What do you mean by "God" being Innate Kant?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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According to Kant’s definition, innate ideas are those that nobody can think of, they are born with us, namely in our genes. I know what he means, but I can’t but to think that this particular concept is highly speculative.

Just to be critical as he was, I say that no generally abstract ideas should be defined as innate. The idea of “God” isn’t born with us. When we were firstly aware of our surroundings, e.g. the sky, we respond feelings rather than thoughts. “God” is only developed later, as we reasoning over our experiences, in the attempt to explain natural phonamona, e.g. thunder. These experiences in this case could be those with our social superiorers, e.g. our tribe leaders, who have the power over us - as we could do nothing about a thunder. Hence, “God” is a product of reasoning out of experiences, like pretty much any idea else.

Space and time, accroding to Kant, is the basic means of reasoning experiences and proccessing sensations. If there is anything that’s innate, these should be the ones. However, to say that we are born with the intuition of space and time, is just as speculative as those so called innate ideas. We show inacurate deductions about time and space in childhood, and we get better as we grow up. But if not, how come we have the ability to reason?

I consider a baby being born (maybe I should consider right from fertilisation). At birth, he possesses nothing but the “will to power” and the basic human surviving instinct, e.g. crying for air and sucking for milk. these are the only innate, the only things that are already in our genes. At this time, rationality and empiriality are at their most primitive - the form of survining instinct. As time passes, the baby begins to develop both rationality and empiriality. The development must be simutaneous, since the mutual dependency of the two entities. Over time, the entities pull and push each other, driven by the “will to power” and the physical laws, eventually into the complexity as we know now: the matured reason and the adult human body. A small brain cannot undertake many logical functions, just as a limited reasoning power cannot ensure the survival/development of the organs/body.

To sum up my points:

All things are developed from infinity and heading towards infinity, concerning the problem of “nothing is a thing or not or what”.

All things have mutual relationships with each other, because they originate from unity hence having the same fundamental characteristics.

All developments are continous, this is represented by time and space, buut nothing special about them, time is because development is underway, space is because nothing has expanded into everything.

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^^sorry to intrude cuz i’m not Kant…:slight_smile:…But to answer you questions:

We ‘are’ born with God!..God is the nothingness that is Space and time. Space as you said is “the expansion of nothing into everything.” Therefore you begin with ‘nothing’. Nothing is everything!..contradictory?

we’re born with no knowledge of time, but knowledge of space…not the universe, but the fact that there ‘is’ space. Space is all around you and time is Space, they both go hand in hand. And all eminate from God!

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Why do you say that time is space? Kant said space and time is nothing because they can’t be thought of and detected as objects. They are merely intuitions that are innate to us, their existence for us to have the base of reasoning. I refuse to believe that they are innate, let alone how might he define intuition. I see differ from a entirely different point, a point that’s fundamentally related to “God”.

You say “God” is innate, so you agree with Kant on this, but you didn’t come up with any supportive arguement nor defying arguement against my theory about the origin of the idea “God”.

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I don’t know about genes, rather, our cognition occurs through categories in our mind. There are two kinds of concepts (concepts of freedom and concepts of nature). Concepts of nature make possible theoretical cognition governed by a priori principles. Concepts of nature can be understood as scientific, as they deal with the empirical world. Our understanding (cognition of this world) occurs through these a priori concepts. Time, extension and other such categories allow us to have cognition of the outside world. Concepts of freedom relate to reason’s ability to formulate maxims in accordance with the categorical imperative.

Kant’s god has more to do with the purposiveness of nature than it does with an innate belief in god.

This is somewhat close to kant’s purposiveness in nature. Kant suggests that this a subjective principle of judgment. Here is a passage from the third critique:

As we reflect on nature, we assume there is general laws guiding it. These laws cannot be fully known, for they lie in the supersensible realm. We have an experience of them, Kant refers to this “as if” there was a system of order. That is how we know of god, the universe is ordered according to concepts that reason can understand. The logical order of the universe implies god.

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actually kant’s arguments about the necessity of space and time as the “irremovable goggles” through which all events are percieved are excellent (although not infalliable)… on this one point I tend to agree with him…

space and time are nothing without the human observer to judge them…

the “tabula rasa” is not so pure…

-Imp

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Kant said we can’t “know” God in the first critique, didn’t he? Or did he changed his mind in the third? The thing about Kant bothrs me is that he eximanes reason by reason. He stresses the limit of reason, now to me, a man who can see the limit must be able to see the beyond, in order to actually recognise the limit. But if he saw beyond, didn’t he break the limit of reason? Also, Kant reasons way too much. He practically considers nothing practical. he talks about what’s innate, yet he doesn’t look into the human development. He defines the concepts of space and time and other abstracts as promblamatic - “because we’ve reached the limit of understanding” as he puts it. Again, how can you purely use reason to fully understand reason? As he said himself, that judgment only comes when reasoning is combined with sensation. This whole thing to me is speculative to say the least, if not contradictory.

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To me the problem with Kant is that there’s no good way to separate “innate” knowledge from social conditioning. You’d have to have access to a humans with no culture or language that never interacted with each other in order to see what “innate” knowlegde they had. And then even if you found such subjects you couldn’t communicate with them.

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I hope you read my example about baby there. In that example, basically I was trying to fugure out more or less the same issue you’ve just raised. Just to repeat, I think that what really innate is the “will to power” with the basic survival human instinct. They are in the genes as the result of evolution, hence they are in the genes of at least every living creatures. Whatever abstract ideas that appeared later, are the result of the expansion of what I said as the innated, via the interaction between rationality and empiricality.

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I think he still stands by the fact that we cannot know god, except subjectively (that is why he uses judgement). I just finished the Metaphysics of Morals and he makes some interesting points about revealed religion but still suggests that it could have no part in a purely philosophic morals. God still cannot be our ground for knowing, rather that is left up to the Understanding and Reason, Judgement is the closest we get to “knowing” god.

The limits he sets is the supersensible. We can still get some idea but that is through judgement which acts as if its propositions should be universal but they can’t be.

AMEN!!!

I’m actually writing my senior thesis analyzing Kant’s freedom as only the freedom to obey Reason then I will show how Foucault is able to point us to much more expansive notions of freedom, freedom outside the sovereignty of reason.

well… there is practical reason :wink:

Kant also uses the Understanding and Judgement but I agree with you, it is all reason.

Contradictory is one of Kant’s specialities. He presents this as an antinomy and then solves it by cutting things into two.

Very true, our very ideas of Reason are socially conditioned. This is why Kant leaves us susceptible to power. Kant naturalizes things like authority, guilt, sovereignty, punishment, and more by calling them universal concepts. People begin to think that the products of reason are absolute, timeless and irreproachable. Nothing is irreproachable.

Kant’s categories are great to use in discussions about how the conscousness is structured and what effects that may have on cognition. I used to work at a home for individuals with severe mental handicaps. Those that had been injured showed certain differences in the way they understood time, space, interpersonal relations and many other concepts. I think that human consciousness does lend itself to a structural interpretation where our cognition is shaped by the operations of our consciousness. I don’t think Reason can offer us universal laws of human action but Kant’s morality is very rich in other ways.

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Kant’s morality is very refreshing and plenty, but again, I think he ignores the practical too often. He reckons love is an act out of duty. But how can one really say that, knowing all the other factors play euqally important roles. Aesthetic factors relating to gender attraction can completely outweight the sense of duty, no?

Another thing. “Nothing is a thing or not?” Kant call this antinomies as you mentioned. But is this more or less solely to do with our language? Is the causation of reason flaws the limitation our language excert onto the mind?

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^^sorry I wasn’t near the computer to reply…:slight_smile:…I’ll try to break it down.

The simplicity of life overpasses most heads of the thinkers and those who love to reason, basically because you seem to look at what it should, could, and would be instead of what it is.

Time and space are the same thing…and what Kant said is true because they are nothing, to the physical eye you can neither see time or space; you can’t see nothingness. Yet with the mind that you have you ‘know’ that all exists. Time is made up by man, the concept of having to be controlled by movement! If then you’re timeless, then there is only space; which occupies both time and itself. Space is the unseen the nothingness which exists as everything when it’s by itself.

when you close your eyes -without thinking- you see only darkness and only space, the nothingness. While your eyes are closed you have no perception of time because you’re not thinking, so with no perception of time you only have the nothing which is space.

And you also said that nothing can’t be a thing or not. <-That’s a basic truth, because if nothing is all you have in an area, then nothing is the everything that’s there.

Silence is Silence or not
Truth is truth or not
Lying is Lying or not
Love is love or not

^^take a look at those…If Silence is what you have it’s everything yet it’s nothing!
If truth is what you have then it’s everything, yet it’s also nothing!

because none of you can ever grasp any of these invisible things of space in your hand, which you say are all affected by time… which I say is a part of space which is nothing, and that’s the only thing there IS!

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I’ve read what you had to say 730, I find that you’re harder to be understood than Kant.

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^^lol…It’s as simple as an excercise like this:

If you hold a cup in your right hand, you can’t hold the box of orange juice in the same hand…you have everything in that one hand; but the moment you let it go, and hold on to nothing, nothing is the everything that’s in your hand…nothing is what you’re holding on to, and nothing is only space…that’s what makes it everything…

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Space represents being, time represents motion. With only space, it’s like the freezed ampty night sky. Only with time, things come into being in the form of space, no?

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Time doesn’t move though!..we make time move, we create Time. The revolution of the planets is just the revolution of the planets, nothing else. We make up the thing called time where we want to measure how long it takes for us to go full circle from infront of the sun to behind it. Our own curiosity is what is diminishing our sight of reality, nothing is complicated unless you seek to find the answer. And with Space things won’t freeze, time is not what makes things move, Flow makes things move; the on-time work between caterpillar-cucoon-butterfly. Everything you know as time is only the constant flow of Space/and actuallity. Space is forever moving, but because it is so vast it seems to stand still, <-isn’t that the same thing time is supposed to be?

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Don’t we creat space too though? We use it to measure the volum of objects. To measue how long it takes? How do you want to know “how long” in the first place anyway? Flow? That’s not Kant is it?

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you can’t create space, because it’s there even before you can think about it. And anything measured is time! length=time, distance=time, height=time etc…

Wanting to know will only put you somewhere where you will have to find out more to curb your apetite for searching. Accepting is the only thing that contentment comes from…and that’s the only way you can be inately filled with anything.

And as for Flow? flow is the invisible motion of an unmoving object. Therefore through flow things will seem to move, but that’s only because we’re moving too (because of flow). Flow is what makes white look good on any dark background or vice versa…both white and the darker color are unmoving but still you say they flow together…think about it?

and as for Kant?..I speak of conviction, Kant has similar statements and ideologies, but the basis without all the words is still the same…

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Right, I hope you can come up with some real explainations of the following of my questions regarding your last post.

1 How is time a universal unit for measurement? Even for volume? If so, doesn’t that put time before space?

2 Yes, I agree with our neverending desire for knowledge. But that doesn’t mean we should settle with the mere story that a man named Juses told us.

3 Flow is the invisible motion of an unmoving object? Better refine it. I don’t see how the white on dark analogy can support the idea. Also, when you talked about moving, you didn’t mention any reference. You do accept the basic theory of relativity right?

Ah well, who knows what we’re all doing with this endless reasoning over things that we can’t sense via the organs. Killing time, occupying space.

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  1. You can’t create something that’s already there! name me any single person in existence who can create nothing out of nothing. And time cannot come before space…you cannot walk when you come out of the womb. Einstein stated that Time is Gravity…gravity is space: therfore time can only be space.

  2. A man named jesus told us that love is the way through life, and that’s it, Nothing more and nothing less. Simplicity only comes after you understand, and simplicity is the opposite of knowledge; and true love only comes when you accept the simple things in life.

  3. I stated before that because space is so vast it seems unmoving, but it moves because of flow. You said that if it was only space then we would be frozen stiff…So i’ll let you know this before I go to my bed, We are frozen stiff you don’t move on your own, and seeing that time is also space time doesn’t make you move. Therefore the only movement which you are able to perform is because of flow. You can look at it through poetic or philosophical eyes. Flow is the relationship between the unmoving rock and the displacement of sand sitting under it. Flow is the relationship of DNA and the body. Flow is the circle of life, death, and also the flow of silence and nothingness. Flow is God! the only invisible thing that we will never percieve with our human eyes. I’m not going on the words of Jesus, I’m not going on the words of Kant, I’m not going on the words of any single philosopher you might find from the beginning to the end of time. I’m going on the reality of invisibility which is God.

Until you can visualize nothing and see it as a masterpiece, then you won’t understand the masterpiece which is God/flow/space/time/everything.

This conversation was really enlightening…hope to do it again maybe tomorrow or the day after…:slight_smile: but i gotta go to sleep…I like you, you got alot of questions…the answers are inside of your understanding tho…lol…:wink: much love!..

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rep.routledge.com/article/DB047SECT5

from radicalacademy.com/philkant1.htm

"1. Transcendental Aesthetic

The beginning of knowledge is in sensibility, in the reception of sensations. In order to constitute knowledge, sensations must be located in space, if they come to us through the external senses; and in time, i.e., succeeding one another, no matter what their origin – even if they be simple states of consciousness, such as pleasure and pain.

Now, for Kant, space and time are not realities existing in themselves, as Newton believed, nor are they realities coming from experience, as Aristotle maintained. They are, instead, a priori forms, that is, exigencies of our knowledge. Sense knowledge (pure intuition) carries within itself the following exigencies; Every sensation must be located in space, i.e., above or beneath, to the right or to the left, and in time, that is, antecedent, subsequent, or concomitant to other sensations. Hence space and time are conditions, not of the existence of things but of the possibility of their being manifested in us. In a word, they are subjective forms."

-Imp