My interpretation of Kant's....theory is that he believed that our reasoning of the world limits our perception of the world. We all know that the world is in reality full of colour. However, once Sophie dons the red glasses it limits her perception of the world; everything she sees is red.
Kant believed that there were “certain conditions governing the mind’s operation which influence the way we experience the world”. Metaphorically speaking, these ‘conditions’ are the glasses. Whatever colour they may be, they limit the way we perceive the world. If we wear red glasses, we see a red world, if we wear yellow glasses we see a yellow world, even though in reality the world explodes with colour. These ‘glasses’ are our innate reasoning of the world. So basically, Kant believed that everyone is born with innate reasoning that we apply to everyday life experiences, however, this innate reasoning can limit the way we perceive the world.
An example of this is the illusion of the staircases which are all connected and never ending. On paper, all the staircases are connected; going up one will lead you to another one to climb. That is what we perceive from our sensations. However our reasoning tells us that these staircases cannot possibly exist in the 3 dimensional world. Our reasoning and perception of our senses are both used; we accept that the image we are receiving does exist (in the 2d world) and at the same time, with our reasoning we accept that the image cannot exist (in the 3d world). We are not simply relying on one or the other, like the empiricists and the rationalists. And therefore, our innate reasoning determines the way we interpret the information our senses are telling us.
The red tinted glasses are our reasoning and the world that we see is our limited perception of the world. Basically, every material sensation we receive conforms to our minds’ reasoning of the world and thus, our knowledge of the world develops.
2 comments:
Hi Gloria
A wonderful, thoughtful response - I especially like the analogy of the staircases. Regarding your final paragraph, does this mean you feel reasoning is more powerful in the development of our knowledge than any other way of knowing? When can emotion help us see more clearly than reason? When might reason obscure our vision and therefore our ability to learn?
M Turver
A great post. I totally agree with your idea of innateness. This explains why we are all different to each other, and that makes each of us to have different perception of matters. Meanwhile, I was thinking what reasons can limit the way we perceive the world. Maybe it could be our experiences. So from what we have already been through, our perception of matters can differ as we experience more.
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