Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: Understanding Knowledge
Kant’s Epistemology
Knowledge, according to Kant. Rationality encompasses the realm of knowledge and action, and reason is the instrument that guides action. Our scope of knowledge and theoretical reason is what Kant calls the sphere of action, or practical reason. Rationalists defend reason that starts from itself and its innate contents to reach universal, certain knowledge. Empiricists, however, argue that reason relies on data from experience, and as experience changes, so does our knowledge. They believe we come into the world without innate content.
Kant does not identify completely with either position, acknowledging that both are incomplete. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he writes that our knowledge begins with experience but is not limited to it. The subject receives data from experience, but it is the subject who processes and uses this data to understand reality. Each person has a unique way of perceiving their surroundings.
Copernican Revolution in Philosophy
Like Copernicus, who reversed the perspective of the world and generated a new worldview where humans are no longer the center of the universe, Kant proposes a similar shift in the theory of knowledge. Copernicus showed that the Earth revolves around the Sun. This change of approach is what Kant performs at the level of scientific knowledge.
It’s difficult to justify universal and necessary knowledge if the subject adapts to the many changes of the object. Hence, universal and necessary knowledge results from the subject’s imposition on the object a priori.
Transcendental Idealism
Kant’s philosophy is known as Transcendental Idealism because only the ideas or mental structures of the subject (space and time) allow for transcendental knowledge. These are universal ideas that transcend the particular case and do not depend on it (a priori character).
Reconciling Rationalism and Empiricism
Rationalists and empiricists could not agree on the validity and universality of science, as both currents offer different explanations. Kant seeks a way to find the validity and legitimacy of scientific progress, and he develops this in the Critique of Pure Reason.
His arguments are relations and statements (judgments). To determine whether an argument is universal or necessary, we must first analyze these judgments. Kant elaborates a theory of judgment, establishing the conditions a judgment must meet to be scientific (universal or necessary).
Types of Judgments
Judgments can be:
- Extensive: Expanding our knowledge of the world.
- Universal or Necessary: Valid in all circumstances and moments.
According to these criteria, Kant makes the following classification:
- By Degree of Extension:
- Analytical: Do not broaden our understanding of reality because the predicate is included in the subject.
- Synthetic: Expand our knowledge because the predicate provides new information about the subject. For example: “The straight line is the shortest distance between two points.”
- By Validity:
- A Priori: Their truth does not depend on experience; they have universal and necessary validity.
- A Posteriori: Their truth depends on experience, and we must verify them through observation.
Kant uses these distinctions to define possible judgments and build his theory of knowledge.