Kantian ConstructivismMotivations

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Kantian ConstructivismMotivations

• Rationalists argue that experience alone cannot
  give us knowledge
• Empiricists argue that reason cannot give us
  knowledge.
• Is each philosophy partly correct and partly
  wrong?

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KantBiography

• Lived 1724-1804
• Born in Königsberg, Germany
• Spent entire life there, studying at the
  university, and becoming professor of logic and
  metaphysics in 1770
• His main work is the Critique of Pure Reason
  (1781)
• His views on ethics are set out in the
  Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
  and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

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Preliminary Issues

• We have knowledge of the world.
• Scientific disciplines provide a priori universal
  necessary principles about the world.
• But we only experience specific events.
• How is a priori universal necessary knowledge
  about the world possible?

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Kants Revolution Constructivism

• Copernicus Revolution
• Kants Copernican Revolution
• Knowledge Conforms to Objects
• Objects Conform to Our Knowledge

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Key Points

• Kant is NOT saying that
• Kant IS saying that
• Noumenal World vs. Phenomenal World
• Universal A Priori Knowledge about the world

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Structuring RealityPart I

• How does the mind do it?
• An Analogy the Cookie Press
• Space and Time
• Thought Experiments for Space
• See p. 125 in Lawhead
• Thought Experiments for Time
• See p. 125 in Lawhead

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Structuring RealityPart II

• Does sense data in space and time yield
  knowledge?
• The Categories of Understanding Provide further
  Organization
• Causality
• Substance

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What is Reality Like outside of our Minds?

• We have objective universal knowledge of the
  phenomenal world
• We can never know the noumenal world
• Self, Cosmos, and God