Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and Theory of Science - Post-seminar reflections

After an interesting and intriguing, partially hard to follow, lecture by Johan Eriksson my understanding of mainly Criticism of Pure Reason by Kant became slightly more clear. Whether my interpretations of Theaetetus were in line with what Plato wanted to convey remains unclear. During the lecture I tried to follow Johan’s reasoning as much as possible, listening and trying to grasp the concepts of Kant’s work. Afterwhich and up until the seminar I had shorter discussions about what had been said with a few classmates and prepared for our seminar. For reasons currently unknown we were only 8 participating during our session which gave us all more space to share our thoughts.

We discussed what we did not yet understand and what we believed we understood from the texts and lecture. One part we discussed more thoroughly was regarding Kant’s thoughts of whether we can perceive synthetic objects a priori. The discussion revolved around the fact that all bodies have extensions but also that the bodies exist only if it is actually perceived. The paradox enters, how can an object only exist if it is perceived? Well, if it is not perceived, there is no way of knowing that it actually exists. Say there is a pen, a body with extensions, for example,  lying on a table, we can only say that the pen is there of we perceive it. Otherwise, there is no way we can actually know that a pen lies on a table. In a broader perspective, you can with the same reasoning claim that without people, the world would not exist, since there would not be anyone there to perceive it. On the other hand, we could never know that the world, in this case did not exist because there would be no one there to perceive this. If there were, at least one human, then the world Would obviously exist since that person would perceive the world as it is.

Furthermore, we discussed what would happen if an infant were to be raised in solitude, separated from any kind of upbringing, culture or stimuli. When would the child learn to walk, or Even walk for that matter? If so, would s/he be aware that s/he was walking? That is, would the child learn how to walk, without any previous experience of seeing or being taught about walking or would that skill just never be learnt? If the child learnt how to walk, without any possibility of knowing about walking, that would be synthetic a priori knowledge. Alternatively, one could argue that learning how to walk without the knowledge or experience of walking could also be categorised as a part of our nature. But without ever having tested how the child would actually evolve, we could never know whether learning to walk is part of our nature or upbringing and effects of outer stimuli.  Theoretically, couldn’t the child might as well never learn to walk on two legs? But instead only crawl around or even learn to fly? Similarly between learning to walk or learning to fly, what would trigger the child to learn either of these skills if there were no object of attraction, no outer stimuli? Then the child would have no use for, and hence not develop, either skill.