have you ever questioned the true nature of reality, and how much of what we perceive is a reflection of our own minds? Do you think it's possible that the limits of human knowledge and reason are in fact the limits of the world itself, or is there more to reality than meets the eye? Hello everyone. Today, we're delving into the world of Emanuel Kant. Emanuel Kant, an 18th-century German philosopher, is a significant figure in the Enlightenment movement and indeed a major philosopher in the broader sense. He's the one who steered Western philosophy onto a different course, fundamentally changing how we approach philosophical questions. While Kant is often associated with his moral philosophy, which emphasizes duty and moral law, it's actually his philosophy of knowledge that left an indelible mark on the history of ideas. Today, our aim is to understand why Kant, despite being widely recognized as a profound thinker, is often considered difficult to grasp. He employs a highly technical vocabulary and occasionally redefines philosophical concepts, making it challenging for

readers to follow. In fact, Friedrich Nietzsche even nicknamed him the great Chinese, highlighting the difficulty of comprehending his ideas. But fear not, we're going to rephrase Kant's insights and simplify his arguments to make them more accessible. So what is Kant talking about? He's addressing the subject of knowledge, more specifically the limits of our knowledge. Kant's central question is: what can we know, and why is this question important? He grapples with this inquiry because he believes that up to his time, philosophers had largely discussed things that are unknowable or discussed them without considering whether they could be known. What are these unknowable things? There are three of them: God, the soul, and the world. Since the days of Aristotle and even going back to Plato, philosophers have been conversing about these topics. In fact, this constituted the bulk of philosophical work: discussing things that are invisible, discussing things that are beyond the realm of the senses, what we call metaphysics. This field deals with the study of what lies beyond the physical, beyond the material, and the

Observable philosophers engage with the metaphysical to ponder the invisible and the super sensible. The things that elude direct perception. Had philosophers solely focused on studying the material world, we might call them physicists rather than philosophers. Well, what Kant tells us is that in their pursuit of discussing things that lie beyond perception, things that elude our senses, philosophers forgot to ask a fundamental question: is it even possible to know these things? This question becomes the focus of his magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason. This work aims to define the conditions of knowledge, in other words, the structural limits of knowledge, what Kant refers to as the a priori limits of knowledge. What are these limits? Let's start with the first one, which is that we can't know things we can't perceive. For there to be knowledge, there must first be perception. We'll elaborate on this later because in reality, it's not as straightforward as it may sound, but remember this: for Kant, perception is the foundation of knowledge. In fact, it's the very first sentence of his introduction.

he States all knowledge begins with experience. There is no doubt about it. So, this sentence is crucial because it means that when we talk about things that lie outside the realm of experience, beyond perception, we aren't engaging in knowledge, we're engaging in thought. Yes, it's thought, but not knowledge. There's a distinction between thinking about something and knowing it. Some things can be thought about but not known. For example, you can think that life continues after death, you can believe it, but fundamentally, you can't know it. You can't prove it. Immortality of the soul is an object of thought, not an object of knowledge. And here's the crux of the matter: it all hinges on the difference between what we can think and what we can know. Kant tells us that philosophers before him, what he calls metaphysicians, considered as objects of knowledge what were in fact objects of thought. According to Kant, this is the fundamental error of metaphysics. Philosophers speculate, they make abstract, sometimes highly complex and subtle, but purely speculative arguments that float in the air, detached from

observable reality. For centuries, it was considered normal to discuss things that elude our senses. But Kant says no, enough is enough. It's time to stop talking about things we don't know. It's time to stop pretending as if we're talking about things we know, because that's not the case. We're speculating, hypothesizing, imagining, but we're not knowing. That's Kant's gesture, resetting the metaphysical clocks and dispelling the illusions of Reason, ending the belief that reason is all-powerful and can bypass experience to reach the truth. In fact, Kant uses an analogy. He suggests putting reason on trial, a trial of reason, to judge what it is capable of and what it is not. The Critique of Pure Reason is the philosophical trial of human reason. Now, it's important to understand that initially Kant held rather Cartesian views. In the sense that he aligned with Descartes' stance on the powers of Reason. Descartes argued that knowledge could be accessed solely through reason, through thought, without relying on experience. For Descartes, experience or perception was

precisely what led to error initially. Kant agreed with this perspective, but then when he read David Hume, who explained that thought not grounded in experience in perception was empty speculation, everything suddenly became clear for Kant. Of course, one cannot think without experience. It's evident that thought needs to rely on a foundation provided by perception. Kant later wrote that David Hume awakened him from his dogmatic slumber, liberating him from his rationalistic conception of knowledge, a view that depended solely on reason and not on experience. Today, it might seem obvious, but it's only because from a historical perspective, David Hume prevailed. Nowadays, empiricism dominates, and we can't conceive of science without reliance on observation. However, until the 18th century, it wasn't so clear-cut. Many philosophers like Descartes believed that experience was deceptive and that the senses were misleading. This was the essence of the Meditations on First Philosophy: to demonstrate the need to move beyond sensory impressions. Kant was the first to say, Okay, the empiricists are right.

they were right in the sense that using reason is great, but using reason on nothing but itself isn't sufficient. Rational knowledge needs a foundation, and this foundation is insensible objects - objects that can be sensibly intuited. It's worth noting that for Kant, sensible intuition is another term for sensory experience. The word intuition doesn't hold the same meaning for Kant as it does for other philosophers or common language. The objects around you - you perceive them, you perceive their shape, size, color - you have sensible intuition of them. What Kant tells us is that the only things we can know are things we can have sensible intuition of, which means observable things. This constitutes the first step in Kant's contemplation of the knowledge question. The second step in his reasoning is to ask, But what I perceive, what I can have sensible intuition of, is it truly reality, or is it how reality appears to me? Reality appears to my senses. Certainly, the answer lies within the question: asking, Does the world as I perceive it correspond to the real world?

or only to the world as I perceive it might sound tological, but it's a fundamental tautology. This was something that hadn't been thoroughly explored by philosophers in Kant's time. The idea that there is no identity, no equivalence between the real world and the world as I perceive it. And when I say as I perceive it, it doesn't mean just how I perceive it, but how it's perceived by human beings in general. Because as simple as it may sound, nothing guarantees that our perception of the world corresponds to the reality of the world. Let's take a simple example: colors. Things we perceive as blue, are they truly blue? Are they inherently blue, or do our eyes make us see them as blue? And this is not a foolish question at all, because today we know that there are many things we perceive in a certain way, not because they are truly like that, but because our perception is tuned a certain way. We don't see infrared rays, yet they exist. We don't see ultraviolet

rays yet they exist some animals perceive colors differently why because from one species to another the organs of perception have differences for instance we humans perceive three color domains red green and blue thanks to the three types of cones in our eyes with each type corresponding to a color range so what we see when we have sensible intuition of an object is that object filtered through our cones our sensory organs filter the world when we speak of the world we are in fact talking about the world as it appears to us through this filter we're not discussing the world itself but the filter that stands between us and the world this distinction lies at the heart of what Kant refers to as the phenomenal reality and the reality in itself phenomenal reality is how we perceive reality where phenomenon refers to what appears to us what manifests itself reality in itself on the other hand is reality independent of our perception but here's the catch even the reality in itself is by definition beyond our reach so how can we know something we have no access to

that's the problem, and it's not merely a mental exercise or word play claiming reality isn't real, and we're geniuses for understanding it. It's merely stating we can't say anything about the world beyond what we perceive of it. It's a structural limit and a priori limit. I like to use the example of an apple to illustrate this idea. So, what color is a green apple, you may ask? It's green, right? Yes, it appears green, but is it truly green? Strictly speaking, a green apple that appears green isn't actually green. It reflects green; it emits green because it's made up of chemical components that react to light. When a green apple appears green, it means it absorbs red and blue and reflects green. This is known as subtractive color synthesis. Therefore, an object's color isn't the color of the object itself; it's the color reflected by that object. This changes everything. We say an object has a particular color when it reflects that color. In other words, a green apple is everything but green. It's rather

peculiar. When you think about it, this color will be captured by the retina, which sends a signal to my brain for processing to make me perceive the color. Hence, perception is the result of brain processing of retinal data, which in turn depends on retinal sensitivity. When I perceive a color, I'm not really seeing the color. I'm observing the outcome of a retinal process. When I perceive an object, what I'm genuinely perceiving is how my eye functions. I'm not observing the object. I'm observing my perception of it. What Kant tells us is that all knowledge is fundamentally limited by the conditions of our perception. All knowledge is conditioned by the structures of perception. Hence, the idea that the reality in itself, what Kant calls the numon, is forever beyond our reach. We are prisoners of our senses, just as we are prisoners of the words we use for thinking. There's no escape from this prison. We can only become aware that what we perceive is not reality, but merely our perception of reality. K's.

discussion isn't limited to Colors. It extends to other aspects of our perception. He addresses space and time. He tells us that space and time constitute the a priori forms of sensibility. What does this mean? It means we can't perceive and consequent know anything outside of space or time. Space is the realm of external objects, physical entities. This Smartphone, this pen, this microphone, they occupy space, they exist within space. Without space, no physical object could exist. Time, on the other hand, is the domain of inner objects, of mental States. A mental state is characterized by its duration. Without the dimension of time, there is no inner experience. Kant's message is that we perceive the world in different ways due to our cognitive apparatus, thanks to our sensitivity being structured by these two parameters, space and time. We perceive objects either spatially or temporally depending on the situation. Why is this significant? It's important because it implies that it's not so much the world that is inherently spatial and temporal, but rather our perception of the world that

holds these properties. In other words, space and time are not properties of the world; they are properties of our perception. Kant terms this the transcendental Aesthetics. Aesthetics, because in Greek aestheticus means sensation or perception, as seen in the word anesthesia. Anesthesia is the absence of sensation, and transcendental means that which makes something possible. It's crucial not to confuse transcendental with Transcendent. These words are often used interchangeably, but they have opposite meanings. Transcendent is what comes from above, what is beyond the subject and descends toward it, transcending it. Transcendental, on the other hand, is what emanates from the subject. It's the foundation, the internal structure. Transcendental Aesthetics involves the analysis of the structures of our perception. This is why Kant's philosophy is known as transcendental idealism. Idealism, because for Kant, we don't know the world but only a representation of the world. Idealism encompasses everything related to representation, and transcendental is

because this representation has conditions, it has a structure, namely space and time. So, in simpler terms, we could say that transcendental idealism is the doctrine that firstly claims we don't have access to reality, only to a representation of reality, and secondly that this representation of reality is structured by two parameters: space and time. Now, let's take a moment to catch our breath because I understand this isn't the easiest material. We'll pause and discuss what makes Kant's philosophical project quite original. Kant, a Christian philosopher, a Protestant, is a believer like Dayart and most people of his time. Yet Kant boldly asserts we can't prove the existence of God. It can't be proven. This is far from ordinary, a devout philosopher stating that the existence of God can't be proven might seem like self-sabotage, but Kant is just being honest and consistent because he recognizes a significant gap between the realm of reason and the realm of faith. Pascal had already expressed a similar sentiment. Pascal argued attempting to demonstrate the existence of God is trying to

demonstrate the UND demonstrable. It's nonsensical. God is beyond the tools of rationality, so it's a lost cause. If you're going to believe in God, you might as well make the wager of God's existence. Betting on the existence of God is ultimately more honest and coherent than trying to prove it. Deart wanted to prove Pro God's existence, aiming to establish God's existence solely through the instrument of Reason. One of his proofs, or more accurately, one of his arguments, rested on the idea that if God is a perfect being, he cannot not exist; otherwise, he wouldn't be perfect since something would be missing. This was Dart's line of reasoning, starting with the definition of God and deducing his existence. This is known as the ontological argument, the argument by which existence of something is deduced from its definition. However, Kant didn't agree with this. What did he do in response? He took Deart by the ear and said, What are you doing here? Your demonstration doesn't work. It's not even that it

doesn't work. It's not a demonstration at all. You've demonstrated nothing. You've just repeated the same thing twice. What did he mean by that? He meant that when you define something like God as perfect and then claim that he exists because he's perfect, you're essentially just restating that he's perfect. If I say all left-handed tennis players are left-handed, have I proven anything? No, I've proven nothing. I've simply reiterated what was already contained in my initial statement. Well, Kant tells us that Descartes does the same thing with God. He deduces God's existence from a property, perfection, which was already inherent in the initial definition. But that's too easy. We can prove the existence of anything using this logic. If I say something that's obliged to exist exists, I've embedded the conclusion in my premise. It's cheating. Descartes' example illustrates the fact that sometimes reason can lead us to say just about anything. Or more precisely, reason can guide us to contradictory conclusions. What Kant refers to as the antinomies of pure reason. Just as Descartes

believed he had proven the existence of God through reason. Some argued that they had proven the non-existence of God through reason. They said, for instance, everything that exists has a cause. So, if God exists, he must have a cause. But if God has a cause, he ceases to be God. Therefore, God does not exist. The problem with reason is that it can demonstrate anything and its opposite. It can demonstrate that God exists, just as it can demonstrate that God does not exist. It can demonstrate that we are free, as well as demonstrate that we are determined. If reason can demonstrate one thing and its contrary, there must be an issue with reason. We can't entirely rely on reason. It has limits. This is where Kant's analysis is crucial. It signifies the dethronement of reason from its pedestal. Reason is no longer the Supreme judge of Truth. So, what Kant tells us is that not only does our perception have limits, not allowing us to access the reality in itself, but reason itself has limits since knowledge is the product of

both perception and reason. When we arrive at the conclusion that knowledge is doubly limited, limited by the constraints of our perception and the constraints of our reason, it's essential to understand that just as there's a structure of perception, what Kant calls the a priori forms of sensibility, there's a structure of Reason, which Kant calls the a priori forms of understanding. Let's delve into what this means, but before that, a quick note to emphasize why Kant's project is known as a critical project. Kant is the first philosopher who sought not to explain how to know, but to elucidate what is impossible to know. This is why we sometimes refer to it as conscious criticism philosophy, as a critical approach to knowledge. This is significant because it gave rise to epistemology, the study of the conditions of possibility of knowledge, a branch of the philosophy of science. So after Kant, our way of thinking changes fundamentally. We perceive the human mind in terms of limits and imperfections. It's no longer about

saying this is what the world is, but rather this is what the thinking subject is. This is how the thinking subject operates, and here's why the thinking subject deludes itself when it believes it can know the world. I'll close this parenthesis and return to what I was saying just before, which is the a priori forms of understanding or the categories of understanding. They mean the same thing. There are four of them: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. In other words, according to Kant, every object that your understanding can conceive can only be conceived under these categories. You won't find a category, you won't find a concept of reason that escapes these categories. There's nothing thinkable beyond them. Trying to conceive something beyond these categories would be like trying to imagine a new color. And just as that's not possible, the same holds true for understanding. To draw a parallel, even though the comparison isn't exact, it's like when Spinoza explains that everything a person can conceive can be conceived either under the attribute of extension or under the

attribute of thought. Does that mean the world is composed only of extension and thought? No, it means the world is knowable only through the attributes of extension and thought. Similarly, human reason is structured by categories of thought, by a container of thought, and nothing can be thought outside of this container. That's why we mentioned earlier that knowledge informs us more about the workings of the mind than about the world. To know is first and foremost to know the functioning of the mind. When Kant talks about mathematical knowledge, which is supposed to be the most reliable and objective knowledge, he tells us that mathematical knowledge is a pure product of the mind. This is what he calls a priori knowledge, meaning it is entirely independent of experience. Well, a priori knowledge, logical mathematical knowledge, informs us only about how understanding is structured. We say that mathematics is objective, but it's not just that they are objective, they are the pure reflection of the workings of our reason. For Kant, producing mathematical knowledge is producing knowledge about our own mind. Therefore, ultimately what Kant does is

show the relativity of our knowledge. Relativity, in the sense that human knowledge is always partial, always conditioned, always constrained by its structure. Saying this at the time was a significant philosophical step because it stopped viewing reason as a tool that could lead us to the absolute. The natural inclination of reason is to reach for the absolute, to seek the first cause, the ultimate end, the ultimate meaning. The natural inclination of reason is to regress infinitely in the pursuit of truth. But Kant tells us that these are illusions. There is a glass ceiling above our reason because the structure of the world is not the same as the structure of reason. Up until the 18th century, there was an underlying assumption, a kind of silent belief, that the structure of reason corresponded to the structure of the world. But no, that's the illusion. Kant makes it clear that it's not knowledge that aligns itself with the world, it's the world that aligns itself with knowledge, with the possibilities of knowledge. Ancient philosophy aimed less at knowing the

world and more at knowing knowledge itself. When Kant initiated what we would call the cernic revolution in philosophy, it's no longer the world at the center with the subject seeking to understand it. It's the subject that becomes Central, and the world adapts to it. The world conforms to the subject's modes of perception and understanding, and by doing so, it loses its innate nature. It's no longer the reality in itself; it becomes the phenomenal reality, the reality that can be perceived and understood. The world orbiting around the subject is the world as it is perceived and thought by the subject; it's not the world as an absolute. Kant dethrones Knowledge from its absoluteness; he brings it back to its conditions of human production. He introduces the subjectivity of the thinking sub subject as an essential component of knowledge about the thought object. He overturns the hierarchy of subject to object, the hierarchy of thinking reason and the thought world. It's reason that becomes the object of thought, no longer the world. With Kant, thought gazes at itself.

in the mirror for the first time. I quote, we need to affect here a change of methods, similar to what mathematics achieved in ancient Greece when, instead of the tentative approaches it had used until then, some great minds thought about drawing knowledge not from the object but from the a priori construction of its concept. It is also akin to the transformation that modern physics underwent when, instead of merely following nature passively at its edges, it embarked on directing and interpreting experiments according to the principles of Reason itself, thus compelling nature to answer as a supreme judge. The authors of these revolutions understood that reason perceives only what it produces by itself according to its own designs. This is the perspective that Kant attempts to introduce into metaphysics to bring about a revolution akin to those that yielded fruitful results in mathematics and physics. He further compares the idea behind this revolution to that of Cernus, realizing that he couldn't explain the movements of the heavens by assuming that all the myriad of stars revolves around the Observer considered.

whether it might be preferable to assume that the Observer rotates, while the Stars remain stationary. Similarly, instead of assuming, as has been done until now, that all our knowledge is regulated by the objects, Kant suggests that it is, on the contrary, the objects that adapt to our knowledge. This is the attempt to resolve the primary question, one of life or death for metaphysics: how is a priori knowledge of things possible? The answer is encapsulated in this thought that Kant regards as the Touchstone of the new method: we only know a priori about things what we ourselves put into them. From this, he deduces a consequence that seems contrary to the goal pursued by metaphysics: we cannot, with this faculty, go beyond the bounds of possible experience, because the part we contribute a priori to our knowledge of nature precisely contributes to making it possible; outside of this use, it cannot have meaning. Our philosophy provides a kind of experimental proof for the truth of this result, one that bears many analogies to what chemists often call reduction tests. It involves testing the a priori

principles of Reason by considering them successively from two different points of view. On one side, as revealing things as they are in themselves. On the other, as revealing them only as they appear to us under the a priori laws of our minds, or in a single word, as phenomena. If in the first case it results in a true conflict of reason with itself, while this contradiction vanishes in the second, it will be demonstrated that our reason grasps only phenomena, unable to extend to things in themselves, which, although real in themselves, remain unknown to us. Since the 18th century, Humanity has become acutely aware of its limitations. It is recognized that the world is not as it naively imagined before aspiring to comprehend the world. One must embark on a journey of self-discovery. Kant was the pioneer of this project, an Endeavor in self-critique of human reason, which is now characterized by its fallibility, bias, and relativity. It beckons us not to place our entire trust in it, not to

burden it with all responsibilities. The primary illusion of reason is to generally consider our own conception of reason as the sole reason, and everything that doesn't fit within this framework as irrational. Knowledge is a treasure that resides deep within our being, and reason is our faithful guide to explore it. Let us hope that all Minds blessed with this precious faculty realize that other Horizons are open to them. A new kind of Reason, marked by curiosity, humility, and openness, is possible. Thus, together we advance on this infinite journey of Discovery, seeking to better understand the world that surrounds us, and by extension, to comprehend ourselves. Every question we pose, every answer we discover, brings us a step closer to the light of knowledge. So, let us continue our Quest, driven by the conviction that knowledge is the key to our emancipation, progress, and fulfillment. May the thirst for learning never extinguish, and may the human Spirit continue to push the boundaries of understanding. Thank you for.

KANT | The Boundaries of Knowledge | Critique of Pure Reason

with various philosophical  concepts, exploring their depths and #untangling complex ideas to make them accessible for everyone.


KANT | The Boundaries of Knowledge | Critique of Pure Reason

KANT | The Boundaries of Knowledge | Critique of Pure Reason

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