(above: Immanuel Kant)
In Chapter 25, Alberto uses the red-tinted glasses as a way of explaining to Sophie about the interrelationship between perception and reason. It is a way of telling us why Kant agrees with neither the empiricists nor the rationalists.
Empiricists believed that all knowledge of the world comes from our senses and our experience of the world. This is shown not to be true since if we put on the red-tinted glasses, we are still seeing the same world, but which is now different to us from without the glasses. We see the world in the way we see it, but that does not mean the world is as we see it.
Rationalists believed that the basis of human knowledge come from our mind. Without outside stimulus coming from our senses, there is no such thing as knowledge. Reason has to be applied to what we sense, but without our senses, there is nothing to reason.
I have always wondered about what the real world looks like. This line of thought is similiar to what we learnt in Religious Studies in Year 9 (visiting the Matrix). What is the table in front of me? If I was an alien species would I see something different in front of me in place of the table, for example - empty space? Is there a sixth sense, seventh sense which could give us entirely different perceptions of the world? There probably are. In this way, I believe our knowledge of the world before us is limited by our senses, whereas there is no limit to our reason since inteligence or potential inteligence is infinite (e.g. supercomputers).
Kant is a great philosopher and his thinking has drastically influenced and affected life in the 18th Century. There is much to learn from Kant.
Xiang Ding N1
5 comments:
The example of the Matrix is, to me very smart. I see that it can pose some questions related to how we think and the red tinted glasses.
When reading your blog I was very interested with the phrase “Without outside stimulus coming from our senses, there is no such thing as knowledge”. At first I was inclined to disagree, but having thought about it, with none of the five senses we would really have no knowledge of contact with the outside world or anything in it. Therefore, we would be completely ignorant of the world around us.
I also agree with Vivien. It was a good example ("The Matrix") and one that all students who were in Year 9 at KGV can relate to.
Good work, Xiang -- succinct, thoughtful, and purposeful, your post provides ample evidence that you have considered both the reading and the task and made sense of them for yourself.
Can I commend Anna, too, for a model follow-up post: it demonstrates that she's considered your thinking, has applied it to her own life, and, in through the process, arrived at even greater understanding.
Thank you both.
I really liked your Matrix example :) Agreeing with Anna above, I too think that our sense is terribly important as it is true that we would not be able to know what the 'world' is. I actually find myself hard to believe that our knowledge is innate.
I thought Kant agreed and disagreed with both the empiricists and the rationalists. Also, I think there is a limit to reason and that inteligence isn't infinite.
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