- Reconciled empiricism & rationalism

- Agreed with Hume that empirical method is limited to the observation of some cases

- But rejected Hume's skepticism, i.e., doubts concerning universal generalisation

• Suggested that the process of knowing involves making two basic kinds of judgements:

(i) Analytic Judgements: In analytic judgements,

e.g., "A rose is a flower," the predicate (flower) is logically contained in the subject (rose).

The validity of such judgements can be tested on purely rational grounds, ‘a priori’, i.e., before having

(or without having to have any) experience of the object (rose). For, to deny that a rose is a flower is

a contradiction.

(ii) Synthetic Judgements, in contrast, do not have the predicate logically contained in the subject,

e.g., "This rose is red." Such judgements can be made only a posteriori, i.e., after having the actual experience of the object, or based on empirical observation.

• Kant noted that in science, judgements such as those of causality are made a priori, or before having experience in that all objects in a class
• (e.g., apples), in the past and future, are said to
  obey a law (e.g., gravity).

- Kant asked: How can science make statements of causality without an empirical basis? (since it is impossible to observe all instances, past or future)?

- According to Kant this is possible because:

• The mind is equipped with "categories" such as unity (one), plurality (many) and totality (all)
• Such categories, Kant thought, exist before, or prior to, making any observations. So he called them a priori categories.

(i) Mind is not empty to begin with.

It is equipped with certain categories" or ways of organising experience

(ii) Mind is not passive, either. It actively organises experience in pre-existing categories.

• Kant rejected Hume's notion of mind as a mere bundle of ideas lacking any basic principle of unity or of sameness.

- He argued that the continued existence of one and the same "self-as-knower" is necessary to account for the very possibility of knowledge.

(Note that it is absurd to think that a constantly changing knower, or a series of different knowers, could make sense of anything.)

- This self-as-knower provides an unchanging backdrop which lies "beyond" or transcends ever-changing ideas in the mind; & is called the "transcendental ego"

• Kant affirmed the view of persons as moral agents capable of understanding, feeling, and will (implicitly accepting cognition, affect, and conation, or the "trilogy of mind")

- Affirmed the permanence of person (self) as moral agent capable of being guided by "categorical imperative," i.e., by commands suggested by universal rational principles of ethics

- According to Kant, human life is a thing

of the highest value, an end-in-itself, not

a means to an end

Note: These Kantian ideas basic to Piaget & Kohlberg's theories

- Kant called the world as it appears to us in our experience the "phenomenal world"

- The real objects "out there" were called noumena

- We can never know the noumenal or real objects directly; we know them as they appear in our experience, i.e., as phenomena

Justification of individuals' subjective

experience: i.e., of the world as it

appears: Phenomenology

(i) Phenomenology: justification of the study of individuals' subjective view of the world.

(Implicitly, we react to the world as it appears to us, not to what it is really like!)

(ii) Mind is (a) not empty - (Nativism) (b) not passive

Therefore, knowing involves "constructing" a reality, not discovering!

(iii) Kant held that science can construct a valid view of the world since he thought that it would firmly founded on universal principles of rationality (the "categories" of understanding)

Note: Piaget thought of categories of understanding are not fixed; they evolve in the course of human development, and evolution in nature (see Hegel)

(iv) Emphasis on laws (or principles) of "structuring" cognition, rather than on principles of learning/association.

(v) Implicit holism, as opposed to molecularism/elementism

• Theory building can/should proceed from abstract, general principles as well; not merely and always from simple & concrete to complex ideas, even as mind proceeds from a priori categories to organised experience

- Space, time, causality are given

in intuition - like a priori principles

• necessary for organisation of experience

I

Of quantity

Unity

Plurality

II III

Of quality Of Relation

Negation Causality/dependence

Limitation Community (Reciprocity)

IV

Of modality

Possibility . Impossibility

Existence . Non-existence

Necessity . Contingency

(Note: the bipolarity of the categories of modality)

Particular

Singular

Negative Hypothetical

Non-finite Disjunctive

Problematical ("may be")

Assertory ("yes")

Apodictic ("absolutely!")

(Note: the dialectical nature of the judgements of modality)

{Adapted from Kant's Critique of pure reason, pp. 62 & 56}