Humean skepticism comes about when Hume asks how we perceive causal connections between events. Hume declares that we can't discover the concept of causal connection by reason alone. The conclusion that he comes to is that we have no rationally justified knowledge of cause and effect. Our causes are justified by the habit of seeing certain events result from previous events. With regards to this, Kant agrees that we can't discover the concept by means of reason. But, unlike Hume, he does not conclude that this concept is just a result of habit or custom. He suggests that causation is a priori concept of understanding applied to appearances. We can't know anything about things in themselves. Cause and effect is not to be found in these appearances. It is a part of the form given by understanding. Causation is a type of experience that makes it intelligible to us. Hume questions us as to how we can derive pure concepts from experience and responds to his own inquiry that we can't. Kant agrees with this. Wen cant derive pure concepts from experience, but instead we derive experience from these pure concepts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
how do we derive experience from these pure concepts? are there any pure concepts, isn't everything constantly changing? I know Kant said, "Reason is the means by which we translate experience into understanding." But I don't know how we can just use pure concepts
I think that Kant might say that the world of appearances is constantly changing, but that the universal laws which it works according to are constant. Kant would further say that the world of appearances is only made possible by working according to the laws of the pure untutition of space and time.
perhapes one can derive pure concepts from experiance, if we ourselves are also experiance. A sort of self knowledge. Experiance make us who we are don't they?
I agree with Dan, it is quite possible for us to have two different things hapeening at the same time. It is quite possible for there to be gravitational attraction in one part of the universe while not in the other.
This does not mean that there are different laws for that part of the universe. Indeed the laws could be the exact same, but the specifics of the particular situation is such that the same law creates different apparent effects.
I kinda think that Kant is wrong is saying that our perception of causality is a priori. That seeps kind of hard to prove. How does he think he knows that? It just seems to me like he's going at it the wrong way.
I think that causation is developed a posteriori, that we seem to develop the concept of cause and effect after we see it that certain events at one specific time result in some other events in a latter time.
i agree with dan
Post a Comment