Alan’s notes on Kant’s Theory of Knowledge
Kant (1724-1804) tries to unite the theories of rationalism and empiricism into a new third approach to explain how we gain knowledge. To do this he starts by taking Descartes’ ‘I’ and asking what is this ‘I’ Descartes talks about so much. Kant also takes Locke and Hume’s basic empirical model of the mind as a blank paper (tabula rasa).
Kant adapts Locke and Hume’s model of the mind by dividing their blank paper into sections. These sections he calls categories of the mind. He argues these categories, just like Mathematics and logic for the rationalists, are inside us from birth before we experience anything at all. In other words they are innate, as well as being universally the same for every living human being. Examples of Kant’s categories include space and time, cause and effect and substance. When the mind receives some sense information (experience) reason decides which category it should be placed in. We can understand Kant’s mind as an empty bookcase with reason as the librarian. Once reason places a particular piece of sense information onto a particular shelf (under a particular category) an idea is formed resulting in knowledge.
Kant further proves the universal innate existence of his categories of the mind by stating that the result of this organization of sense information by reason according to space and time, cause and effect and so on gives all human beings what he calls ‘unity of consciousness’. Unity of consciousness for Kant enables all people to know themselves as ‘I’ in a way that animals cannot. It is a direct consequence of the mind’s ability to organize the sense information it receives.
Animals lack this and the innate categories of humans and therefore experience a constant jumble of sense information. An example of this would be when a person sees a ship sailing down a river each time it moves position we our able to know it is the same ship due to our innate category of cause and effect. For a goldfish it simply would be a new ship every time it changed position (If we accept a goldfish could ever have the concept of a ship at all!).
Kant has two main problems with his theory. The major one is the universal status he gives to the categories of the mind and the role of reason. His entire theory is based only on his own direct experience of his own consciousness. He cannot know or experience with certainty how another human being’s mind works. I cannot make a universal claim that all snickers eaten at 10am will taste the same for all human beings when they eat them at that time based on my own knowledge/ experience of eating a snickers at 10am each day.
Second, if we accept his theory as correct, we can know the world and others in it (Some progress when compared to Descartes who could not prove either.), but the knowledge we can have of the world and others is limited to that of appearance. Kant’s categories of the mind act like internal sunglasses of the mind allowing only certain sense information through, but not all. We can never see the world as it is. We can only know the world at the level of appearance as constructed by the mind’s categories.