Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

1.In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

Immanuel Kant 1724 - 1804

What we can assume from this is that our cognition is evolving from how we experience the world around us which enriches our understanding and knowledge. However, Kant suggests that instead of originate from our perspective, with the knowledge we have and the science we know, we could learn more about the world, looking from the perspective of other things. As in his example with Copernicus, if Copernicus wasn’t so busy with looking at the rotating stars, maybe he would realize that maybe, he is the one that is rotating.

2. At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Soctrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call ”empiricism”?

Socrates & Plato 507 B.C.E

What Socrates means is that when we perceive something, such as temperature, our experiences of the same object or element is perceived different and thus we think differently of the same experience. He takes the example of the perception of a gust of wind which appear warm to a person and cold to another person. If both the persons tried to explain the temperature of the wind to a third person which one would be correct? This would be a rather difficult situation to straighten out. But what if a fourth person entered the discussion and also claimed that the wind actually was hot. Would it be more true then? We can’t know for sure but we are more likely to believe that the wind was in fact hot since more people said so. This is how modern empiricism works where we bring up argument for our thesis with facts and knowledge from past documentation and experiences to make it more believable for other persons. It still does not make our thesis necessarily true but people will believe it and thus it is accepted as knowledge in our world. Another example could be colors. If we show a hue to 100 people and 100 of them point it out as red then it is very likely that the hue we showed is indeed red. All people have different perceptions of red and it is very unlikely that we share the exact same perception of color. But still, our perception of red is so similar that we agree upon that the hue is red. Does this fact make our shared statement 100% true to each person or do we need to reconsider?