knowledge was a given, and not meant to be argued in conjunction with the other facets of Kant’s theory.  The preservation of the a priori concept at least saves some of the foundations for the rest of Kant’s interpretations on subjective experience and the reality of external objects.

Although Kant believed that human experiences were real, his transcendental idealism theorized that said experiences only granted the subject with individual appearances of objects in the real world.  Kant believed that empirical objects existed in the external world and that humans could attain the knowledge that such objects were truly there.  At the same time, Kant’s theory stated that each person’s interpretations of those objects would be completely subjective.  Thus the objects and experiences of each individual would simply be appearances of the objects that actually existed in the real world, should all human conception of them be removed.  The overarching principles and their general interpretations in the philosophical community came under heavy fire.  Counter-arguments centered on the perceived disconnect between the ability for humans to know objects existed while simultaneously being unable to conceptualize them in anything but a subjective manner.  Despite such accusations, Kant’s theory put forth various understandable postulations about the transformation of a priori truths into real knowledge.  Kant’s writings on the subject were both highly reviewed and criticized, a strong point toward their value in thinking about such difficult philosophical concepts. 

Works Cited

Stern, Robert, "Transcendental Arguments", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Web. 17 Mar 2013 <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/transcendental-arguments/>.

Rohlf, Michael. "Immanuel Kant." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2010): n.pag. Web. 17 Mar 2013. <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/kant/

Watson, John. The Philosophy of Kant Explained. Glasgow: Publishers to the University, 1908. Web. <http://books.google.com/books?id=u2kRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover