Introduction, IV-VII

I realize that we're only in the introduction, and that the real arguments are yet to come, but there's a jump here I'm going to have to work through carefully, because it's not coming immediately.  And hey, why not in this space?

We started out so promisingly, "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt." (Introduction I) Yes, I'm totally with you there, Immanuel.

But then, here we are at the end of the introduction, with "The most important consideration in the arrangement of such a science is that no concepts should be admitted which contain anything empirical, and that the a priori knowledge shall be perfectly pure."  (Introduction VII, incorrectly marked II in my edition, I think)  But if all knowledge begins from experience, how can there exist any knowledge that does not contain anything empirical?

I'm getting the impression that the point of the introduction is to complete the walk between these two points, and I'm struggling with that.  In the early introduction, Kant declares that knowledge must begin with experience, but not necessarily arise from experience.  I'm not getting this distinction (maybe this is clearer in the German), so let's start at the other end and walk backwards.

Kant wants to talk about "pure reason" (obviously), so do I think such a thing exists?  I want to demand that any form of reason inherently derives from the physiological constraints of the human brain in considering acquired experiences.  And Kant covers it there in the introduction.  Kant points us at mathematics as a science of pure reason, and dismisses critics who say that pure reason can't exist by pointing to mathematics, and saying, if you say this can't exist, then you're saying mathematics doesn't exist, and plainly it does.

My first instinct is to counter and demand that mathematics derives from the observed properties of objects abstracted in the mind and then contested with each other based on their own rules, and that any application to the empirical -- that is to say, any grounding mathematics has in objective reality -- is in its ability to imperfectly but practically model the behavior of reality.  But then, as I write this out, I realize that this conception of how mathematics works derives from my previous understanding of the school of philosophy that begins with none other than Kant.

So, here's where we are, I think.  Kant wants to describe "pure reason."  Inasmuch as I don't think that truly exists, I can't deny that there is very clearly, a la mathematics, something that we experience as pure reason, and that this demands an analysis.  Or, perhaps, as Kant puts it, transcendental philosophy.  And yes, it certainly merits critique.

Introduction, Parts I-III

Running behind, unsurprisingly.  Here's a response I drafted Saturday to parts I-III.

In another aborted internet discussion of philosophy once upon a time between Carleton alums, with a philosophy Ph.D. student leading a discussion of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, I wrote a response to the first chapter that effectively consisted of, "okay, I get general idea X, but that seems obvious, and all of these specifics seem wrong."  I can't even remember what it was, the leader of the discussion responded that basically I had conceded the major idea Freud was arguing for as his major premise, and the concepts I had taken issue with were effectively asides or illustrative anecdotes.  In short, as I remember him putting it, it's now Freud's world and we just live in it.

In reading Kant's introduction, I feel like I'm in much the same situation.  The thrust of the first three sections seems to be laying out a rubric for what can be considered a priori knowledge (or that which we know in advance of experience), and arguing it into a very small corner.  Perhaps I should have started with Plato instead of Kant, as it appears that Plato is the foil with which Kant is jousting here, but my issue is that Kant doesn't go far enough.  In short, he lays out certain principles such as gravity, which I would generally term scientific laws, and tries to carve out a small space for a priori knowledge along with what he terms the perfection of mathematics.  My issue is that he carves out any space for a priori knowledge at all.  I'm resisting the temptation to launch into my speculations about the epistemological origins of mathematics and its contingent nature because I've just started this project, but I'm not sure I believe that any knowledge can be considered a priori in the sense that Kant describes it.  All that said, with my minimal background in philosophy, I suspect that I'm simply going along the road that Kant mapped out, and if that thought is true, I've already given Kant the victory over his primary targets in this space.

a priori

My reading of Kant in this exercise is not exactly without foreknowledge of what's to come.  This is not just because I've made a couple of aborted forays into the text before getting distracted, but because I've covered Kant in a couple of academic courses.  More to the point, those synopses, such as from David Livingston's The Geographical Tradition, have made enough of an impact on me that I find myself basing a lot of my thinking on religion, politics, and epistemology in general centered around certain Kantian constructs.  I'm going down enough mental rabbit holes around this that I figure it's time to both ground it in a reading of the primary text, and to read the considerable philosophical work which emerged in response to Kant, which it doesn't make much sense to read if I haven't read the seminal text.

With that said, this is a summary of my understanding of the structures Kant erects in the critique, and how I tend to apply them.

The most central idea that I'm aware of from the critique is that of the division between on the one hand matter as it exists its mind-independent state, or the noumena, and on the other hand objects that exist as we perceive them or register them in our minds, or as phenomena.  I realize that quite a bit more must exist in the 500 pages of translated english* I have, even given the German disposition toward verbosity, but this is the division I've read the most about and which drives me to return to the source.  My understanding of history is that at the time of Kant's writing of the Critique, there was disagreement within the scholars of the Enlightenment on how to balance reason, in its logical progression from first principles, with empiricism, with its orderly examination of the world as we perceive it.  The Critique's historical importance largely derives from its ability to settle this debate, by illuminating that our empirical understanding of the world and our ability to rationally interpret it meet in the mind around phenomena.

At this point, it's safe to say that I'm about 98% in agreement with Kant on this score.  Or rather, I'm in agreement with what I think Kant is saying, although I'm far from certain that I have it right.  I'm aware of two primary 20th century disagreements with Kant -- one from Nietzsche, and one from Rand.  Nietzsche's frustration with Kant, as I get it, goes something like this: you've now defined the noumena as the world which we can never truly see and never truly comprehend, but then you go on to discuss what it looks like.  Make up your mind, Immanuel, either we can't directly fathom the noumena except through the phenomena, or we can.  I gather that Nietzsche incorporated this further into a narrative of Enlightenment leading us to a point of confounded philosophy, but I haven't read the text.

A much more strident criticism comes from Ayn Rand, who apparently thought Kant represented everything that was wrong with 19th century philosophy, and that his cautionary program delineating our limited access to the objective world enfeebled our ability to take the actions required of great men.  Indeed, the name of her philosophical school, Objectivism, reflects her belief that at least some men (and she did seem to believe it was mostly men) have the ability to understand the world objectively and act on that knowledge.  My only confusion here is whether to look at this as her "original sin" error from which the rest of her noxious, grandiose bile emerged, or whether this particular error emerged naturally from a patently deranged brain.  I would say that beyond this it's safe to ignore her, but unfortunately the world is currently awash in Randian nonsense, so perhaps one way to undermine that and attempt to return sense to the philosophical and political discourse is to reiterate Kant's Critique.  

* My copy is a paperback from a used bookstore published in 1966, translated by F. Max Muller, published by Doubleday under the Anchor Books imprint.