The transcendental aesthetic against empiricism: the kantian coup against empiricist's sensible intuition

Author(s)

Ethel Panitsa Beluzzi

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2014-05-27

Examining board members

Enéias Forlin; Monique Hulshof; Maurício Cardoso Keinert

• Advisor: Enéias Forlin

Abstract

The main objective of this research project consists in analyzing that fundamental moment in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of The Pure Reason, when Kant, accepting the empiricist thesis that we only have sensible intuition, transforms space and time into a priori principles of the sensibility of human mind, and therefore allows, against empiricism, the foundation of a synthetic knowledge independent from experience. Knowledge actually begins with experience, according to Kant. But that does not mean in any way that all of it derives from experience, like philosophers of the empiricist tradition such as Hume claim. Although some philosophers such as Locke and Hume have even established the existence of principles of the understanding through which we have experience, yet they assert all knowledge is derived from experience itself. Kant, however, goes further: reason not only organizes experience, but in certain ways produces it; taking away the space and time from things and putting them as organizers of our perception, Kant defends the existence of these pure principles of sensibility and understanding, where the pure principles of sensibility actually produce the sensible experience: our perception isn't only mediated, but entirely produced by our form of knowing; a thesis considered by it's author as "possess[ing] as undoubted a character of certainty as can be demanded of any theory which is to serve for an organon" [CRP A46 B63]. Thereby, the Kantian Aesthetic is capable of: undermining the concept of sensible intuition as intended by the empiricists and holding the prerogatives of reason (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 11/16806-9 - The Transcendental Aesthetic against Empiricism: The Kantian Coup against Empiricist's Sensible Intuition
• Grantee: Ethel Panitsa Beluzzi
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master