Kant you see, I just Kant understand Kant!

Thomas: Hey! What are you reading?

Matt: I'm reading about Immanuel Kant. He was a German philosopher.

Thomas: What did he have to say?

Matt: Well, do you agree that you perceive things?

Thomas: Uh, yes. Well, what do you mean? That I see things?

Matt: You can use all your senses to perceive. That's what perception means. You taste, smell, see, hear, and touch.

Thomas: I thought those were the senses.

Matt: Yes, they are. But through the senses, you perceive. The senses are the spectacles through which you perceive the world. If you take off the spectacles, you strip yourself of the perceptions.

Thomas: Okay, I guess it seems obvious that I perceive the world.

Matt: Well, Kant asks, "How do we perceive the world?"

Thomas: Through the senses, right? Isn't that what we just said?

Matt: Well, that's not what Kant's getting at by 'how'. The senses may be necessary for perception; but it seems like we need something more, something that orders the objects of perception.

Thomas: Whoa! Slow down. What you mean 'orders the objects of perception'?

Matt: Well, why do we perceive things to be 3 inches to the right of another thing? Or 67 miles from something else?

Thomas: Because we have a ruler that measures different measurements. Because every thing that can be measured is in a common space. Each thing makes up a point in space.

Matt: A hah! Space!

Thomas: Yea. What's the big deal?

Matt: Do you perceive Space?

Thomas: I guess not. I see different things.

Matt: Do you even directly see the things? If you look at a table, what are you directly perceiving? It's shape, it's color? But shape and color aren't tables; they're sense data. So, 'tables' are inferred from sense data. If all we directly perceive is sense data, then we are a far cry away from perceiving Space, right?

Thomas: Hmmm. But I think space exists . . . That's true. How do I know that?

Matt: We'll get to that in a second. Think about this too. What about time? From Myrtle Beach, Conway is about 20 minutes away. How can we say things like that?

Thomas: Okay. We agree that a minute is 60 seconds, another agreed upon convention for measuring Time. But, yea. It's true. It seems like I'm directly perceiving not Time, but its measurements in seconds, minutes, etc . . .

Matt: Exactly! So, how can we make true statements about Time if we never perceive Time?

Thomas: That's true.

Matt: And these are some of the questions Kant set out to answer. As with Time, how we can make true statements about Space if we never perceive Space?

Thomas: Okay, what did he say?

Matt: Suppose I said, "The tree is in my front yard."

Thomas: Well that assumes that there's objects in space/time.

Matt: Right. A tree can't be IN my front yard if there isn't a common space for them to be in. But what about the sentence you said? What about the sentence, "Objects exist in space and time."?

Thomas: We saw we don't perceive space or time. I don't know it by experience.

Matt: And it's not analytic!

Thomas: Analytic?

Matt: Take this sentence: All bachelors are unmarried males. This is true because bachelors ARE unmarried males. Not very illuminating. But it is a kind of sentence. Kant called it an analytic sentence, because the subject and the predicate were the same thing! So, what about the sentence: Objects exist in space and time?

Thomas: That doesn't seem to be the same kind of sentence. 'Existing in space and time' seems to add something new to the subject 'Objects'.

Matt: Right! Kant called these synthetic a priori sentences.

Thomas: Slow down!

Matt: Sorry. Synthetic means that the 'predicate' adds something new to the 'subject' 'A priori' means known independent of experience.

Thomas: Okay . . . I think that makes sense. I know objects exist in space and time, but I've never experienced space and time. So, 'objects exist in space and time' is a synthetic a priori sentence.

Matt: Very good. We'll stop here for now. Next we'll talk about Kant's Transcendental Deduction.

Thomas: No wait! What's that annoying word 'Transcendental' mean?

Matt: Okay, really quick. Remember. You don't perceive space and time, right.

Thomas: Right.

Matt: If you're going to analyze space and time, you have to do it Transcendentally.

Thomas: You just used to the word in the definition! That doesn't tell me anything.

Matt: Wait. I wasn't done. Kant says his analysis has to be Transcendental because it has to 'transcend' perception, what we perceive, what we can directly observe. We have to somehow 'get behind' or 'underneath' perception.

Thomas: Oh yea. Because we're trying to find out the 'conditions' for perception. How do we perceive things?

Matt: This Transcendental Deduction is what leads Kant to the unorthodox position that Space and Time aren't 'out there' in the world, but 'in the mind', making up features of the structure of the mind.

Thomas: You mean our minds analyze our sense data 'in a certain structured way'?

Matt: Right. In a way that perceives objects in terms of space and time. Space/Time are the spectacles that are cemented on our face. We can't take them off. And through these spectacles, we perceive the world, or so says Kant.

Thomas: Hmmmm.

Matt: Think of it this way. Space and time aren't the pieces on a chess board; they are the rules for the game of chess; and without the rules of the game, chess as a game wouldn't exist.