Kant's Representation Of Knowledge

Kant tells the reader that knowledge has two sources: (1) the capacity of receiving representations (the ability to receive impressions), and (2) the power to know an object through these representations (spontaneity in the production of concepts). In order to have knowledge, then, Kant believes that we must subsume what is given by the senses under innate rules for thinking. What we know about is essentially related to how we are equipped to know the world. One immediate concern about Kant’s project is that it may lead to at least two vicious forms of skepticism. First, if what one can know is necessarily constrained by ones spontaneous application of norms of thought, then is it possible that there are different norms of thought for different people? If so, which norms are correct, and how could we possibly know? A second skeptical worry is that Kant’s picture entails that one cannot ever know the world as it truly is, but only

First, Kant believes that humans are universally equipped with the same basic rules for thinking. If he is correct then all properly functioning, (e.g., not severely mentally handicapped, etc.,) human beings are capable of attaining the same knowledge about the world. Second, while it is tempting to read Kant to be claiming that one can only ever know our internal representations, Kant does state that “appearances” are not internal to our minds. There are alternative, more charitable readings of what Kant is thinking. One such reading says that to know things “as they appear to us” is simply to know things that are apt to appear to us when we encounter them. The things that cannot appear to us, because experience of them is ruled out by the structure of the mind, are, as Kant says, “nothing to us.” If so, then arguably one could not hope for a better understanding of reality than the one already present, because reality is simply all the things that are apt to appear when one encounters