If Kant is right, and the laws of science only apply to the world of appearance, does science have any real value? Should we care about, for example, the laws of physics, if they don't apply to the realm of ultimate reality? Explain your view.

I need to make a power point about this, I need to explains Kant's view on the a priori and the posteriori, but I'm having a difficuly time understanding git and applying it to the question above. Also I need to explain what exactly is the ''realm of ultimate reality''
If anyone could please offer some help, I would appreciate it. Thank you !

Hi drealo,

Yes, Kant is right because he distinguished between the phenomena and noumena. You are probably familiar with phenomena. It's what Kant means by cause and effect. Science has developed because of these types of observations. Form empirical observations (cause and effect) we can formulate general scientific principles. You probably have a good understanding of the scientific process and the role of causation.

Now there is an interesting problem here and you need to understand this because it is significant. Science is ultimately based on the phenomenon of cause and effect, yet cause and effect is ultimately unreliable. That is to say, whenever we observe one event followed by another often enough (cause and effect) we tend to think that it must happen all of the time.

I am not sure if you are just starting in philosophy but some people have great difficulty in accepting this. If I throw a ball in the air it will fall to the ground because of gravity The question is, are we justified in believing it will happen EVERY single time?

The answer is NO. It is conceivable that a thrown ball may shoot off into outer space. If something is conceivable then it has a probability factor.In other words, there is no LOGICAL NECESSITY when it comes to cause and effect. Loosely speaking science is based on something which has no ultimate reality, or more correctly based on observations which don't have any logical necessity.


The phenomena just discussed is what Kant calls, 'things-for-us' because we can observe physical things in the world and make some type of move towards science. There are also what Kant calls a posterioir judgments. e.g. We can say there is no logical necessity in a ball having to fall to the ground when thrown into the air. You may or may not recognize this as Hume's position as well.

Unlike Hume, Kant wants to claim that besides 'things-for-us' there are also things-in-themselves' or noumena. This is where it gets a bit tricky.

Kant's theory is that the world of experience, the so called phenomenal world (things-for-us) is the product both of something we observe and the a priori conditions supplied by the mind. The mind gives us answers to our questions, but not the specific content. Only experience can give us this.

This idea is much like claiming that we look at everything through a set of rose coloured glasses. What we experience has two parts. We perceive the phenomenal world which is determined by the glasses. The glasses are 'necessary and universal' because we cannot remove them. However the actual content of the phenomenal world is not in any way determined by the glasses. It is just the way we see the world.How we see the world through the glasses has nothing to do with the way the world is ultimately arranged.

According to Kant we can investigate both the content and the form. Science investigates the content while ( very roughly speaking) things-in-themselves can be investigated as a source of 'ultimate reality'

You will need to tidy this last bit up by looking further into Kant's Transcendental Inquiries and his 'categories of understanding'. What I have tried to do is give you a starting point for this tricky bit.

Regards

Tut

Thank you so much, this has helped quite a bit ! This is what I needed, I am a high school senior taking philosophy, and sometimes it get's hard to understand certain concepts. Once again, thank you !

Thank you Tut! This helped me as well! I'm am a freshmen in college taking philosophy. You explained Kant better than my textbook and teacher. Thank you. Hopefully now that I understand I will get an A on my phi midterm. Thank you again.And thank you drealo for posting this question.