Philosophy: Kant on Space Part 1
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- čas přidán 3. 07. 2024
- What is space? Kant's answer is a head-scratcher: space is merely a form of intuition. Scott Edgar (Saint Mary's) explains this rather perplexing answer in accessible, every-day language. He also lays out Kant's most famous argument for this view of space (the "Argument from Geometry"). Never before has it been so easy to get a handle on Kant's views on space!
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Kant was a mind monster. Even if we found out that an alien race existed somewhere in the universe, it doesn't take away the brilliance/intellect someone like Kant possessed.
Well, he was definitely a monster, but not in the sense you mean.
@@s0lid_sno0ks How confidently you make that judgement from the standpoint of your own situation in space and time!
i still dont get this from kant.. even tho i have seen 10 videos, and been on a lecture on this. jesus christ i hope i dont get this on the exam
Sorry I mean it wouldn’t be mind independent because we would perceive aliens through our senses
This is one of the best philosophical videos I've ever seen.
I will tell you something , this was mind boggling and very few people have this skill of you know making complex things simple and clear. Loved it.
You are such a brilliant teacher. I can understand it so easily. Thank you.
your videos are brilliant for visual learners like me :) thank you, helps a lot :) Reading Kant is some hardcore shit
Amazing video! Helped a lot, thank you
This is an excellent video!
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction.
Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime.
The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe.
However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework.
Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back to antiquity; namely, to treatises like the Timaeus of Plato, or Socrates in his reflections on what the Greeks called khôra (i.e. "space"), or in the Physics of Aristotle (Book IV, Delta) in the definition of topos (i.e. place), or in the later "geometrical conception of place" as "space qua extension" in the Discourse on Place (Qawl fi al-Makan) of the 11th-century Arab polymath Alhazen.
Many of these classical philosophical questions were discussed in the Renaissance and then reformulated in the 17th century, particularly during the early development of classical mechanics.
In Isaac Newton's view, space was absolute-in the sense that it existed permanently and independently of whether there was any matter in the space.
Other natural philosophers, notably Gottfried Leibniz, thought instead that space was in fact a collection of relations between objects, given by their distance and direction from one another.
In the 18th century, the philosopher and theologian George Berkeley attempted to refute the "visibility of spatial depth" in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision.
Later, the metaphysician Immanuel Kant said that the concepts of space and time are not empirical ones derived from experiences of the outside world - they are elements of an already given systematic framework that humans possess and use to structure all experiences.
Kant referred to the experience of "space" in his Critique of Pure Reason as being a subjective "pure a priori form of intuition".
In the 19th and 20th centuries, mathematicians began to examine geometries that are non-Euclidean, in which space is conceived as curved, rather than flat.
According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, space around gravitational fields deviates from Euclidean space.
Experimental tests of general relativity have confirmed that non-Euclidean geometries provide a better model for the shape of space.
Thank you! This was a good read without bias.
Thank you, good read
Can it be argued that theoretical physics is in some cases a priori and therefore Kant is correct
Before we were satisfied with the wrong mechanics but now we have relativity
Or am I misunderstanding?
@@delgande Yes he is. Kant was a genius in some aspects for sure. My disagreement is with his views on time where he says for the apriority of time claims that our representations of simultaneity and succession must be mind contributed since they are presupposed in our experience which i find implausible a reason to suppose that a
representation of time is a necessary precondition of the experience of the passage of time.
SDSen A representation of time must be conceptualized as successive and dynamic.
Thank you professor. Very helpful.
Honestly this has helped me so much when writing my essay, talking about the geometry etc I'm so happy I've included all of that, is there any way you could put references as to where you got the info though?
The Critic of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. Good luck though finding the passages. This book is a nightmare.
Excellent video. And besides Philochrony is the theory that describes the nature of time and demonstrates its existence. Time is magnitive: objective, Imperceptible and measurable.
Does the detection of gravitational waves change something? I wonder what Kant would think about string theory, particle physics and the fabric of space-time.
João de Carvalho he gave you what he knows. Now it’s on you to finish the puzzle
Kant was not investigating geometry per se. He was investigating the philosophy of knowledge; what is it the nature of knowledge and how can we be sure it is true in itself.
I think theories of space time would just add bearing to Kant's ideas because, it kind of means that space and time are just constructs humans are using to understand reality, and the reality might not be that "intuitive". That's the brilliance of Einstein that he broke through this intuition, to give a scientific model to explain the data. But Kant supercedes science. Science including Einstein's models of spacetime are subsumed by our understanding of reality through senses and the irony is that, so is Kant's theory!
validation
@@vasishtapolisetty639 This is actually not correct at all. The *mathematical* model of space-time developed by Einstein is a *mathematical* construct, a structure which Einstein has invented to describe observed phenomena (seen so it is also a substitute of the physical ether theories from the late 1880s and 1890s). But this does not mean at all that this mathematical construct has an ontological reality or *is* ontologically true. Worse even! Einstein nonchalantly claims with it that space and time are "things in themselves" and irrationally makes them to appearances which can be "curved". (But where does he take this right from? He can do this only if he can prove irrevocably that space and time can be curved. But this has still not happened and never will, because space and time aren't things-in-themselves, they are pure forms of intuition, as Kant said)
This contradicts not only our own experience (because it is not the space and the time itself which are curved, but the appearances IN space and time), but also our understanding, which needs exactly space and time as *aprioric* conceptions, so that experience is possible at all. Because space and time are the conditions for the possibility of experience and they have to be within our horizon of our reason, *not* outside of it. It is not to exclude that there might also be an empirical space and an empirical time (and this is where the general theory of relativity shines), but this does not disprove the a priori conceptions, which must exist necessarily in us.
By continously rejecting these conceptions, this is exactly where modern physics is going wrong and hence why we nowadays all have these obscure (counter-intuitive) mathematical theories such as string theory, dark matter and dark energy, etc. It's epicycles all over again. To elaborate: Back when people were convinced that they lived in a geocentric system, they produced mathematical models such as the epicycles model in order to calculate the movement of the planets. This model worked astonishingly well and delivered accurate results. However, despite the model being great and accurately calculating these movements, it still built upon a wrong ontological understanding of our reality (geocentrism). And *this* is extremely crucial: Just because a model delivers the right results, doesn't mean that the ontological reality that model is subsumed to, is likewise ontologically real and true. A model can deliver correct results, while the ontological ideas within that model can be terribly wrong.
So, no, Kant absolutely *doesn't* supercede science. It's exactly the other way around: Kant's philosophical system, his transcendental philosophy, acts as a regulative to nonsensical metaphysical speculation that we cannot rightfully make. He wanted to put metaphysics within the bounds of what *we can know* , he wanted to answer the questions how metaphysics as science is possible science compared to what all past metaphysicists did and which modern physicists with many of their ridiculous mathematical theories do now again. Kant's apriorism is the *cure* to highly speculative science. It is modern science that tries to supercede itself by continously relying on empiricism and ignoring the logical evident nature of the apriorism within ourselves. And this is really a thing of concern. Only a few scientists acknowledge and see this problem. Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is one of them who sees the issues and correctly points out the problems within modern science, especially with "dark matter", "dark energy", etc.
Another very interesting video. Thank you :-D
Thats great! Really helpful!! Willt you will you also do something about the transcendental analytic as well? ;) It would be really helpful, and Kant is so important to understand, for anyone wanting to study philosophy
Isn’t the requirement of a triangle’s inner angles adding up to 180 also a definition of a triangle as a shape in as much as it having 3 sides?
Definition of a triangle: Form
About the interior angles: Function
Does anyone else sense a similarity between Kant’s view of space and Einstein’s view of spacetime? Namely, how general relativity states that there is no preferred coordinate system in space, and that all notions of distance are relative to other frames than the one where the measurement is “taking place” (and the similarity to space being a mental construction more than a reality)
The comparison is moot because General Relativity does not maintain a distinction between phenomena and noumena. Space for Kant is a category of the understanding and thus only is synthetically related to phenomena (the contents of experience.) Whether or not space exists in the world beyond experience cannot be known. The subject cannot definitely make claims one way or the other about noumena, while Einstein’s Relativity goes right to the things-in-themselves.
I want Kant and Einstein to sit and have a conversation so baaaddd!
I take issue with the idea that space is 'imposed' onto experience by the mind. To say that the mind applies space to experience is to conflate space with a pure concept of the understanding which is actually imposed upon experience by the mind. I think what needs to be investigated further is Kant's notion of 'form of intuition' and whether this means a form we apply to intuition or rather a from of giveness. On the former view Kant's philosphy is able to reduced to a facile form/matter schema which would cause tremendous problems as you read through the transcendental analytic, on the latter view Space becomes a formal structure of a pre-given horizon in which Reason encounters objects. Reason, as the power of unifying representations, gets its definition from the spatio-temporal horizons in which it operates, this definition is simply the pure concepts of understanding which are applied on the basis of Space and Time without Spaxe and Time being some higher order concepts that are applied prior
Thanks.
is this spacial structure a deconstruction - reverse-engineering - do trees have an idea of space
Amazing video, thanks!! Here is how clever Kant was.. Schopenhauer built on Kant and argued space and time are one, ancitipating relativity.
Moesy Pittounikos
Do you know which book Schopenhaur does this?
@@samisiddiqi7814 The world as will and representation
And Einstein said that Schopenhauer was an influence of his and that his relativity fir with Schopenhauer's philosophy
Anyway, I think we can not generalise saying that math or geometry is analytic or synthetic, a priori or a prosteriori. The right thing to do is go case by case, that is to say, the definitional part of math and geometry is analytic and a priori, for example, a triangle is a 2 dimensional figure with three sides is analytic and a priori and the sum of its angle is equal do 180 degrees or any mathematical equation or formula that requires calculation and add to out knowledge of the world is synthetic and a posteriori.
... except that the angles in a triangle don't have to add up to 180 degrees.
Squatting Erudite
In the intuition of 2 dimensional Euclidean space, yes.
You ain't slick boi.
Nice
What is the summary of the video
Without any doubt, I Kant was the best of any other modern philosopher, however, his influence with respect to the nature of the space was an epistemological obstacle in the development of the non-Euclidean Geometries, ( Bernhardt Riemann’s Elliptical and Lobachetsky Bolyai Hyperbolic )
How can the knowledge that: the interior angles of a triangle equal 180°, be synthetic a priori? when there are exceptions; triangles on non-euclidean planes such as a sphere, do not always equal 180°. How would you reconcile this... Is it just that the mention of such triangles whose interior angles equal 180°, is missing the requisite precursor of their existence on a euclidean plane?
@ Sterling Non-Eucldean geometry is Euclidean geometry wrapped onto curved surfaces. Kant never intended to prove that the interior angles of a triangle add up to 180 deg, he only used that as an example of apriori reasoning, that is to say the equation for geometric shapes give predictable and accurate results without need for actual measurement. One is still using apriori reasoning with non-Euclidean geometry in that you can math out, say a torus, and you can be certain of the angles of any triangles on mapped onto it without buiding one and then measuring it.
How can Geometrical knowledge be universal if in some parts of the universe space can be distorted due to the influence of gravitational body. Does a geometrical figure keep all its fundamental characteristics and properties in this case? Does this question even make sense?
As sophisticated ,nuanced, modernist-nihilists know, the universe is nothing relative to the buzzing in your head. Simply adjust the
controls until you get a good buzz.
It is universal because a triangle is always a triangle, it is independent of experience
In our minds we can all agree to the axioms and theorems of geometry with no exceptions
Once proven we cannot discard something like the Pythagorean Theorem
As a physicist
Why equate the brain with mind - which you do repeatedly in the visuals? For someone who refuses mind brain identity (theory) this is a no-brainer.
Ok this was funny
Space for Kant is a prori and is determined by what Hume calls impressions.
what if our minds are as big as the universe ( what evidence is there against it?), and objects are part of the same fabric as our mind and they are one and the same, then wouldnt space be apiriori analytical?
He might be right because mathematics is a priori so when ever we build concepts in geometry using mathematics then it’s synthetic and only is in our minds, so yes chances are space is only in our minds
"the conclusion that we never have any knowledge of how things really are in themselves" humm..... sounds like I'll need to ripp the bong for this one .
but intuitively as a child i kinda always thought the depths of the universe manifest in so far as you look , like a videogame's draw distance
Wow! So these must be the shoulders Einstein stood on when he came up with a theory of relativity.
Time and space are the same thing
If time is relative space is as well.
We've been able to see how time relativity works. Now if only we can see an example of space dilation. It must be out there, but I wonder if we're even biologically equipped to recognize it if we came across it.
Kant! 😳
Neuroscience seems to be saying lately that Kant is right here. However physicists have been saying space IS a “thing”. Perhaps both are true.
Space is the canvas in which the picture of the Universe is contained
180 is made up not in definition of triangle it can be 120 or 168 or 14645
bet u thought this was it, big dawg
it ain't
shouldn't he have explained kant's categories when tackled the second premise? that would have explained why space is not a property of the things in themselves but our interpretation of the things
Pua
The fact that the definition of a triangle doesn't literally say that it has the sum of all angles equal to 180 doesn't mean that BY DEFINITION a triangle doesn't have 180 the sum of all angles. It's just a matter of how you write down the definition. Also 5+7 really by definition is 12. It's 12 expressed in another way. So I wonder if those propositions are truly synthetic or not. But leaving that aside, how is the space a priori , so unrelated to our experience, and in the same time is just an intuition, an illusion made by our senses....which means we've experienced it?
Intuition here means sensory data we take in or intuit
this argument seems odd to me. Is Kant suggesting that space is an artificial idea that it's useful for understanding the real world?
Also, while I'm not an expert here, do we know that geometry is a priori, or can all of geometry be defined as a logical extension of axioms that are true by definition (Kant is assuming no, I think)
+Philip Stuckey Watch part 2. Short answer: Geometry isn't a-priori.
Kant says space and time are a priori aspects of the pure intuition of sensibility. He's not saying that the concept of space is just a convention, but that the perception of space is built into the machinery of the mind, we can not perceive anything else. Most of today's geometry is built upon formalism which means that it's truths are tautological aka analytic and its certainty a priori relies on the rules of inference of the formal system on which the theorems are proven, which is closer to logic than math. Kant explains his theory of a priori logic in the form of his categories
One way of understanding what space might possibly be is from the perspective of certain interpretations of quantum theory that suggest that phenomenal reality may be “holographic-like” in nature.
Now what the holographic theory loosely implies is that space and matter are both composed of the same informationally-based substance, wherein depending upon how the patterns of information in the substance are configured, it can create the appearance of “emptiness” (space) in some areas...
(as in that which exists “between” the stars and planets)
...and that of “somethingness” (matter) in other areas...
...(as is represented by the suns and planets themselves).
The bottom line is that the appearance of space between the phenomenal features of the universe is simply what the information is prompting us to see, when, in fact, there is no separation of anything at the deepest level of our informationally-based underpinning.
_______
What about "Kant... IN SPACE"?
How can space be synthetic Aprioi if even if we are not looking at it or even exist it will always be there? Someone please answer. It is a property of them selfs
To Kant the objects are there but our understanding, our perception and conceptions, imposes rules on it such as space, time, and causality
cannot find the video synthetic a priori knowledge
I don't agree with Kant on this one. Even if space is a composition of our own mind does not mean that it isn't also simultaneously not a feature of reality. Think of it like this, what if I have my eyes closed and I begin to dream and I dream I am in my bed, in my room, with my night light there, it could be the case that this dream mirrors reality exactly. Or say I imagine that I live in a box and I imagine that there is a world outside it of trees and rain and sky, just because this is a creation of my mind does not show that reality does not resemble my imagination. I also disagree with Kant when he says we cannot know the thing in itself, for the same reason. I could have reasons to believe that the universe is a certain way and it may turn out that I cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the universe is the way I think it is, and it could be that I can not actually establish whether I know i'm correct, this doesn't mean I cannot know, it means I cannot know I know, I could be correct but may have no way to verify beyond a shadow of a doubt I am correct.
***** But what if this is still knowledge? What if only some instances of me experiencing space are mental constructs and some are not, or assume my mental construct aligns exactly with reality occasionally and space is one of those occasions. I might have true knowledge of space and the external world but I might not know when or if I do. I could still be accurate by accident. Like imagine you hallucinate a chair in front of you and there actually is a chair in front of you, you do know a chair is there. Do I have knowledge? Regardless my belief is true and I "know" something about the external world. But say I know I hallucinate a chair in front of me that doesn't mean i'm hallucinating the table in front of me, what if i'm seeing it directly? Then this is knowledge. I'd say about the external world we might have knowledge but we cannot know for certain we have knowledge, we cannot have knowledge that our justifications are true, so we cannot have knowledge that we have knowledge, we cannot know we know.
Boaz Awunde Dicks reality is too broad and of a term
You have no clue about Kant. Read him sometime.
I think the mind is simply a filter.
What if the filter is clogged w/dirt?
So ... did Kant figure out what really matters ... How would one go to a Halloween party dressed as "Synthetic A Priori?" -- The Superhero of Philosophy!!
That would be a nice costume.
Brain in a cube?
Tautology
Excellent video! I think such valuable conceptions would actually help people and draw them into philosophical thinking a little more, if they understood that the need for safety
and the compulsion to personal satisfaction - are synthetic and a priori...that we fall in love not with a person, but with our own invention of that person, based on our embellished interpretation of their cues; that one's own safety and satisfaction - a priori givens, are behind all of our actions and relationships. My point here is that average people rarely can be reached with abstract
conceptions...
A nice exposition. I'm sure Prof. Edgar got Kant's argument right but it is weak. Partly because it is circular about how one comes to have knowledge of space. A child learns about extension and linear space from sensory experience, from play, not from an 18th century text. The child grows up and knows very well about his neighbourhood, distance, and even geometrical truths from experience w/o ever having been to university. He built up the concepts from his own experiences. His knowledge of the world is real and true, though he may still be corrigible. Thus knowledge of the world, of geometry, etc. for billions of people who have never heard of Kant, is synthetic a posteriori. Kant just never dealt with the child's mind, and how human's learn.
Couldn't you argue that the knowledge a baby has on space is just sufficient enough to operate in it? The baby has some form of knowledge of space due to the prior intuition imposing itself onto external experiences of relations of objects and such. However it is not complete as we can see due to babies not understanding object permanence. The truths they come to I would argue are only possible due to this a priori knowledge to give rise to space in the first place as a general concept.
So are you saying that we KNOW objects MUST exist in space because we have seen that that’s how they exist?
😯
Not only is space mind dependent or based on the structures of our mind or a category of reason as Kant referred to them; but cause and effect as well. Also, Einstein read Kant and was influenced by his ideas of time and space i.e. the "spatiotemporal manifold".
A lot of this is being proven scientifically nowadays. The 2d universe theory comes to mind among other things.
Very quantumish. Pansychism is likey true btw
Kant known about the Matrix
The first step in studying Kant is hitting your head with a hammer. When you have such a headache that focusing your mind, thru your senses, onto concrete reality is impossible, you are ready to empathize w/Kant's intellectual confession, "I have denied knowledge therefore, in order to make room for faith." Open the text and begin.
TeaParty1776 noice
I don't agree. Math is analytic. I don't see why it'd be synthetic.
Because, given 5+7, I can arrive at 12 only by way of synthesis.
Do we even exist or does only "God" exist in the form of all things? What if all of reality was only occurring inside "God's" consciousness but relatively speaking it appeared real to us? Would there then even be any space at all? Or at best, only "God's" Space?
Hmm I could be wrong but I think this is what Berkeley argues. you should check him out
Jerry Reyes
I'm new to all this, "Berkeley" who?
Also, things like "pi" with a never ending solution. Just an oddity of our human math in a very real definitive existence OR can it only exist in a truly imaginative existence?
Charles Brightman George Berkeley. My understanding of him is that he believes that there is no external world and that all that exists are souls and ideas. The rest of it is made up by God.
well I don't know much about math but it seems to me that math is just an imaginative existence. that is to say, we can't really point to any math, we just come to certain mathematical conclusions through reason. If by imaginative existence you mean to say only in our minds..
Jerry Reyes Thanks about George, I'll look into it.
The analysis that I've personally done, utilizing "occam's razor", would highly suggest that an eternally existent entity I call "God" does in fact truly exist and is most probably everywhere and in everything. (Hence is it at least possible that only "God" exists in the form of all things). But, assuming the analysis is correct, the one very thing "God" could never ever do is to personally experience a total cessation of conscious existence, and yet that is the one very thing we can apparently never ever escape. Coincidence? I don't believe so. It appears by analysis "we exist, at least in part, to cease to exist". It's the only way how I know how "God" could ever experience "death" is by how "God" is apparently doing it. Create entities separate from self, (of course made up from the stuff of self, otherwise where could it come from), who then experience existence and then a personal and total cessation of existence.
Whether we truly physically exist or only exist in "God's" consciousness, if we don't truly eternally consciously exist, (in whatever state of existence we might be in), then all things cease to matter to us from our human perspective as far as eternity is concerned, of which then did anything or anyone ultimately and eternally matter in the first place? "Life" is an "illusion".
I am down to only two possibilities:
1) We either truly have an eternal conscious existence somehow, someway, somewhere in some state of existence, (possible for there is much we do not know, and believing in an eternal conscious afterlife with your loved ones could have positive health benefits in this life as it may help to de-stress your life); OR
2) We don't truly have an eternal conscious existence. All things cease to matter one day of which then did anything or anyone ultimately and eternally matter in the first place? Who's eternally consciously left to care? All of life is an "illusion".
So, to some extent, however we exist, I am more interested in where we are all going to.
"What exactly matters into eternity and to whom does it exactly matter to?"
"God" alone? and/or "Me" too? and/or "Some other entity or entites"?
OR "To no eternally consciously existent entity at all"?
What are the real answers to these questions?
Jerry Reyes On George Berkeley, who perceived the first perceiver? Also, light photons appear to come from very real objects even though they are "imaginative" within our own consciousness.
The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, but only in two dimensional space, which we don't live in.
We also don't have perfect triangles in out world you know .
This video is a joke. Kant has never been to space.
Please speak slower and explain more. we need to know our audience want to learn and thery are not phylosophers. Art of teaching is simplifying the complicated facts. Thanks for considering these next time.