Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science - Preseminar

Kant

A priori - proof without experience.

As I see it, the “object” is referred to anything which the five senses can pick up and translate into a sensation or experience. By having our cognition obey all that is around us, which means all that we see is absolute, we yet to make headway with the possibility of creating new knowledge within our minds which is not bound to the senses, and then proving that such is the truth.

What I then interpret Kant to be suggesting is: What if our perception or rather intuition is actually shaping the world we live in. We might be the ones to give things substance and meaning where there is none. Does the tree make a noise in the wind, if no one is listening? As mentioned in Plato’s text, Socrates brings up the idea that we as humans give a quality to things when we experience them, maybe even with a form prejudice, therefore white and heat become hot and whiteness. Is this what Kant means with the possible reversal of his first presumption about cognition? Is this way of thinking beneficial to better understand things beyond our grasp? That we are molding the world and it is not the world that is molding us, I most likely think it is a combination of both.

Perhaps the other way to think is by that of the supernatural - metaphysics by definition tries to deal with the concept of a higher power, mind over matter, the sixth sense. By trying to move beyond our senses and into the unknown we struggle to prove our ideas since there has yet to be any tangible way of actually knowing the truth about concepts and theories beyond our perception.There may or may not be many more dimensions of perception which we cannot unlock.

Plato

I believe what Socrates is trying to express is the fact that we are unique, each and every one of us. Therefore we experience things differently through our senses, not with them. Does my brain interpret objects in the same way yours does? Surely there must be some differences with the genetic diversity and the billions of people that inhabit the world. If I perceive a blue box as blue, and another person also think it is the colour blue, does that mean our mind know of the same blue color? The hue might be slightly shifted or completely different, therefore we do not see with the eyes, we experience things through them and because we have prejudices about things and objects our view of the world will differ. At least that is how I would try to make sense of this long winded argument.

My final interpretation of Socrates is that the mind that has to translate the input from our sensors, therefore we see through these sensors, not with them. I think the correlation between Socrates proposition and “empiricism” becomes quite clear when you take this former sentence into the argument.