This is being posted early Tuesday morning because I am too compulsive to wait until class is over. I'm going to be following on Steve's lead and discuss the form of space in the first edition of the Transcendental Aesthetic.
We've all read the Inaugural Dissertation, so there's already some idea as to why space is a pure form. Furthermore, Steve also laid out the individual points made in the Critique : space is a the grounds for all outer sensation, and it is impossible to conceive of objects outside of ourselves without first having a universal concept of space to orient these objects. What separates the Critique from the Dissertation is that Kant more clearly states the validity and necessity of space for our intuitions. He "asserts the empirical reality of space...though to be sure at the same time its transcendental ideality" (CPR 160). Steve also mentioned this quote but I'd like to delve into it with a bit more detail.
What this quote means is that space is absolutely necessary and a valid orientation of all empirical perceptions, while still at the same time being inapplicable to things thought of in themselves, i.e. concepts. While everything that is an object of experience must exist in space and time, we can still think of things in themselves without necessary spatial extension. Using this method Kant preserves both the subjective role of the knower in examining objects as well as the necessary application of space to the sensible world.
This distinction primarily seems to serve as a criterion for metaphysics: space cannot be applied to concepts or ideas to be coherent. However, it also has some interesting repercussions for the empirical world. Kant notes "we cannot judge at all whether the intuitions of other thinking beings are bound to the same conditions that limit our intuition and that are universally valid for us" (CPR 160). Therefore, hypothetical non-human thinking beings might not orient the empirical world in terms of space and time. While this would certainly make conversation interesting, it likely would not affect our own experiences a great deal as even the evidence of such thought would be received by us within the constraints of space and time. Does anyone else think Kant would have made a good science fiction writer?
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Hmm. I can accept that things in themselves aren't necessarily bound by the constraints of Space and Time. I'll even be willing to accept Kant's distinction(s) between synthetic and analytic judgments. But somehow it just doesn't all seem to meld quite well for me. And I wish I cold say why, too, but it's just... ... ...something's off.
That is all for now, comrades.
Yes, Kant would have been like the early sci-fi writers who grounded their works in science. Just imagine a saga based on the travails of metaphysical exploration of the human mind.
Or may be it could be based on the transformations of the way we understand the world. For example, our ideas of objects remove the spatial and temporal nature of the objects that produce them. Take for instance the computer screen you're reading this on, even though the screen itself has a place in space and time, your perception of it, the idea in you mind, does not. Also, I agree with you that Kant's limiting his comments to human beings does nothing for us since we can't perceive reality outside of space and time. I makes me wonder why Kant felt the need to qualify his statement this way. Imagine that Kant had found another different intelligent species and the qualification was on their behalf.
@Xusana: To an extent I understand what you mean. Many of Kant's distinctions make sense when reading the Critique, but there does seem to be something counter intuitive. I think this might have something to do with what we discussed on Tuesday: Kant starts from our common sense perceptions of reality, but he moves beyond experience to establish the transcendental basis of the forms of our understanding. It's something of a logical leap, but it seems to be the only coherent solution to the metaphysical problems at issue.
@Martha: Well, according to Professor Vaught, Kant is thinking of the divine mind when he refers to other thinking beings. I also wonder if this could be a reference to angels? I don't know if such things have a place in Pietist theology.
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