"Intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuitions are empty; it is only in their conjunction that knowledge arises" (Kant).
"All human knowledge begins with intuitions, continues with concepts, and ends with ideas" (Kant).
"Everything is known, not by itself, but by the capacity of the one who knows" (Boethius).
Kant's Theory of Knowledge
Kant criticized rationalists (such as Leibniz and Descartes) for relying exclusively on pure reason. He called them "dogmatic rationalists." He also criticized pure empiricists (such as Locke and Hume) who claimed that all knowledge arises from and is reducible to experience. His philosophy −a theory of knowledge presented in his work "Critique of Pure Reason"−, emphasizes the dyadic relation between subject (knower) and object (of knowledge):
For Kant, three elements are involved in knowledge:
Intuition.
It is the capacity to be in direct contact with innate, universal, necessary and a priori concepts, that is, prior to sensible experience. For example, space and time are intuitions that cannot be defined in terms of other concepts because they are primary or pure concepts.
The pure or primary concepts are, in addition to space and time, the philosophical categories, which are the pure concepts of the understanding. To make a judgment is to conceptualize through the philosophical categories.
The pure or primary concepts constitute the foundation of knowledge, bring unity to the knowledge of the various phenomena, and make experience possible.
Sensible experience, the experience of the physical world.
Experience is founded on intuitions, on philosophical categories, which are the a priori concepts. Without these a priori concepts experience cannot take place.
The concepts.
They are the intermediaries between intuitions and experience. From intuitions and sensible experience arise concepts. All perception implies an interaction between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. Concepts and intuitions need each other and from their conjunction arises knowledge.
According to Kant, there is a noumenal world unknowable at the rational level, but intuitive and a priori. And there is a phenomenal world that can be experienced and understood and from which concepts arise. We can only know the phenomena, the external that captures our understanding. The essence of things (the noumenon), the thing in itself, cannot be known rationally, but it can be intuited through the innate, universal and a priori philosophical categories. Reason is insufficient to know the deep nature of reality.
The types of judgments
Kant distinguished two types of judgments according to their contribution to knowledge:
Analytic.
They are those in which the predicate is contained in the subject, that is to say, the predicate is an explanation or definition of the subject or from the subject we can deduce its predicate. They do not provide new knowledge, they are not extensive. For example: "bachelors are unmarried", "all bodies are extensive", "the triangle has three angles". A mathematical example is the principle of non-contradiction: an object either has a predicate or it does not.
Synthetics.
They are those in which the predicate is not included in the subject. They provide new knowledge, they are extensive. For example, "Jorge is taller than 1.8 meters".
Kant also distinguished two types of judgments, depending on experience:
A priori.
They are judgments independent of experience. We can establish them without recourse to experience. They are universal and necessary. The above examples of analytic judgments are a priori judgments.
A posteriori.
They are judgments that arise from experience. We need experience to establish them. They are particular and contingent. The aforementioned example of synthetic judgment is an a posteriori judgment.
Combining analytic and synthetic judgments with a priori and a posteriori judgments, four types of judgments emerge:
Analytic a priori.
Synthetic a priori.
Analytical a posteriori.
Synthetic a posteriori.
Of these four forms, the third is contradictory, so he does not consider it, focusing on the other three.
Kant's "Copernican revolution"
Before Kant, it was admitted that all analytic judgments were a priori, and that all synthetic judgments were a posteriori. But Kant postulates that there are a priori synthetic judgments. For example, "The straight line is the shortest distance between two points" is not an analytic judgment because the predicate is not semantically included in the subject, and neither is it an a posteriori judgment because its truth is known to us without access to experience (pure reason suffices).
The synthetic a priori judgments:
They are judgments established a priori (there is no need of sensible experience) and at the same time they provide knowledge, so they are synthetic.
They proceed from experience but are not comprehensible from sensible experience alone.
They are not so much concerned with objects as with our way of knowing them.
They are linked to our self-consciousness.
They constitute the foundation of modern science, its principles.
Before Kant, the process of knowledge was considered to be passive on the part of the cognizing subject. With Kant, the cognizing subject is active and inwardly (mentally) constructs the perceived phenomena according to his cognitive faculties. We see phenomena through the filter of our mental structure. It is the subject that interprets the object.
Kant's position is called "transcendental idealism," an idealism of a subjective kind, different from Plato's realist idealism. "Plato did not realize that, with all his efforts, he was making no progress, since he had no foothold" (Kant). Idealism is a philosophical theory that holds the primacy of ideas, even their independent existence (as in Plato's theory).
Kant's theory of knowledge is one of the great landmarks in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of science. Kant himself claimed that he had accomplished a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy and that his philosophical system was complete: "I venture to assert that not a single metaphysical problem remains unsolved or without at least the key to its solution having already been provided." Before Kant, knowledge was governed by the external world. With Kant, the formula is reversed: the external world is governed by our inner world; the subject is the metaphysical center. With Kant, contemporary philosophy truly begins. Kant is the modern Aristotle.
Mathematical knowledge
Kant tried to synthesize the two philosophical currents that were being debated in his time around the problem of knowledge in general and mathematical knowledge in particular: rationalism and empiricism.
For rationalists, mathematical knowledge is a priori, prior to all sensible experience. For empiricists, mathematical knowledge is a posteriori, it arises with the experience of the physical world.
For Kant, mathematical judgments are synthetic, a priori, universal and necessary:
Mathematics is grounded in space and time.
Space and time are a priori intuitions.
Space is studied by geometry. Time is studied by arithmetic.
The axioms of mathematics are not logical principles, but constructions based on the intuitions of space and time.
The Kantian categories
For Kant, there are 12 fundamental categories, organized into 4 groups of 3 each:
Grupo
Categorías
Quantity
Unity Plurality Wholeness
Quality
Reality Negation Limitation
Relation
Inherence Causation Correlation
Modality
Possibility Necessity Contingency
Category characteristics:
The categories are the pure concepts of thought, the root and transcendent concepts of understanding. They are a priori, innate concepts, i.e., prior to experience, non-empirical. They are mental frameworks within which perceptions (including space and time) acquire meaning. The a priori categories are those that make experience possible.
The categories are associated with the internal world. What is universal and necessary comes from within us, from our own mind, and not from the external real world.
The external world is responsible only for sensations, for perceptions of phenomena. To make them intelligible, the mind associates them with concepts, thus structuring reality. Concepts have a unifying function. "The function of concepts is to reduce to a unity the multiplicity of sensory impressions."
Space and time are not empirical knowledge; they are intuitions, also a priori, like the categories.
We must distinguish between form and content. Form is a priori (independent of experience). Content proceeds from experience. The forms are the categories, space and time. Form is associated with quality and content with quantity.
Thanks to the categories we can think (construct judgments) about phenomena. To make a judgment is to categorize or establish relations between categories. Understanding is the faculty of making judgments by means of concepts.
The "I" is not a category, it is the transcendental unity of consciousness, which realizes the synthesis of the categories.
Space and time
Space and time are primary intuitions and ground the other intuitions (the philosophical categories). Their characteristics are:
Space and time are infinite, continuous and indivisible.
Space is three-dimensional and essentially one. The different spaces are manifestations of that one space.
The concept of space is not derived from the experience of observing the relations between objects. Instead, for Locke, Leibniz, and Berkeley, the concept of space arises from the physical relations between objects.
Space is not a content, but a container or continent of objects.
It is impossible to represent space.
Space and time are conditions of possibility of the objectivity of phenomena and independent of them. The experience of phenomena is made possible by space and time.
Kant conceived of three types of space:
The external, empirical and perceptible space.
The internal or gnoseological space, which contains interrelated knowledge forming a structure.
The logical space, of pure reason. It is not a real entity. It connects internal and external space.
MENTAL as Theory of Knowledge
Everything, inner (mental) world and outer (physical) world are manifestations of the primary archetypes. The primary archetypes constitute a priori, intuitive, universal and necessary knowledge. These primary archetypes are the universal semantic primitives of MENTAL, which are at the same time philosophical categories. The connection between outer world and inner world is what creates consciousness and what enables knowledge.
The philosophy of primary archetypes or archetypes of consciousness is simpler and more universal than that of Kant. It is the foundation of universal science. It is a Copernican revolution even more profound than the Kantian one. It is in the line of Jungian archetypes and of the neutral language sought by Jung and Pauli. Moreover, the categories constitute a universal language in which structural and lexical semantics coincide.
The center of everything is not the cognizing subject, as Kant said, but the primary archetypes, the archetypes of consciousness, which connect and ground the internal world and the external world. Reality follows the principle of economy using the same universal principles.
From the current point of view, the analytical corresponds to the left hemisphere mode of consciousness, and the synthetic corresponds to the right hemisphere mode of consciousness. Then the analogy with Kant's philosophy (of the three levels associated with knowledge), would be the following:
The semantic primitives are synthetic, universal, necessary and a priori. They are the foundation of everything. They correspond to intuition.
Concrete expressions (combination of instances of semantic primitives) are analytic, particular, contingent and a posteriori.
The interpretation of concrete expressions are concepts, which are abstract in nature and may correspond to or refer to the internal (mental) or external (physical) world.
Other distinguishing features with respect to Kant's theory of knowledge are:
For Kant, philosophical categories are the foundation of knowledge.
In MENTAL, the categories are the foundation of all physical and mental reality. They are the deepest and at the same time the most real. In the categories everything converges. They are the supreme genera of things, which manifest themselves on all planes of reality and in all sciences, especially in the formal sciences (linguistics, mathematics, computer science, etc.).
Although Kant tried to differentiate himself from Plato, Plato's theory of Ideas (or Forms) is more generic than that of Kant. Plato was the precursor of the concept of archetype developed later in a broad way by Jung. For Jung, archetypes are the basic postulates of reason, and are analogous to Platonic forms and similar to Kantian categories.
In MENTAL, the form is associated to the categories, to the primary archetypes. According to Jung, archetypes are forms without content. And the content are the expressions or manifestations of the primary archetypes.
Kant understands the categories, besides pure concepts of the understanding, as "conditions of possibility". In MENTAL the categories are degrees of freedom or dimensions of possible worlds.
For Kant, space and time are intuitions, but they are not part of the philosophical categories, they are their foundation. In MENTAL, space and time are abstract concepts that transcend the physical and the mental. They connect internal and external worlds, like Kant's logical space. The abstract space of MENTAL is created from the relationships between expressions.
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