>> Welcome back to Intro to
Philosophy 1010, summer session 2019.
In this video, we're going over
for the most part Immanuel Kant
and we'll be comparing him
to David Hume and Plato.
So, the reading is from the Critique
of Pure Reason and we'll be going
over the questions for exam three.
And that first one we'll be going over
today is part A, question three which is
in what ways is Kant's theory of the self
similar to and different than Hume's theory
of the self in chapter 10 of our book.
So, in chapter 10 of our book, we read an
excerpt from the Treatise of Human Nature
in which Hume argues that there
is no such thing as a self.
As an empiricist, Hume is arguing that all
that we ever actually experience are sense
perceptions from our five sense organs, sights,
and sounds, and touches and tastes and smells.
And if I left one out, the five sense organs.
So, I see a bunch of different sights,
I hear a bunch of different sounds.
They're fleeting and there's a
tremendous inconceivable rapidity
of this flux of sense perception.
But nowhere in any of them do any one
of my five sense organs detect a self.
If you define a self as something that remains
identical to itself from one moment to the next.
It's just ever-changing flux.
That's all we ever actually experience.
So, if knowledge comes through
the senses then there is no self.
So, for Immanuel Kant, he is bridging the
gap between the empiricists like Davide Hume
and John Locke and the rationalists
like Rene Descartes and Leibnitz
and the ultimate rationalist Plato.
The original father of the idea of the eternal
absolute forms of reason, the absolute ideas
like the idea of justice, the idea of
beauty, and the ultimate idea of the good.
But also, the idea of tree, the idea of
rabbit, those are the two I use a lot.
Any trees that you see in the material world,
says Plato are emanations from the absolute idea
of tree which exists according to the
Phaedrus, the dialogue called the Phaedrus,
at the outermost heaven of heavens.
So, we've been over that a bunch of
times and we'll go over some more
as we're discussing these
potential exam questions.
So, for Kant, he's saying
Hume and Plato are both right.
And I will explain why.
But I might as well read part B
question number 6, what is the difference
between Kant's rationalism
and Plato's rationalism?
And also, number 5 for part B, exam three,
why does Kant compare himself to Copernicus.
So, those are the three questions
we'll be going over in this video
and they all relate with each other.
So, the difference between Kant's
rationalism and Plato's rationalism,
which will also help us understand
the difference and similarities
between Hume's theory of the self and
Kant's theory is that Plato says these forms
of reason are eternal and they are the sources
of the material things that we encounter.
So, if you encounter a tree, it's because that
tree is participating in the idea of tree,
the absolute perfect essence
of what it is to be a tree.
And that sounds very strange.
But again, I think in the 21st century, it
sounds a little less strange when we compare it
to the extremely strange evolution of physics
from special relativity to general relativity
to quantum mechanics to string theory
which says the past, the present,
and the future of our three-dimensional
world are radiating
from the outermost horizon of the cosmos.
So, I've been over that before,
I just mention it again and again
because it makes Plato's claim and the claim in
the Upanishads about the ether more plausible.
It's just not something to be dismissed as
a holdover from primitive-thinking people.
It's just very strange that we should be
coming back around to that basic worldview.
So, Kant is saying, yes, there
are absolute forms of knowledge
that can give us certain a priori, meaning
before experience, before any sense perceptions,
we can know for certain how what are called
material objects will interact with each other,
how they will relate with each other.
But it's not because those forms of reason are
the source of those material objects but it's
because material objects that we perceive
are just the appearances in our minds.
So, this is the most complicated reading
for this whole condensed six-week class.
And so, I'm going to be going over
it first in a rough way enough
to just give you a basic
idea to approach the exam.
And then I'll give a little more detail.
So, for Kant, what he's saying is
whatever the thing is in itself,
you're observing this material world, here's
the famous mouse I use in these videos.
What is this mouse in itself?
Kant will say it's unknowable,
it's impossible to know.
All I can know is how it appears to my mind.
But the way it appears to my mind follows very
definite laws, rules that you can be certain
of they will be necessarily
true everywhere in the universe.
Contrary to what Hume said.
Hume was right, however, Kant said in as much
as we cannot know what things are in themselves.
So, Hume was a skeptic, he's saying we can't
know anything for certain, we learn everything
through sense perceptions and anything
you can learn through sense perceptions
by observing the material
world is always contingent,
it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
It just is that way.
There are no laws of reason that demand
things unfold the same way all the time.
The so-called laws of physics that
Newton discovered, says David Hume,
aren't necessarily going to be true everywhere
in the universe for all time in the future.
They might not have been
always true in the past.
They're very valuable, but they are
not necessarily universally true.
Kant is saying, yes, they are.
But not for the reason most people think.
Newton's laws of physics are true, says Kant,
because they are telling us the way any
human observer will necessarily perceive the
unknowable thing in itself
anywhere in the universe.
So, what is this mouse before I perceive it?
It's impossible for me to tell because whenever
I perceive it, it's already been filtered
through the categories of my thought.
Those are the absolute ideas
that Plato talked about.
And the difference is, Plato says, well, yeah,
the idea of a perfect mouse in God's mind,
and so you've got to think about
all kinds of crazy scenarios like,
okay, is there an idea for anything.
But at any rate, Plato would say, the source
of this mouse is the idea of the mouse.
All the absolute ideas are imprinted on my soul.
I can know this thing because in one sense I
am this thing because I'm one with the idea
of which this thing is made, from
which this thing is projected.
Kant is saying we can't say that, that's
beyond the ability for a human to know.
But we can know how the world as it
appears to humans will always behave.
So, I'm hoping it's going to start
to sound a little more clear.
I mean, I just want to give you --
here is a little example of
the way I've been reading this.
So, it's a relatively new book.
So, you've got to reread everything.
But here's just, you know, you've got to circle
things and link these ideas over here and there,
and he's using words in novel ways,
and it's just extremely difficult.
While reading through this again and again
and again, I'm thinking to myself, okay,
the students in an introductory class aren't
going to have time to really digest this.
If you've read it through
and were patient enough
to read every word, that's impressive enough.
I'm assuming it was extremely difficult to
absorb much of this and so again like I said,
I'm going over the answers quickly and
then I go back with a little more detail
and just give you a taste,
an introductory taste of one
of the most complicated writers, Immanuel Kant.
But also, I think one of the most important so
it's worthwhile to get into some of the details
of these paragraphs, each one of which
is linked to all the others in ways
that clarify the ones that
come before and after.
So, it's extremely complicated, like I said.
But let me just -- to give some order
to what we're trying to do here,
let me read again the questions
we are going over.
So, question B, number 5, why does
Kant compare himself to Copernicus?
Part B, number 6, what is the difference between
Kant's rationalism and Plato's rationalism.
And then part A, number 3, in what ways
are Kant's theory of the self similar to
and different than Hume's theory of
the self in chapter 10 of our book?
Okay. So, I think the easiest way, well, I
haven't even touched on Copernicus' aspect
yet so I'll briefly mention that.
So, Copernicus, he thought, okay, everyone's
trying to figure out how to predict the motions
of the planets, the problem of the planets.
Plato brought this up in the Republic.
Sometimes if you look up at the night sky,
the outermost sphere of the stars what appear
to be all -- because they are so far away, they
appear to all be on one surface and they appear
to be moving regularly all the time.
They don't change direction.
But some of them, the stars appear
to be wandering, wandering stars.
That's where the word planets
comes from, it means wander.
Sometimes they're moving with the rest,
sometimes they stop, sometimes they're going.
How do you account for this seemingly chaotic
motion of some of the stars in relation to most
of them which are fixed together in a pattern
and they move always in the same direction?
So, Copernicus said, well, maybe
instead of thinking that all
of these wandering stars
revolve around the earth,
we should think that the
earth revolves around the Sun.
So, he changed it from a geocentric,
Earth-centered view of the universe
to a heliocentric, Sun-centered
idea of the solar system.
But even then, the Sun wasn't
considered the center of the universe,
the whole idea of other stars being
suns with other solar systems.
So, there was no known center of the
universe and the humans were cast
out of their privileged position as the
central point of the whole universe.
And an important aside to that is
according to general relativity,
which is Isaac Newton's improvement upon --
I mean, no, it's Einstein's improvement
upon Isaac Newton's theory of gravity.
So, according to general relativity, the current
theory of gravity, no matter where you are
in the universe, it appears from
your perspective that you're
at the center of the expanding universe.
So, the Earth is in the center
of the universe, so is the Sun.
If you're on the Sun, it appears that
the Sun is in the center of the universe.
If you're on the Earth, it appears that
Earth is the center of the universe
and all the other galaxies are
expanding away from your central point
at an exponential rate no matter where you are.
So, if you're in the galaxy from our
perspective that appears to be expanding away,
then you'll appear on that galaxy
to be a stationary central point,
everyone else is expanding away from you.
So, that's important I think aside.
But in Kant's time, Einstein hadn't
corrected Newton's oversights
yet so the whole idea is don't
see the Earth as the center,
see the Earth as rotating around the Sun.
Similarly, when we're trying
to observe material nature,
don't think that we are observing what the thing
is in itself but try to see that the things
that we're observing are just appearances
that are following our laws of understanding.
So, I didn't say that very well.
So, you know what, let me just let
Immanuel Kant say it for himself.
So, now we're getting into the guts of
the Critique of Pure Reason which is --
so, he begins on page 479 by lamenting
the history of metaphysics and saying
that it hasn't gained an inch, it seems
peculiarly suited for those who desire
to exercise themselves in mock combats.
No participant has ever yet succeeded in
gaining so much as an inch of territory,
not at least in such manner as to
secure him in his permanent possession
that shows beyond our questioning
that the procedure
of metaphysics has hitherto
been nearly random groping.
Okay. What's a sure road to
science from metaphysics?
He's saying the examples of
mathematics and natural sciences --
this page 480 on the left-hand column.
The examples of mathematics and
natural science which by a single
and sudden revolution have become what they
now seem to be sufficient and remarkable
to suggest our considering what may have been
the essential feature in the changed point
of view by which they have so greatly benefited.
So, the changed point of view by which they've
so greatly benefited is the Copernican idea.
So, I'll just skip down a little bit
to the bottom of that left-hand column.
This would agree better -- all right.
So, we must, therefore, make trial whether
we may then have more success in the tasks
of metaphysics if we suppose that
objects must conform to our knowledge.
So, our knowledge does not conform to objects.
The objects conform to our knowledge.
But what are the objects?
They're really appearances.
What appears to us is what
conforms to our knowledge.
So, let me just go over this again.
So, he's comparing the history or the
science of metaphysics, what is real,
what are the first principles of being.
He's saying so far, Plato,
Aristotle, all these people,
nobody has even gained one inch of sure success.
They all contradict each other.
Is there any hope?
Yes, the natural sciences have shown
us a way, these mathematical sciences,
the examples of mathematics and natural
science, he's saying, they are showing us a way.
Their succession inclines us at least by
way of experiment, imitate their procedure.
Hitherto it's been assumed that all
our knowledge must conform to objects.
But all attempts to extend our knowledge of
objects by establishing something in regard
to them a priori by means of concepts
have on this assumption ended in failure.
So, he's talking about Hume
there and I'll go over it again.
We must, therefore, make trial whether we may
not have more success in the task of metaphysics
if we suppose that objects
must conform to our knowledge.
So, Hume said, there's no
way you can have necessary,
universal truths about objects
that you perceive empirically.
That's just the way things have happened
in the past and you're assuming, oh,
the pattern has always been that way in the
past, therefore, I'm habituated to see it
that way and therefore I assume it must
necessarily continue in that same pattern
which Newton described with mathematical
-- with his mathematical theory of gravity
and all of his physics that would predict
the way nature behaves and worked.
Hume is saying, yeah, it works but it
doesn't mean it will necessarily always work.
It's not a universal truth,
there's no such thing.
So, Kant is saying, yeah, if you assume that --
and he says, but all attempts to extend our
knowledge of objects by establishing something
in regard to them a priori -- a
priori means before experience.
By means of concepts, how has
this assumption ended in failure?
We must, therefore, make a trial of whether
we might not have more success in the tasks
of metaphysics if we suppose that
objects must conform to our knowledge.
So, the essential thing is the objects we
perceive are really the way they appear to us.
Those appearances must necessarily conform
to the categories of our own understanding.
That our minds are not a blank slate, a tabula
rasa like John Locke said that we're born
with the blank slate and
then our sense impressions
like chalk right up all our knowledge.
That's not the way it is says Kant,
our minds shape very distinctly
every sense perception that comes in.
Whatever the unknown thing in itself is when
we perceive it through our sense perceptions,
our minds are like a computer with programming.
And it transforms that chaotic flux
into the single objects we see.
I don't see, you know, an infinite series of
photons, you know, and all the chaos around me.
I see one thing, I see this mouse.
I know that it's made out of a bunch
of atoms and it's a chaos of energy.
But what do I actually perceive?
This one thing.
So, Kant is saying I can be sure
of how this thing will behave.
The laws of Newtonian gravity
will always work necessarily
because they're not telling
me anything about this object
as it is in itself unperceived by me.
Those laws of physics are only telling me how
I will always perceive this thing in itself.
Its appearance to me, I can be
absolutely certain of before ever having
to have a sensory experience of it because
all I have to do is consult the categories
of my own understanding which tell me
the way any object I perceive will behave
because the objects I perceive are
just the appearances of my own mind.
I have categories of thought which
can tell me how my thoughts work.
That's not such a crazy thing
to say says Kant to Hume
which is granted I don't know how your mind
could perceive an object that's an unthinking
substance outside of your mind.
How do ideas in your mind make contact
with some unthinking substance?
We saw George Berkeley point that out
and David Hume accepted what Berkeley
said but rejected his idea of a mind.
Berkeley said there's only ideas
in the minds that perceive them
which you call material objects
are just sense perceptions
and sense perceptions are ideas in your mind.
So, you see a tree, that's a bunch of
different sense perceptions that you formulate
into the idea of a tree in your mind.
But there are no physical things outside
of a perceiving mind says Berkeley.
Hume agrees but he says but
there's also no mind.
So, you can't perceive a self,
you can't perceive a mind.
So, how does he account for
the fact that he's thinking?
It's a good question.
It's a good question to the Buddhists
as well because the Buddhists
and David Hume have the same argument that all
you ever experience is this ever-changing series
of sense perceptions and memories.
But where is the self?
It's not empirically observable and
yet, how is that that you are aware.
And then to me, that's a good question.
David Hume and the Buddhists seem to say,
hey, I'm not claiming I know everything.
As a matter of fact, I'm claiming
to know nothing other than the fact
that there's nothing to be known.
And they are claiming to know that definitively.
So, is that a self-contradicting argument or not
that's a whole another philosophical question.
So, what Kant is saying is,
all right, I'll grant you that,
I can't empirically observe
anything that's a thing, you know,
the idea of a single unified object and a single
unified self are not empirically observable.
But he's saying the fact that we do observe
single objects proves that we are a self.
Because we have a unified consciousness
and if we didn't, we would never be able
to detect single objects in the
flux of changing sense perceptions.
It's not something that according to
David Hume you can just have a propensity
to make this fiction like willy-nilly,
oh, just to make my life easier,
I'll just instead of seeing a
flux, I'll observe a single object.
Kant is saying that's an automatic process and
it's rooted in the fact that you are a self.
And so, here is now we're going to get into --
so, I mean, I know I'm moving around
because everything is interconnected.
I'm going to get back to
this whole Copernicus thing.
Actually, all right.
So, we're going to get into the self with
Kant and David Hume but let me continue here
on page 480, so we can get the
Copernicus question out of the way.
So, he's already said I can't know
things as they are in themselves
but I can know them as they appear to me.
Bottom of 480, left-hand column.
This would agree better with what is
desired namely that it should be possible
to have knowledge of objects a priori.
Determining something in regard to
them prior to their being given,
being given through sense experience.
We should then be perceiving precisely on
the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis.
So, there's the question why does
Kant compare himself to Copernicus.
Continuing here on 480, on
the right-hand column.
Failing of satisfactory progress and
explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies
on the supposition that they are
revolved around the spectator, the Earth.
He tried whether he'd not have better
success if he made the spectator
to revolve and the stars to remain at rest.
A similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics
as it regards to the intuition of objects.
If intuition must conform to
the constitution of the objects,
I do not see how we could know
anything of the latter a priori.
And I'm going to go over this.
But if the object, as the object of the senses
must conform to the constitution of our faculty
of intuition, I have no difficulty
in conceiving such a possibility.
All right.
So, Copernicus.
What are all these epicycles
people are talking about?
Here's the Earth and the Sun
goes around and Mercury and Venus
and sometimes they're going backward.
And what's the deal?
That's too chaotic.
Can we simplify it?
Yeah. Let's take the Sun out of the fourth
orbit or whatever it was, put it in the center,
and take Earth out of the center and
put it as the third rock from the Sun.
And, oh, now everything is much easier.
Yeah, what appears to us as the planet
is going backward is the result of all
of the planets revolving around the Sun.
So, similarly, let's not think that we
are understanding objects outside of us
because there's no way Berkeley and Hume
showed us that your consciousness which is made
of ideas can have contact
with an unthinking substance
that exists outside of a perceiving mind.
Where is the connecting point?
You can't have knowledge of these things
because it's all you perceive through your --
knowledge comes from your senses
and that's all you can see.
You don't see any necessary laws of nature.
You don't even see the links
of cause and effect.
You see this happen, you see that happen.
This repeatedly happens and then you insert
this idea of a necessary causal link.
This happens as the cause,
that happens as the effect.
That's necessarily true everywhere
in the universe.
No, it isn't, says Berkeley and Hume.
Kant is saying, yes, it is, but don't try to
see that you're understanding these objects
in themselves, try to see it rather
that which we're really understanding is simply
the way the thing in itself, the objects,
you can't even really call them objects.
The unknowable whatever it is manifests
as single objects in your understanding.
It appears to you that this
-- to you and me it appears
that this is one single thing,
not a chaos of sights.
So, don't try to understand that thing in
itself, that's unknowable, you'll never know.
Just limit yourself to try and understand
the appearances in your own mind.
So, you've just kind of flipped.
You're not really understanding this thing
outside you, rather you're understanding --
that thing outside you what
appears to be the thing outside you,
you're not trying to understand
the laws that it's following,
you're trying to understand the fact that it's
following the laws of your own understanding
that you're not observing this objective
universe that is following its own laws
and you're trying as an outsider, trying
to look in and see what's going on.
What you're seeing is the whole
so-called objective universe is a creation
of the categories of your own understanding.
What are they?
Well, there are two types and
there is the categories of reason.
Let's see here.
The laws of understanding
and the laws of sensation.
So, the categories of sensation
are space and time.
You see things in a context of space and time.
So, this is the summer of 2019 class so
it's pretty warm in this room over here.
So, space and time are not
empirically observable.
You can't see, smell, touch,
taste, or hear space or time.
And all of your sensibilities
-- so, if you look on page 477,
the bottom paragraph there,
this is the introductory notes.
Kant denies that we can have
knowledge of noumena.
Noumena means things in themselves.
Indeed, we never encounter things in themselves.
Everything we perceive or
conceive has been conditioned
by our faculties of perception and thought.
Sensibility, our faculty of perception imposes
the form of space and time on objects perceived.
Your understanding of the faculty
of thought imposes the categories
which give our thoughts logical form.
We can speak of objects or events
causing other objects or events.
We can speak of things existing
or failing to exist.
We thereby speak solely of appearances, the
categories apply only to things as conditioned
by sensibility and understanding.
We cannot legitimately apply them to things in
themselves so we cannot even efficiently say
that there are things in themselves.
Okay. So, the faculty of perception, what
are the a priori categories of thought
that condition our sense perceptions?
The two main ones are space and time.
Any sense perception you have
is automatically filtered
through this category of space and time.
They're not empirically observable.
So, if you're a strict empiricist then like Hume
and Berkeley realized you don't really believe
in physical objects, three-dimensional physical
objects enduring in some space through time
because you can't identify space or
time with your sense perceptions.
So, Kant is saying, okay.
And yet, nevertheless, there does
seem to be these certain regular laws
of physics that apply everywhere.
So, what's going on?
How's that even possible?
Hume was right, you woke me from my dogmatic
slumber, Kant says, not in our selection.
So, how can Newton's laws of physics actually
give us predictive a priori knowledge
of the material nature?
And yet, how can Hume be correct or
as his empiricist philosophy shows?
How is it that we can know for certain
the way things are going to behave?
It seems to be impossible because
our minds, how are they going
to touch someone thinking
substance outside of our minds.
This is what Berkeley and Hume were
trying to say, that's impossible.
So, Kant was saying, yes,
you're right, it is impossible.
But it's not impossible for us to understand
the laws of the appearances in our own mind.
So, the laws of physics are really
for Kant the laws of psychology.
And what he's trying to analyze
are these categories of thought.
And that is what's different again.
To go over this with Plato.
Plato said the ideas through which we
perceive things create the things we perceive.
Kant was saying, no, we can't say that.
All we can say is the categories of thought,
these a priori, before sense perceptions,
these categories of thought that are
there before any sense perceptions
and automatically organize those sense
perceptions for our human understanding.
We can know what they are and they can
tell us exactly how appearances will behave
in the future always for us everywhere.
But they don't tell us anything
about the thing in itself.
That's the fundamental difference between
Kant's rationalism and Plato's rationalism.
And I'll go over it at least one more time.
The Copernican revolution in
philosophy is Kant's philosophy
as he's saying we're not trying to
analyze the outside physical world,
we're trying to analyze the way that
unknowable thing in itself is categorized
by our own process of understanding.
So, here looking at the world, you're looking
in, you're turning your eye of the mind inward
and trying to understand the way the mind works.
Realizing that you can never have knowledge
of the so-called material objective world.
You only have your appearances.
And so, the other question was how does
Kant's and Hume's theory of the self,
how are they similar and different.
Let me just read that exactly.
In what ways are Kant's theories of self
similar to and different than Hume's theory
of the self in chapter 10 of our book.
All right.
So, I think I've gone enough
of a generalization,
so now let me try to get a little more specific.
So, if you go back to chapter 10,
David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature.
And then I'm going to be able
to get back here easily enough.
So, as an empiricist, he
says I don't perceive a self.
I believe knowledge comes from sense
impressions and therefore on page 284,
it says from what impression
could this idea be derived.
If any impression gives rise
to the idea of the self
that impression must continue invariably the
same through the whole course of our lives
since self is supposed to
exist after that manner.
But there is no impression
constant and invariable.
Pain and pleasure, grief and joy,
passions, and sensations succeed each other
and they never all exist at the same time.
It cannot, therefore, be from any of these
impressions or from any other that the idea
of the self is derived and
consequently there is no such idea.
So, that is his basic argument.
I don't perceive a self as supposed
to be the same from one moment
to the next, it endures through time.
For Plato, the self was an eternal soul
and an unchanging eternal soul just
like the absolute ideas that it
perceives imprinted on itself.
Hume says I don't perceive any
unchanging sense-impression.
And since that's all that the
reality is, there must be no self.
What deludes you into thinking that you
perceive the self is the inconceivable rapidity
of this flux of different sense
perceptions, he says on page 285.
So, he says we might have -- on page 286 --
we have a certain propension
to create these fictions.
He says but we may further observe that
we do not give rise to such fiction.
Okay. But we may further observe that where we
do not to give rise to such fiction of a self,
our propension to confound identity with
relation is so great that we would have
to imagine something unknown and mysterious
connecting the parts besides their relation.
So, the same arguments that
Hume uses against the idea
of an individual enduring
self he applies to the idea
of physical objects, unified physical objects.
There's no such thing as a mouse or as
Nagasena said there's no such thing as self
to King Milinda just like there's
no such thing as a chariot.
It's just a word that refers to this
temporary assembly of ever-changing parts.
So, that's what Hume is saying also.
There's just an inconceivable rapidity of
this flux of sense perceptions that deludes us
into thinking there is one continuous self
like a movie reel has all these still frames
rapidly going past the projector light
that gives you an illusion of
continuous ongoing motion picture.
And also, he says we insert
this idea of cause and effect.
We see this happen and then
that happens regularly
and we assume there's some
necessary law of cause and effect.
And one moment of our lives
leads to the next to the next.
Our whole lives are connected by
a chain of causes and effects.
That's what we think.
Hume says I don't see any causal link.
I can't touch it or smell it or hear it or
taste it either, therefore it doesn't exist.
There is no self.
On page 289, it says as our memory alone
acquaints us with the continuance and the extent
of this succession of perceptions it is
to be considered upon that account chiefly
as the source of personal identity.
Had we no memory, we never should have
any notion of causation nor consequently
of that chain of causes and effects
which constitute our self or a person.
So, you have a memory, not of
all things but you have a memory
of a lot of the things that you've done.
So, you are assuming there is this
causal link connecting them all.
If you don't believe in the reality of causality
and that's the source of
self and there is no self.
So, there is David Hume's theory of a self.
Now, going to Kant.
He'll admit, yes, I do not perceive a self with
any of my five sense organs nor do I perceive,
you know, individual objects continuing
in an unchanged way how I perceive the
sense perception, I'll grant you that.
But it appears to me that these
things are enduring physical objects
and it appears to me -- and why is that?
Why instead of a flux of sense perceptions that
I perceive one unified object like this mouse?
Because, he's going to say, you are self.
That's the fundamental principle.
So, there's his metaphysics
and this is where he gets
into this concept of transcendental
apperception.
Okay. So, if you're going to answer the
question about comparing Hume and Kant's theory
of a self, this is the page you want to
go to, page 482 on the right-hand column
about the middle of the way down.
So, he says this original and
transcendental condition is no other
than transcendental apperception.
All right.
So, what does that mean?
The consciousness of self according
to the determinations of our state
in inner perception is merely
empirical and always-changing.
No fixed and abiding self can present
itself in this flux of inner appearances.
So, that's what Hume was saying.
Such consciousness is usually named
inner sense or empirical apperception.
What is necessarily to be represented
as numerically identical cannot be
thought as such through empirical data.
And I'm going to go over this a few times.
So, to render such a transcendental
presupposition valid, there must be a condition
which precedes all experience and
makes experience itself possible.
So, when he uses the word experience,
he's talking about sense
perception, sense experience.
That's the way, that's the word they're using.
So, to render such a transcendental
presupposition valid, there must be a condition
which precedes all experience and
makes experience itself possible.
How is it that I experience a single object
and not a crazy flux of sense perceptions?
The fact that that's even possible
for me to do to transform crazy flux
into a single enduring object demands that I
have a unifying faculty in my understanding,
something that changes flux
into individual objects.
That's the self.
Because you have a unified self of
consciousness that conditions all
of these many sense perceptions coming
in and forms them into single objects all
of which must follow very definite laws.
We call them the laws of physics but really,
they're the laws of the categories
of understanding.
That's what Kant is trying to say.
And that's kind of this Copernican revolution.
Newton thought he was understanding
the outside laws of nature.
And what Kant is saying is no,
what he's discovered is the laws
of categories of our own understanding.
And all of those categories of understanding
space and time, the categories of sensibility
which form our sense perceptions and
frame them into this framework of space
and time are our mental constructs.
Well, they're not mental constructs.
Space and time, we don't construct them,
they're the organizing principles of our mind.
They're the way our mind organizes
incoming sense perceptions.
So, that and the idea of causality,
those are the three big ones.
Those are built-in and they're rooted in
the ultimate self which we can understand
through transcendental apperception.
Now, I know this is extremely difficult
but I'm getting into the details now.
So, continuing, it will make a
little more sense as we go through.
There can be in us no modes of knowledge, no
connection or unity of one mode of knowledge
with another without the unity of consciousness
that precedes all data of intuitions.
So, for him, the intuition is
the objects that you perceive.
What am I seeing?
A pen. It's an intuition, it's not the thing
in itself, it's just what I'm perceiving.
I already had one in my hand, anyway.
So, you've got to understand the
way he uses words in a unique way
and this is an introductory class, and it's
not expected that you would get into this,
you would normally -- you know, this is
introducing you to a bunch of philosophers.
If by any chance you are attracted
to one philosopher or another,
you can take another philosophy class
just on Immanuel Kant, you know,
and then you would really get into it and write
a paper on this and analyze maybe one paragraph.
I'm just introducing you to the
way these guys think and so,
that's going to be relatively brief and
even so, it's already been 41 minutes.
All right.
So, continuing here, he says -- so, I'll
read that again and read the next sentence.
There can be in us no modes of knowledge, no
connection or unity of one mode of knowledge
with another without the unity of consciousness
that precedes all data of intuitions.
Before any sense perception come in, you
have a unity of consciousness of self.
By relation to it, the representation
of objects is alone possible.
This pure, original, unchangeable consciousness
I name transcendental apperception.
That it deserves this name it's clear from the
fact that even the purest objective unity namely
that of the a priori concepts space and
time is only possible through the relation
of the intuitions to such
unity of consciousness.
I'm going to go a little
further and then go back.
The numerical unity of this apperception is
thus the a priori ground of all concepts,
just as the manifoldness of space
and time is the a priori ground
of the intuitions of sensibility.
Okay. And I'm going to continue
after that but let me now go back
and analyze this paragraph a little bit more.
So, he's saying there can be in us no modes of
knowledge, no connection or unity of one mode
of knowledge with another
without the unity of consciousness
that precedes all data of intuitions.
Unity of consciousness.
You don't experience what David Hume and the
Buddhists say you really are which is this flux
of ever-changing sense perceptions.
If you -- apperception -- perception is sense
perception, apperception is looking inward.
You have things going on in your own
mind as well, emotions and memories,
things that aren't coming from within.
But there is empirical apperception
which is just, okay, let me sit here
and think what are my memories, what
am I experiencing, emotions coming up,
okay, a sense of sound and sight.
That's what Hume is talking about, that's
what the Buddhists were talking about.
That's empirical apperception and
Hume -- I mean, Kant agrees, yeah,
there's no self that you can ever
learn about through that process.
Transcendental apperception is transcending
or going beyond sense perceptions.
Can you know something beyond sense perceptions?
Empiricists say absolutely not.
That's our whole thing.
We say knowledge comes through
sense perceptions.
What Kant is going to say
is that's an absurd belief
because you would never experience those sense
perceptions the way you do were there not some
preexisting structuring principles
of your own consciousness
that we're not experiencing this flux that
they say is all you can actually experience.
We do. Why is it that everyone
agrees, yeah, this is a single thing?
You know, that's what common sense tells you
it is if you analyze it carefully in your mind,
you'll say, well, actually I'm not, you
know, I don't empirically observe space
or time so how could this thing which appears
to be a three-dimensional spherical column exist
in space and time, my whole
sense perceptions are fictitious.
The human being has a propensity
to create these fictions.
Kant says we don't choose to create them, that's
the pre-given structures of our own thought
and they're stable and they're real things.
Just because they're not empirically
observable, it doesn't mean they're not real.
So, Kant isn't an empiricist.
He is a rationalist, but then again, the
difference between his forms of reason
and Plato's are that his forms of reason
apply only to human understanding.
At least that's all we can say for sure.
We can't say that what I perceive actually
is giving me knowledge of what's out there.
There's a complete divide between things in
themselves existing before they are perceived
by humans and the world of our perceptions.
All we can ever know of the
world of our perceptions.
But that world we can know about with
absolute certainty that things that must --
we can know what necessarily
will always happen everywhere
in the universe wherever human being goes in the
universe, the same laws will apply, says Kant.
And that fact is rooted in
the unity of our own self.
Granted we can't perceive that self through
sense perceptions but we can logically infer
that it must exist because of the ordered
nature of the world that we do perceive.
What we call nature is the world of appearances
and it does follow very predictable
regular patterns.
How can that be possible?
Because we're only observing our own --
the appearances of our own mind and those
sense perceptions have been categorized
in definite law, a law-governed way.
And the source of those laws
of our perception is the self.
This is like Plato's idea of the good.
All of the other ideas, the idea of justice
and beauty, and then the other ideas
that describe the physical workings of
the material world, the mathematical laws
that describe the orbits of the planets,
they all come from the idea of the good.
Similarly, all of the categories of thought,
space, and time, as well as the idea of cause
and effect, they're coming
from this idea of the self.
And we learn about the idea of the self
through transcendental apperception
which is simply logically analyzing the
law-governed way objects appear to us.
So, I'll continue to read now.
The bottom of page 482 says the numerical unity
of this apperception is thus the a priori ground
of all concepts just as the manifold of
space and time is the a priori ground
of the intuitions of sensibility.
The Buddhists and Hume do not believe
in any single enduring unit of anything.
There is no chariot, there is no self.
Kant is saying, yes, there is a unit,
there is a self, and it unifies all
of our different sense perceptions
into individual objects
that obey one set of physical laws.
So, the unifying agent behind all
of our perceptions is the self.
All right.
So, continuing on page 483, on the left-hand
column it says this transcendental unity
of apperception forms out of all the possible
appearances that can stand alongside one another
in one experience, a connection of all
these representations according to laws.
For this unity of consciousness would be
impossible if the mind in the knowledge
of the manifold could not
become conscious of the identity
of function whereby it synthetically
combines it into one knowledge.
All right.
You see what I've been dealing with?
I've been reading this and reading this,
that's why I'm putting this out so late.
And it goes on in that vein.
But if you read through it,
it starts to make more sense.
It goes on to say, the original and
necessary consciousness of the identity
of the self is thus at the same time a
consciousness of an equally necessary unity
of the synthesis of all appearances according
to concepts, that is according to rules.
This not only makes them
necessarily reproducible but also
in so doing determines an object for their
intuition that is the concept of something
in which they're necessarily interconnected.
I'm going to continue and then go back.
For the mind can never think its identity
in the manifoldness of its representations
and indeed think this identity a priori if
it did not have before its eyes the identity
of its acts whereby it subordinates all
synthesis of apprehension which is empirical
to a transcendental unity thereby rendering
possible their interconnection according
to a priori rules.
Hurray! So, I'll break this up a little bit.
But let me read the last part there.
It says for the mind could
never think its identity
in the manifoldness of its representations.
So, the mind could never even develop the
fiction of its unity if it's enduring selfhood,
it couldn't have done that
just by observing things.
It wouldn't just happen automatically.
Hume says, oh, yeah, well, while the sense
perceptions happen, and we have memories
and then the human being just has a propensity
to make up these fictions of the self.
Kant is saying, no, nobody would
just arbitrarily stumble upon --
oh, I'm myself, I'm an individual self.
He says that would never happen and
here's how is trying to explain it.
So, for the mind, it could
never think its identity
in the manifoldness of its representations.
And indeed, think this identity a priori
if it did not have before its
eyes the identity of its act.
Whereby it subordinates all.
All right.
So, what's the identity of its act?
The fact that it perceives identical
unified objects enduring through time.
That is the function of the self.
It transforms the flux of sense
perceptions into single unified things
that endure through space and time.
That isn't something that
would just randomly happen.
The fact it's something that happens a
priori before we ever have sense experiences,
our minds have structures ready to go to
digest these sense impressions and turn them
into objects of knowledge that
follow the laws of nature.
And it's the very fact that we perceive
the world that's ordered by laws of nature
that proves we must be a self, forcing the
world into those patterns of perception.
So, again, it says for the mind could never
think its identity in the manifoldness
of its representations, the
flux of representations.
And indeed, think this identity a priori.
So, before you even have sense
perceptions, you've got a self.
You know, this is complicated to me too.
I'm no Kant expert but I've read
a lot of Kant and, at any rate,
I know I'm probably going deeper than you
need me to go and I've already given you
to think sufficient amount
for answering the questions.
I'm just trying to introduce
enough to like, okay, yeah,
I see how Kant's paragraphs finally
make sense after a little while.
So, that's what I'm trying to do.
All right.
So, for the mind could never think its identity
in the manifoldness of its representations.
And indeed, think this identity a priori.
If it did not have before its eyes, the identity
of its act is nature whereby it subordinates
all synthesis of apprehension which is empirical
to a transcendental unity thereby rendering
possible their interconnection according
to a priori rules.
All right.
So, the fact that we subordinate
the flux of sense perceptions,
this is how I'm understanding what he's saying.
It is what enables us to know that we are a
self that we need to see the ordered nature
of the universe, not to realize that
we're just this insignificant bug floating
in a soulless void rather
when you look at and think
that you're perceiving material
objects acting according to laws
of physics what you're really doing is
discovering all of the different categories
of thought and the way they
interact with each other all
of which taken together constitute the self.
So, I'll continue to read here,
483 in the left-hand column.
Now also we're in a position to determine more
adequately our concept of an object in general.
So, again, he'll say a concept
of an object is created for us
by the categories of thought, space, and time.
Give us a sensible understanding
or sense perception.
So, all representations have as
representations their object and can themselves
in turn become objects of other representations.
Appearances are the sole objects
which can be given to us immediately.
I see the appearance of a pen,
that's what I am understanding.
It's what my mind is contacting directly.
What is this thing outside
of my perceptions of it?
What is it in itself?
There's no way for me to ever know that.
So, appearances are the sole objects which can
be given to us immediately and that in them
which relates immediately to
the object is called intuition.
My image of this pen is the
intuition in my mind.
That's the idea of the pen in my mind.
But these appearances are not things in
themselves, they're only representations
which in turn have their object, an object which
cannot itself be intuited by us and which may,
therefore, be named the non-empirical
that is transcendental object equals x,
x equals the unknown in algebra, you know.
It's 1 times x equals 7.
And through the laws of math,
you can determine x equals 7.
But he's saying there's no way
we can ever know what this thing
in itself is a transcendental object.
It's outside our ability to
perceive with our sense perceptions.
Our sense perceptions are
just ideas in our minds.
And we can understand the laws that govern them
but what the thing is outside
of it, we cannot know.
And I've said a bunch of times but
that's the main thing with Kant.
So, continuing here he says the pure concept
of this transcendental object which in reality
through all our knowledge is always one
and the same is what can alone confer upon
all our empirical concepts in general relation
to an object that is an objective reality.
So, this pure concept of this
transcendental object -- all right.
I'm going to continue.
This concept cannot contain any determinant
intuition and therefore refers only to the unity
which must be found in any manifold of
knowledge that stands in relation to an object.
This relation is nothing but the necessary
unity of consciousness and therefore,
also of the synthesis of the manifold
through a common function of the mind
that combines it in one representation.
This unity must be regarded as necessary
a priori otherwise knowledge would be
without an object.
So, the relation to a transcendental
object, that is the objective reality
of our empirical knowledge rests on the
transcendental law that all appearances
in so far as through the objects are to be
given to us must stand under a priori rules,
those of synthetic unity whereby the
interrelating of these appearances
and empirical intuition is alone impossible.
In other words -- and I'm glad
he's giving some other words --
appearances and experience
must stand under the conditions
of the necessary unity of apperception.
Just as in mere intuition, they must be subject
to the formal conditions of space and time.
Only thus can any knowledge
become possible at all.
So, let me just read that last sentence and
that's the only one I'm going to analyze.
In other words, appearances and
experience must stand under the conditions
of the necessary unity of apperception.
The unity of apperception -- again, apperception
is perceiving things in your own mind.
There's empirical apperception and
there's transcendental apperception.
Empirical apperception is what Hume
and the Buddhists tell us to do.
Look in, what do you experience?
Thoughts, sights, sounds, emotions,
they come and go, oh, yeah.
No self. Fine.
Transcendental apperception is using logic
to say why is it however that this flux
of sense perception is following
such a well-ordered system.
And Kant is saying all of the ordered systematic
way the appearances of the unknowable thing
in itself follow are rooted in this self, this
unifying agent which is the source of all order
in the universe that appears to our minds.
And that's the only universe we can
know, the universe of appearances.
So, without that unifying self in the core
of our consciousness, it would be impossible
to experience any objects at all.
We wouldn't experience anything, there would
be no self first of all to experience anything.
And the experiences would just be
this random flux of sense perceptions.
So, there must be a self that forces those
sense perceptions into very predictable patterns
that always necessarily follow
very predictable rules.
A lawgiver of nature is the self.
The self is gained through analyzing
the way appearances appear to our minds.
And I could read more to
explain this a little bit.
I think I'll read a little bit more here.
All right.
On page 484, on the left-hand
column, on my principles,
it is easy to explain all possible appearances
as representations belong to the totality
of a possible self-consciousness.
So, all possible appearances belong to the
totality of a possible self-consciousness.
Anything you could possibly observe
in the universe belong to the totality
of a possible self-consciousness.
Again, the laws of physics for Kant
are really the laws of psychology.
So, anything you could possibly learn about the
so-called material universe is revealing more
and more about the self which is unifying,
organizing lawgiving agent
of the world of appearances.
So, continuing.
But as self-consciousness is a
transcendental representation,
numerical identity is inseparable from it
and is a priori certain for nothing can come
to our knowledge save in terms
of this original apperception.
Our consciousness is filtered through
categories of thought, space and time,
and then the idea of cause and effect.
We'll just leave it to those simple three.
Those furthermore go through one last
filter which is the idea of a self.
And that's what unifies all of the
sense perceptions into one worldview.
We perceive a unified vision of nature
and we have a unified sense of myself.
It is not empirically observable
and yet we all feel that way.
Why do we feel that way?
Because we are a self.
It's just not empirically observable.
So, continuing here, he says
but as self-consciousness is a
transcendental representation,
numerical identity is inseparable from it
and is a priori certain for nothing can come
to our knowledge save in terms
of this original apperception.
Our knowledge is filtered
through the unifying self.
This identity must necessarily enter into the
synthesis of all the manifold of appearances
so far as the synthesis is
to yield empirical knowledge.
So, the appearances are a
subject to a priori conditions.
The synthesis of their apprehension must
be in complete accordance with them.
The representations of the
universal condition according
to which a certain manifold can be posited
in uniformed fashion is called rule
and when must be so posited a law.
So, I'm going to skip a little bit beneath.
That nature should direct itself according
to our subjective ground of apperception
and should indeed dependent upon it
in respect to its conformity to law.
It sounds very strange and absurd.
So, he says that nature should
direct itself according
to our subjective ground of apperception.
So that nature isn't obeying the laws of our
psychology, nature in itself is not doing that.
What is obeying the laws of our thought
categorizations is the appearances of nature.
So, it would be absurd to say nature is
following our psychological categories
of thought.
So, then he goes on to say but when we consider
that this nature is not a thing in itself
but is merely an aggregate of appearances,
so many representations of the mind,
we shall not be surprised that we can
discover that all the inner radical faculty
of our knowledge namely in
transcendental apperception.
In that unity of alone, it
can be entitled the object
of all possible experience, that is nature.
Nor shall we be surprised that just
for this very reason this unity can be
known a priori and therefore as necessary.
All right.
So, I'm going to leave it at that,
and then I'm going to go back over
and read these questions one more time.
The fact that the world of
appearances follows these --
first of all, appears as objects that are
interrelated with each other according
to strict laws that whole
ordered nature of objects is
because our sense perceptions
are all being categorized
through these a priori categories of thought.
And it's like space and time are
outermost lenses, the idea of cause
and effect, still deeper than that.
And then ultimately the idea of
transcendental apperception which is the self.
Everything that we experience is
filtered through those organizing lenses
and they create the laws of nature we perceive.
It is itself the lawgiver of
nature, he'll conclude on page 485.
Okay. So, there are a lot more details in there
that I've made notes about but I'm not going
to get into it because we've already
been an hour and four minutes.
So, let me just go back over these
questions, and then we'll finish it off.
So, for exam three, part A, question three, in
what way are Kant's theory of self similar to
and different than Hume's theory of
a self in chapter 10 of our book?
So, again, Hume as an empiricist
I don't perceive a self
through any of my five sense organs.
A self must be the same from
one moment to the next.
There are no sense perceptions that are
the same from one moment to the next,
therefore, the self is a fiction.
The human being has a propensity
to these kinds of fictions.
And he also attacks the idea
of cause and effect.
Just because these memories
I have follow a timeline,
we assume that each moment causes
the next moment to occur, therefore,
all of these memories are connected
by a chain of causes and effects.
Hume says I don't see any cause and effect.
That's an idea of the human
mind, an idea of relationships
between empirically observable things.
It's not real.
So, there's no enduring sense
perception that applies to a self.
And even though the idea of a bunch of separate
moments connected by the chain of cause
and effects, that's also invalid.
There is no self.
Kant says, yes, that's true there is
no empirical apperception of a self,
you can't look inward to your memories and
emotions and sense perceptions and find a self.
But transcendental apperception will enable you
to logically determine that you must be a self
because it's the source of all
of the forms that you perceive.
You don't perceive a flux of sense perceptions,
you perceive distinct individual objects
that obey very definite necessary
universal laws of nature.
How is that possible?
There must be a reason for it.
The self is the reason.
It's the unifying synthesizer of sense
perceptions that forces the appearances
in your mind to follow very strict rules.
Okay. So, part B, question number 5.
Why does Kant compare himself to Copernicus?
Copernicus took our thought away from everything
is revolving around the Earth and he put the Sun
in the center of the solar system and
had the Earth revolve around the Sun.
So, he just inverted the point of view.
And Kant similarly says you think that you're
trying to understand objects outside yourself.
Berkeley and Hume showed
you that that's impossible.
You can't have certain absolute, necessary
universal truths about objects outside of you
because how are the ideas in your mind going
to contact some unthinking
substance outside your mind.
Those are two different species of being.
Where is the connecting point?
We saw that with Rene Descartes.
Princess Elizabeth said, "How can mind
which is thinking substance unextended
in space contact unthinking substance
that is extended in space, in other words,
matter, where is the connecting point?
I don't see it."
Similarly, for Kant, he's saying there is -- for
Hume and Berkeley, there's no connecting point
between the ideas in our minds
and some outward material objects.
So, we cannot have any ordered knowledge of
the universe, says David Hume, ultimately.
We can just know the way things
have happened in the past.
Assume they're going to probably
happen that way in the future
but at best, we can have probable knowledge.
Kant is saying, no, you're not trying
to put your understanding and wrap it
around the objects outside of
yourself rather turn that inside out
and what you're really trying to understand
is the appearances in your own mind.
Forget about knowledge of the outward
objects, you can't have, it's impossible.
To know it is to transform it
through the categories of thought.
So, the unknowable thing in itself is one thing.
A study of nature is not a study of the
outward world, it's turn that inside out,
it's the study of your own
psychological categories of thought.
And you can look on page 480 for more details
if that's the question that you want to answer.
So, part B question six.
What's the difference between Kant's
rationalism and Plato's rationalism?
Again, for Plato the forms of reason,
the absolute ideas are the sources
of the physical objects that we perceive.
Plato will say, yeah, those physical objects
are always changing, they're never the same
from one moment to the next so
you can't have knowledge of them.
How can you have knowledge of something
that won't even be there the next moment?
You can have an opinion about the
way it will probably appear to you.
But those objects are really
like dreams or shadows projected
from the eternal forms, the absolute ideas.
Those are the objects that reason perceives.
They are imprinted on your soul.
They're the cause of the material world.
There is no unknowable thing
in itself for Plato.
You can know everything by
knowing the idea of the good.
The idea of the good is the
source of everything,
it's the source of the way you perceive things,
and it's the source of the
things that you perceive.
For Kant, no.
The idea of the good he calls
transcendental apperception which is the self.
And it unifies all of our perceptions,
all of the appearances of nature to us,
that's what the self organizes for us.
But it isn't the source of the objects
themselves of the thing in itself.
So, that's a big difference.
Okay. That was a lot.
And in the next videos, I'm going to
be going over Hegel and Nietzsche.
