The Summary of Kant’s Argument: The epistemological debate between rationalism and empiricism is

basically about whether, or to what extent the senses contribute to knowledge. Both rationalism and
empiricism take for granted that it is possible for us to acquire knowledge of Reality, or how things really
are, as opposed to how they seem to us.

But both rationalism and empiricism overlook the fact the human mind is limited; it can experience and
imagine only within certain constraints. These constraints are both synthetic and a priori. All our
possible experience must conform to this SAPs. These SAPs include location in space and time, causality,
experiencing self, thing-ness, identity, and various mathematical notions. (20th century Gestalt
psychology ‘s attack on psychological atomism is based on Kant’s views.)

Therefore, we must distinguish the world we experience, bounded by SAPs, and the world of things as
they really are in themselves. Kant calls these two worlds the phenomenal (apparent) world versus the
noumenal (real) world.

Empiricism pretty much nails what it means to know something, once the SAPs are in place; i.e., within
the phenomenal world, empiricism rules. The phenomenal world is a world of things, publicly
observable, describably by science, known to the senses, determined by physical laws. No God, no
freedom, no soul, no values exist in this world.

If God, freedom, souls, and values exist, then they must be noumenal and unknowable by any ordinary
means.

Thus, according to Kant: Both rationalism and empiricism are wrong when they claim that we can
know things in themselves.

Rationalists are wrong not to trust senses; in the phenomenal world, senses are all we have.

Rationalists are right about innate ideas, but not in Plato’s sense of Forms. It is much more like
Descartes in the argument of the wax.

Hume is wrong when he claims the concept of self is unsupported by senses, and thus bogus. Rather,
the experiencing self is a pre-condition for having any experience at all. (Descartes was right).

Hume is wrong when he says the notion that the future will resemble the past is due only to custom and
habit. That notion is a SAP; we couldn’t have ordinary experience without it.

Hume is wrong when he says the source of morality is feeling. Morality, properly understood, provides
the key to linking the noumenal and phenomenal worlds. Kant argues that if morality is real, then
human freedom is real, and therefore humans are not merely creatures of the phenomenal world (not
merely things subject to laws).

The Ramifications of Kant’s Views

Kant revolutionized philosophy. Kant showed that the mind, through its innate categories,
constructs our experience along cerntain lines (space, time, causality, self, etc.). Thus, thinking
and experiencing give no access to things as they really are. **********We can think as hard
as we like, but will never escape the innate constraints of our minds.***********Kant forced
philosophy to look seriously at the world for the agent (what Kant forced philosophy to look
seriously at the world for the agent (what Kant calls the phenomenal world) independently of
the real world outside consciousness the world in itself (the noumenal world).
Ethics had long recognized the importance for moral evaluation of how things seem to the
agent. But the ramification sof kant’s noumenal-phenomenal distinction extend far beyond
ethics. Philosophyers like to take credit for all the big events in 19 th century intellectual history
as direct consequences of Kant’s philosophical legitimizing of the perspective of the subject:
Hegel and German idealism, Darwinism, romanticism, pragmatism, Marxism, the triumph of
utilitarianism, Nietzsche, and the establishment of psychology as a science, especially Gestalt
psychology.

FINAL NOTES on EPISTEMOLOGY OF KANT

The Matrix is the name of the simulated world. “I don’t think we see things as they
are……….we see things as we are.”
Old Talmudic proverb says the following: Put Quotation right here.
The human mind is a Cognitive matrix. It helps us make sense of the stimuli around us.
According to Kant, time and space and causality are the Forms of Sensibility and we must also
use the Categories of the Understanding-----Apriori Intuitions-------THEY ALL PLAY
A PART A PART IN BRINGING FORTH THE PHENOMENAL WORLD.