I don’t really have a good grasp on this, so I was wondering if someone could help me out in pointing out misinterpretations of ideas. Sorry for the poor formatting.
The epistemological theory of Immanuel Kant, sometimes referred to as Kantian Constructivism, attempts to impose necessary a prioriconditions upon the formulation of a postori ideas and concepts. This theory is often said to have mediated the reductionist epistemology of rationalism and empiricism with a non-reductionist philosophy that
necessitates faculties of mind derived independent of empirical means in the process of experiencing external phenomena, or even the self.
To accomplish this, Kant distinguishes between ding an sich, noumena, and Erscheinung, phenomena. Kant believed that concepts such as space and time did not actually extend into noumena, an idea that the traditional schools of rationalism and empiricism sought to prove through their epistemology, albeit through largely different means. Instead, Kant considered these concepts as a faculty of the human mind that allows the experience of phenomena, providing an intermediary between self and noumena. To Kant, knowledge of noumenon, or things in themselves, cannot be had, because these objects actually exist outside of our perceptive faculties and thus cannot be experienced in their true form. Rather, these faculties, or categories, provide a framework that limit the means in which persons interface with noumenon, or the actual world.
Following Hume, Kant held that knowledge cannot be had in the form of inductive reason alone, but held firmly to the claim that knowledge is both universal and necessary. Kant’s position was that although all knowledge presupposes existence, not all knowledge is derived from experience, and experience itself has certain necessary presuppositions. These presuppositions are both supposed and satisfied by Kantian Constructivism through the explanation of concepts such as space, time, causality and quantity not as properties of the external world, but as tools, not unlike the senses, that allow us to experience phenomena and, in a large sense, bring order to the world. Since knowledge of these faculties cannot be derived from experience, shown by Hume, Kant, defending knowledge, assumes the view that these faculties are derived a priori, or
independent of experience.
Kant finds his foundation for knowledge within synthetic a priori propositions that are, to Kant, necessarily true in themselves. This conclusion, however, provides an unsatisfactory and incomplete epistemology in which, allowing extensive rationalistic concessions, knowledge arises out of pure reason rather than experience or a
combination of the two. Further, the theory complicates the matter of existence rather than simplifying it, and brings about an object of inquiry, the noumena, that is unable to interact with other objects or demonstrate definite properties.
To Kant, reason alone is not a sufficient means through which knowledge can be obtained. Experience is necessary for knowledge to be actualized through our reasoning faculties. Kant requires experiences as necessary for belief since without concepts that can only be gleaned from experience, no judgements can be made. Following traditional empiricist epistemology, Kant believes that no cognition can precede experience, and that with experience, cognition begins. Here, Kant deviates, and claims that this does not mean that all cognition comes from experiences, but instead from synthetic a priori propositions realized by a postori concepts. This is different from the rationalistic epistemology of Rene Descartes, as Descartes claims that clear and distinct ideas alone provides evidence of real things that associate with these ideas. Kant believes that the experiencing of phenomena and the concepts resultant are necessary for the actual
realization of the intuition or a priori concept, but maintains, as Descartes and his contemporaries had, that the foundations of knowledge lay within the a priori concept, despite the necessity of experience in actualization of these concepts. In other words, Kant believed that we must exercise our faculties of mind by experiencing the world in order to know of the necessary truth of the faculties. Like Descartes, he placed truth as something to be found within reason rather than experience, but saw proof and disproof as only applicable to sense experience.
Certainly, a fundamental tenant of Kant’s epistemology, in opposition to traditional empiricism, is that the concepts of space and time are not properties of the external world, but instead, a priori concepts of the human faculty that allow for sensational experience. He reaches this conclusion through premises that attempt to show that all
experience presupposes space and time, but his arguments are unable further extrapolate that they must be synthetic a priori faculties rather than innate properties of everything that exists or simply an objective continuum within which all existence is had. As a result of attributing the concepts of space and time to human sensibility, objects then have no actual place within space or time, and thus a separate actual reality independent of these sensibilities is bred from necessity, and further, no knowledge of these noumenon can be had.
Kantian Constructivism professes that time is a synthetic a priori truth, but in having an understanding of time, one must be capable of distinguishing the past from the present and future. It seems that for one to be capable of making such a distinction, a point of
reference, or memory derived from experience, must be necessary. Further, Newton, in his Principa, showed that absolute time, or simply duration, is necessary as an equation for time is necessary within the field of astronomy. Similarly, within the same work, Newton argued for the necessity of absolute space by conducting a thought experiment in which the curvature of the water inside a bucket while rotating demonstrates the the true motion of the water in reference of what must be absolute space. Alternatively, the relational view of space, in which space is composed of relations between objects, also opposes Kant’s subjective-objective a priori idea of space. Practically, it seems to be impossible to imagine space or duration without objects, just as Kant found it impossible to imagine objects outside space or time.
Space and time are part of all experiences, but it is not necessary that these concepts are a priori human faculties, as Kant claimed. It seems that space and duration are part of external reality, and that the reason we cannot imagine objects outside of space and time is because all objects exist within an external framework, rather than an internal one. Kant’s separation between phenomenon and noumenon is quite logical, as we must be an omnipotent being to grasp the true essence of an object, even using reasonable and sensical faculties, but this noumenon is likely bound by the same framework as the
observable occurrence of the phenomenon. But, following Hume, this, like all empirical knowledge, cannot be known through inductive means and can only constitute a strong belief.