Post-seminar reflection 1

Starting of with my previous blog post on the two texts pre-seminar, I was trying to grasp the concepts through the eyes of a scientific and empirical standpoint instead of engaging in thought exercises based on the texts themselves. Kant discusses the notions of analytical vs. synthetic judgements, and a priori vs. a posteriori knowledge. Even though I had grasped the notions of a priori and a posteriori, I didn’t quite understand what it was he was trying to say with the notion of “objects conforming to our cognition”, though I do believe now that is the idea of synthetic a priori knowledge.

At the seminar we discussed more closely and within groups of 4 students, what questions and concerns we had regarding Plato’s and Kant’s texts. As the discussion varied from definitions of certain concepts and their ambiguity, to more concrete notions of their effects and practical uses in everyday life, I found myself having numerous things cleared out that before had been blurry and ungraspable. For instance, the, for me initially, obscurity of Kant trying to figure out how one can acquire synthetic knowledge a priori was discussed since few of us understood the reasoning behind it being possible. In short Kant believes that the reason as to why this is possible is because there is no knowledge without people. “The world” wouldn’t exist without us being there to experience it, therefore the forms and categories Kant lays down as our faculties of knowledge are in fact knowledge of the world as it is in itself - seeing as “itself” is the only way it exists - through our perception.

Furthermore, the idea of infinity I discussed in my pre-seminar reflection, and how one could benefit from Kant’s perspective when trying to define it, was also discussed. However, it proved a harder task to define than that of the synthetic judgements a priori. One could argue, that the “knowledge” of infinity humans possess is bound to Kant’s forms of intuition: time and space and can therefore never be an analytical knowledge. This would be because of the fact that the inherent properties of the concept of infinity transcends the idea of space and time, and is therefore something completely different. For instance we discussed during the seminar a future where humans had found a way to live forever. One would no longer age and thus the need for the fundamental conception of time would be superfluous. Perhaps then humans could grasp the notion of infinity, since it could possibly be a form of intuition, as we today grasp the notion of time.

As mentioned, during the seminar all students provided thoughts and discussed questions we had from reading Plato’s and Kant’s texts on knowledge. The preparations I did before the seminar consisted of trying to get through the texts while maintaining a sense of engagement and interest, which proved harder than it sounds seeing as at least Kant’s text was academic in a field and a way I had previously never experienced. However, the question marks one had from reading were answered in both the lecture and seminar held by Johan - as I’ve explained above. Starting of this week, I never thought I'd grasp the concepts as I feel I have , since especially Kant's text was quite hard to follow, but it's been an interesting week and alot has been learned.