How Does Kant Obtain Knowledge And Perceive Things

662 Words3 Pages

Immanuel Kant was an 18th century German philosopher who is considered by many to be a key figure in modern philosophy. One of the areas that Kant was most famous for contributing to in philosophy is how we gain knowledge and perceive things. One of Kant’s ideas on how we gain knowledge and perceive things was that our intuitions gain objective status by being conceptualized. To put it in different terms, Kant believed that our minds can decide on what is real and what is not real by forming a concepts of things, not by how powerful they are, which is what previous philosophers such as Hume believed. When we perceive things, we put them into concepts, which are then objectified. Kant also believed that intuition can gain objective status through empirical concepts, meaning that the concepts that are essential to the way we experience can be gained thought experience. Kant believes that the reason why intuitions gain objective status by being conceptualized is because we do not perceive things as they are appearing to happen. Instead, the way we perceive things is by conceptualizing them in our mind. According to …show more content…

To put it in different terms, our minds only perceives the state of things, not sensations or properties of things. Kant calls these types of representations mind independent, as opposed to mind depended, which is what subjective representations are called. Kant further believes that objective representations are what happened as appeared to the observer, and subjective representations are merely what seemed to happen to the observer. To understand what is around us, Kant believes that we think of things and put them under a concept, and therefore, we conceptualize them. We also use logic in this process, because it is necessary for logic to form concepts and understanding of what is happening in the world around