Transcendental Idealism

1. Transcendental Idealism Kant Made Easy

2. IMMANUEL kANT • Born in Königsberg(Former Prussia) 1724–1804 • Influential philosophies regarding metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and morality • Believed reason was the basis for morality • Frustrated with metaphysics lack of progress – attempted to “fix” philosophy by outlining how philosophy should be done • Wrote the Critique of Pure Reason to connect reason to human experience • In the Critique of Pure Reason he explains what he means by “transcendental idealism”

3. Building up Transcendental Idealism • Kant wanted to explain that some concepts were known a priori (without experience) • The Critique of Pure Reason sets out to test what can be known a priori and how we can be sure of it • Kant’s frustration with metaphysics up to his point was that they were unable to PROVE anything – they were dogmatic • Berkeley’s Idealism cannot be PROVEN one way or the other • Descartes’ idea that reality is caused by our minds being probed cannot be PROVEN one way or the other either • Plato’s Forms cannot be PROVEN if they cannot be experienced • All very problematic for Kant • Transcendental Idealism was to fix these problems by being based on a mixture of experience and reason • What does Transcendental mean?

4. Transcendental Idealism: Stuff exists, but all we know about it is what we can sense

5. Transcendental Idealism Proof • Knowledge that there is extended space can be tested a priori • “One can never represent that there is no space, although one can very well think that there are no objects to be encountered in it.” • Even if you imagine nothing, you are left with space = there must be an extended reality outside ourselves – space is necessary  universal too • That space must be infinite – any limitation we put on it is just sectioning off parts of an infinite whole • Space ≠ objects exist • Space only allows for our intuition of things outside ourselves • “By means of outer sense (a property of our mind) we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all as in space.”

6. Sensations give us the understanding of our environment • “The effect of an object on the capacity for representation, insofar as we are affected by it, is sensation.” • “I call that in the appearance which corresponds to sensations its matter…” • We understand these sensations through experience and call them matter • “[…] objects in themselves are not known to us at all, and that what we call outer objects are nothing other than mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose true correlate, ie. The thing in itself, is not and cannot be cognized through them, but is also never asked after in experience.” • The attributes of objects are understood within our mind – the idealism part • Reality is then fundamentally a subject-based component • Humans necessarily perceive objects spatially and temporally • This is what it means to cognize an object • rather than being an activity that directly comprehends the things as they are in themselves.