Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: A Shift in Metaphysical Method
Kant proposes a change in metaphysical method, suggesting that objects must conform to our ability to understand them. He compares this shift to the Copernican revolution in cosmology. Traditional metaphysics assumed that knowledge was the effect of objects acting upon the understanding. Kant, however, posits that knowing is the effect of objects conforming to the power of knowledge.
Change of Level: Sensitive Method
Kant argues that intellectual intuition, which creates and immediately knows its object, is beyond our capacity. Our knowledge is finite, limited by sensitive feeling. We can only know sensible objects. While all knowledge begins with experience, it does not solely derive from it. There are a priori forms that objects must conform to for intuition to occur. Space and time are these a priori forms of sensibility.
Space and Time
- Space: Everything that appears in our knowledge is in space.
- Time: Everything that occurs in experience occurs in temporal relations. All possible experience takes place within time.
Space and time are not concepts but pure intuitions. Empirical intuition is aimed at the phenomenon, not at things in themselves, but in their appearance.
The Change in Method on an Intellectual Level
Empirical concepts refer to objects, while other concepts refer to concepts themselves. Not all concepts come from experience. If they did, a priori conceptual knowledge of objects would be impossible. Pure concepts of understanding are conditions necessary for judgments and knowledge.
Table of Pure Concepts
Quantity:
- Universal (each)
- Particular (plurality)
- Singular (all)
Quality:
- Affirmative (true)
- Negative (negation)
- Indefinite (limitation)
Relation:
- Categorical (substance/accidents)
- Hypothetical (case/effect)
- Disjunctive (reciprocity)
Modality:
- Problematic (possibility)
- Assertoric (existence)
- Apodictic (necessary)
These concepts, called categories, are the a priori forms of understanding valid for all phenomena.
The Relationship Between Understanding and Sensibility
Impressions from experience are a multiplicity. The perception of an object is a process of binding together a plurality of impressions. The analytic of principles of pure understanding includes not only concepts but also a priori judgments. These are prior to experience, yet synthetic judgments based on experience in form.
These a priori judgments are:
- Axioms of Intuition
- Anticipations of Perception
- Analogies of Experience
- Postulates of Empirical Thought in General
The concept that unifies the multiple sensitive is what Kant calls transcendental apperception, an ego thinking that accompanies all our representations.