Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Robert Paul Wolff Lecture 3

Follow Robert Paul Wolff on his blog: robertpaulwolff...

[@Tinydude10]

Thank you again for recording and uploading these, and thanks to professor Wolff for his wonderful analysis. I just love the style of these - giving lots of additional context and insight to elucidate crucial passages, while leaving ample room for digressions and informal storytelling. If these lectures continue for another three years, he'll have at least one viewer ;)

[@jpruhu7662]

4 years and 46k viewers later...

[@craighamaimbo844]

Watching from Zambia. Thank you for the lectures Prof.

[@knauxu]

Best series of lectures on KZbin.

[@Jaunyus]

I am watching this from Russia! Thanks for the material).

[@florentinka09]

Me too haha

[@RAMZIAARON]

Love your stories. Tell them all.

[@handsbasic]

Many people compliment the style of these lectures. I am glad it is so widely enjoyed. Let me try my hand at a different angle of compliment: personally, I do not enjoy the digression or story telling, and yet i still find these lectures indispensable listening for the content they teach. professor Wolff’s style and personality seems to be widely popular, but, even to those for whom the style is not their taste, the content of his lectures shines brightly through. I hope this comes across as the compliment it is meant to be, certainly I don’t pretend my personal preferences for lecturing reflect any measure of virtue.

[@THEjoelivingstone]

Personally, I don't mind the digressions. If you already know Kant's framework, its interesting to see where it takes other people's minds. I even enjoy Zizek's takes, because let's be honest.. he is the master of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'd have a beer with that fella and demand we don't try to talk fancy. I'd also bring a gift handkerchief.

[@CarlosSanchez-bj8dd]

I'm watching this from El Salvador and giving a thumbs up from the start before I forget. Truly awesome lectures!. Thank you for uploading.

[@sultumchalngeng6195]

One of the best video lecture in You Tube... Enjoy watching this from India!

[@fraktallyfractals2083]

1:04:00 and so forth, absolutely mind blowing

[@SuperMrHiggins]

And I am thankful for you putting these on KZbin! Thank you!

[@bellamylawx9479]

Loving your lectures, I could spend three years hearing them. I wish I could spend my life doing philosophy. Greetings from Mexico.

[@olegwiththeknowledge1729]

bellamylaw x You Kan(t)

[@nissimlevy5476]

Starting at 54:30 I was fascinated. Just blew my mind.

[@dylansevitt]

This is the greatest explanation of Kuhn I have ever heard!

[@jhangeerhanif5435]

Sir, thoroughly enjoying your lecture. You read the passages from the book much like a lullaby, that puts you to sleep. Amazing. Your stories are really inspiring and so is your sense of humour. Very eager to quickly go through the entire series of your timeless lectures. Regards Jhangeer | Pakistan

[@kwwwai]

Wonderful lecture! I learned so much. Thanks for uploading.

[@lanepommer]

Thank you Dr Wolff! Really appreciate your style of taking up this great work.

[@kaeruzin]

Alex, Can you turn on automatic subs? I'm writing from brazil and i have an immense interest on the subject. I can't undestand very well without subs. Even being generated automatically and having some errors, my understanding is much better with them. From a student of philosophy at ICHS-UFMT, Thank you

[@experimentsinAI]

Superb conclusion from 1:07, thankyou

[@jameslatin2939]

Thank you so much for posting these. I am beginning on a study of the Critique and will read and follow along with these lectures. I'm also going to try to summarize the sections, as Wolff talked about in the first lecture. The only thing I wish was that the video descriptions gave an indication of that week's assigned reading.

[@leighwinfield750]

Love the topic and love the lectures. This man's drawing pleasants is a certain beneficiary to the philosophy and world. Thank you

[@MirzaBorogovac]

What made me interested in Kant was that I saw similarities between Kant's philosophy, and financial modeling that I was studying at that time. Model is just a simplified representation of reality. You understand reality through a model in your head. That is another reason you can never know a thing in itself. Not only are you limited by your senses, but the model of reality in your head must necessarily be limited.

[@alexworsham5358]

Mirza Borogovac you would probably appreciate the works of Alfred Korzybski. His famous epithet is "The map is not the territory" which expresses basically the same sentiment

[@ValvtaSilent]

Read Kant.

[@piushalg8175]

Prof. Wollf has a very fine humour and he is exceptionally well entertaining besides being very instructive.

[@bradsmith3829]

Amazing lectures; I wish that audience members were not permitted to ask questions though...it is clear that they took the lectures off the rails and were questions that should have been saved for "office hours".

[@chriscockrell9495]

What a pretty blue triangle!

[@hewhoyawns315]

For anyone interested in another answer to the question posed at the beginning of the lecture, here’s Sebastian Gardner from his Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason: Since Kant’s analysis of cognition is not by any means philosophically neutral, it might be asked if it is not open to the rationalist or empiricist to simply reject it. Kant may appear at the beginning of the Aesthetic to lay down an epistemological theory on a purely terminological basis, but an argument supporting his analysis can be located. It turns on a contrast between the type of our mode of cognition and another logically possible type. We should consider what it would be for there to be no such distinction as that which Kant makes between intuitions and concepts. According to Kant, we can form some idea of a subject whose mode of cognition is not divided in the way that ours is. This would be a subject for whom the act of thinking, and being presented with an object, were one and the same event; the same representations in the subject would perform both functions. Such a subject would possess what Kant calls intellectual intuition (or, equivalently, an intuitive intellect or intuitive understanding) (B68, B71, A252), so called because in such a subject the same faculty that thinks objects would also intuit them. Now it is evident that we do not have intellectual intuition. For a subject with intellectual intuition, there would be no room for sense experience, since to merely think of an object would be to be presented with it; nor would it be necessary to apply concepts to objects, since each given object would be grasped immediately in its full individuality; nor for such a subject would there be any distinction between the actual and the possible, since this distinction disappears if objects become actual merely by virtue of being thought of (CJ 401-3, 406-7). Kant observes that in intellectual intuition the distinction between knowing an object and creating it would also vanish. The only subject to which we can meaningfully attach the notion of intellectual intuition, Kant suggests, is God (B72). Our intuition is by contrast sensible, or, as it may also be put, our understanding is discursive (A230). For us, the functions of intuiting and thinking are not collapsed into one another: to think of something is not to grasp it immediately in the way that perception grasps its object; our thoughts can grasp objects only by bringing them under concepts; we can know things only by thinking of what they are like (our knowledge assumes judgemental form); the actual remains distinct from the possible. Contemplating the notion of intellectual intuition throws into relief and serves to reveal the structure of our own mode of cognition, which rationalism and empiricism fail to grasp.

[@JozsefKonczer]

From 33:55 Right, it should be proved that the line bisecting the angle and BC has an intersection. And no intuition is needed for that, "only" the Parallel postulate in Euclidean geometry. It says: "If a line segment intersects two straight lines forming two interior angles on the same side that sum to less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles sum to less than two right angles." Using this, we can prove, that for every triangle ABC the angle bisecting lines (for example containing the vertex A) has an intersection with the line containing both B and C. Theorem: Let us take a triangle ABC, and the angle bisecting line "t". Then "t" has an intersection with the line BC. Proof: The lines AC and BC has an intersection, C; The parallel postulate can be "flipped", so on the side, where two lines (here AC and BC) intersect, there the sum of angles is less then two right angles (otherwise it would a contradiction); If we half one of the angles in the construction, here for example the angle at A, then the sum will be less the original; So using the parallel postulate again, the line "t" has to have an intersection with line BC. Q.E.D. Going further, one can show axiomatically that "t" will intersect the edge BC as well Theorem: "t" intersects the edge BC. Proof: It intersects the line BC; from parallel postulate we know that it besides line BC on the side of line BA which contain C; repeating the argument for the line AC and point B we get the same result for the line AC and point B; so the intersection must be between B and C. Q.E.D. One can be anxious about that, what if "t" intersects AC or AB as well, and does not hit first BC: Lemma: Every different two lines "p" and "q" can have at most one intersection. Proof: Let think they have two, let say M and N; Let choose one point P on "p" between M and N; Let choose one point Q on "q" between M and N; we can draw a line "r" between P and Q; The situation is that we have intersections of the lines "p" and "q" on both sides of "r", which is a contradiction. Q.E.D. Using it to our case, "t" has an intersection AB and AC, namely at A, so there can be no more. Counter example on a sphere: We can have the points A, B, C almost on the equator, close to each other, and for the edge AC we can choose the longer path (trough the whole sphere). In this case the angle bisecting line "t" will hit the edge AC first. The counter example shows, that the parallel postulate is indeed essential to the proof. From 35:00 The axiomatization of Euclid is not complete, it was completed by Hilbert in 1899. And indeed, there are problematic assumptions in the original theory. For example: math.stackexchange.com/questions/328028/what-are-the-differences-between-hilberts-axioms-and-euclids-axioms I want to show here a construction, where it can happen, that there is a point outside the a circle and there is no "point" which lies on the intersection of the circle and the line connecting the center and the outer point: So for the construction one has to define what is a point. Well, axiomatically one can say, that we start with some finite, undefined objects in the beginning, then we can do constructions by drawing lines, and circles, and by definition call the intersections as new points. In this approach a point will be procedure, how we can get there by these constructions from some finite set of undefined objects. The minimal construction needs only two initial points, which define a "ruler". From this one can generate a dense subset of points of the plane, what means that practically any "real" point can be approximated by these generated points. However, because constructions has to have finite steps, there is less constructible points then "real" points. And if one thinks in algebra, these constructions are roots of second order set of polynomials with integer coefficients. From this we should conclude, that all the distances between constructible numbers must be algebraic. So for example there will be no generated pair of points, which have distance "Pi" or "e" because these are not algebraic. (There are simpler non constructible numbers as well: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructible_number ). So if one would say, that he or she only deal with points which are constructible from a pair of points, than all the theorems of Euclid would be true on this set, however if a second person would draw a circle from a constructible point, with radius Pi times the length of the initial ruler, then "there would be no point" which intersects the new circle and a constructible line. Of course the intersection can be defined as a new point, but it has to be added to the previous ones, and will generate a new infinite series of constructible points (with the new point). This is actually the reason why Hilbert had to introduce the Continuity axioms.

[@hishamfahmy6169]

thanks for such a wonderful series of lectures :))

[@LostMerkaba]

I really loved the explanation of 4d.. It reminded me of something my maths teacher said back in high school. Imagine a line (1d) passing through the wall of a class room, its cut section through the wall is a point (0d), while a circle (2d) passing through the wall creates a line (1d), a sphere's (3d) cut section is a circle (2d), and so we could assume that a hypersphere (4d) would have a cut section of an entire sphere (3d) passing through the wall. Meaning that the 2d cut section of a 4d shape is a 3d shape.

[@davidste60]

In the film "Interstellar" there is a wormhole in space, and because it's a hole in 4 dimensions it manifests as a sphere.

[@Alkis05]

Technically the second time you use circle you actually means disk. And the second time you use sphere, you actually means ball. A sphere is a surface, the same way a circle is a line, while a disk is a planar surface.

[@FightXScience-wh6kx]

No wonder there are 9 lectures in this series. I'm half way through and he hasn't said anything but the most introductoey remarks about the Transcendental Aesthetic.

[@boardpassenger1483]

32:24 "The blueness of the triangle is no part of the proposition." lol Thank you for these lectures!

[@boardpassenger1483]

I've done my fair share of math, and when I first read Kant saying that Euclidean propositions rely on intuition, I realized that that's what I had long been suspecting subconsciously, and I was excited and happy to see someone putting it into words so clearly. But then the thought dawned on me that in modern mathematics, such a "problem" would not occur, or perhaps more appropriately, could be avoided, by not making such "illogical" deductions and by making the axiomatic system more elaborate. Whether that is really possible, to me, is an interesting question, but probably the answer is no, given that Kant is also asserting that even arithmetic propositions are synthetic.

[@boardpassenger1483]

BTW, maybe we can deduce that the line crosses the circle? For any point on the segment AB, the distance from A is between zero and 2r. Also, the segment is continuous, so there exists a point on AB whose distance from A is r. The definition of the circle is the collection of all points whose distance from A is r. Therefore, the intersection isn't empty.

[@boardpassenger1483]

Still, Kant's claim stands, because we can realize, or know, this without this kind of deduction, and he's exactly talking about that function of the intellect.

[@mSchwippy]

I laughed aloud at the "hustling used iphones" comment😂

[@joop5415]

The topics discussed at or just before 57:00 regarding the possibility that forms of intuition (in particular of space and time) might be historically and perhaps even ideologically contingent are discussed by the Neo-Kantians of the Marburg school who wanted to come to grips with the implications for the theory of relativity for Kant's work. A more contemporary work on topics cognate to this is Michael Friedman's "Dynamics of Reason" where a Neo-Kantian conception of the constitutive role of mathematical and scientific principles is essentially unified with the Kuhnian conception of the history of science to produce a theory of the historically relative a priori and which focuses on the nature of space, time, and spacetime in particular. What they don't do, to be sure, is address the relation of these facts to political ideology but all that would be needed to do so would be to consider the role of politics and ideology in the process of Kuhnian scientific revolutions - a relation that Kuhn famously left out of his statements in his *Structure* (to its detriment) but has been worked on elsewhere (though I know much less about that). If Friedman's thesis were essentially correct and one had some kind of account of how scientific revolutions could be spurred by political-historical and ideological change, one would have a very robust account of how, historically speaking, political ideology influences scientist's collective understanding/intuitions about the nature of space and time.

[@renemilet788]

Foucault’s work (esp in The Archeology of Knowledge and The Order of Things) can be read as addressing that line of inquiry.

[@eugeneho7556]

Anecdote about Wolff's Senior Thesis at 48:48

[@rogerabbott8611]

A nice lecture. Especially loved the explanation part on Kant's arguments against Descartes' 'Cognito' and Liebnitz's 'Transcendental reality' starting at 58:00 Thank you very much.

[@alfredmicallef]

K y is ❤

[@andreysavin1931]

If professor knew how recently a russian admiral in s city of konigsberg spoke about Kant , he would have gotten a heart attach

[@kalukeru]

Excellent lecture

[@MehrdadMohammadi63]

Could u plz add subtitle?

[@almilligan7317]

I love the digressions. Illustrations are always better than explanations alone. Anyway, about intuition and geometry I always heard it explained as the proposition that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. There is nothing in points and shortest that imply a straight line. You have to do a second movement. It's not analytic. Is this correct?

[@gingerfeest]

I'm not sure if I am missing something, but it seems straight forward to show that the lines intersect. We say two lines intersect when they share at least one point in common. If we show, 1.) The midpoint between A and B is on the line connecting A to B and 2.) The midpoint is on the circle, C. then we have shown that the two lines cross. All of the following hold by definition of midpoint and circle: 1.) The line connecting A to B contains the midpoint between A and B. 2.) C contains all points that are distance, r, from A. The midpoint between A and B is distance r from A.. Hence C contains the midpoint between A and B. It follows that the line connecting A to B crosses with circle C. QED Let me know if there was an error in my argument.

[@brendantannam499]

Is this where non-Euclidian geometry might kick in? The line might curve around the edge of the circle., above or below C.

[@brendantannam499]

Perhaps that's not correct. In the perception of a concept where all the elements are straight lines, the line crossing the edge of the circle should be straight too. So I think we're back to figuring out if the crossing of the edge of the circle comes out of the definitions or just the construction.

[@edwardwoods3097]

I will here again seek advice from those with greater wisdom of the Kant than I. I have just begun to study Kant and thus far I have watched Dan Robinson’s lecture series on the First Critique. I have read The CPR itself and the Prolegomena. I have read Roger Scruton’s book on Kant from the very short introduction series. I have Sebastian Gardner’s commentary on the CPR on the way, along with the Paul Guyer translation of the CPR. And of course, I’m working through this lecture series. I have also read the section on Kant in Coplestone’s History of philosophy which is actually fairly good for what it is. Am I missing any key resource? Some essential secondary source for understanding the Critique?

[@SeekingApatheia]

Kant's Transcendental Idealism by Henry Allison

[@chriscockrell9495]

How do you know it intercepts? Pure Intuition? Properties of the definitions of 2-D existence. 2 parallel line is the only time two lines don't intersect. Inside and outside a circle sets a boundary and zones. And a change in zone requires a boundary crossing (an intersect). What if we experience time and space differently? Now that is interesting.

[@edwardwoods3097]

I’m going to try to give a basic definition of pure intuition as I am understanding it and I hope someone can either correct and clarify for me or confirm that I’m on the right path. Pure intuition is the constructs of space and time that we supply to the otherwise plethora of sense-data and thereby begin to organize the chaos of “the manifold.” Of course, we then further synthesize or unify by the pure concepts of understanding. And experience is then the combination of the pure intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding. I am even in the ballpark of Kant’s meaning?

[@rh001YT]

The other day I was listening to Durant's "The Story of India" on YT, and in the chapter on Philosophy I was surprised to learn that way back say 3000 to 500 BC, Hindustanis had debated empiricism, idealism, rationalism, solipsism, and virtually all that Westerners had debated say since about 1300 up to 1850. The end result in India was a sort of disinterest in the arguments due to being exhausted, and nothing useful coming from them, and a turn towards pragmatism. According to Durant, skeptics and what we in the West call atheists were in good supply even among the folk, and Buddhist philosophy was already known before the Buddha. The outcome was that all agreed that life is an illusion, the Buddhists taking that path most ardently, and the rest of India, HIndus, going in a direction of agreeing that it's all an illusion but embracing limited idealism as a pragmatism. So Hindus kept playing with maths while Buddhists did not. Hindus actually advanced in more than a few technologies and had better results from alchemy in terms of pigments and coatings and processes using multiple minerals than Europe. India was more advanced than Europe until about 1400-1500. Virtually nothing was happening in the Buddhist regions of Burma, Siam, Sri Lanka, Tibet and Bhutan, except the people, it is claimed, were quite happy...simple and happy, except maybe in the Burma/Siam region where there were lots of skirmishes and wars. Today, Indians claim that had they not suffered colonialization, but instead had reciprocal trade with Europe, they would have advanced in tandem with Europe and would today have the same prosperity as the West. But was the limited idealism of Hindustan sufficient to actually make prosperity? I certainly don't know, but I will claim that idealism in the West, even if technically wrong headed according to some, is that which kept pushing forwards, discovering an immense amount of useful knowledge even if that was gained while traveling a path that leads to no tangible end. "It's all an illusion (maya)" may not be the path to prosperity. Not too many Indians today are willing to confess that they have been influenced by the West and are and have been increasing their interest in idealism, and I think that explains how they are catching up now after the tragedy of the colonial period.

[@judiahhawley9789]

rh001YT really interesting thought

[@TreeintheQuad]

I am also curious how you would address the scientific and technological advancements made in East Asian countries with large Buddhist populations and influence such as China, Japan, etc.

[@enlightenedturtle9507]

58:00 This is where I don't understand Schopenhauer. He goes along with everything Kant has to say about inner and outer sense; but somehow, according to him-even though we experience our willing, so affective states, which he at least identifies as us experiencing our will being directly affected, within time, just as we experience everything else he identifies as our direct experiences of the will within time-we can have a direct knowledge of the thing-in-itself, namely as experience of it in ourselves as willing.

[@enlightenedturtle9507]

Sorry for talking only about Schopenhauer on all of your Kant lectures by the way 😄

[@johnnycockatoo1003]

4:35 focus

[@Antiposmoderno]

quirality is awesome

[@alecmisra4964]

Apriori concepts are already implicit in lockes interpretation of empirical experience, Kant merely clarifies and firms up lockes initial insights (in the light of hume) and are not really incommensurate with it. Its a rather confused clarification I think. Locke is easily the most underestimated of the great philosophers.

[@dl-q3387]

Every time I see an old person I like in a video I can’t help but think “this guys probably dead now...” Happy to say that I googled it, this old cat is still kickin and that makes me happy

[@Israel2.3.2]

58:00 "crucial crucial passage"

[@markus4925]

Is this the whole series? It’s fascinating

[@alexcampbell7886]

There are a total of 9 lectures in the series.

[@markus4925]

@@alexcampbell7886 thank you 👍

[@MmM-do6rg]

I'm trying so hard to capt. No, I can't. The extra textualities isn't helping either

[@matrixmash9907]

My question is what domain is the circle in? If its domain is R then it crosses the circle, but if it is in, say Q then would the line not cross the circle at some point along the circle, say point G? Also, great thank you for these lectures! I'm studying Kant for an essay I am writing in my undergraduate philosophy class and this is incredibly helpful; especially in breaking down his language and defining his key wordings.

[@longcastle4863]

7:25... I know Darwin wasn't born until a few decades after Hume, but I'm wondering if Hume or other thinkers of his time ever discussed how the propensities and dispositions Hume described were necessary for day to day functioning and survival and what role that necessity might play or have played in their being present in human beings. I mean beyond the explanation given by religious thinkers that God just made us this way...

[@jamesmoseley5428]

36:33. Hot damn. That dude just blew my mind questioning Kant’s proof about the existence of a priori synthetic. I always thought’s Kant’s argument was genius. Geometry is where we find the a priori synthetics. You don’t arrive at the majority of Euclidean theorems by analytic deductions based on the nature of triangles, circles, lines etc.. you imagine the isosceles triangle and plot out a line going through it. Then you see that it’s obvious a line will bisect the base if it goes through the apex. The definition of the isosceles triangle itself does not tell you that. Boom done glove doesn’t fit you must acquit. Then this bastard brought me to epistemic crisis. There are an infinite number of isosceles triangles. How do you know that proof will be the case every time unless you resort to inductive reasoning and all the pesky Humean problems that come with that? How then can you say this synthetic is a priori? If anyone has An answer for this please keep me from staying up all night pondering this:)

[@septicwomb4394]

I think you could claim a priori that any line perpendicular to the base of an isosceles triangle and passing through the apex would precisely bisect the base, given only the definition of an isosceles triangle, as the infinite number of possible isosceles triangles could only be distinguished from one another by extension of their equal sides, or by increasing the angle of the apex, which in both cases would only extend the length of the base without altering its orientation to the apex, i.e. in both cases you would be extending the base symmetrically relative to the apex, meaning extending symmetrically the base to each side of the bisecting line. This can be inferred logically and proven to apply to every case, given only the definition of an isosceles triangle.

[@davidste60]

@@septicwomb4394 But a child has no notion of the axioms of geometry, they just try to keep their face off the floor and can't even focus their eyes on objects. We learn the properties of triangles by experience.

[@allmhuran]

This was sort of covered by the answer 38:18, although I don't think it was emphatic enough and was the subject of a followup question. The critical element is that the particular triangle you construct in your intuition is not, in fact, any particular triangle. You can certainly imagine a particular triangle, and "picture" in your mind that imagined particular triangle as a construction on some equivalently mentally constructed two dimensional space, but that's not the same as the intuition from which the construction was generated. And since the particular imagined triangle was constructed purely from the more abstract intuition of what an isosceles triangle is by definition - and not constructed as a result of perception - the precise form taken by the imagined particular triangle contains no properties not given by the formal intuition. So the construction which applies to your imagined triangle is really a formal construction which applies to the formal triangle, and thus every particular triangle of that form.

[@davidste60]

@@allmhuran But 'the more abstract intuition of what an isosceles triangle is by definition' is itself constructed as a result of perception.

[@allmhuran]

@@davidste60 Yeah, but that's the synthetic part, right? In other words, sure, we could gain an understanding of triangles by looking at pictures of triangles. But we could also gain an understanding of them by looking at examples of angles, and straight lines, and never see a particular triangle per se. Or we could see an equilateral triangle, and then have the properties of an isosceles triangle describes to us. Either way, without ever seeing a particular isosceles triangle, we can still generate our "a priori" intuition of an isosceles triangle - hence a synthetic proposition understood a priori. Then, from that a prori intuition, we can - so the claim goes - generate further knowledge by reflecting upon our pure intuition, like the example of the bisector, which does not depend upon any particular isosceles triangle, but rather only upon our intuition. We still need the concept of space to have a concept of an angle, or a bisector - hence Kant's requirement of space as a form of intuition that must be applied to anything perceived - so we can't quite "make an apple pie from scratch", as Sagan would have it. But Kant doesn't think that we need to be able to do that - or even, indeed, that the concept is coherent.

[@pdrpl6537]

If someone can explain me the discussion generated by that two questions i will be very thankful.

[@henryberrylowry9512]

Funny enough the text for me of which Wolff speaks is Hegel' Phenomenology.

[@paololuckyluke2854]

16,28. So, how’s about a performative speech act, e.g. “You’re fired!” , constituting an active intuition?

[@jakubbilski2705]

I suppose it must be something like deeply changing the subject that you touch with this sense, or some kind of a stronger connection. Otherwise, simple crushing a toast in your hands would be a use of an active intuition, and I personally don't think Kant missed that. Maybe the example is not really great and Prof. Wolff used it just to mention the aria. (actually, in modern physics, even an observation changes the state of an object, I'm curious if that changes anything)

[@jamesmoseley5428]

Wouldn’t active intuition be more akin to imagination? If we take Schopenhauer and Fichte interpretation of Kant and see kant as more solipsistic then we could argue that because things as they appear are all that can be known, then what we invent in the universe (time, space, unified perceptions...) is active intuition. If we believe Hume and Berkeley or the 2 D theory of the universe, we could argue that everything we see is imagined to be in the state we observe it. Kant Says imagination is essential for all knowledge. So wouldn’t our subconscious imaginative constructions create our world? Like Schopenhauer says “the world is my idea.”

[@Zing_art]

James Moseley Active intuition, according to Kant, is God’s sole prerogative. Human beings are passively intuitive I.e intuition would lead to a perception first based on which he/she will sense the appearances in their own way. Active intuition, first creates, which stands independent of the perception as it is in immediate relation to the object.

[@paololuckyluke2854]

Jakub Bilski These answers never came through to me, but thank you. You make an interesting point about modern physics, especially since it concerns what is regarded as imperceptible reality. With regard to the aria, the reply may be that God’s creation of the cool winds in the glade is, yes, a performative ‘speech’ act, but one which creates noumena perceived by us as winds and glades, whereas “You’re fired!” creates a new state of affairs effecting a change in our understanding of the phenomenal world. Still, when one ponders over it, many questions arise (such as the ontology of states of affairs, whether a performative speech act is merely willed or part of a chain of cause and effect, whether changes in perceived reality should correspond to changes in things in themselves...), and I’m not sure a clear answer would emerge. I can’t help thinking if only Kant-in-himself were still around to answer our questions how it would make his thinking much clearer. That said, Wolf is a wonderful substitute, as I might add is also Sebastian Gardener, whom I remember him mentioning.

[@larrycreech9847]

Where is the 'Closed Caption' for this lecture? Some of us really need it?

[@judiahhawley9789]

In the example of the circle with the point outside of itself, is there an assumption that the figure is two dimensional? It could not cross the line if it went into the third dimension. I don't know anything about Euclidean geometry so idk if there are fixed parameters

[@banpaksebangfaixaibouri1107]

21: 00

[@africanfromafrica]

would not all be transcendentally ideal? As in all perceptions are akin to the mirage in that they are a mere appearance.

[@Zing_art]

namelessone interesting. Kant , however, doesn’t belittle appearances per say. He probably tries to undo the majesty of independent reality which his predecessors were grappling with.

[@cameronsmith7941]

The problem of the inability to superimpose hands or other objects is no problem for Leibniz since it means that the two hands are not internally the same, one having a thumb on the right side of the hand and the other on the left side of the hand for example

[@filosofiadetalhista]

It seems to me there is a problem with Wolff's characterization of the difference between Berkeley and Kant, at the end of the lecture (1:00:00 onwards). Berkeley too distinguishes between the illusory and the non-illusory within his philosophy, and even provides a method of distinguishing between those. One thing is an oasis-hallucination in your private mind, quite another thing is a real oasis publicly accessible to all "souls" and existent within the mind of God, as Berkeley conceives it. So there too is a distinction between the empirically real and the empirically ideal. Furthermore, Berkeley too has argued that he has drawn the distinction between appearance and reality in the only way it can be drawn - recall his series of argument that "materiality" (which he thinks to be the transcendentally real) is either a meaningless or a incoherent concept. The real differences between the two, as far as my amateurish understanding has it, is that Kant maintains the transcendentally real exists, but that it is not material as Berkeley thought it would have to be. Furthermore, Kant thinks that the empirically real are existent within our mind, and are wholly structured by it, even if they are caused ("affected") by things outside it - whereas Berkeley held the empirically real to be existent within God's mind and to be structured by it (though Berkeley may not speak much of structure). What do you guys think?

[@alecmisra4964]

The stuff on euclid is simply incorrect. Just to use one of your examples, if a line is extended 2 times the length of the radius from the center of a circle then that line MUST by definition of what a circle is, cross the circumference of the circle concerned. This is indisputable, you know it not from sense intuition but from the definition of the terms you are using. Kant needed analytic knowledge to contain a synthetic component in order to maintain the symmetry of synthetic or aesthetic knowledge necessarily containing an analytic component. This is kants fundamental error, the 2 cases are NOT symmetrical - synthetic knowledge depends on analytic knowledge but the reverse is not true. Thus analytic knowledge has a more general chatacter to it, something kant coukd not grant for some reason. Yet the rest of what he says is not impaired by admitting the correct view on this matter, his errors concerning euclid etc would have been avoided however.

[@YamiAi]

Why would the empirical, the synthetic, depend on the non-empirical? Can one not observe without concepts?

[@nurulahad3162]

37:33

[@nihiladmirari7534]

Ahhh, mister Kant never tried meditation!

[@stevena8719]

No, he decided to actually get something done instead

[@DorotheaJacob-c5s]

Anderson Deborah Young Jennifer Anderson Maria

[@Erickvazquezc]

Here's the aria referred in 19:00 kzbin.info/www/bejne/eIqyi6GthraJZ5o

[@nissimlevy5476]

Synthetic and Analytical statements only make sense if you understand them within the context of Godel Incompleteness. Analytical statements are the provable theorems within a system. Synthetic statements are the unprovable theorems. That is all!

[@Swift-mr5zi]

Having to watch hour long video's to get 15min of real content is killing me

[@alecmisra4964]

You are waffling a lot off the point in these lectures.

[@MahmoudIsmail1988.]

This type of philosophy covers all the spectrum between things that are (common sense, self-explanatory, go without saying) and things that are utterly (meaningless insignificant polysyllabic jargon).. no wonder it absolutely disappeared and lost all value with the emergence modern physics and modern biology and neuroscience and stand up comedy!! yes.. stand up comedy!! every thing that is real and helpful in those topics has been said simply and clearly by the greeks. Nothing thenceforth has been new or real with the exception of Karl Marx (and his similars) whose work still resonates with workers and real people who do real work and real production

[@pendejo6466]

Jesus Christ, who is the slow talker at 45:21? Get to the point already.

[@KafrosKypselis]

Pendejo ...

[@Ignirium]

...

[@Israel2.3.2]

34:00 Hilbert's axioms for Euclidean geometry introduce the notion of betweenness that corrects such gaps in Euclidean proofs. I'm not sure if this refutes the main thrust of Kant's argument given that betweenness notions are somewhat post hoc but it seems relevant. Ignore what's below I misunderstood the point of the example 😆 Regarding the second diagram I'm a bit confused when one says that it doesn't follow from Euclid's definitions and axioms, Euclid defines a circle as the set of points equidistant from a given point. Let the given point be A and let a circle of distance r be described about A and let the point B be taken such that B is distance 2r from A. Now bisect the segment AB and obtain a point C. C is necessarily of distance r from A, but the circle is merely the set of points of distance r from A, therefore C lies on the circle. C was obtained by bisecting AB and hence C also lies on the given line AB. Therefore the line intersects the circle in C. QED

[@alandean2]

The example of being in a desert, the absence of water and a mirage confused me. Surely Wolff meant hallucination? A mirage is phenomenal, it really is out there and observable for all to see

[@videodaniel8945]

The bent spoon in a glass of water is also there for all to see. I see that by empirically ideal he doesn't mean a hallucination but something which appears to be something that it really isn't. Surely for someone who's never been on a desert and is not aware of the physical reasons why mirages appear they would appear like a distant body of water, even though they aren't.

[@Zing_art]

Not hallucination, the mirage of the oasis , for Kant, is the empirical ideal precisely because that’s phenomenal as you said in the later part of the comment. The empirical real is the dreary stranded desert.

[@thejimmymeister]

Wolff doesn't know what a mirage is. (He says that he never saw one during his time in the desert because he stayed well hydrated; mirages have nothing to do with how well hydrated an observer is.) He meant a hallucination, and hallucinations are empirically ideal. They are empirically ideal because they are *phenomena which do not correspond to an object in the external world* . (There is no _oasis_ to which the hallucinatory _phenomenon of an oasis_ corresponds.) Hallucinations are not the only examples of the empirically ideal. I wouldn't call seeing the bend in a stick in water a hallucination, but the bend is still empirically ideal. This is, again, because the phenomenon does not correspond to an object. Our phenomenon of the stick corresponds to the external object _stick_ , making it empirically real, but our phenomenon of the bend does not correspond to any such object. (The transcendentally ideal is similar. In the case of the self, the temporal ordering does not correspond to a transcendental object-transcendental objects being atemporal. The stick is transcendentally ideal because nothing about it as an empirical object corresponds to the transcendental thing-in-itself.) Seeing a mirage (a real mirage, not a hallucination of an oasis) is actually the exact same kind of example as seeing a bend in the stick. The distortions of objects seen through the mirage are caused by differences in refraction between hot air and cooler air, just like the distortion of the stick is caused by differences in refraction between the air and the water. Note that it's the visual distortion caused by the mirage, not the mirage itself, which is empirically ideal. Likewise, it's the bend, not the air and water, which is empirically ideal in the example of the stick in water. The mirage itself and the air and water themselves are all empirically real. For those who don't know what a mirage is: A mirage is the visible motion of heated air of uneven density. It is not seeing an oasis where there isn't one, nor is it seeing the motion of the heated air. It is the motion of the air itself. It is as real as the sand in the desert, and it is phenomenal in the same sense that the sand is: Our experiences of it are phenomena. People in deserts mistake mirages for oases because the wavy motion resembles a reflection on rippling water. This mistake is a matter of judgement-of truth or falsity, not of reality or ideality (in Kant's terms: of validity, not of reality).

[@z0uLess]

57:00 If anyone knows whether or not there is a doctoral dissertation written on this now, I would love it if you commented on this comment to let me know

[@RunningCordoroy]

Anyone else confused?

[@karimhassan6099]

I need the mail of Prof. Wolff

[@alexcampbell7886]

His email is available on his blog.

[@crizish]

Bravo!

[@richarddeese1087]

Thanks. Maybe it's just me, but I get the distinct impression that Kant probably talked to himself *_a lot_*. tavi.

[@Alkis05]

Of course Kant didn't even consider the possibility of people having different forms of intuition. If he did, he would fall down to like in a coyote cartoon, where he realizes there is no grounding to keep he from disaster.

[@brandgardner211]

terrible habit of digression, most annoying and counter-productive; combined with needless responses to stupid questions. very hard to listen to, which is too bad. worthwhile to do so anyway, however. superior to the fool at oxbridge, whatever his name is.