What is the source of our 'categories of understanding'?
- Matthew_Berto
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What is the source of our 'categories of understanding'?
As Blackburn puts it, 'We can have a priori knowledge of space and time only because they are forms imposed by our own minds upon experience.' [Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy]
To quote Arthur Schopenhauer:
'The fact that we recognize matter as having certain properties a priori rests on this derivation of its fundamental determinations from our cognitive forms, of which we are conscious a priori' [The World as Will and Presentation, §4]
Does Kant explain where these categories/forms originate from? By Kant's own philosophy, it would not be possible for human beings to not have been with these forms, since we cannot experience the world in their absence.
- Hereandnow
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Re: What is the source of our 'categories of understanding'?
The categories are transcendental, not empirically seen. They are extrapolated from the seen apriori, as one might extrapolate from the trajectory of stars a theory of a Big Bang. Only here, in this analogy, the observer would have to be in movement that make measurement of other movement impossibly biased.
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