Comparative Essay: My Ideas In Philosophy Versus Those Of Immanuel Kant

I have chosen to compare my ideas with those of Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher during the Age of Enlightenment. His theory of truth theory is along the same reasoning as the correspondence theory of truth:

“Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognizing it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. The ancients called such a circle in explanation a diallelon. And actually the logicians were always reproached with this mistake by the sceptics, who observed that with this definition of truth it is just as when someone makes a statement before a court and in doing so appeals to a witness with whom no one is acquainted, but who wants to establish his credibility by maintaining that the one who called him as witness is an honest man. The accusation was grounded, too. Only the solution of the indicated problem is impossible without qualification and for every man.” (Kant, 1801)

In general, I believe his theory is correct. He is saying that this definition of truth, that what is true is the agreement of cognition with its object, is in principle correct, but practically impossible to use to judge truth in the real world. Because the only way to judge that the object is in agreement with your thinking is to use thinking, which is circular logic, to which I agree. The fact of the matter is that this theory is dependent on the integrity of the mechanism that is observing the phenomenon. But what if the individual is perturbed? For example, schizophrenic?

Immanuel Kant expounded on his theory of truth in his Critique of Pure Reason. He makes the distinction between the noumenal world and the phenomenal world. The noumenal world is what exists independently of human sense perception. This is like the old riddle that asks if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound? Kant says the noumenal world is not knowable. Only the phenomenal world can be known by humans.

Thus, I give my first argument against Kant’s theory. We are able to ascertain facts about the world that we are unable to perceive directly. Many scientific theories were developed before the observations to prove them true came about. For example, Einstein’s theory of Relativity provided the foundation to predict the yet unseen phenomenon that would prove the Big Bang theory. One prediction was that the afterglow of the big bang would be detectible as microwave radiation. This prediction as well as others was confirmed decades later by astronomers.

Next I will describe then give my second argument against Kant’s theory. In this case his theory of Transcendental Idealism which he wrote about in Critique of Pure Reason. Here Kant says that humans do not objects but appearances:

“We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us; and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What may be the case with objects in themselves and abstracted from all this receptivity of our sensibility remains entirely unknown to us. We are acquainted with nothing except our way of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which therefore does not necessarily pertain to every being, though to be sure it pertains to every human being. We are concerned solely with this. Space and time are its pure forms, sensation in general its matter. We can cognize only the former a priori, i.e., prior to all actual perception, and they are therefore called pure intuition; the latter, however, is that in our cognition that is responsible for its being called a posteriori cognition, i.e., empirical intuition. The former adheres to our sensibility absolutely necessarily, whatever sort of sensations we may have; the latter can be very different.” (Rohlf, 2016)

Here Kant is further restating and emphasizing more explicitly his theory by drawing a line in the sand so to speak and asserting that what we observe outside ourselves is actually within us. Because it is only with our senses that we can experience the world. I disagree. I believe that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it it still makes a sound because what we are calling sound is differences in air pressure that occur even if we are not present. I believe Kant’s view is too human centered. If humans did not exist would the universe still exist? Yes.