Kant on Space

I thought it might be more helpful to just post this essay....Please forgive the lack of page citations, if anyone is expressly in need of them, I can get them for you.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant describes space as both transcendentally ideal and empirically real. This declaration creates what might initially be perceived as a paradoxical dilemma. How can space be both something that exists only in the mind, independent of experience (transcendentally ideal), yet also be described as possessing empirical reality, that is, the result of experience? Kant attempts to answer this quandary with a two-fold application of the term [space].
First, Kant treats space as an a priori intuition. He states, “this intuition must, however, be encountered in us a priori, i.e., prior to any perception of an object; hence, this intuition must be pure rather than empirical.” This assertion then raises the question of how the intuition of space can precede sensation of objects themselves. For Kant, the solution to this was that the intuition of space exists as an intrinsic and limiting part of the concept of the subject (the conscious entity capable of perception of objects).
Kant explains this by saying, “The subject’s receptivity for being affected by objects necessarily precedes all [sensible] intuitions of these objects.” That is to say, we must contain within us a preexisting mechanism [our a priori intuition of space] which allows us to order the data delivered to us by our senses. This mechanism allows us to formulate relations between objects of the senses. In this case, namely, how these objects appear to us in terms of spatial relationships.
Next, Kant deals with the empirical aspect of space. Although he claims, “space represents no property whatsoever of any things in themselves, nor does it represent things in themselves in relation to one another,” he assures us that space can be (and is) applied both empirically and universally. He tells us, “We can indeed say that space encompasses all things that appear to us externally, but not that it encompasses all things in themselves…” and that, “If the limitation on a judgment is added to the concept of the subject, then the judgment holds unconditionally.”
That is to say, our reception of objects is framed by our preexisting intuition of space, and that all our perceptions of objects conform to the notion they exist in space. This process is universal, with respect to humans, in that we all are limited in our perceptive ability (in regards to objects) by our preexistent (transcendentally ideal) intuition of space (limitation on judgment). For one and all, our ideas of external objects conform to a notion of space. Kant sums this up by telling us:
“That space is real in regard to everything that we can encounter externally as object, but teaches at the same time that space is ideal in regard to things when reason considers them in themselves…Hence we assert that space is empirically real (as regards all possible outer experience), despite asserting that space is transcendentally ideal... (the condition of the possibility of all experience).”

Do the Math...Find Yourself...Find God.

Metaphysical reflections....

According to David Hume, there is no self. This fact, that he could find no empirical evidence for the existence of "himself," led him to propose his Bundle Theory[1]. Hume was a skeptic, an empiricist, and is also believed to have been an atheist [2].

I have been thinking for a long time about Hume's problem. I was so offended by his allegation that I did not exist. I could not get it out of my head! Recently though, I feel that I have had a break through. Not just in regards to Hume, but also in regards to understanding my own thoughts on how I know myself and how I know God.

A friend and I had a debate last week about Pascal's Wager [3]. In the course of our discussion, we began to touch on the issue of a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of God. He firmly asserted that he saw no reason to believe what there is no evidence for. As a former atheist, I completely understand his perplexity. Ironically, my friend adamantly declared MATH was something he could put his money on! Not some God for which no evidence could be found!

I began to reflect on my readings in Modern Philosophy and the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge [4]. For an empiricists, like my friend (Although, I do not think he is an atheist.) Hume, and an ever increasing number of other people in this age of Materialism, the only evidence for anything is rooted in our senses. However, even someone as rigorous as Hume allowed mathematics to squeak by as the only a priori knowledge. Reminded of this, I brought the epistemological distinct to the attention of my friend, and tried to lead him to see that not all knowledge is rooted in the senses.

Ultimately, I replied to my friend that a spectrum of evidence limited to the senses was insufficient to deal with the question of God. Just as it is when dealing with the self. Oddly enough, God seems easier to write off than the self when evidence is in question, but taken to the extreme, empiricism will eradicate both. I am not sure that my friend had ever considered that he could have knowledge without experience, as I had not (Thus, my atheism.) until I began to study philosophy.

The pure concept. Math. God. The self. This body of knowledge could possibly be the most fundamental that we posses. But...in order to get to this knowledge, we must move away from our senses and into our minds. Ignorance of our ability to arrive at knowledge without the senses is like a fisherman losing his rod and reel. Not only do we lose the ability to know God, we lose the ability to know our selves, and maybe even our ability to make 2+2=4. We lose the ability to "sustain" ourselves. To quote another friend, to take away our a priori knowledge is equivalent to giving ourselves a lobotomy.

Einstein arrived at his Theory of Relativity through conceptual thought. He used his mind to move beyond what his body could ever experience. This allowed him to produce a pure concept, math so beautiful and elegant, Einstein could not imagine it to be wrong, but it has taken decades (and in some instances nearly a century) for the empirical evidence to catch up with him [5].

Like Einstein's math, do we have to find God with our minds before we can find him with our senses? Theists and Deists, like Einstein, see existence as evidence for God [6]. But what came first? Do they know God as a pure concept, then see God reflected in the world? Or do their senses convince their minds that God is real? Where does the proof of God really lie?

I have come to the conclusion that searching for the proof of God through our senses is futile. I don't think God can live in the world of our senses until he lives in our minds as that pure concept. A pure concept as necessary to the existence of all things as the pure concept of my self is to my existence.

I dedicate this post to Pythagoras, who found God in math, and to my friend, who says math is something he can rely on to be "real."

1. http://www.philosophyofmind.info/bundletheory.html

2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/#1

3. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

4. http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/

5. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828570,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/apr/15/spaceexploration.universe

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3322/einsteins-theory-proven-21st-century-test

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solar-sails-einstein-experiment-100726.html

6. http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/

The Myth of Decline

In Classical Philosophy, we discussed the myth of progress as seen through the lens of philosophy. Ever abiding questions still haunt philosophical discourse age after age. What is the nature of reality? What is Good? How do we know what we know? Etc... Well, this summer during my British Literature class, I was reading a brief essay in the introduction to the anthology, and I was struck with a queer thought. The essay was discussing the overarching effect societal discontent had on literature. (I searched for the actual citation, but to no avail.) Point being, the century in question (14th-15th-ish)was predominated by thoughts of societal decline. Today, like in ages before us, we teeter on the precipice of uncertainty, and the same apocalyptic rhetoric gaining in popularity today was all the rage hundreds of years ago. Will we pass into the annals of history's paranoids, or will the anxieties of mankind finally come to fruition?


So, here is my perplexity...If progress is a myth and decline is a myth, where does that leave mankind? Are we stuck in a mental quagmire? Do we fail to move at all? Are we at the same point where we started millenniums ago, only differentiated from our ancestors by the quirks of our technologies? Are we going "nowhere" fast? One might be tempted to clap one's hands in exclamation for the fact that we are no worse off than we ever have been or for the many ways we seem better. However, I think this would be a fool-hearted error.


I am disturbed by the possibility of a lack of human motion. To be motionless seems much like what it is to be dead. Einstein's words regarding a "snuffed out candle" come to mind...One giant human invalid, bedridden by its ignorance and self-loathing. Surely, this cannot be the case.