Kant's Inaugural Conversation

Kant credited both empiricism and rationalism movements. He believes that they both contributed to human’s knowledge and should not reject neither one of them. So, he keeps some parts of those principles and defines empiricism a posteriori knowledge and rationalism as a priori knowledge. His goal is to explain and then justify the possibility of scientific knowledge.

Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals, published in 1785, is Kant’s first major work in ethics. Like the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, the Groundwork is the short and easy-to-read version of what Kant deals with at greater length and complexity in his Critique. The Critique of Practical Reason, published three years later, contains greater detail than the Groundwork and differs from it on some points—in the Critique of Practical Reason, for instance, Kant places greater emphasis on ends and not just on motives—but this summary and analysis will cover only the general points of Kant’s ethics, which

Lying the one form of communication that is the untruth expressed to be the truth. Immanuel Kant states that lying is morally wrong in all possible ways. His hatred for lying has made him “just assumed that anyone who lied would be operating with a maxim like this: tell a lie so as to gain some benefit.”(Landau,pp.171) This is true for a vast number of people, they will lie in order to gain a certain benefit from the lie rather than the truth.It is similar to if you play a game of truth or dare, some rather pick a dare because it would release them from having to tell the truth. However, those who do pick truth still have a chance to lie to cover up the absolute truth.People lie in order to cover who they truly are. Even if you lie to benefit someone or something else, it would not matter to Kant because he does not care for the consequences. If you lie but have a good intention it is not the same for Kant, he would argue that you still lied no matter the consequence that a lie is a lie. “ While lying, we accuse others for not being transparent. While being hypocrites ourselves, we expect others to be sincere.” (Dehghani,Ethics) We know how it feels to be lied to by a person, so in order to not have the feeling returned, we hope the person will be truthful. We rather be surrounded by truthful people constantly despite all the lies that some people tell. No

Kant’s intuitions are representations given by sensation that provide the beginning for all cognition. Essentially, it is the way in which we receive representations which relate immediately to the object. The distinctions between intuitions and pure intuitions lies in the method of affection. Intuitions spur from the input of sensation whereas with pure intuitions there is no mingling of sensation. Pure sensations are transcendentally ideal meaning they are necessary forms of cognition. In virtue of reason, a transcendental truth cannot be denied and it is not necessary to test since it must be real. Pure intuitions determine exactly how we receive sensory input; they are not empirical and can be viewed more as a process where intuitions are passive experiences that happen to a person.

Kant became interested in the structure and limits to our own knowledge. Three critiques were written between 1781 and 1790: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of

This is true because it is the ability of an individual to understand the concepts that are provided that one has the capacity to synthesize the available concepts. Further, Kant also believes that the act of understanding must be combined with synthesis because it is regarded as an activity. Considering the fact that an action cannot be regarded as the work of sensibility, this claim cab is ambiguous and requires much explanation for one to get its deep

The significance of Kant’s thoughts was that until the time of Kant, we were expected to believe the teachings of Hume and Locke. They taught that from birth our minds were simply blank tablets. Over time we would etch onto these tablets all the knowledge we had determined through sense experiences. However, Kant had a different opinion. He believed the mind was an evolving mechanism that outlines and translates the constant sensations the brain receives. The brain is not a blank tablet, but rather a machine that is continually learning. It can determine cause and effect as well as, understand simply logic. In addition to that, Kant taught that it was no longer the world that formed our brains, but our brains that formed the world. What he meant by that, is the world and the knowledge cannot cause us to perceive the world in a different light. Yet how we choose to interpret all the information will determine our perception of reality.

Based on the end of the reading, Kant broke his writing into three sections with a brief explanation how each section transitions from the common rational knowledge of morality to philosophical, from popular moral philosophy to metaphysic of morals, and the final section from the metaphysic of morals to the critique of the pure practical reason.

1. The identity of subject and object. Since the noumenal is revealed as another manifestation of phenomena, what is unthinkable is also thinkable. Since what is thinkable depends on the necessary conceptual activity of rational beings, the consequence is that the noumenal world beyond thought is also dependent upon thought. The Kantian subject is identical with its own

The project of the transcendental dialectic is well-known. Kant’s primary aim is that of warning us against the danger involved in the misunderstanding and hypostatising of the concepts of reason.5 Nonetheless, this section of the Critique of Pure Reason does not play a purely negative role; instead, it furthers a positive enquiry of what Reason is, what its contents are, and what is their purpose. These concepts, also labeled as ideas of pure reason or transcendental ideas6, are defined as being those concepts which contain the ‘unconditioned’.7 In other words, they are related to the transcendental premises of possible experience, that is, to infinite and unconditioned ‘pure notions’ unattainable through

a dress - which does not in fact suit her - just to make her feel

For Immanuel Kant, truth is accessible to the mind only because it derives from rational categories already in the mind. Although knowledge begins in the senses, Kant claims, “besides what is given to the sensuous intuition, special concepts must yet be superadded—concepts which have their origin wholly a priori in the pure understanding, and under which every perception must be first of all subsumed and then by their means changed into experience.”6 The sources of such synthetic a priori concepts are categories inherent in reason, and Kant supplies a table of such categories, including in it: Unity (measure), Plurality (magnitude), Totality (whole), Reality, Negation, Limitation, Substance, Cause, Community, Possibility, Existence, and Necessity.7 Thus, the understanding of any perceived thing as a whole entity, or as having an independent material existence, or as being caused by anything, or as itself the cause of anything has its origin in rational categories in the mind and is not traceable to any essential quality or state of being that can be attributed to the thing in itself, according to Kant.

Kant believed that there are different concepts and intuitions in which intuitions are put under concepts. Kant refers these intuitions into what he calls the three-fold synthesis. Kant describes the three fold synthesis as “the capacities in the understanding to compare, connect, and unify the fragmentary manifold items in intuition” (A97). To put it in different terms, the three fold synthesis describes the necessary components for intuition of what is happening in the outside world. It allows us to Kant believed that the three fold synthesis is divided into three different types of synthesis. According to Kant, it is required that all of the synthesis work in unison in order for experience to happen. Experience is what makes possible the synthesis of apprehension, in return makes the possibility of the synthesis of reproduction, which creates the possibility of the synthesis of recondition. Therefore, Kant argues, the synthesis of recondition is contingent on experience. Kant also stated that for each of the three fold synthesis, there are both empirical and pure levels. In other words, each of the three fold synthesis have two ways of being interpreted in the mind, one based on our intellects because it is gathered through experience, and another based upon the fact that the manifold works in unison with the others and are dependent on each other for experience to happen.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is much concerned about the operations of the mind. Though he believed in the existence of the mind, he held a different view from the empiricists when it comes to the nature and function of the mind. He set out to prove that Hume was wrong by claiming that some truths were certain and were not based on subjective experience alone. Kant argued that the very ingredients which are necessary for even thinking in terms of a causal relationship could not be derived from experience and therefore must exist a priori, or independent of experience. Though he did not deny the importance of sensory data, he thought that the mind must add something to that data before knowledge could be attained; that something was provided by a priori (innate) categories of thought (unity, totality, time, space, cause and effect, reality, quantity, quality, negation, possibility-impossibility, and existence-nonexistence). Kant claimed that the subjective experiences of human has been modified by the pure concepts of the mind and is therefore more meaningful than it would otherwise have been.

Kant explains our knowledge of the world is based on our awareness of the world. Same goes our consciousness which gives us representations of the world: ideas of things. There are several main ideas in Kant work that I would like explore in this paper. He talks about experience, ideas, logic, and the five main human senses. He explains that in order to have an idea of something, humans first have to experience something that is similar so that they can create something new in their mind. If this does not happen, then they cannot have the idea of the thing since the idea would have no experience to gain from. For example,