- In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?
Before this quote Kant talks about metaphysics and, as I understand, how he thinks that the field hasn’t reached where they want to reach and that is adherents hasn’t been able to reaches some form of agreement in fundamental principles. He uses logic and mathematics as examples of scientific fields where they have gathered knowledge with the help of a priori knowledge. He says that to gain knowledge about nature we must first try to establish something about it before and then experiment to see if what is established is true. It’s a bad method to let the nature lead and to hope for accidental results. I think that Kant thinks metaphysics has used this method and he thinks that to turn it around and make the object conform to our cognition as an experiment.
- At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?
We say that we hear with our ears and that we see with our eyes. In the discussion Socrates and Theaetetus are trying to define what knowledge is and to do so Socrates says that he has to be more precise with the use of words and that we really see and hear through our eyes and ears and that the mind is using them to perceive our surroundings. Our mind interpreters what our organs sense, and then interpreting the information and reasoning about it is where we gain knowledge about our surroundings. And when I think about it you can’t know everything about an object by just look at it or just feeling it, you will need all your senses to interpret your surroundings and to know something about it.
Socrates argument is similar to empiricism in the way that both takes a starting point in our sensory experiences and that both think that it is the source of knowledge. And that we can’t know if something is true if we don’t experience it ourself. And this is a complicated matter where I feel that the simple conclusion is that you can’t know something about what you haven’t experienced but after reading these text you start thinking about what we know and why we know it.
I think your interpretation of Kant’s position is mostly correct. He believes that it is necessary to gain knowledge a priori to achieve progress in science. But I guess that you have to distinguish more between a priori knowledge and metaphysics, because as I understood Kant these concepts are not exactly the same. Metaphysics are about things in the world, which we cannot understand by investigating. We cannot answer the question ‚Does god exist?‘, we can just think about it and try to come to a conclusion which we cannot prove. Metaphysics are just a form of a priori knowledge, the synthetic a priori knowledge. There is also another kind of a priori knowledge which is called the analytical a priori knowledge and which contains all the knowledge we have never actively gained but which came to us with the knowledge about concepts.
SvaraRadera