Hi.  Welcome back to Philosophy 101 from
Honolulu Community College I am Chris Ann
Moore.  So, we are now on program 18 and
today we're going to talk about Immanuel
Kant.  So, we have been speeding through history
and, as we have been speeding through
histor,y we have been looking at moral
theories and ethical controversies.  We
have looked at what philosophy is, what
morality is.  We have looked at how to
answer moral issues, how to make moral
determinations.  We've looked at what are
the inadequate answers, what are the best
possible answers and the, we began to
look at different concepts of morality
in different cultures and at different
times.  We looked at moral theory from the
perspective of Taoism, Buddhism, from the
Sophists, cultural relativists, through
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, through the
Hellenistic world into the domination of
the Catholic Church for a thousand years
and the establishment of a
Judeo-Christian ethics; then, the natural
law theory, the ethics that arose out of
the Catholic Church in the high middle
ages.  And then, we talked about the
Renaissance, the Reformation, the
Scientific Revolution and we've begun to
talk about the rebirth of philosophy
because, really, during the thousand year
domination of the Catholic Church over
the Western mind, there was very little
philosophy done.  The Catholic Church was
in total control of existential
questions or the answers to existential
questions.  The answers were considered to
be arrived at by faith alone and by the
interpretation of revelation by the
authorities of the church.  Now, as we've
looked at these theories over time, we
have also been exploring ethical
controversies, particularly through the
films that you've been watching. You saw
Warrior Marks, a film about the Somali
practice of female genital mutilation
and needed to ask yourself:  is morality
dependent on culture and do members of outside cultures have
a right to say whether a culture's
practices are right or wrong?  And, of
course, you realize, by now, there's no
easy answer to that question.  We also
went exploring Judeo-Christian ethic, had
to confront where the virtues of charity
and forgiveness fit into our own
personal idea of morality because, of
course, a big part of this show is you
developing your moral theory, you are
learning all these moral theories so
that you have this vocabulary, these
tools to understand how to solve ethical
controversies and moral dilemmas.  But, is
it's ultimately your moral theory that
counts and so, as you are developing your
moral theory through this course, where
do charity and forgiveness fit in?  Does
one only need to care for their own
happiness or does one need to care about
only for the happiness those they love,
those around them?  How far does that
circle extend or does it extend to the
suffering stranger?  And then, as we go
through natural law theory, you saw that, out of the Judeo-Christian
ethic and out of natural law theory, came
very definite ideas of what the morality
of sexuality is.  Natural law theory
definitely says the sexuality, the final
purpose of sexuality is procreation,
which Aquinas says must be within a
lifelong marriage between a man and a
woman.  So, you had to confront, in a sense,
what you believe about sexuality and
what you believe about procreation by
watching the film, Trade.  The film Trade
simply prevents, presents the lives of a
lesbian couple and their own confrontation with their tradition, their
religion, their culture.  And, where do--
where is the moral determination for you
on that issue?  After natural law, we saw that, once again,
ethics returned to the domination of the
church.  But, through the Renaissance, the
Reformation and the Scientific
Revolution, as we discussed last time, the
world had changed after the Reformation.
 The Catholic Church no longer had
singular control over religion and
philosophy in the west.  The Protestant
religions were formed and now, one needed
to decide on one's religion through the
Scientific Revolution.  The scientific
method had been discovered, which was
allowing for incredible discoveries of
the laws of nature, of how they worked,
actually mind-blowing new views of the
universe and how it functioned.  And, these
discoveries made life better.  The
scientific method had brought knowledge
that worked.  And, because of the
Scientific Revolution and because of the
Reformation, where there are now all
sorts of different religions, and because
of the bloody conflict that arose,
because of all these different religions
fighting with one another, oppressing one
another, persecuting one another, some
people realized that philosophy was once
again, it's necessary.  Philosophy was
necessary to try to figure out the great
existential questions:  who am I,
how do I live, what do I do?  Simple, huge,
inescapable questions and yet, many
people have looked to religion alone
for generations to answer those
questions.  But, the bloody conflicts
between religions and the persecutions
made religion appear to some less and
less a secure place to look for answers
to existential questions.  But, even those
who were still religious, they now had to
decide on which religion.  There wasn't
one singular answer handed down from
authority.  What do I decide?  Which religion?
And, some of those religions expected the
individual to read the sacred book (in
the west, in most cases, the Bible) and
determine what that book meant, to
interpret that book for themselves, which,
of course, requires reasoning.  Furthermore,
as science discovered more and more
natural laws, discoveries that worked, that
made life better, it seemed that the
human mind and human reasons should be
able to discover philosophical truths,
that we should not necessarily be
dependent on revelation, that we should
not necessarily be dependent on trying
to discover God's will because it was
becoming more and more clear that is
extraordinarily difficult, even for those
who believe in God.  We have human reason,
we have a natural world around us to
apply that reason to.  Shouldn't we be
able to using our own hearts and minds
and feelings and imagination and
critical thinking to be able to determine
the answers to how to live our own lives?
Really, out of that confrontation,
philosophy is reborn.  After the
Renaissance, the Reformation in the
scientific revolution around the
beginning of the 17th century, the
sometime the Scientific Revolution is
taking off.  And so, people, once again, turn
to philosophy, this idea of reasoning,
striving and struggling for one's own
answers.  Of course, when one begins to
look for answers philosophically, one
needs a method.  How does one answer these
great questions?  How does one know what is moral?  How does one know what is good?
How does one answer the question:  why
should I be good?  Who should I care about?
What should I do.  A method.  Well, we've seen, since chapter 2 and
chapter 3, that's most of those who are
looking for a moral theory are trying to
answer the question:  what is good for all
human beings?
This idea comes from the notion that if
something is true, it is universally true.
In other words, if it's true for me, it's
true for you.  If it's truly true for you,
it's true for me.  If it's wrong in one
culture, it's wrong in another culture.  If
slavery, slavery is wrong in my
culture, slavery is wrong in your culture.
If it's wrong for me to lie, it's wrong
for you to lie.  If it's wrong for you to
steal, it's wrong for me to steal.  But, how
do we discover and prove these universal
truths through philosophy?  We need a method.
Now, as we've seen since the beginning, as
well, philosophy uses two basic methods:
that of logic or reason (deductive logic(
or experience (inductive logic).  But, both
of these are flawed because deductive
logic, logic in order to arrive at
universal truths needs to begin with a
priori ideas, needs to begin with certain
self-evident, undoubtable ideas.  And then,
when we apply logic, we can arrive at
other universal truths.  Experience, of
course, is flawed because experience is
always my experience.  Or, even if I
compile the experience of thousands of
people, experience is always limited.  It is
always relative to the individual and it,
indeed, can be deceptive.  So, once again, in the 17th century, where we were back to
the conundrum of the dilemma of needing
to discover a philosophical method to
arrive at certain truth, if religion and
revelation presents problems, well, so
does philosophy.  Now, two schools arose in attempt to answer this problem and
attempt to create this method.  The first
we discussed a little bit about last
time:  rationalism, those who believe that
deduction and logic indeed could arrive
at certain universal truths.  Rationists--rationalistsc excuse mec believed that a
priori ideas do indeed exist.  Undoubtable, self-evident
universal truths, which we can discover
and know, apply logic and arrive at
universal truth.  These are called the
rationalists.  Universal truth can be
deduced by applying deductive logic to
self-evident first principles called a
priori ideas.  Of course, there's a
difficulty with rationalism as, again,
we've seen from the beginning, how to
prove that a priori ideas exist and how
to know exactly what they are.  The problem with rationalism it is
difficult to discover a priori ideas, it
is difficult to prove they exist.  Now, as
we saw way back with Socrates and Plato,
when they were trying to refute this
office, trying to refute relativism,
Plato's--Plato and Socrates
determined that a priori ideas exist in
a transcendental realm.  Indeed, Socrates
and Plato believed in reincarnation and,
therefore, they believed that we
experienced these a priori ideas as
forms in a transcendental world.  And then,
when we are born into this world, we
forget them, but we know them inside
ourselves and we can discover them.
Socrates, through remembering our soul
through, remembering what nurtures our
soul, and Plato, through looking at
different manifestations of the forms in
this world, different forms of imperfect
justice, we can remember justice,
different forms of imperfect love, we can
remember love itself.  But, of course by
the time we get to the 17th century, the
west people do not believe in
reincarnation.  Although much of what
Socrates, of what Plato wrote and Socrates
taught is still accepted in the west, the
idea of reincarnation was not.  So, establishing a priori ideas through this
concept of reincarnation was no longer
workable,
was no longer available.  So, how to find
these a priori ideas?  Well, this is a
problem and, as we talked about last time,
Rene Descartes began to develop a method
to discover a priori ideas in his book, Discourses on the Method, published in
1638.  He thought that if he doubted
everything that it was possible to doubt,
what would be left would be an
undoubtable idea.  If something could be
doubted just a little bit, then you must
throw it out, you must discard it, you
must find that one idea which is
absolutely undoubtable.  And, as we saw in
the last program, Descartes did find one
idea that was absolutely undoubtable and
that was the fact that he was doubting.
Amazing!  I cannot doubt that I am
doubting, therefore I cannot doubt that I
am thinking and therefore, I cannot doubt
that I exist.  And so, Descartes's famous
"cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am).
Amazing but controversial because, really,
this one a priori idea, this one
undoubtable truth, "I think, therefore I am"
doesn't lead anywhere.  Descartes found
that, in order to really use logic on
this one a priori idea to get any new
ideas of meaning, Descartes found he had
to prove the existence of God.  And, we
will not follow Decartes's proof for the
existence of God.  We will suffice it to
say that Descartes's discovery of the a
priori idea was unsatisfactory to most.
And so, his project, though brilliant and
world-changing in his method, ultimately
did not recover philosophy the way it
needed to be recovered.  Now, there was
another school of philosophy,
however, that thought we could find
knowledge through experience.  In fact,
this school, the empiricists, believe that
all knowledge comes from experience.  They believed there was no such thing as a
priori ideas.  In fact, they claimed that
when one says they have discovered an a
priori idea, all they are saying is, "My
truth is undoubtable."  So, the empiricists
throw out the concept of a priori
ideas, say that we are born, actually,
nothing but a blank slate and all our
knowledge comes from our experiences.
Empiricism:  belief that experience is the
source of all knowledge.  Well, you may
realize, of course, that this position is
problematic, as we have said from the
beginning, because, as I said, the problem
with empiricism is experience is limited,
relative and can be deceptive.  We've talked about this again and again,
so it should be very clear to you.  So, can
empirical knowledge be used to find
universal truth?  No.  It would seem no, it
cannot be.  And, by the time of the 17th
century, other problems with using
experience as a source of knowledge
became more apparent.  As the appears
empiricists wrote and published, the
flaws in their method became even
clearer.  You see, if we are born a blank
slate and all we know is what we
experience, certain problems arise that
may be a bit difficult to understand.  But,
if you take a moment, let's look at this
cup.  I am looking at this cup, I am
sensing this cup, I am now experiencing
this cup.  But, where am I experiencing it?
Where do I see this cup  So, I see it out
there? No, in matter of fact, what I see I
see in my
mind.  Now, where is mind?  We don't know,
really, but we amounted our mind to be
somewhere behind our eyes, simply because that's where we locate sight.  But,
nevertheless, where I see this cup is in
my mind. I don't see it out here. really.
What I'm seeing is light hitting the cup,
entering my irises, hitting my cornea,
being translated into neural chemicals,
neural chemicals moving through my
nervous system to my brain, being
translated onto an image which is
reflected on to my mind, which then makes
it appear like it's out here.  Think about
this for a second.  It may seem confusing
at first, but if you think about it for a
moment, it is obviously true.  My sight is
happening in my mind.  You see, all I ever
experience is in my mind. I can't
experience anything outside of my mind.
So, empiricism leaves a problem because
if all I ever experience are ideas in my
own mind, how can I really verify what is
happening outside of my mind?  What does
this cup really look like before I see
it on my mind stream?  Even more so, how
can I know what's inside anyone else's
mind?  What do you see when you look at
this cup? I can't go inside your mind and
see what you see.  No.  We both look at that
and we call it red.  We call it red
because, since we were little, when
someone pointed to this color, they said, "red."   So, whenever we see this color, we say,
"red."  But, I don't know what red looks like
inside your mind. I don't know what red
looks like to you. I can't get inside
your mind.
In fact, this is what is called the
egocentric predicament.  If I am born a
blank slate and all I ever experience
are ideas in my own mind, how can I
verify anything outside my mind and how
can I know what is in anyone else's mind?
How can there be any such thing as
universal truth because, in fact, your
experiences are completely different
from my experiences. I don't know what it
was like to be raised in your family; you
don't know what it was like to be raised
in my family.   I don't know what it was
like to be in the kindergarten you were
in; you don't know what it was like to be
in the kindergarten I was in.  Our
experiences are vastly different.  So, how
can we discover universal truths from
vastly different experiences, from
limited experiences and from experiences
that we only perceive in our own mind.  See, this is called the egocentric
predicament.  I see a cup, I assume that
what I see in my mind, on the screen in
my mind is the same as what is out there.  But, the truth is I don't know what's out
there. I only know what I see in my mind.  Further than that, I don't know what's in
your mind and so, we end up in the
egocentric predicament.  If all you ever
experienced are ideas in your own mind,
how can you verify what exists outside
your mind or ever know what is in anyone
else's mind?  You can't.  Now, there's no
doubt you're probably going to have to
think about this.  It's not something you
can just run over and get immediately.  So,
read about this in your text and then
give some thought to it and you will
discover that it is indeed true that, to
an extent, you are bound within your own
mind.  Only you can know your own thoughts,
your own feelings, your own perceptions.  You can't ever really know
anyone else's, not the specifics.  Sure, you
can communicate, but we have this awkward
strange thing called vocabulary that we
have to shovel that into and then
communicate and hope that the other
person translates it in such a way that
they understand.  If you've ever been
really, really in love, you understand the
egocentric predicament because, at some
point, you realize you can only get so
close.  We are bound by our skin, but even
more, so we are bound in our minds, in our
own perceptions.  In a sense, we are alone
in our own minds, knowing only what we
see and what we feel and being trapped
by the needs for words and gestures to
try to communicate it to the other.  And,
so often, our communications fail, which
is why our relationships fail so often.  So, rationalism has failed to give us a
priori ideas which are meaningful or, at
least, we can agree on.  And, empiricism:  our
experience leaves us trapped in our own
mind in an egocentric predicament.  So,
where is philosophy getting us?  It's, it'ss amazing that we are still
talking about philosophy.  But, the fact is
philosophy was recovered by Immanuel
Kant, who we'll talk about today.  And, the
reason Immanuel Kant began on this quest,
it's because one empirical philosopher
really made him upset.  There was one
empiricist who took empiricism, the idea
that experience is a source of all
knowledge, to its logical extreme.  This
empiricist's name was David Hume and
David Hume, on his Treatise on Human
Understanding, proposed that if, indeed, we
are born a blank slate and if, indeed, all
of our knowledge comes from our sense
experiences, then, really, all meaningful ideas should be able to be
traced back to sense experience.  So, if the
idea has meaning, I should be able to
trace back the experience that that idea
came from.  Of course, we have many ideas
that do not come from experience.  For
instance, you may have an image of a
flying horse and you, of course, have
never experienced a flying horse.  Or, if
you have, let me know in an email!  But,
most people have not experienced it,
flying horses.  Where does that idea come
from?  It comes from our imagination.  Our
imagination has put together our sense
experience of a horse and our sense
experience of birds and compiled them
into this imaginative, creative idea.  The
mind is incredibly creative, but these
creative ideas are not meaningful ideas.
Hume is saying that the meaningful ideas
can be traced back to sense experience.
But, this causes an enormous dilemma
because there are many ideas which human
beings hold to be of incredible
importance which cannot be traced back
to sense experience.  I'd like you for a
moment to try to trace back to sense
experience your idea of an "I".  We all
have this idea that we are "I"s.  "I"s, in
other words, that I exist as a continuous
self over time, that I am, somehow, the
same person who went to kindergarten, but
I am somehow today the same person who
grew up in my family.  But, how is that
true, in what way am I the same as the
girl who went to kindergarten?  We
certainly don't have the same body, we
certainly don't have the same thoughts,
we don't have the same way of thinking,
we don't have the same feelings.  So, what
is the same between Chris Ann today and
the little blonde, toothless girl who went off to
kindergarten?  We think there's something
the same, but what is it?
Whatever it is it cannot be found in
sense experience.  Now, you may have to
trust me on this at first.  But, if you
have some time and want to do an
interesting thought experience,
experiment, try to trace your sense of a
continuous self over time to sense
experience.  You won't be able to or, if
you are able to, write and let me know
and we'll do a great philosophical paper
together and become very famous because
nobody's been able to trace "I" back to a
sense experience.  What's another idea
that many people charge that cannot be
traced back to sense experience?  The idea
of God.  The idea of God cannot be traced
back to a sense experience. God didn't
show up in your room one night and you, you
know, shook his hand or shook her hand,
right?  You didn't see God running across
the field lately, did you There was no
sense experience which can trace this
idea of God back to.  Another idea that
you cannot trace back to sense
experience its morality, what we are
dealing with in this course.  David Hume
points out that, for instance, if you saw
a murder, where would you see the evil in
the murder?  What sense experience would
lead you to think that there was evil
there?  It's not traceable to a sense
experience.  Nor, if you saw a great act of
charity, someone saving a stranger's life
and risking their own, where is the good
in that?  What sense experience can you
find the good in?  You can't.  Hume went so
far as to say morality is just a matter
of feelings, it's just a matter of human
sentiments.  Really, morality is something
more like taste.  We find evil in a murder
because we find the murder distasteful.  We find goodness in self-sacrifice
because that gives us feelings of goodness, but these feelings are not
sense experience.  Hume says that a morality appears to be universal because humans
are similar in their makeup and
therefore, we have similar feelings in
similar situations.  But, morality really
is just a feeling, the way we feel about
something.  So, this idea that all
meaningful ideas must be traced back to
sense experience means we have to throw
out some of our most cherished ideas.
Let's look at that some ideas that
cannot be traced back to sense
experience, include God, morality and "I".  
Wow!  It seems that both rationalism
leaves us trapped in our own mind,
knowing one thing that we think and
therefore we are, which isn't incredibly
helpful and empiricism leads us in the
egocentric predicament, having to throw
out some of our most cherished ideas
because they can't be traced back to
experience:  I, God and morality.  And, it
would seem, at this point, that why is
there philosophy at all if it's getting
us absolutely nowhere but confusing and
asking us to understand that cups don't
look like cups and red doesn't look like
red?  And, why people do philosophy,
anyway?  It kind of gives you a headache
after a while when you really try to
expand your mind that much.  I know!  It's
well worth a try, though.  Keep going!
Well, one of the reasons philosophy still
exists and is meaningful is because a
philosopher today, Immanuel Kant, solved
this problem between rationalism and
empiricism.  He solved it by saying that
rationalism and empiricism are both right.  He
solved it by discovering a priori ideas,
a priori ideas much more meaningful than,
"I think, therefore I am," a priori ideas
which will actually give us a basis to
develop a logical, rational understanding
of morality.
It really was an incredible feat.  And, Immanual Kant, because of this, has had an
impact, an enormous impact on philosophy
and psychology and art and literature and
science, in every aspect. Immanuel Kant
was born in 1724 and he died in 1804.  So,
his life spanned the 18th century, the
Age of Reason. And, in some ways, Immanuel
Kant is the apotheosis, the icon of the
Age of Reason because he really recovers
rationality and logic as ways of knowing,
of universal knowing, of determining
universal truth.  Before that, though
Immanuel Kant's life was really quite
settled.  As a matter of fact, most
biographers speak of Immanual Kant, they
say that he was remarkable in the fact
that he was so unremarkable.  He was born
in Koningsberg, which was then Prussia,
and he pretty much never traveled more
than 60 miles from the place he was born.  He studied philosophy.  He became a
professor.  First, he was a lecturer--
actually, was a lecturer in philosophy
for 17 years, which meant that his living
was dependent on the number of students
he had.  Instead of being paid by the
university, he was dependent paid by the
number of students that came to his
class.  He was, however an extremely
successful lecturer.  He was very popular
and his classes filled and, eventually, he
became a full professor at the
university.  But, it took many years.  He never
married.  He lived a very quiet, very
regulated life.  As a matter of fact, it is
told in, I think, every biography of
Kant, you will read that the citizens of
Konigsberg could set their watches by
his three o'clock walk because every day,
at 3 o'clock, Immanuel Kant would go
outside with his manservant and walk up
and down the boulevard of Konigsberg
like clockwork.
And so, this quiet, settled, unremarkable
life went on until Immanuel Kant read
David Hume.  And, when Immanuel Kant read David Hume, he became
incensed, he became furious.  Then, he
became deeply concerned.  See, Immanuel Kant
was basically very pious.  He had grown up
in a pietist household.  Pietism is a
sect of Protestantism, which is somewhat
simpler, similar to the Quakers in the
United States, but a very strict pious
upbringing.  And, Immanuel Kant had
deep belief in morality.  And yet, when he
read David Hume's Treatise on Human
Understanding, he realized, with horror, that David Hume
was making sense.  If, indeed, we are born a blank slate, then all meaningful ideas
would be able to be traced back to sense
experience.  And, it is true that I and God
and morality cannot be traced back to
sense experience.  And so, Hume is
correct:  we do have to throw out these
ideas.  If Hume is correct, we are, indeed,
stuck in the ego centric predicaments.  But, this was utterly unacceptable to
Kant.  First of all, it seemed that these
ideas--God and I and morality--are indeed
universal ideas and if they don't come
from sense experience, they must come
from somewhere.  And, on top of that,
science was working.  By the 18th century,
science was making astounding discoveries.  As a matter of fact,
in 1724 , as Kant was being born, Newton--excuse me--as Kant was being born,
Newton was dying.  By the time of 1804,
when Kant was dying, the United States
had already been born, the French
Revolution had already occurred.  As a
matter of fact Thomas Jefferson had just
signed the Louisiana Purchase.  In this
18th century, rationalism and science
were making differences in the world.  So,
you must be wrong because science does
indeed work and it couldn't if
you're so trapped in our individual
experience.  So, Kant determined to
discover a priori ideas we cannot be
born a blank slate.
There must be universal ideas shared by
all human beings and there must be a
universal morality based on those shared
ideas.  And so, Immanuel Kant spent the
next 10 years of his life searching for
these and writing his Critique of Pure
Reason, "critique" meeting critical
analysis and "pure reason" meaning
reasoned divorced from experience, pure
Reason alone.  And, Kant did find a priori
ideas and he found them in the most
remarkable place.  He found them in the
way the mind structures experience.  You
see, my experiences may be very different
from your experiences; indeed, they are
different from your experiences, all of
our individual experiences are different.  But, all of us:  our minds structure
experience in the same way.  Now, this is a
complex idea and we're going to break it
down step by step to try to give you an
idea.  But, if you're willing to explore, if
you're willing to think, I think you'll
begin to understand what Immanuel Kant
was talking about.  So,  in order to begin
to understand Kant, what I would like
you to do is, once again, let's do our
watching our thoughts experiment.  We've
done this before. I'm simply gonna ask
you to close your eyes
and watch your thoughts as they arise.  Just take note of your thoughts, whether
it's "I'm hungry" or "I wish I wasn't
watching this TV show" or "I have no idea
what she's saying," just watch your thoughts.  After you watch
your thoughts about a minute or so, I'm
going to ask you to write down two of
those thoughts, any two of those thoughts.  It doesn't really matter.
Okay, let's start.  Close your eyes.  No, don't watch me.  Close your eyes.  Watch
your thoughts.
 
Okay.  Write down any two thoughts.  If you didn't have enough time, stop the
tape, do the exercise and then turn me
back on.
Okay.  You should have written down two
thoughts.  Again, if you didn't have enough
time, just stop your tape and write them
down.  Okay.  Now, it should seem apparent
that the two thoughts you wrote down are
going to be different, probably than
anyone else's thoughts or even more
apparent that you don't know what
anybody else wrote down.  You don't know
what anybody else who was watching this
show right now or who's ever taken this
class wrote down, right? Those thoughts
are completely individual.  They are
completely from your own head.  They are
completely yours and other people's
thoughts are completely theirs.  There is
no way to know someone else's thoughts
for sure, which is probably a good thing.
But, what's astounding, what Immanuel Kant realized and what you soon will realize is that
every thought of anyone who has ever
done this exercise and written down
their thoughts--in fact, any, every thought
that has ever been thought has certain
features in common.  And, though I may not know what you wrote down, you may not
know what anyone else wrote down, I can
assure you that those thoughts have
certain things in common.  The structure
of every thought is the same.  The
structure of your thought is the same as
the structure of the thought of everyone
who's ever taken this class, is the
structure is the same as my thoughts.  In
fact, if there's someone in the deepest,
darkest jungles of New Guinea, right now,
thinking, their thought has the same
structure as your thoughts.  Every thought
has this structure.  In fact, the two
different thoughts you wrote down:  they
may be completely different thoughts,
they have, may be completely different
content, but the structure of the
thoughts will be the same.  Look at the
two things you wrote down.  Think about
what is the same between the
two thoughts.  What is the structure that
those thoughts share?
Well, first of all there's an "I" there.
Every thought contains an "I", whatever
you wrote down, whether it's, "I am hungry" or
"I'm confused" or "I don't know what she's
talking about" or "I think this is a
stupid exercise."  Whatever you wrote down, it has an "I".  Whatever any student who
has ever done this course has written
down, has an "I" and whatever anyone is
thinking, whether in New York or Guam or
Nairobi or Guinea, New Guinea, it has
an "I".  You see, I cannot be traced back
to sense experience, but "I" is fundamental
to every thought.  "I" is the way we
structure our thoughts and experiences.
we don't say, "There's hunger going on," we
say, "I am hungry."
We don't say, "There is a roller coaster
ride happening," we say, "I am having a
roller coaster ride."  Every experience,
every feeling that we have, we locate in
an "I"and it's not traceable to sense
experience.  You see, "I" is an a priori idea.
"I" is the way we structure thought and
experience.
So, now we're beginning to see a priori ideas do not come from experience, they are the
way our mind structures experience.  So, we can begin to find a priori ideas by
looking at the way our mind structures
experience.  Let's look for another of
those a priori ideas.  The way we could
find them is by finding those things
without which thought itself becomes
impossible.  Look about the room you are
in.  Now, I want you to take a moment and
imagine that room without furniture it.
Should be fairly easy.  Now, I'd like you
to imagine that room without people.  You
can imagine a room emptied of furniture
and people.  Imagine that room without
light.  You should be able to imagine a
room emptied of light.  Now, I would like
you to imagine that room without space.
Can't do it, right? You cannot imagine no
space.  Try.  If you try to imagine nothing,
what you will imagine is empty space.  Now, again, this may take a little effort and
it is going to take a bit of effort to understand our Immanuel Kant, but it's
well worth the effort.  Try to imagine no space.  You can't.  You
can imagine empty space.  You can imagine everything collapsing to a point, but
there's still space because your mind
cannot think without space.  Every
experience is placed in space.  Every
experience occurs in space.  Every thought
presumes the existence of space.  Further
than that, every thought presumes and
every experience presumes the existence
of three-dimensional space.
Everything I experienced--let's take my
famous cup.  I see this cup in three
dimensions.  It has height, it has width,
and it has depth.  Height, width, depth.
Everything on experience has height,
width and depth.  Now, I don't know what
this cup looks like outside my mind, if
you remember our picture.
I don't know that this cup is exactly
three dimensional. I know that, when my
mind sees it, it is seen in three
dimensions.  You see, I cannot imagine,
envision anything other than three
dimensions.  It may be outside, out there,
is eleven dimensions.  As we've said
before, physicists and mathematicians,
they take mathematical calculations, then
envision the world--not envision, that
require a world of eleven dimensions.  But,
it cannot be envisioned, we cannot see
that way, not yet.  Anything that comes
into our mind is put into a
three-dimensional framework.  What is seen back here is three dimensional space.
Three dimensional space is an a priori
idea.  No matter what your thought is, no
matter what my thought is, no matter what
the thought of somebody standing on the
top of the World Trade Center, right--uh,
World Trade Center--Empire State Building,
is going to see three dimensional
space.
So, three-dimensional space is an a
priori idea by which our mind structures
experience and thought.  Now, let's look at
one more.  Pick something up in your room,
pick anything up in your room,
hold it.  Is it still in your hand? Still?
Still?  It may seem quite obvious, but
you're experiencing that is occurring
over time.  We've talked about this before
with Lao Tzu and with Buddha:  that thoughts
happens in time and thought is of time.
All thought is structured by time.  We
think, we experience things as happening
over time.  We cannot experience them any
other way.  As a matter of fact, we
experience things as happening in
forward moving time.  We cannot imagine or even think about any other kind of time,
really. I know that I can put this cup
down, but I also know I cannot go back
and have never picked it up. I can put
the cup down, but once I pick the cup up,
I cannot go back and have never picked
it up.
Our actions are irrevocable.  Time moves
only forward, at least in our minds.  We
don't know, really, out there time.  Maybe
simultaneous time may move backward and
forward.  If you're a science fiction
reader, wonderful scientific novels have
played with the concept of time:
traveling in time, moving backward in
time, moving forward in time.  But, you
always run into something called the
temporal paradox.  Then, eventually, the
mind cannot conceive of the consequences
because nothing but forward making time,
forward moving time makes sense to us.
For instance, think could you go back in time and prevent your own birth?  Could you do
something and go back in time to prevent
your own birth?
Just play with that idea.  Well, of course,
you couldn't because if you prevent your
own birth, you can't be there to go back
and prevent it.  So, how would that work?
Temporal paradoxes.  This is why people
who watch Star Trek always have an
easier time in philosophy because Star
Trek plays with these concepts all the
time.  People who read science fiction
play with notions. In philosophy, that's
why so many philosophers like science
fiction, including me.  So, let's look at
this as each thought and experience
comes into our mind. It is shaped by the
filters of our mind, like dough is shaped
as it moves through a cookie cutter.
Immanuel Kant discovered a priori ideas
and recovered philosophy from
meaninglessness.  The a priori ideas he
discovered was the way that our mind
shapes thought and experience, like dough
through a cookie cutter.  My mind shapes
every thought and every experience that
comes into it before I perceive it on
the screen of my mind.  Or, imagine:  if I
took lace and I shined a flashlight
through that lace.  What would appear on
the other side would be shaped by the
lace pattern and that is what our mind
does with thought.  If you think of
thought as light through lace, the lace
pattern, the thoughts, are patterned by
the thing it moves through.  Think of
light going through a lace pattern.  What
appears on the other side is patterned by
the lace.  I'm saying: as these thoughts and
experience come into our mind, what
appears on the screen of mind is
patterned by the thought that it moves
through.  Our mind, in essence, contains a
filter.  We might image it something like
this:  there is a filter in our mind that
structures all thought and experience.
The Noumenal World, as Kant called it, is
the world as it is, the unfiltered world,
the world out there, the world before we
perceive it.  But, once it goes through our
filter, we perceive the world as it is
filtered, as it is structured.  And, this is
called the Phenomenal World.  Now, let's
look at those filters.  We've talked about
three-dimensional space.  It's one of
those filters. It may be 11 dimensions
out there, but we perceive in three
dimensions, forward moving time.  Time
may be simultaneous or moving backwards and forward.  There may be all sorts of
different movements of time, but we
perceive forward moving time and we've
perceived everything in terms of an "I", a
self, a continuous self that exists
over time.  These are structures.  Now,
Immanuel Kant then went forward and
talked about many different filters he
called the regulative categories.  There
are others that we don't want to go into
or need to go into for this course, but
there is one important filter that is
essential in this course.  And,that is,
of course, morality.  You see, Hume is
right.  Hume had said morality cannot be
found in sense experience and it cannot
be.  So, morality must be an a priori
idea because we do experience in terms
of morality.  Everything that we
experience, we experience iss good or bad,
correct or incorrect, right or wrong.  So,
morality must be a component of
rationality.  Morality must be one of
those filters in our mind, one of those
structures in our mind.  Morality itself
is an a priori idea, part of the
structure of our mind, part of the way we
organize thought and experience, universal in all human beings.
Just as all human beings think in terms
of "I", all human being structure their
experience in terms of three-dimensional
space.  All human beings think in terms of
forward moving time.  All human beings
share morality as a component of their
filter, as an aspect of rationality.  It's
part of our hardware.  We are not born a
blank slates.  We are not born a tabla
rasa.  We are born with definite a priori
ideas and those a priori ideas structure
every thought and every experience we
have.  Morality is one of those a priori
ideas.  Why?  Morality cannot be traced back
to experience and yet, as a Immanuel Kant
pointed out, no one wants to live in a
world without morality.  Amazing but true.
No one wants to live in a world without
morality.  Now, granted not everybody wants to be moral,
but even immoral people want you to be
moral.  Even people who want to lie, cheat
and steal want everybody else to be
honest.  Even those who break contracts
expect you to keep your contracts.  You
see, even the immoral want everybody to
be moral.  No one wants to live in a world
without morality for, indeed, it would be
unlivable .  Therefore, if everyone has this
idea of morality, it cannot be traced
back to sense experience.  It must be an a
priori idea.  But, unlike Socrates and
Plato, who said that that idea that must
come from a transcendental world we
experience before we were born, Kant says, "No!"  It is a structure of our mind.  It is
one of the filters of our mind.  and,
because morality is a component of
rationality, because it is a structure
that we are born with, we can now take
this a priori idea apply logic and
determine universal moral truth.  And so,
that is why philosophy is still so
important in being studied.  And, next
episode, we will look at this idea that
morality
is a component of rationality, apply
logic to it as Kant did and come up with
a universal, objective moral theory:  Kant's ethics, which are considered by many to
be one of the most important ethical
theories of all time.  And, we will find a
step-by-step method to apply to our
ethical controversies and moral dilemmas.
Now, these are a lot of complicated ideas.  Don't worry if you didn't get it the
very first time I said it.  Don't worry if
it's not all immediately apparent. You're
gonna have to think about this.  You're
gonna have to read.  You want it to strive
and struggle for your own answers.  Well,
here's the time to do it.  You gotta think
about these things, but they will become
clear.  It happens every semester. I'll see
you next time.  Bye bye.
