Senses and Reason in I. Kant’s Knowledge Theory Research Paper

Introduction

The question of gaining knowledge has been one of the major issues in philosophy for centuries. Philosophers of the world have been trying to define, whether knowledge is given to humans genetically, or whether it can only be gained. They also tried to find out if it is possible to gain knowledge with the help of senses, or is it only possible with the help of logical operations. One of the most famous modern philosophers, Immanuel Kant, also studied this issue. He has a very original position, and his approach is now one of the most popular in philosophy.

It is needless to say that Kant is one of the founders of the theory of knowledge. This theory is based on critical philosophy, which was also invented by the author and which is aimed at forming an objective opinion about certain issues (Velasquez, 74). In his theory, Kant combined the approaches of rationalists and empiricists. Interestingly, the two opposing branches of philosophy were successfully composed into one concept, which is now fully justified. However, it would be wrong to state that the philosopher simply took the existing materials of both rationalists and empiricists to synthesize them in his theory. Kant tried to analyze both branches, modify them into his critical philosophy.

Theory of knowledge

The theory of knowledge offered by Kant first of all has roots of rationalism. Unlike the traditional rationalist ideas, which are focused on the existence of nonempirical knowledge, Kant has a different opinion about the issue. The philosopher denies the possibility of any nonempirical knowledge, arguing that there is no way in which humans can know something about the realities, which they cannot explore themselves. However, denying the knowledge, the philosopher does not deny the necessity of knowledge. Thus, even though people are unable to be sure about some things, they still need to know something about these things. The concrete issues discussed by the philosopher are the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and human freedom. According to Kant, no one on Earth can tell anything concrete about the abovementioned issues; however, ignorance in this sphere makes human life senseless and unjustified. As a result, people need to know something about these issues; they need to know, whether God exists or not, whether their souls will be alive after death, etc. The philosopher suggests, that the only way to satisfy this human need is to believe. He encourages people to believe in the abovementioned phenomena, arguing that this is important for a sustainable morality of people.

Rationalism

Another branch of philosophy, which constitutes Kant’s theory of knowledge, is empiricism. However, its basic notions were also criticized by the philosopher. Contrary to the traditional conception of empiricism, which suggested exploring the world with one’s senses, Kant argues that there is one more constituent in this process of exploration. This constituent is a priori knowledge, which is the knowledge that cannot be gained from any experiences. However, Kant does not accept the existence of a priori knowledge alone; he sees it as a tool for getting experience. To be more specific, the philosopher expresses the idea that there are some things, which a person can know before getting acquainted with these things. However, such knowledge can only exist in case it can be checked in real situations. Thus, the before mentioned immortality of souls is impossible to be checked, and therefore, there is no a priori knowledge for this phenomenon. In other cases, an individual can have an intuitive understanding of an object, which in practice can appear to be true.

Empiricism

Among the a priori knowledge Kant mentioned the synthetic statement of mathematics and natural science. He was the first to prove the synthetic nature of these disciplines. Concerning mathematics, the philosopher denied the assumptions of other scientists, who supposed the discipline to be analytic, and showed its synthetic nature. Specifically, Kant showed the interrelation between the judgment about a certain mathematical operation, and the results of the operation. Thus, a certain figure does not follow from the meaning of adding two numbers, but this figure represents the result of their adding. Moreover, the philosopher claimed that knowledge of such synthetic statements is present in humans a priori. According to Kant, even before doing some operations with numbers, people already know the possible outcome. Even though it is sometimes impossible to predict the concrete result (e.g. when dealing with big numbers), when adding two numbers we know that the result will be greater than each of the constituents; similarly, before the operation of division, we know that the result will be multiple of the initial number.

Mathematics

Similarly to mathematics, Kant argued that the synthetic statements of natural science are also familiar to humans a priori. Even though it can seem impossible for pure science to be of a priori nature (as all the natural phenomena can be explored by senses), their synthetic nature was proved by Kant. The philosopher mentioned the main laws of physics and tendencies of the world, which were already fixed by scientists. The results of their work suggest that now we have certain universal laws, which are much deeper than just results of logical operations. Kant also proves that knowledge of these laws exists a priori, showing that they can be applied to certain natural phenomena, and thus they can be checked. At the same time, even before applying these laws, we already know the future results, which once more proves the a priori nature of natural science.

Works Cited

Velasquez, Manuel Introduction to Philosophy: A Text with Readings 11th Ed. NY: Wadsworth Publishing, 2011.