Transcript Kantian Constructivism - College of the Redwoods

Kantian Constructivism
So Far
Rationalism
Plato, Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibniz.
Empiricism
Locke & Berkeley.
Knowledge about
the world comes
primarily as a
priori knowledge.
Knowledge about
the world comes
primarily as a
posteriori
knowledge.
Thingness
(substance),
identity, self,
sameness, etc.
Primary &
secondary
qualities, esse est
percipi, etc.
Skepticism
Hume.
We don’t have knowledge
about the world, only
knowledge about our
experiences.
Analytic statements are
trivial, synthetic
statements are impossible
to verify, cause and effect
is unjustifiable, self is
illusory, etc.
Kant
“Though all our
Knowledge does not
knowledge begins with conform to its objects.
experience, it does not
follow that is all arises
Objects conform to
out of experiences.”
our knowledge.
The mind constructs
objects out of the
materials provided by
the senses.
The cat is on the
mat.
Can we observe
space/time?
Can we observe
anything without the
concepts of
space/time?
Cause-Effect.
Time.
Space.
What would the
experience of this
room be if we lost
the ability organize
sensations into
distinct objects?
What would our
experience of the
world be like if we
lost the ability to
ascribe
cause/effect
relationships to
events?
For the categories of the mind to work
in concert with the sense data, doesn’t
there have to be some kind of
similarity between the categories and
the nature of reality? If so, doesn’t
this mean that our minds are
structured like reality? If so, doesn’t
this mean that we can know reality?
Anthropologists have discovered that
people in different cultures perceive
spatial and temporal relationships
differently. Does this contradict Kant’s
ideas of universal structures in the
human mind?