Introduction to Philosophy

Achieve Test Prep: Philosophy

Two Realities: Phenomenal and Noumenal Kant’s inspiring idealism and his Copernican revolution solves the traditional problems of knowledge posed by rationalism and empiricism. Kant believed there was no way for us to go beyond the reality constituted by the categories of our mind as they transform sensations into an intelligible world. Kant makes a radical division between phenomenal and noumenal reality.

• Phenomenal reality: The world as we constitute it and experience it • Noumenal reality: The world beyond our perceptions, reality “in-itself”

Kant believed that we can achieve knowledge of the noumenal reality—it is just that we cannot achieve it through our senses. The noumenal reality can be known only through the application of pure reason, which in addition to confirming the existence of objective reality, also gives us knowledge of the possibility of genuine personal freedom and the existence of a universal moral law. Kant also identifies three additional transcendental ideas he believes we use to synthesize experience on a grand scale. These are “self,” “cosmos,” and “God,” and they help us to bridge the gap between phenomenal and noumenal realm. Kant is acknowledging that pure reason does not establish the actual existence of cosmos or God, only that these are regulative ideas that are necessary to account for the world as we constitute it. These are universal a priori ideas that regulate and make possible the phenomenal world, but because they refer to possibilities that exist in the noumenal world, they can never by observed and verified. Applying Kant’s Theories For Kant, we constitute our world through the ongoing synthesis of the categories of our mind with the sensations of experience. Perceiving is a dynamic process in which we actively select, organize, and interpret sensations in a way that reflects our unique perceiving lenses. To construct knowledge from the information provided from our experience, we must explore many different perspectives on the focus of our attention and take into account the lenses of the individuals or organizations that are providing the information as well as being accurately aware of our own lenses. This type of organized evaluation of contrasting sources and opinions (perspective-taking) is an essential strategy of sophisticated thinking and one of the most powerful ways to construct well-supported beliefs and genuine knowledge Jaggar: Emotions Shape Our Understanding The feminists made the argument that the thinkers who have populated mainstream philosophical thought have shared certain basic assumptions which has narrowed the framework for knowledge. Allison Jagger was a well-known professor of women’s studies with areas of interest in contemporary, social, moral, and political philosophy, usually from a feminist perspective. Her central thesis is that Western tradition has for the most part, omitted the entire realm of emotions in the mainstream discussion regarding the nature of knowledge. The goal in her writings “ Love and Knowledge: Emotion in a Feminist Epistemology ” was to display the central role of emotion in the construction of knowledge.

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