Self-Consciousness in Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories
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- čas přidán 4. 08. 2022
- A lecture given by someone named Kit Slover called "Self-Consciousness in Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories: What do we Understand when we Understand?". The talk was given in 2021 at St John's College as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series.
"In the Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant confesses that the 'Transcendental Deduction' of the categories is the section of his work that cost him the most effort to produce. In the centuries since its composition, it has cost his readers just as much-or even more-effort simply to understand. From its style of argumentation to its basic conclusions, this all-important chapter of the Critique remains one of the densest in the entire work. In this lecture, I will present a reading of the Deduction, hoping to make some sense of its fundamental claims and transcendental argument. I’ll focus my exposition around the activity of 'apperception'-roughly synonymous with self-consciousness-contending that, for Kant, our cognition of the objective world around us always runs in important ways through our recognition of ourselves in and through that world. Objects align with the concepts that make them what they are just by enabling us to become conscious of ourselves through our experience of them. After exploring the argument of the Deduction, I’ll attempt to make its claims more concrete by showing self-consciousness to consist in taking rational responsibility for one’s claims, beliefs, and actions-in the way Socrates tries to make us do. I will conclude the talk by using the Deduction to think about some of the most notorious questions surrounding Kant’s critical philosophy. How should we understand the so-called 'thing-in-itself?' How, and in what sense, are human beings both free and constrained by causality? I think the Deduction has some unexpected answers. The target audience for this lecture is the junior class, who will be discussing Kant in seminar for the first time, but I hope it may also be of some interest to more seasoned readers of the Critique and students who have not yet read it. "
#Philosophy #Kant #Epistemology
This was the best explanation of Kant I have ever heard.
Thank you 🙏
This is an excellent summary of what can otherwise be very difficult conceptual ground to cover. Thank you very much for this.
Magnificent lecture on a complex matter !
Greatest representation of the greatest philosopher in the history of humanity, kudos!
appreciate the Brandomian turn at the end
this was excellent and extremely helpful... thank you for sharing... more KANT, please.
I read fragments from Kritik der reinen Vernunft on regular basis. I must say I always feel a lot better afterwards. Kant can be really uplifting.
Ha I do the same. Why is it uplifting I wonder.
@@anonjan82 because it refreshes my worldview over and over again. It kind of recalibrates my thoughts.
Please do more on kant❤
Interesting ... Can't wait to check this out later!
You mean, you Kan't wait? :D
@@szilveszterforgo8776 😀😀😀Classic!
I never heard a more lucid explanation. And the lecture avoids the use of misleading and bad examples like a space and time glasses and the like, which I always found very distracting.
Question: how is Chomsky’s universal grammar related to Kant’s meta grammar?
Is there, A transcript of this lecture available anywhere
Esoteric overdose. Love it. 💀💀
If time were not a mere linear progression, as Kant thought, but the past and future dimensions of time likewise existed simultaneous to the present, would there then now be a way to the Thing-in-Itself ?
See Dewey Larson (Reciprocal Systems Theory of Space and Time)
I thought the rejection of the necessary existence of the "Thing in itself"/noumenon was a criticism of Kant by later German Idealists (like Fichte), not something Kant himself rejected... anyway, I'm probably just ill-informed, but I'm just curious. Still a very easily understandable (compared to most) and enjoyable explanation of Kant!
“Transcendental deduction” -> awesome term lol
Really good to listen to after a Khole lol
ooooooh, i fucking love KANT... more, P.O... straight to the vein... kant!kant!kant!
I always had trouble with a triangle has three sides being a priori knowledge. Let’s say your a baby, you are unfamiliar with the concept of a triangle. You will learn about this concept when you grow older. I never met a baby that knew the triangularity of a triangle from day one. Kant always has been one of my favorite philosophers but this, and a few neglected alternatives for the transcendental aesthetics I always thought to be a flaw in his reasoning. Could it be I miss something here? If so please let me know.
What would it require for a baby to formulate a concept of triangle ? Not experiencing things that look like triangles, but being able to abstract a concept from the intuition of space. Kant would probably say that to you.
Acquiring ability to use concept and its application is two different things. If you wonder whether some triangle has three sides you clearly miss something about what you have to presuppose in order to operate with this concept. This component of presuppositions necessary to understand and talk about this thing at all is clearly prior to talking about this thing. Before you knew that triangles have three sides you couldn't talk about them. If you were trying, it was not triangles that you were talking about.
What's a priori is the truth that "All triangles have three sides". What you're talking about is the innateness of the concept of a triangle. But that's something different. So you're missing the point. It may well be true that experience is needed in order to acquire the concept of a triangle, but that doesn't mean that there aren't truths about triangles that can be known a priori, like that triangles have three sides. For once someone has the concept of a triangle, they're then in a position to know that all triangles have three sides. You don't have to go out into the world and check whether triangles have three sides, you already know that they all have three sides prior to and independent of any such experience. Again, this doesn't mean that the concept of a triangle is itself innate. It may well be that experience is needed in order to acquire the concept of a triangle to begin with. But that's a different question.
Note, this isn't just something you need to get your head around in order to understand Kant. It's essential for understanding nearly all subsequent philosophy, including most contemporary philosophy.
@@MrLcowles Have heard about some dogs beginning to bark or vocalize when a baby starts crying in a room and the mother is not there. The dog can't talk but recognizes a situation when a baby needs the mother. Does it mean the dog has no concept of what a baby is or what is a situation when someone being in distress, or someone missing from the room just because no language?
@@MrLcowles What proof you have that it's instinct? Why not empathy, or magic or God's own intervention? I think Kant's instinctual reference to transcendental forms or categories is a way of Kant saying that awareness of anything at all requires an organism to have an ability of forming these categories and concepts. However, I'll stand corrected if someone expert in reading Kant wish to convince me otherwise.
Would Socrates understand the following sentence - Η γάτα του Σρέντινγκερ έφαγε το ιχθύς - without understanding the symbolism in the words, Schrödinger’s cat and Ichtus?
brandom's responsibility idea is anticipated in a better way by Lonergan
Sorry to be this dumb, but are “degrees” in a triangle given by nature? Isn’t it arbitrary how many divisions we cut up a circle into? Like why 360? What if we used 100 as the full circle then a triangle would have 50 degrees.
Again, I quit math after 11th grade, so… apologies.
"180 degrees" in the lecture is to be understood as a half turn. How many degrees you wish to divide a circle into is beside the point.
Hmm...explains why you quit math so early :)
@@reimannx33 because I questioned the Babylonian usage of 60 as their number base, which led to questioning why we say a circle has 360 degrees, rather than some other totally arbitrary number of degrees? I guess so.
@Godward Podcast You do not seem to understand the difference between different number systems, like base 10, base 60 etc., and the invariant object they represent.
So, for example, while the degrees of revolution in a circle may be represented in various number systems differently, properties of its invariant relationships between radius, circumference, area - charecterestics that define a circle being the locus of points maintaining the fixed length from a given point, remains remains the same regardless of different numberinv systems, Babylonian or otherwise.
@Godward Podcast You do do not seem to have grasped the difference between different representational number systems and the INVARIANT mathematical object they represent.
🧠🤯
the responsibility idea as basis of self-recognition seems too abstract, though it does yield a nice account of hypocrisy
Are all 'selfs' female?
What the fuck!
I still don't understand what "i am a unity" means.
Basically, it means that consciousness is singular, not fragmented. It is a "one-ness."
For example, imagine a piece of paper (consciousness) on which experiences are ordered. In order to differentiate between experiences (as separate and unique), there must be a unified piece of paper beneath them. If the paper were not unified and instead were fragmented into different parts, like experiences, then there would be no possibility to distinguish between experiences at all, since each piece of paper (fragment of consciousness) would have a different experience, and the pieces of paper could never compare personal experiences or evaluate them as a whole.
We are therefore unified self-consciousnesses because we recognize the differences in experience and can even rationally order them together to produce new insights.
This channel has great content. This particular one was definitely sub-par. Just being honest here. It felt too awkward and nothing was truly broken down in the way the rest of the videos on this channel was able to achieve
epistemology is difficult, it's true.
Listening to it several times may help comprehensing of it.
@@davidqin7033 that did in fact help. Thanks for the constructive suggestion
For the self-consciousness part, I had to come back after listening and reading other sources. It's not easy for one lecture to plug holes for everyone.
Imagine faulting a lecture due to your own lack of understanding
Kant's philosophy might have gotten onto the right track if he had figured out that you could explain the unity of apperception naturally, without resort to 'transcendental' arguments.
My god, the hubris and ignorance 🤦