Hello and welcome to the first session of Kant's Circle of Revenge with Reza Negra Stani. I'm going to pass the mic off to him now. Thank you, Theodor. Okay, hello everyone. So, this session, I know that I have scheduled 12 sessions for this course, but I expect expect that we will go over that schedule and you know those of you who have been in my classes before you know that I always add one or two sessions you know at least to the schedule so even though there this is 12 sessions I
expect that we will go overboard and we'll have one or two more sessions in to kind of go over the main topics in the critique of pure reason. Suffice to say that this is not an easy task, even 14 sessions or 12 sessions, to go over critique of pure reason. If you read the introduction to Selaar's Kant and Pre-Kantian themes, you see that he has been teaching Critique of Pure Reason for a year and still he doesn't manage to finish it. So this is going to be, I'm just going to go over the most basic important stuff
in Kent. What I think at least are the most important. And feel free to ask me questions, interrupt me whenever you want. I would be happy to explain stuff. And this session, I read a little bit of the introduction, the first two paragraphs of the introduction, second edition, because I think it's just simply a basic core of critique of pure reason. I talk a little bit about some of the vocabularies in Kant, which needs to be taken into account throughout the whole course, because they're extremely confusing if not taken with proper assiduousness, then I will start to somehow provide a historical
background, a historical context for this text. You know, obviously any philosophical text is written within a particular philosophical context of history, and Kant's work is no exception here. As I will discuss, this historical context is really the interaction between two major philosophical movements of its time.
One of them is still prominent today, and the other one is not. But nevertheless, the one that is not prominent today actually made much more impact on Kant than the one that is still prominent today. So what are these? The prominent one is empiricism, particularly concept empiricism of British philosophers like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. And the other one is the rationalist metaphysics, a short-lived school of thought in Germany in early to mid-18th century, advanced by people like Christian Augustus Crucius
and Christian Wolff, who were extremely influenced by people like Leibniz. And I will talk about this idea that But some of the main insights of Kant's, which people think that are originally Kantian, are not really Kantian, they are Leibnizian. But a kind of reinterpretation of Leibniz inherited from Christian Wolff and Crucius. So this is going to be our first session. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask, otherwise I will start our course.
Okay, so I hope that you have the Cambridge edition of Critique of Pure Reason because that's what we are going to read. If you move to page 136, it's the second edition of the introduction to the critique of pure reason. So, you know, the first edition, Kant essentially starts the introduction with
the idea of transcendental philosophy, okay? The idea of transcendental philosophy. In In the second edition, it changes this title to something else, and this is really important, on the difference between pure and empirical cognition, no longer in terms of transcendental philosophy. What is transcendental philosophy? It simplifies, it simplifies the problem of transcendental philosophy into the difference between pure and empirical cognitions. You can think about this transition from the first edition to the second edition as this
idea that Kant starts with some major philosophical problems. In the second edition, he tries to reduce in a positive sense, reduce these major problems to more simplified or tractable problems that can be pursued and discussed in the context of the history of philosophy. particularly the clash or interaction between British empiricists and German rationalist metaphysics.
So before moving forward, before I read these two paragraphs and start talking, let's start What is really just encapsulation of what critique of pure reason is about? Does any of you have a kind of a succinct formulation of what critique of pure reason ultimately tries to talk about? It's quite a big ask. The possibility of a synthetic a priori? Absolutely, yes. Possibility of synthetic a priori. What does this mean? Obviously,
this is jargon, synthetic a priori. What the fuck is that? Knowledge that's not empirical but isn't analytic. Yeah, no, I'm talking about a cat's jargon. So, it ultimately comes down to a basic problem of philosophy that we saw in the last course on Plato was the problem of philosophy, the problem of intelligibility of the world. What is intelligible? So the Platonic problem of intelligibility, what are intelligibility, what is intelligibility, becomes or takes a different connotation in 17th century and 18th century.
This new connotation is basically instigated or put forward by the scientific revolution, by the Enlightenment, the mathematization of nature, the Galilean, Copernican, Keplerian revolution. The idea that we can mathematize nature, what, why nature should cooperate with us, why is that nature, the so-called secrets of nature from a scholastic point of view, suddenly once we start to mathematize it, disclose themselves before us. Obviously, this is not a kind of simple task.
Nevertheless, even if it is a project that unfolds through time and requires a toilsome labor, but nevertheless it's fruitful. We see that once we mathematize nature, nature becomes almost willing to cooperate with us. Willing to cooperate with us. This is so-called Pythagorean puzzle. Why is that nature cooperate with us? when we try to learn from it using concepts, whether these are the concepts of mathematics
or other disciplines. What this is for Kant is really this whole idea that the premium problem of philosophy, the problem of intelligibility of nature or intelligibility in general is now sharpened to a new level in the wake of the Galilean mathematicalization of nature. And that's the pinnacle of its new term, Kant reads. So this is really the problem of synthetic a priori.
What is synthetic a priori? I will talk, we will talk about all of these, you know, jargons, Kentian jargons as we move forward. But a priori, or a priori, is the idea that there are components of cognition, or components, or more precisely, components of experience, that are organizing or systematizing or integrating our experience as we know them. But these components are not derived, their knowledge is not derived from experience.
Their knowledge, emphasis, is not derived, derived in quotes, from experience in quotes. Three important words, knowledge derived experience. Salars call these accordion words. Accordion words. Why does this? Precisely because these These seemingly innocent words create such a bigger sound than what they stand for by themselves, like an accordion.
So this is the meaning of a priori. There is the idea of syntheticness or the word synthetis is quite complex in Kent, but for now let's think about it this way. This idea of synthetic a priori comes from a long tradition of philosophy, at least going back to the scholastics, to the Middle Ages, Middle Age philosophy. So what does synthetic mean?
in this sense means ampliative, means something that adds something to something else. So whether it is something and something else. It's a concept or subject and its predicate. A subject and its predicate. So all bodies are extended. Okay, the concept of body is a subject concept. Is extended is a predicate concept. Okay, subject and predicate. So we see here that by definition the concept of body already means in the history of philosophy that
that in order for something to be a body, it needs to be extended in a space. Espinosa, Scholastics, even Aristotle, so on and so forth. So here, the concept predicate is already contained or implied by the subject concept. This is called an analytic concept where the predicate is already contained in the subject. Now if the predicate is not already contained in the subject, we call these synthetic concepts.
So what is a synthetic concept? A synthetic concept means an example of this. All bodies are heavy. To be a body doesn't already imply being heavy. So heaviness is heavy, the concept predicate is not naturally contained within or implied by the subject concept. This is called a synthetic concept. It's ampliative in the sense that the concept of heaviness adds something else to the concept of body. So this is the meaning of synthetic a priori.
So how do we know stuff about the world? where our knowledge of certain predicates, of certain concept predicates about the world are not already contained within or implied by our logical concepts. Is all bodies are heavy synthetic a priori or is it just synthetic as such? It's synthetic, it's not synthetic a priority, yes, yes, it's synthetic versus analytic. So the idea of the problem that Chagy said that the core of critical pure reason is a
problem of intelligibility, why is it the world cooperates with us, or the possibility of synthetic a priori. So synthetic a priori means that we know something more about the world than what is already contained within our concepts, our logical concepts, our analytical concepts. Socrates is wise, Socrates is a snob-nosed, Socrates is a pimp, according to Xenophon, so on and so forth. These are not already implied in the concept of Socrates.
So how is that we learn this? This is the problem of the coordination between our sense impressions and our cognitions. The spectrum that connects these, what you might call to be cogitations, cogitations as acts and sense impressions as materials. What connects these together is what Kant calls experience. So this ultimately comes to the question of what exactly is the structure of experience
as that which connects a priori acts of cognition to sense materials or sensory materials, simply sensations. Now, this might look a very tame question, but I assure you that once we move forward with this question, it turns into a monstrous question. It ramifies. It creates this massive ramified structure, which we stumble across new problems, even more fundamental than this problem, than the problem
of intelligibility. SPEAKER 1 And this is what you were saying earlier, that this is the big critique against Kant, that he's saying the connection between our sensations cognition's experience and that's where the synthetic a priority is stemming from and that's that's a big problem and that had terrible ramifications and flaws in me yes uh yeah but but i think that you know kent kent is not on the wrong track he just doesn't see alternative tracks that are equally need to be taken into account from a perspective he's right but he just doesn't see the whole picture. That's, I think, one of the critiques being launched against him
by the people like Fliege, Herman Cohen, Paul Natorp, and later on by Hosser. question before I move forward and please please if you know these jargons I understand these jargons even though we use them in philosophy you know quite frequently but they are quite vague without proper clarification so please feel free to ask me question to clarify them more I'm curious about where does
like the subject predicate logic initially stem from? Well it's actually you mean that like where is the historical origin of this discussion or what is its genetic the proper genetic origin if you mean historical context is Aristotle really. Oh okay. Aristotle and Plato yes Plato and our subtle idea of syllogism. But if you mean genetic in a broad sense, beyond the scope of the story of philosophy, it's really the whole idea of thought. It's the origin of thought. It's the origin of thought as such,
which we will talk about. And that's exactly, as we move forward, we see that this is Hermann Cohen's critique of Kant. The so-called the thought of the origin. What about the genetic account? What were you thinking about that? Well, the genetic account is the whole idea. So okay, let me, before answering you, let me read the first paragraph and then contextualize your question a little bit. So on the difference between pure and empirical cognition. In this first edition, Kant had entitled this on the idea of transcendental philosophy.
As I mentioned, he breaks down the idea of transcendental philosophy into two more tractable problems. The difference between pure and empirical cognition. There is no doubt whatever that all our cognition begins with experience, for how else should the cognitive faculty be awakened into exercise if not through objects that simulate our senses okay I will highlight this simulate our senses the role of our objects is that they affect our senses one their affect our senses now okay here is
another important commentary needs to be put forward precisely because it's going to be really confusing if we don't pay attention to this okay you see in German there are two untranslatable words for object at least at least one is a geggen shand and one is object a geggen is a sensible object it's not really an object in the sense that it's been translated. It's a particular item in the world that has a unity of appearances, namely phenomenally we see it as some
particular thingy, not a thing in itself. Okay? It's a particular item in the world, like it's this chair. This chair is just an organization of the phenomenal appearances. We will go to all this depth, what are these phenomenal appearances, but for now. It's a sensible item in the sense that there is something there that affects my causal structure, my cerebral, my nervous system. This is called a sensation. So here Kant, through objects, he woars the word gegneshtand, sensible objects.
What is object? Object with capital O and with K instead of C is an object for thought or object for knowledge as in contrast to the sensible object, an object that affects a particular item in the world that affects my senses. The other one is an object for thought. It's basically constructed simply for knowledge, constructed by thinking. So object is a different kind of object than Gegenstand. Now, this becomes even more confusing when Hegel uses Geggenstand as object rather than sensible object.
So Hegel, whenever he tries to talk about sensible object, he emphasizes on the sensibility. When he wants to talk, for example, about a spirit, A spirit is what you might call to be self-consciousness as the object of thinking. It's something that is not sensible. It's not really in the world. It's that thought or cognition itself constructed. It's like a computer program. So Hegel, Kant calls this kind of object, object, whereas Hegel calls it a geggenstand. So, but let's just, and this becomes even more convoluted, and Hossel adds his own twist
to this. We don't want to go to that level. Let's just for now understand that in Kantian parables, a geganishtan is a sensible object, a particular item in the world that affects my senses. My senses are embedded in causal structures. So sense impression is not a cognition, it's not a mental act, it's simply a causal or process wall interaction between two natural items in the world, my body and something else outside of me.
So this is the core of a Gigenishtand. Now of course this is not just, this is not the whole of the idea of a Gigenishtand, precisely because Gigenishtand ultimately needs to be organized, this sense impression needs to be organized into some sort of perceptual invariance, like his chair. That organization of perceptual invariances requires mental acts, multi-level mental acts, a complex interplay between sense impressions, concepts of understanding, and reason. So, but nevertheless this is called a
Giganeshna, namely an object whose roots are in sense impressions, whereas object is an object whose roots are forms or acts of thinking themselves. Now Kant makes this distinction throughout his works, but he never remains consistent to this distinction. One thing that I need to mention, Kant is an extremely subtle thinker, but he's not a consistent thinker. He introduces certain subtle distinctions always early on in his work, but later on he
somehow kind of moves between these distinctions, kind of elights these distinctions. So for how else should the cognitive faculty be awakened into exercise if not through objects that stimulate our senses and in part themselves produce representations, in part bring them the activity of our own understanding into motion to compare these, to connect or separate them, the whole idea of organizing, separate them, and thus to work up the raw material
of sense impressions into a cognition of objects that is called experience. So you see, for Kant, the idea of experience ultimately means arriving at the cognition of geggenstand, at organization or synthesizing a geggenstand out of raw sensory materials the level of your nervous system and out of the acts, a priori acts of cognition.
The very idea of what it means to do transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy is essentially defined by these a priori acts. So let's define, Kant now defines a priori acts, the core of transcendental philosophy. Now this is really that damning sentence that I was telling you. As far as time is concerned, then no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins. Can anyone say something about this sentence?
somehow criticized, kind of dissecting it. It just seems that there's already some degree of cognition going on in the creation of the Gagetan. To me, I mean, it seems, you know, like at a lower level, but there must be something going on. Yes, absolutely. That's absolutely the problem. So, you see, this sentence doesn't seem... it seems really innocent. I mean, he says, as far as time is concerned, in terms of temporal precedence, no cognition in us precedes experience. He says that as far as temporal precedence is concerned, experience precedes cognition,
precisely because sensory materials come first and then a prior acts of cognition are applied to them and organized in a very complex interplay. This doesn't sound rude. Well, why is that it's wrong? Precisely because this whole idea that Kant talks about experience, so Kant here makes at least two mistakes. First, he knows that experience is not sense impression. is the complex interplay between a priori acts of cognition and sensory materials or sense impressions.
How I am thus and so being affected by objects or items in the worlds outside of me. So this is obviously not experience. The only way that you can say that experience precedes cognition is when you conflate or confound experience with sense impression which of course can't is against that so obviously this sentence doesn't make from this perspective so there is another way that you can approach it that that our thoughts, our a priori thoughts, are always somehow restricted by the limits
of our experience. Another way to put it, as Hosserl does, in formal and transcendental logic, is you say that the logical dimension of thought is restricted by the structure of our transcendental experience. But this is a far worse mistake than the previous one. Precisely because Kant, as I mentioned, is a very subtle thinker. One of the distinctions that he always makes in his philosophy is that you need, a philosopher always needs to distinguish between act from
its content, act from its object. So here it confounds act and object. Cognition comes in two senses, a cogitation, an act, and a cogitatum, thought as an object and thought as thinking, as an act. It is only thought as a content that is restricted by experience, but thought as an act is in fact precedes experience. Precisely because it was not thought as an act, experience could not even arise in the first place.
This is what Frigge calls psychologism. psychologist. So, Reza, could you just, could you go over the Husserlian point again? Sure. Because I didn't quite catch that. So, in formal and transcendental logic, which I really suggest, you know, those of you who want to go further into detail, is absolutely majestic work. It's probably the best of Hossell's work. So Hossell tries to... So there is this discussion after Kant, basically, after Kant's
death, among his students and later on among Neokantians of Marburg School by the people like Paul Nautour and Herman Cohen, that in the critique of pure reason, Kant tries to surreptitiously restricts the territory of thinking as an act to psychological or experiential residues of thought as an object.
In Phrygian parlance, you might say that there are something like laws of thought, acts of thinking, or pure cognitions, and cognitions or cogitatums as thoughts, as contents, as an object. Like I think about something in the world, that's a cogitatum. But the content of my thinking or as thought or cogitatum is different from the acts of of my thinking. In fact, without the act of my thinking, cogitation, there wouldn't be a cogitatum, an object of thought. So Husserl tries to sufficiently differentiate cogitations
from cogitatum. Thinking as an act and thought as an object. To show that yes, thought as a content or as an object is rooted in experience, in our particular experiences, and hence the sentence works correct. That experience precedes cognition. But the very fact that this cogitatum, or thought as content and object, is possible precisely because there is a pure dimension of thinking as an act what you might call to be the pure formal logical dimension of thinking is the act of
thinking the same thing as a judgment or is it an exercise of form of judgment form of judgment so you have hotel actually talks about this that you have judgment as an act which is purely logical formal and you have judging judging that's analogous to cogitations and cogititum thinking as an act and thinking as an object judgment as an act and judgment as a concept how does the distinction between understanding and reason relate to this it doesn't it doesn't relate to this at this point. We will come to this, but there is no...
In fact, the difference between cogitation and cogitatum ultimately is the element that somehow undergirds Kantian idea of understanding. One thing that also I need to mention to you is that for Kant, understanding and reason are faculties, are abilities, are cognitive abilities. In Hegel, however, there are modes of thinking. They are not just faculties. They are not just capacities.
So we will come back to this, but I probably shouldn't go to that because it somehow becomes confusing. But for now, let's just imagine that there is no direct connection between understanding and reason and judgment and judging and cogitations and cogitation. And it seems like judgment is extremely chaotic, but then it's prior to experience. So is it closer to what he was trying to arrive at with the synthetic a priori, this idea of a chaotic judgment being prior to everything else? What does that mean? So what is exactly a judgment? We will get back to this, but judgment is essentially a logical form.
It's a relation between subject and predicate that can be multiplied. P is Q, is an assertion. Socrates is wise, subject and predicate, OK? Now, you can use logical operations, now purely formal, in order to create a dynasty of fundamental forms of judgments, or acts of judgment rather than content, such as if P then is Q. Or PQ is Q, assimilating the predicate within the subject and then applying another predicate to it. Questions?
And I think it's probably good point to have a very small break and then come back. I know that, sorry, I didn't mean to jump into these kinds of like, biotechnical stuff, but unfortunately this is going to be the course of this whole class. We are, this is just rudimentary stuff. There are much worse nightmares yet to come with regard to cans. But I think it's important to at least go over some of these vocabularies, because these vocabularies are quite actually important, and even professional philosophers tend to
draw false conclusions from them. People like Sellars, and Sellars, you know, Sellars is mighty Sellars. He actually draws wrong conclusions precisely because he confounds the distinction between a gegeneist and an object. Or for example, people like regular cantons like Deleuze tend to align the distinction between cognition or cogitation and cogitatum. We will go over all of these, but I just want to kind of,
as we move forward, I make these subtle distinctions that are put forward by Kant to make sure that when we are talking about Gaganeshsthant, we mean sensible logic. We are talking about thinking, then you should ask, When I talk about thought, then you should ask, do you mean thought as content, or do you mean thought as thinking, as an act? Because they are completely fundamentally different. So, just to hop in and try and explain it for myself. the right off in the first paragraph we're addressing the problem of is thought an effect
of a causal sequence or is thought somehow an act separate from this causal order and that's coming into the like forefront for Kant as a problem that's seemingly self-evident because thought is contained within time, right? Yes, more or less, more or less. Why more or less? Because neither Kant, nor Hume, nor any empiricist believe that there is such a thing as a causal sequence without thinking, okay? That's just naive empiricism.
Any empiricist that actually comes up with this, you need to stone him. It's just stupid. Even Hume, the most skeptical empiricist, never says something like that. In fact, he discourages you to say something like that. Because causality or causation requires modal vocabularies, requires modal concepts. What Hume talks about are habits. Now we will move, I will introduce what really he means by habits. He doesn't mean habit in an ordinary sense, he means convictions. Sense impressions and convictions that comes in a sequence that are not causal, but nevertheless is a temporal sequence, the temporality of which is explicit to us, which of course that
That becomes a major point of Kant's critique against Hume and empiricism in general. But yes, as you said, you can read it in that way with these caveats of course. Just to read this one portion from the Preface A, he says, the chief question always remains what and how much can understanding and reason cognize free of all experience and not how is the faculty of thinking itself possible since the latter question is something like the search for the cause of a given effect yes you see you see that that he you he gets rid of this in second edition is precisely
because of that. It's because, you see, he knows that he has made a mistake of alighting the distinction between thinking or thought as an object, the knowledge of which... Okay, here. You see, thought, okay, thought, you see, you have thought as thinking as an and thought as a concept. So the thing is that that's really the core of Kantian conservatism versus Hegel, precisely because he still thinks that thought is something that you can approach it as a geggenestand, namely a sensible object. But thought is not a sensible object, neither at
the level of an act nor at the level of content you see thought is not a sensible object is an object it's an object for and made and constructed by thought as itself and that's really Herman Cohen we get to this this is the lynchpin of Herman Cohen's critique of Kant the thought of the origin that the thought of origin belongs to the dimension of logic rather than to experience or transcendental logic. And it seems like this would have implications in physical objects as well, that they can't be objects at their base either, it seems like.
Yes, I mean that's absolutely, I mean Kant knows this, Kant already knows this, that you can't have an object without a priori acts of thinking. But nevertheless, as I mentioned, he's subtle, but he's not consistent. He basically refutes himself once in a while. And he comes up with this idea that, oh, well, thought requires object. No, objects require thought. Otherwise, you couldn't have, as you said, that if you didn't have a priori accident, how can you organize objects out of sense materials? We will get out to these, so don't panic. We will get to these slowly, stage by stage. OK, let's have a break, and then let's come back.
Oh, I just hate it. Life is really grotesque without smoking. Only I'm allowed to smoke, Reza. You're not allowed to smoke. One of the things that, you know, I think that if you guys are reading Critical Pure Reason, you know, I know that it's cheesy, but I think it's really important, precisely because English translations can create massive amount of confusion in terms of basic concepts in Kantian
lexicon. I recommend Howard K. Kant's Dictionary. It's actually quite good. It somehow simplifies this whole idea that, for example, when Kant talks about idea, what does it mean? Idea, there is nothing more trivial than the concept of idea in philosophy. Everyone talks about idea. But what does it mean? Plato talks about idea. Hegel talks about idea. Kant talks about idea. But they absolutely mean different things. So it's really important if you want to really pay attention to these subtleties.
Have a good dictionary, Kant's Dictionary, with you. And go through it. Who is the author of this book? That's the spelling. I'm not sure. It's Kant's Dictionary. It's famous. and then caught there's the the difference between like pure ideas and and regulative ideas correct yes yes regulative ideas we'll get to this regular team ideas are essentially belong to
the way of principles so what are principles principles are the stuff that are put forward word by reason, okay? Not by understanding, by reason. They regulate how we think about stuff. They organize. This regulation is a kind of a governing principle. So a good example of this, like the idea of God for Kant. It's a regulative idea. But a regulative idea doesn't mean that it's real. It's simply a product of reason. Out of its own resources, it boot
the straps and put forward the regulative idea, to regulate and organize its expense toward something more, usually an infinity. God. And eschematism, of course. Eschemata, as we will see, eschemata in Kant, are also regulative, and they have a regulative function. That's why Kant says that you never know about what these eschemata are, precisely because they are mysteries of the soul, profound mysteries of the soul. And the thing is that also regulative ideas are closely connected with something that Kant calls as-if arguments.
As-if arguments. As if God existed, then, or as if, cosmos was infinite, then what would be our duty? How should we behave? How should we think? So these are as-if arguments. As-if arguments means that you cannot overstretch the premises or the conclusions of these arguments Otherwise, it becomes hypothesized, becomes right-line. So we'll get to these. But yes, regulative ideas are very different from pure ideas.
Any question, any comment? any heckling. I have a small one, I guess. So if we already mentioned regular ideas, it seems like, at least in my mind, I felt like there was a bit of a dichotomy between when Khan talks about some moral arguments such as the as if exists or not and what he talks about in critical judgment when talking about beauties when we stumble upon free beauties we almost have this teleological feeling um that like something just should have guided me here so
uh in this sense i just wanted to ask it seems like there's a difference between the as if moral Can you repeat the last part of your question? I'm just, sorry, I'm trying to condense it all. No, no, no, I just had a hearing problem. You got cut off. I understood the rest of your question, just the last part. What I'm asking is, is there a difference between an as-if argument about moral propositions, about God, for example? Mm-hmm. aesthetic ones. Because it seems when Kant talks about aesthetic arguments about encountering free beauties, it seems like we cannot think otherwise, but it seems we're very free to
think that there, for example, is no God. Yes, okay. Yes, okay. Well, it's actually a little bit more intricate, precisely because The reason that it's intricate is not because of that there are two different kinds of as-if arguments, but it's because their territory of aesthetics and the territory of theology are different. You know, aesthetics in Kant belongs to the regime of pure cognition, okay? Whereas the other one belongs to the speculative reason. now uh can't uh the very idea of teleology is an as if argument in kent
kent is not aristotelian when he talks about teleology or telus he doesn't mean it in aristotelian since that as if nature has some telus in it as if there are real functions in nature, okay? He says as if, as if, analogically posited, in comparison or in analogy, without theoretical and practical reasons, then we could say that, for example, heart serves such and such functions or telosens with regard to the whole to which it belongs, namely the body,
maintaining metabolism, circulating blood, so on and so forth. So it's as if arguments are always analogically posited with regard to our theoretical and practical reasons, one. Two, Two, for Kant there is no real telus in nature. Our teluses are analogically positive in the context of as-if arguments. And as Plato would say and Kant would confirm, when it comes to the domain of analogical reasoning you cannot overstretch analogies. Precisely that's That's when it becomes hypostaticization.
Then you relapse on the Aristotelian scholasticism, from which Kant, in fact, wants to recover. So that was two. Number three, aesthetics and theology, or the idea of God, are both can be formulated in in terms of as-if arguments, but the idea is that beauty is part of pure cognition, what's called Kant's disinterestedness of reason. Disinterested, that reason is not interested in anything sensory. This is not how reason is defined.
Reason is only interested in its own logic. So, the disinterestedness of reason is what allows beauty to emerge. Now, whereas a speculative reflection of reason unto itself is what allows God to emerge. Now, the idea of a speculation in Kant is quite slippery. We'll get back to this. But in German idealism there are two at least forms of speculation. One is a Kantian speculation, which is simply a reflection mediated by experience, and the
other one is a Hegelian idea of speculation, which in fact tries to divorce itself from a mediation that seems to be immediate. What is that mediation that seems to be immediate? An example of this, as we will talk about this, the idea of time consciousness temporality it seems that for chance can't already understand that time is or
temporality is transcendental the idea what does transcendental the ideal means it means that the very fact that we see things or events appear to follow a temporal order, a sequence which is temporal, earlier than, later than, past, present, future, is not real. The world is not really like that. It's that we see the order of appearances like this. So this means transcendental ideal. Now, Now, Kant thinks that this transcendental ideality of experience temporality is immediate.
It's not mediated by anything else. It is how really the order of appearances unfolds through the inner sense, through our perceptions. Hegel says, bullshit. This is mediated. This immediacy is an illusion. In fact, there is no temporality. There is no temporal order of appearances. There is no earlier than and later than. There is no past, present, and future. It's only time, and time as eternity. So Hegel belongs to the tradition of Plato and Parmenides, whereas Kant, in the sense
of his understanding of time and temporality belongs to an Aristotelian tradition. Can I give some pushback? Because I'm not exactly sure why he would fall into this Aristotelian, sort of teleological version of time when he's when the emphasis upon time is like and that it's a subjective condition for thinking it there you see the objects themselves sure you see this is this actually a little bit what okay I need to apologize
because the way that present it was a little bit simplified can't is more subtle but nevertheless he's still isotelian. Now why? Why is that he's not, why he's more complex and why is that he's still isotelian? So the reason that he's complex is that he believes that, so basically what Kant is ultimately interested is in this idea of synthetic a problem in the sense that our thoughts about objects in the world are synthetic. They are not analytical. And that's how, as the time unfolds, we can learn more, we can know more about the world.
We might revise our previous commitments or beliefs about this world. This means it's synthetic, it's ampliative. Things are being added to it as our field of experience in the world enlarges, expands. We see more evidences that test our previous assumptions about the world. So this means it's synthetic. So obviously this is what Kant called discursive rationality, discursive, aperceptive intelligence, in a technical sense. We will talk about what Kant means by discussing the concept of intelligence. So it means that a kind of intelligence
whose knowledge about the world unfolds in time precisely because this agent doesn't have an immediate access or direct access via concepts to the sensible materials. human is not God. God's intuition, God's thought of particular items in the world is intellectual. According to a scholastic philosophy and later on, all God needs to know is a concept of a tree. This concept is intellectual, not sensible. Knowing this intellectual concept of a tree means that I know everything about this particular
tree. Whereas humans' concepts, concept of a tree, is sensible. It is a particular kind of tree that thus and so, such and such affects my senses in real time. And only when I interact with it throughout time that I can revise my concept of what kind of tree this is. What are its characteristics? So you see, my sensible intuitions unfold in time. This means they are discursive. Whereas according to scholastic philosophy, God's intuitions of particular items in the world are intellectual.
It has a direct access to the totality of a particular object in the space and time. Now Kant's idea of synthetic a priori always coupled with the idea of discursive rationality. The discursive rationality takes time precisely because it unfolds gradually through time. So from this perspective, he's absolutely right. But, now, there is a different kind of thing. So this is a kind of temporality that is fine. But then, Kant tries to interpret this kind of temporality as temporality proper, as past,
present, future. That this is really the ideal nature of time. And that's distinct from Aristotle because Aristotle would say something like, there's just now in my perception. Yes, yes. And that now, what is exactly now? Now what William James calls it the unit of experience, the unit of time consciousness. All of our experiences are always belong to the domain of now, not past or future, but only now. Now is not present. Don't mistake now with present. Now is a unit of time consciousness
of an experiencing transcendental subject for whom what I have experienced right now appears to be moving to our distance paths. What I am experiencing immediate now appears to be moving toward less distant past. And what I will experience, what I anticipate to experience, is moving toward the direction of present and the immediate past. So this Now, which is the unit of Kantian experience, also happens to be the very marker by which
we can talk about temporality of time as such, past, present and future. And that's exactly what Kant does. So Kant, at one point, says that our consciousness of temporality is ideal, or transcendental idea, means that it's not really real. But at the same time, he says that this idea of experience temporality is time itself. It is the basis of time itself. Now this is a bad move. Having the first one doesn't warrant jumping into the second one.
Because what if the objectivity of time is independent of how we perceptually perceive events that are happening in time? namely the disjunction between how our memory records events and what time itself is there is no apparent or immediate link between these two kent understands this but nevertheless he wants to make that bridge between the two
in accordance with of course newtonian physics it almost sounds like he's alighting time with the you know in something that's similar to judgment like in a bad way like he's alighting time with judgment in the wrong way because if it was alighting with the judgment in the right way it would be more chaotic and not like this solid edifice of time as what time is yes i mean yeah yeah no i mean that that is and that's i will basically we will get to this when we get into Kant's commentaries on inner sense so what is inner sense? Inner sense what you might call to be inner
perception is where so outer sense is when your nervous system is being affected by these stuff that are happening outside of you like something a particular item affecting your sense organs and this is a flux of sensations stuff going on they're confused absolutely moving in every direction there is no sense of a space and time about it now this is called outer sense inner sense is a faculty or capacity that is source to organize this confused used influx of sensory inputs, organized them as temporally divided, earlier than,
later than, past, present, future, so on and so forth. Kant identifies inner sense as where his critique of pure reason starts. whereby he gives an extremely important role to time and time consciousness in the account of the possibility, the conditional possibility of synthetic a priori, or how we can have a synthetic a priori knowledge of the world, items in the world. So this idea of inner sense, which is essentially coupled with the idea of temporality, or
or internal organization of sense impressions according to an internal sense of time becomes extremely important. As I mentioned, Kant obviously understands time at this point as something being internal as specific to the agent, not something as a metaphysical account of time. But nevertheless, he moves on, makes this a sneaky move, and bridges this temporal understanding of time, which is the unit of experience, and the most important element of synthetic operiary to the metaphysical account of time. That he shows that time itself has such and such characteristics.
But that's just absurd. because we experience things thus and so doesn't mean that things in the world, including time, abide by or conform to the characteristics of our experience. Okay, any more questions before I start? I was looking at Jay Rosenberg's book a little bit, and I don't know, I don't quite remember, like he seems to suggest that in some ways,
constant counts of time could be justified in that something like any scientific account that we have of time still requires like a system of coordinates with a sort of perspectival nature. Yes. Sort of like a zero point. I'm quite familiar with Rosenberg, which is quite a classical Szilard's account of time. Now the thing about Rosenberg, Rosenberg is an absolutely fantastic philosopher. He was a student of Szilard's and is top-notch philosopher and really one of the most criminally undervalued philosophers in the 20th century.
The thing is that with Rosenberg's account of time is that, Rosenberg knows about all of these studies. But the thing is that Rosenberg, exactly like Sellar's account of time, he seems to be conflating between two basic notions. One is the idea of temporality and the other one is the idea of time. He knows this, that these are two different things, but he just doesn't know how exactly
they are different. Temporality is an agential pragmatic concept. What does this mean? basically there is no such a thing as temporal time in the real universe. Or if it is, we don't ever know. But suffice to say, as John Maxegurt says, that every time that a characteristic of the real universe corresponds to the characteristics of your experience, that's where you need to be suspicious. That's where you need to be suspicious rather than accepting it. So Rosenberg, the idea that simply you can talk about temporality or time in terms of
this coordination of sequences, I think is quite trivial actually, precisely because as Magda Gart would say, Let's say that my encounter, my experience of this particular item in the world proceeds with earlier than my experience of this particular item at a later time. So there is here a sequential coordination. But it's sequential coordination. It doesn't tell us anything about, is it really actually temporal or is it time?
It can be actually spatial, as modern physics shows us. Change is not temporal in modern physics. It's spatial. It's a metrical spatial coordination. So this brings us to this idea that we need to be very careful about this common sense apprehension of temporality time, in the sense that just because something precedes something else doesn't mean that that something has caused the other something that came later, or that it temporally precedes that thing.
These are just from the perspective of the time conscious entity. So like, maybe like temporality precedes time epistemologically or something, but... Pragmatically, from an agential perspective, yes. But agential perspective is a pragmatic concept. concepts are not metaphysical concepts or not even ontological concepts. Okay, thanks. Absolutely. Any more? Anything? I want to respond to that, but I also want to let you go on.
I was kind of wondering more about like the misconceptions you know of space too maybe you could talk a little bit about that how that might factor in I will go that without I mean I don't want to go into too much into in the more detail the stuff that we are going you know to work with but yes absolutely a space as well a space as well a space and time and you know that a space and time in Kant. So I mentioned that in Kant, synthetic a priori is the main reason behind writing the critique of pure reason, and ultimately comes to this complex interplay between a priori acts of cognition and sensory impressions of raw sensory materials.
That how is that the complex interplay between these two bring about something as rich and as revisable as experience. Now, Kant calls experience also as the order of appearances. How we experience the world doesn't mean that that's exactly what the world is, literally. Thus hence the order of appearances. But order of appearances doesn't mean that the order of appearances are essentially wrong. or we cannot gain anything from it.
No, order of appearances is the first step through which we can gain access to the world, as in Kantian parlance it is in itself. Or in Hegelian sense what you might call the objective world, a world which is ruled by objective validity. Now this order of appearances is called an order precisely because it's organized by certain necessary conditions or necessary constraints without which we cannot access
the structure of the world. We cannot say anything about the world as an intelligible edifice. Two of these, most important of these conditions, of these necessary conditions or constraints which organize the order of appearances, the order of experiences, and ultimately allow us to access what is intelligible, are a space and time. A space and time as positive enabling constraints by which the order of appearances are organized
from the confused complex of sensory inputs that are kind of just, you know, if we didn't have mind or we didn't have any form of mental acts, we are just like these kinds of what you might call to be objects or items in the world that are being bombarded from different directions by these incoming simultaneous fluxes of how these other particular items stimulate us or affect us. Obviously, they need to be organized in a way so as we can make sense, differentiate
between them, and in differentiating between these sensory influxes, differentiate particular items in the world. space and time you know part that play the key roles key roles in Organization of of these sensory fluxes and we will get back to this when we talk about the structure of altering sense Can I ask a quick question? Absolutely. When you say space and time that Kant's working from, what science was he basing that on?
Did he just sort of come up with that or was he, is that influenced by the science of his era? There is quite actually a very detailed discussion about this. So as I mentioned, Kant's idea of space and time, you might say that space and time in Kantian philosophy takes shape at least on two different levels. One is a transcendental ideal, the pragmatic agential aspect of how we experience things and what is necessary for us having experience. And another one, what you might call to be the metaphysical or physical or real accounts
of space and time, right? So real space and time versus the experiential subjective space and time, which is in subjectivity has a core of objectivity. Now, at the level of real space and time, Kant was, of course, very influenced by Newtonian physics. Newtonian account of space and time, absolutely space and time. At the level of psychological or transcendental psychological account of space and time, which are the necessary conditions for the order of appearances to be organized so we can have experience, so we can have objective account of intelligibility the world, he was not influenced by science. He was in fact very much influenced by rational
metaphysics, which I will talk about, particularly Leibniz, Christian Augustus Crucius, and Christian Wolf, particularly Christian Wolf, was a very prominent figure at the time and Kant was extremely, is extremely actually indebted to Wolfian psychology. Yeah, so kind of, you know, people usually think that Kant's idea of space and time is simply Newtonian, but no, yeah, it's Newtonian when Kant talks about actual space and time, real metaphysical account of space and time. But when he talks about the role of space
and time in organizing sensory fluxes so as to allow us to have the order of appearances, the order of experience, experience a particular object thus and so, he doesn't actually drive this account of space and time from science. He drives it from actually transcend rational psychology of his time. Theo, you had something. Don't worry, I mean, you guys don't worry. Well, we are almost
running out of time and I haven't even started the introduction so next session I will go through that a sort of background and as I mentioned don't worry those of you have been in my classes whatever is left I will make you know arrange additional sessions at the end so you know we can we can cover everything as far as we can so you know it's important I mean I understand that this is a monstrous work you probably all of you have somehow red cans in you know in different capacities and dark things are vague for you it's better to get rid of these you know vague notions and bill events is one of the questions
that you have early on so you know we won't be kind of bogged down by these kinds of things later on. Well, I guess the question I was getting at was more, it doesn't seem like Kant comes to... By what right we come to say anything about time as such, as it is in itself, is complicated in Kant because of the thing itself and that it's a logical limit plays for him yes but you see you know there is a reason that can't one of the things that
you need to have in mind and unfortunately that can't is completely aware of this person, this distinction, a distinction that I'm going to mention. And unfortunately, for some reason, philosophers in contemporary philosophy, particularly in continental philosophy, somehow missed that, oh well, Kant was aware of this distinction, and unfortunately they came up with something called speculative realism. This whole idea that Kant is completely aware of the difference between thinking time and knowing time. You can think time as it is in itself, but you don't know what time is.
Two different things. Thinking time is possible. It's in fact encouraged, whereas knowing time is impossible, at least for us locally and contingently constituted discursive, perceptive cells. Thinking time is very different than knowing time. And in fact, Hegel tries to show that thinking time is in fact more radical than knowing time. In fact, knowing time is a subset of thinking time. That's Hegel's revolution. It's almost kind of sounds like actualization of time, to put like an Aristotelian bent
on it as opposed to knowledge of time. Yes, well, you know, the thing is that, I mean, Hegel, Hegel's account of time is absolutely Parmenidian and Platoist in the sense that we discussed Plato past seven hours. In the sense that he doesn't believe that anything lives in time. There is nothing in time. Nothing lives in time. That's just idea of temperality and temperality is simply an illusion of the upper set itself, of the ego. But a spirit as the totality or self-developing totality of thought as such is time itself.
A spirit is time itself for Hegel. A spirit is time itself. That's cryptic, but you can, we can't go into that length, but you can look into this. that Hegel's idea of time is fundamentally different. I generally don't think that there is a more radical, I'm not talking about whether it is correct or not, there is no more radical account of time than Hegel's, even Heidegger's. So what would be some good, some secondary literature to read about that? I highly suggest Encyclopedia, Hegel's Encyclopedia, the sections about space and time. So basically, and also
a second volume of Hegel's lecture on philosophy of mind translated by Petra. You see Hegel is extremely clear and lucid as in contrast to his major books which are quite hard to follow is very lucid when he you know writes short entries or he gives lectures so those are great and also I met I remember that I mentioned one particular text in in the last seminar on Plato and we're talking about Hegel is by the guy, I forgot his name, but it's called,
Theodore, can you remember, was it Wigner or Christian, Hegel's account of antinomies and time? No, I don't remember. I will find it for you and put it in the Google Drive. And of course, this whole idea of the difference between temporality, or time of experience, and time as such, in Kant leads to the first antinomy, as we will see it, the first cosmological antinomy,
the experiencing subject in trying to know the infinite is brought down or is somehow crushed under its own weight. This is called antinomy, the idea of that you fall into contradiction. That's essentially Kant tries to show that thinking the beginning of the universe or thinking of time by way of temporal discursive experience leads to a cosmological antinomy. Experience falls into contradiction and Hegel tries to show that's exactly where Kant doesn't
follow his own recipe precisely because Kant in so far as Kant doesn't have an adequate account of reason and understanding he has an adequate account of imagination intuition sensation but he doesn't have an adequate account of reason and so far as he doesn't have an adequate account of reason and understanding his idea that thinking the absolute or the infinite attempt that the time as infinite brings him or leads him to contradiction and Hegel tries to shows that this problem can in fact be circumvented once we sufficiently
differentiate between reason and understanding, or between cogitation as the form of thinking and cogitatum, namely the content of thinking, thought as tethered restricted by a particular experiential content so then would copy more consistent if you related time to the transcendental ideas somewhere yes yes yeah absolutely yes okay yeah or at least not transcendental ideas but
working with called to be if he hadn't confused the transcendental condition namely transcendental in itself, with the transcendental method, namely the application of a priori cognitions to sensory materials, which is called transcendental method. If he had not confused what is transcendental in itself and what is the transcendental application, namely method, it wouldn't have stumbled on this problem, the problem of antinom.
Well, don't worry, we will get to all of this. And then that would be closer to Hegel's account of spirit as time. Yes, yes. And this is exactly what Hegel criticizes, Kant's transcendental method. And he tries to salvage the idea of the transcendental in itself as unbound by, or no longer restricted by, that perceptive self, the thinking self, the thinking subject, the subject of experience. Yeah, and that's why I think Aristotle is sort of superior here because for him, that part of the cantantinomy, it's the act of thinking that enables the possibility for
infinity but not the reification of infinity as a transcendental concept. Yes, but I don't think that this is really Aristotelian. And this is actually quite platonic in the sense that, as Hosseau says in Transcendental Formal Logic, you need to distinguish between two forms of objectivity. One is ideal objectivity. What is objectivity? Okay, objectivity, as we will look at it, objectivity means that there is a validity, a logical validity that is independent of individual subjects. Namely, it encompasses all subjects. It's universally necessary for all subjects, regardless of what I particularly experience.
Okay? This is the ideal objectivity. Now, there is also another called real objectivity. And real objectivity, you need to be very careful with it precisely because real objectivity also requires the positioning of an actual thing in itself, that there is a reality out there that constrains our thoughts. Nothing sounds despicable about it. sounds okay, but actually it is not that okay, because how can you posit or postulate such a reality to begin with? Now Hossel says that if you in fact want to rescue the idea of real objectivity, namely
that there is a real world external to me that is independent of my thoughts and experiences, then you need to take the idea of ideal objectivity very seriously. ideal objectivity or cells that its origin is really platine questions Stanley, any comments?
Peter? No, I have to do more reading before I can do any more comments, I think, next week. OK, OK. No, don't worry. I mean, we are going to go very systematically through all of this, but I just want to, you know, it's good to somehow get intimidated by philosophical works at the beginning. and I would just see the sheer scope of how things go in different directions in a vague way. And that's actually, I think, is a good way of how we can orient ourselves. You know, we're starting to go into the details, now that we know that things don't look exactly how they seem to be when we're reading the text.
Okay, so I remember that I concluded my comment on the first paragraph with that important sentence I mentioned that you need to really pay attention because it's kind of damning part, and it just comes in the first paragraph. As far as time is concerned, then no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins. I mentioned that there are two ways that you can interpret it.
Either way that you interpret it, it basically shows that it just doesn't make sense. sentence is unnecessary. And it shows to the extent of Kant's attachment to a kind of critical metaphysical system. Now, Kant thinks that he is anti-metaphysical, that he is very critical, but no, you need to be very wary of people who say bad things about metaphysics,
that they want to be done with metaphysics, because those are the people who usually are slaves of the most implicit, sinister metaphysical assumptions. And Kant absolutely falls into this category, as we will see. Now, I talked about Psychologism. I mentioned that this is essentially the core tenet of Psychologism. So what is exactly Psychologism? Because this is another term that I will bring it up a number of times as we move forward. Well, Psychologism comes in a strong and weak variety.
So the core claim of the psychologism is that the logical dimension of thinking, or what you might call to be pure thinking, pure cognition, is under the influence. Okay, let's... One, either under the influence, two, or is a subset of, three, or is conceived by psychological loss
of the experiencing subject. This is what psychologism is. So ultimately, psychologism, whether it's a strong or weak variety, it starts with this implicit assumption that every mental act, every form of cognition that you can ever Imagine is part of the psychological dimension of the experiencing subject. Then it follows that if logic deals with form of judgments and the laws of
operations of how to ramify these forms of judgment, then by virtue of that definition of psychology logic is a subset of psychology. Then it follows that the limits we can never find an alternative to our existing logic outside of human psychology that the limits of conceivable logics are the limits of psychology this is what ultimately psychology is in means as you as I will argue that this is this is a quite it seems innocent but it's
quite actually a fucked up thesis that it lands you on some really you know dodgy claims and discussions. And this is essentially why is that Kant came under attack in the late 19th century and early 20th century by people like Frigge, by people like Hermann Cohen, by people like Hossil, later on by Carnap, was precisely because of this. That he never managed to get rid of this psychologism. Psychologism doesn't mean that there is
no objective validated to human psychology or psychological laws, but rather that logical or forms of judgments are subsets of psychological was and then all of its conclusions that I mentioned. Questions? Yes, I have. The question is problematic. Oh, okay, okay, okay. I'll let you go. Sure. I don't know if this takes us back too far, but you mentioned that you thought that Kant considers himself as anti-metaphysical. And I guess my question would be, it seems that
he considers himself the defender of metaphysics and the champion. A critical metaphysician. A critical metaphysician. You see, a critical metaphysician in the sense that he thinks that our metaphysical claims, we can simply, using the definition of critique that he puts forward, we can make explicit all of metaphysical methods, metaphysical assumptions that are behind our metaphysical systems. Simply he believes that critique is critique by itself in the sense that Kant defines critique, and uncover our metatheoretical, metaphysical assumptions.
But as I will mention, this doesn't add up precisely because insofar that Kant already sees experience, precedes cognition in time, So, at least temporally, cognition is bound by experience temporally, not logically, temporally. His account of the... So, basically, the limits of metaphysics, of what he understands metaphysics, are already set by the limits of what he understands to be experience. This becomes later on a very, very important part of Hegel's critique of Kant.
That in order for you to in fact unbind, critique metaphysics, or unbind metaphysics, to make its presuppositions explicit, you should divest or rest metaphysics from human experience. So you should understand metaphysics as a species of objective and speculative logic rather than transcendental method of experience. otherwise you will find yourself in some highly shady or rather a slippery
metaphysical territories such as the thing in itself the nominal but all that basically can't things that is innocent of oh well let me say that there is things in themselves postulate their reality even never even even though we can never know about what we can think about them let me postulate them in so far then I can talk about what because if I don't postulate the things in its in themselves then I can
then talk about human experience because you know that there should be things in themselves that affect me create some sensory impressions that allow me to have experience of thus and so particular items or phenomenal order in the world. But that postulation doesn't add up. How do you come with that postulation in the beginning? That just seems to be dogmatic metaphysics. Do you think that calling it dogmatic metaphysics is something that we have the ability to say
as a result of all these thinkers having, you know, first, not that Kant was the first metaphysician, but that Kant, because he undertook the critique, that we can point to him as a dogmatist because we've had the value of time and Hegel and others thinking through. Absolutely, yes. That's the whole idea of Hegel's fundamental thesis, which is also Plato's thesis, really. This idea that reason retrospectively knows its own faults, its own conditions of realization. And it is only precisely because we see philosophy through history, in the sense of history not being historical nature or simply past,
but this idea of past judges, new judges who judge each other, and they're constrained by each other, that we can retrospectively come back to say that Kant was such and such, Hegel was such and such. And then our next generation will say that, oh, well, these people were such and such. They were dogmatic. And another thing is that this idea that Kant is a dogmatic metaphysics needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
You know, because it's not supposed to be a negative or derisive comment about Kant. because Kant initiate a revolution through which later on, retrospectively, we can recognize that he is in fact a residues of dogmatic metaphysics. Without Kantian revolution, we couldn't even detect this flaw in Kantian system. And then we will go on, what is exactly the core of this revolution that allow us to see this flaw in Kant? So it's almost like by categorized, you know, when we call him a dogmatic metaphysician,
it's because the noumenon, like, because he's claiming to be so skeptical of metaphysics and saying that he's positing, saying that is itself something that's retrospectively aware of itself, that it becomes a dogmatic metaphysician. Yes, but you see, this idea of dogmatic metaphysics, I think, you know, Kant, as he ages, he becomes less and less interested in metaphysics, and he actually has more and more of implicit meta-metaphysical assumptions in this philosophy. Now, as I will make that background history
next session, as I mentioned that this whole reaction of Kant to metaphysics is essentially a product of how he tries to forge his philosophy via two main dominant trends of his time. British empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, and another one, rationalist metaphysics of Crucius, Wolff, which are the inheritors of Leibniz in Germany. And of course, as he tries to kind of bring these two positions together, he also shows
that through this very act of integration between rationalism and empiricism, between metaphysics and epistemology the very nature of these questions changes the very nature of metaphysics changes the very major of rationalism changes you say that the distinction between reason and understanding is the key gesture in that sort of understanding as applying to objects of experience and reason as applying to a sort of super sensible but then yes yeah yeah but but
but this is exactly what as I mentioned that chance you know can't can't is superb in terms of how we understand the the lower levels of the complex interplay between reason and sensibility, meaning that he absolutely has a fantastic account of imagination, intuition, and sensibility. But when it comes to the interplay between understanding and reason, as you say, it falls short, precisely because he sees understanding and reason simply as abilities or faculties that are tied to intrinsically, are tied to the transcendental subject of experience,
namely the discursive, aperceptive self, or ego, or the I that thinks. I mean, like Kant is the first person to even make that distinction, right? Yes. yeah no actually can't is not really the first no no no can't be so no no can't not the first really the first person it's really as I mentioned you know people usually when they see original philosopher can't is an absurd original philosopher they think that they are coming out of like a lightning out of blue no they are obviously the products of the history of philosophy and can't is no exception here. The product of, as I mentioned, a long tradition of concept
empiricism, very much Lockean and Humean. Kant confesses this in a number of times that reading Hume awakened me from my dogmatic Islam. And also, as I mentioned the Wolfian psychology and ontology. So yeah, no, I don't think that Kant really comes up with this distinction. These distinctions have been there at least since late scholastic philosophy, if not earlier. He just tries to distinguish them in a new light, make this distinction more refined. If we have time, can I ask another question?
Absolutely. You also mentioned that one of the critiques of Kant is that of psychologism, and I don't really understand that as much, but I will try to ask a question about it anyway. In trying to incorporate or overcome the flaws with empiricism, does Kant, I mean, are these the only two places of refuge? I mean, if you're stuck in an objective empiricism, is the only other place of refuge, this where you have this experiencing subject who's constrained in their own box.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, no, I will start in the next session when I go try to show that how Kant is emerging between these two different positions, rational metaphysics of Wolff and Crucius and British Empiricism, is that, you know, Kant's... Kant's idea of empiricism is quite actually refined in a very human sense, you know. But nevertheless, he believes in the sense that... So let's talk about empiricism. What is exactly empiricism? I mean, what is the core tenet of empiricism?
experience of the phenomenal world yes but can you be more specific I'm sure I can be more specific when I've read more Kant or reminded myself but the core tenets of empiricism is those accordion word all knowledge knowledge emphasized is derived derived being emphasized from experience experience being emphasized all knowledge is being derived from experience so Kant doesn't believe in this anymore
That's why he comes up with the idea of synthetic a priori. But in a sense he is still beholden to the empiricist idea, as we saw in that damning sentence. Experience precedes cognitions in time. Now, as I said, what does exactly this mean? you really mean that experience how can experience precedes cognition in time you just said the sense materials are not experiences yes sense materials are the ones that it precedes cognitions in time but the sense materials are not experienced because they are not organized so you know what they have so
the second question that you can ask Kent is that okay so you mean experience as cogitatum, as the content, precedes the act of a priori cognitions. How can an object be conceived in temporal precedence with regard to its act? the relation between act and object or act and content is coextensive. But the idea that you can say ever that experience as object of cognition or content of cognition
can precede the act of cognition or cogitations, that just seems to be absorbed. So this is really the center of the psychologistic thesis, precisely because in either of these two options you have to abide by some sort of empirical basis for cognition, which actually can't set to escape from but I don't think it can never succeeds can never succeeds to escape from empiricism as I mentioned I emailed theater we had a
discussion about this that can't ultimately is a reactionary not in a negative sense as I mentioned is that it's a philosopher who reacts to what he takes to be the most important trend of philosophical juncture of his time, and that's empiricism, British empiricism, human empiricism in particular. And he gets too bogged down with British empiricism, that he cannot elevate his own idea of a priori transcendental philosophy to a new level the way that Hacom does. So to bring up like Kant's Dove and what he accuses Plato of right in the
introduction where he says, the light dove in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. Likewise, Plato abandoned the world of the senses because it set such narrow limits for the understanding and dared to go beyond it on the wings of the ideas in the empty space of pure understanding. So, I mean, he's clearly like critical of ideas leaving the realm of the sense experience because to what would they apply? Yeah. Okay. You probably know why this my position on this, I would say that Kant's jive,
Jive White is a cheap shot, it's a terribly cheap shot. First of all, Kant is infamous. I mean, let's not talk, let's not, let's not, you know, vilify Kant. It's basically all of our philosophers, like even me. We tend to see other philosophers via mediators, via layers and layers of commentaries and tradition. And Kant is very infamous about this, that he only read Hume actually when he had this kind of conversation with British empiricism. He never really read John Locke or Berkeley, he read them through commentaries or hearsay.
And most of the time, when he talks about Locke, you know, he's just like talking out of his butt. He's really like off the point. So yes, there is this component, and Plato here I think falls in this pattern that, as I mentioned to you about in the course on Plato, that the reading of Plato, the serious reading of Plato's work rather than Platonism wasn't really part of the recipe of academic studies until late 19th century, with the emergence of Marburg School and Tobinjan School.
And before then, everything that every philosopher was ever talking about Plato was simply through the reading of either Neoplatonists, the worst kind of readers of Plato, or Aristotle, who is famous for manhandling Plato. Now, Kant's reading of Plato is fundamentally Aristotelian. Nevertheless, let's even accept that what Kant says here is true. Then, as Hoselle would say in defense of Plato, if you do not have pure ideas, namely pure logic, then how can you even organize sense experiences?
How can you even have experience in the first place? This becomes very, very, as I mentioned, a very sensitive topic in the transition from Kantian philosophy to Neo-Kantian and modern philosophy. This idea that how can we in fact talk about experiences without falling into what Sellars calls the myth of the given? At which level can we say that these datum of experience are given, are there? They are fundamental, fundamental independent of the pure acts of cognition.
Can we even detect such things? Sellars would say no, these are myths of the given. The givens simply in Greek means data, sense datum. But, I mean, the point of the constant in itself is as... It seems like the point there is to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves, to not take appearances as things in themselves. Yes. No, Kant completely understands, Kant completely makes this distinction very, very clear.
However, as I mentioned, at least with regard to a few key topics, namely the main constraints or the main necessary conditions for the organization of the order of appearance or experience, he somehow allies this distinction, and that's the question of time. temporality as being an ideal thing, the transcendental ideality of experienced temporality, which is agential and pragmatic, and time as a real dimension of things in themselves. It makes, it kind of, you know,
glides back and forth between these two, two effortlessly. Any more questions before we finish today's session? session I will start we might kind of somehow tone down discussions and just you know moving toward the introduction I unpacked the introduction and less you know discussions but then we can pick up on the discussions and arguments
the session afterwards. And again, as I mentioned, don't worry. I think this introduction is necessary and if time is needed, which I'm sure will be needed, I will add more sessions at the end, make up sessions. I guess I'm just still sort of curious about how to, how we're reading Kant in this way where it seems like from the outset we want to say that like the project of grounding knowledge
in experience has itself a deep contradiction. And because of that contradiction, we posit this other alternative. But then... No, no, no, I don't think that's... You see, okay, I think I'm glad you brought this up. Knowledge, grounding knowledge in experience absolutely does not have any contradiction because that's what a sense of knowledge is. grounding reason or pure forms of cognition in experience is rife with contradiction. Two different things, two different things. Knowledge is derived from experience. You cannot have knowledge of the world without experience.
You cannot expand your knowledge of the world without enlarging your field of experience. But then going on and claiming that somehow in some kind of surreptitious manner, reason or pure acts of cognition are somehow either temporally or contemptually restricted or tethered or bound by the order of experience, that's where things go alright. Again, two important, as I mentioned, please try to get that dictionary.
I think I have it in PDF. Just for these kinds of simple, as I mentioned, in today's continental philosophy, or where where we are coming from, this idea of knowledge, reason, experience, or intuition, or object, we handle them with utmost carelessness. They are basically too broad of concepts to have any form of technical, philosophical connotation for us, for us to be capable of having a kind of detailed analysis of what what's going on. And the same thing about the notion of understanding and reason or
knowledge. Knowledge or wisdom in German, knowledge is essentially part of experience, whereas Weissenshaft, science or reason, they are not knowledge. And that's why Hegel tries to say that absolute knowledge or absolute knowing is essentially the product of a speculative reason where knowledge ceases to exist. It's basically where reason becomes self-conscious of the limitations of knowledge precisely because knowledge is always constrained by, positively constrained, but also
negatively constrained by the limitation of transcendental structure of experiencing subject. Are the categories, are they on like what side of the veil do they, are they a part of the a posteriori? No, the categories are a priori, but the thing is that as we look at pure concepts of understanding, the so-called categories of understanding, is that
categories is famous that Kant, you know Kantian people say that, criticized Kant that how could you ever come with these idea of categories, this table of categories? Pure concepts of understanding, mainly concepts to which we can organize our intuitions of particular items in the world and construct objects of understanding. Well, Kant never answers to these questions. Kant simply takes them for granted. granted. From a historical context, he simply was reading logical books of the times, you know, just main works of logic of his time, and that's true from
those readings he somehow compiled this table of categories. But nevertheless, Hegel doesn't really criticize Kant simply because he has somehow plagiarized his logical books in order to come up with a table of categories. What Hegel's critique against Kant is, is that insofar as Kant always constrains categories to the aperceptive self, namely the aperceptive eye, the eye that thinks or the eye that experiences, He deprives himself of understanding or the opportunity of investigating in depth what
categories or pure concepts of understandings are in themselves. And that's where objective and speculative logic comes. So again, it comes back to that idea, the difference between cogitations as acts and cogitatum, namely objects. And categories, yes, they need objects, they need content, but you can't really expand the scope of this content or revise your notion of the object of this act without being capable treating acts, pure acts of cognitions, or categories in themselves on their own rightful
logical ground. So like an account can be given a categories that goes beyond what's necessary for experience to be possible? Yes, yeah, but I think, I mean, Kant doesn't have any problem with that. What I'm trying to say is that even the existing table of categories, you know, you can read them in two different ways. You can treat them as logical, purely formal logical entities, the way that Hegel does,
by way of the greater logic or objective logic, or you can always see them as being intrinsically connected or constrained by the structure of the transcendental subject of experience, namely that perceptive eye. Now, Hegel doesn't discourage the latter, the Kantian reading, But he discourages this if it becomes somehow a burden to unbind the former one, the former line of investigation, namely investigating what these categories logically are in themselves. You can't really expand the content of these categories and how they can be applied to sense materials and intuitions without first expanding their logical or pure dimension.
And this is exactly, goes hand in hand with Frigge's revolution in formal logic. An artificial intelligence who has ramified its pure determination of thoughts or form thoughts can potentially have a much larger field of experience than all homo sapiens
is combined. Shall we finish this session? Quite a bit. Just to, so for people, if people feel like they want to say more, please drop stuff in the sidebar in the future, and I'll just make sure that everyone gets a chance to talk.
They haven't gotten a chance to. Yeah, thanks everyone. And also please feel free to ask questions on the classroom board. I feel there are, and those of you who have been with me for a long time, you know that I'm very clumsy with emails and stuff. But you can always drop me a note, and we can just Skype one to one, if you have questions and stuff. But also feel free to post your questions on the classroom page. be happy to answer as I mentioned you know this this course is going to be difficult but I try to keep I mean I understand that the introduction introductory sessions this session and next session will be somehow vague all
over the place but at some point we have to give them orientation we have to go direction because you know wondering in critical pure reason without orientation is not really a good idea. You will eventually drown in the swamp. All right, and I'll try and find that companion dictionary, and I'll put it on the course classroom. Excellent. All right, thanks everyone. I'm gonna end it. Thank you everyone. Goodbye, have a great day. Thank you Reza.