Kant: A Complete Guide to Reason

[Music]

ask yourself only

what are the facts and what is the truth

that the facts bear

the most important value that you can

bring to the table is your integrity is

your trustworthiness

emmanuel kant one of the most

influential consequential and

groundbreaking philosophers in history

change the way we think about what we're

all capable of

each of us swim in the water of his

philosophy politically morally

culturally he changed everything

the course of history us our ways of

thinking and acting he saw that people

had been pushed around by religious

sellers by powerful leaders and by

arrogant metaphysicians and he wanted to

prove

and show how we could think for

ourselves

that in here we had a powerful tool

one that no one had quite yet properly

understood

and that if we used it properly

we could begin to strip away

misconceptions false opinion all this

fuzz all this confusion all this

complexity and find within us

pure reason

a big claim

he said that the enlightenment that 18th

century period of radical change in

europe was quote man's emergence from

immaturity and reading him when you

really understand what he's saying

really does have an effect on the inner

workings of your mind

you can feel the way you think change

so we'll look at both his ideas about

rationality and knowledge and his

philosophy of morality and in doing so

we'll try and find a peak

a viewpoint from which we can reliably

view the world a solid foundation to

stand on from which we might be able to

find some tools some guidelines for

thinking and acting a place we might be

able to find or at least glimpse

pure reason

this is also the story of a man who like

kant is attempting to find their way up

a mountain searching for something pure

at the top

[Music]

emmanuel kant born in 1724

wanted to make us a truly scientific

species he wanted to bring together

reason how we think

and experience what we see

here

touch

what we get through our senses we wanted

to bring them together on a sure

foundation one that scientific knowledge

could be built on

he hoped to lay out what he described as

a cosmic idea of philosophy one that

followed in newton's footsteps when he

discovered the universal laws of motion

and gravity

kant wanted to lay out and discover the

laws that governed human thought human

experience human action

in that he said how we think is central

in the three most important questions we

can ask ourselves

what can i know

what should i do

and for what

may i hope

his most important work was the

monumental critique of pure reason a 1

000 page book published in

1781 written in technical philosophical

language in winding impenetrable

passages with no accepted interpretation

the goal of the book though is quite

simple he's asking what can we know

objectively surely with certainty about

the world and about ourselves and about

the relationship between the two

it starts from a simple premise

if we look around us

at the landscape the universe the

weather our health and our bodies our

pursuits our relationships and choices

how if you really think about it it all

seems so

incomprehensibly complex

there's just so much going on it's

almost chaotic as so many distinct

moving parts can be approached in so

many ways

how is it possible that we make sense of

the world and our lives at all

out of all of this

somehow we do get meaning we get lives

and routines we get schedules and books

and places to go and walks to go on and

people to see

he's asking how in the philosopher

emiyahu uvel's words we constitute a

cosmos out of chaos

kant said that two things fill the mind

with ever new and increasing admiration

and reverence the starry heavens above

me and the moral law within me

the starry world he calls an unbounded

magnitude worlds upon worlds systems

upon systems that unimaginable

complexity everywhere we look

and the second is that the way from that

i managed to carve a path through it

through that unbounded magnitude i

managed to somehow think

and act

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in all of this boundless complexity we

do seem to have a compass something that

guides our thoughts somehow something

that guides our sense of right and wrong

so let's get going i'm going to avoid

technical language as much as i

reasonably can i'll avoid going down the

route normally taken a route you'll

recognize if you've looked at any

introductory book or podcast about can't

it's the root of analytic a priori

bachelors being unmarried men and i

think that's a confusing place to start

because actually i think the key to kant

is quite simple he's asking how we

create concepts how we make our ideas of

the world

what's happening when we do this

in thinking about this we approach the

peak of pure reason

because

conceptualizing is what we do in every

moment

it's the foundation of thought itself

in finding what's pure

you can know what's reliable what to

most focus on you can sharpen

how to think

think about all the experiences you've

had in your life

the things you've seen

felt

smelled turd and tasted now

multiply that by all the people that

have ever lived

by the numerical extent of the world

of the universe

what we know of it what we don't

add in all the things you've forgotten

that they've forgotten the experience of

animals the lives of plants the

processes of physics or chemistry too

look around right now

look at all the parts of the room that

you could focus on

but haven't

have sidelined

now

i could select this single quadrant here

out of all of the others and i could

think about not just its colour but its

shade

not just its shape but its particular

lines its particular corners i could

think about its texture how it feels how

it smells how it tastes if i wanted to

now

zoom back out

how do we choose what to select out of

all of this

how do we know how do we get a

comprehensible picture from something so

chaotic and that's one

rock what about one piece of grass a

tiny piece of dirt this same problem

applies to everything in the world what

we have for lunch who we're going to see

what we're going to say next what we're

going to choose to do next our life

plans

about half a billion photons hit the

retina every single second

yet somehow we translate that into

something intelligible something human

a picture a focus

this is kant's fundamental question

how do you get a structured

comprehensible idea of the world from

all of this

stuff

the collection of perceptions

impressions on the eye on the skin in

the nose on the eardrum are like

billions of artists paintbrush strokes

each and every second

like the collecting of infinitesimal

peas in a colossal bag

what we have is what kant called content

without form

there's no organizing factor it's just a

mass

a mess

a chaos

so the first problem is the

organizational problem how do we

organize all of this

the second problem is how is objective

knowledge possible in the face of all of

this

out of those trillions of artists

impressions so many have been wiped away

turned out to be mistaken

mistreats

how do we know that the sun will

continue to rise

that the laws of gravity will hold

ten years from now

kant was responding to the influential

scottish philosopher david hume

hume was an empiricist he believed that

all knowledge came from the senses that

we learn about the world from what we

absorb from outside of us

from this hugh made a radical claim that

if we only know the sun rises and sets

from experience or from the experience

of others from what we've been told

no matter how many times we watch it

rise no matter how many times it's been

recorded rising throughout history there

is no certain proof that it will rise

again tomorrow

we can only say that with each time we

experience something happening

the chances of it happening again

increase

this deeply disturbed kant he said that

it awoke him from his dogmatic slumber

it disturbed him so much because it

shook the new scientific method that was

emerging in kant's time from having any

secure scientific foundation

we might observe gravity working

consistently

but this could change

after all people believed many things

throughout history that turned out to be

false

the second and related thing that

disturbed kant was that if hume was

right that all of our knowledge came

from outside of us from experience

through our senses

then we have no innate knowledge making

capacity for ourselves if all comes from

outside we're just receptors

passively driven by outside stimuli as

juvel puts it

can't felt intuitively that this was

wrong that we have knowledge of our own

and that some scientific truths for

example that everything that happens has

a cause or some mathematical truths like

two plus two is four are true for us

for everyone and doesn't come from

outside experience we just know it from

within somehow

do we really have to go about like

explorers with magnifying glasses

searching for mathematics in nature

for followers of hume's philosophy

surely it follows that numbers had to be

discovered one at a time

counted out

pythagoras could only find his theorem

out in the world in the wild this surely

wasn't true

do we not have an innate capacity for

working through some mathematical and

scientific claims ourselves independent

of experience don't we know that numbers

exist even if we haven't counted them or

thought of them ourselves

as roger scruton puts it in his

introduction kant wants to know how can

i come to know the world through pure

reflection without recourse to

experience

this pure reflection is pure reason the

root of all thinking

in short again

how do we

in here

constitute a cosmos out of chaos

counts wrote several influential books

but what's referred to as the first

critique the critique of pure reason is

the central one

it's where he answers the most

fundamental of questions how do we

constitute meaning out of chaos how do

we create knowledge for ourselves

okay so first

what does reason mean for can't

broadly it means the process of thinking

the conditions the rules the operating

system for thinking itself

if hume was right that everything comes

from outside of us then the very act of

thinking makes little sense

if we get everything from outside do we

get the rules for thinking from outside

of us too

like picking up someone else's cookbook

if hume was right it would be like all

the thinking was done for us before it

even gets to us through the senses

so in short asking what reason is is

asking what thinking is if it was

emptied of all of its content

that's why he says pure reason

working out what this is could be

unimaginably powerful

to know how to build and program on a

great computer of course you need to

know how the source code works working

this out is like finding the source of

knowledge stripped of everything else

the kind of meaning of life

jovel writes that reasons interests are

inherent to it and not directed at any

external goal

in other words

human rationality is a goal orientated

activity whose goal lies in itself

rather than in anything other than

itself

pure reason

is like

this beaker

a cup

or a measuring jug

it takes the data

of the outside world

and shapes it

defines it in its own way

and reason

does that by formulating concepts

concepts

and how we see the world

as kantian philosopher paul gaia puts it

the critique of pure reason argues that

all knowledge requires both input from

the senses and organization by concepts

and that both sensory inputs and

organizing concepts of pure forms that

we can know a priori

thus know to be universally and

necessarily valid

okay kant uses that phrase a priori a

lot it just means independent of

experience before all thinking is done

the conditions for thought itself

universal it's the elixir the holy grail

of pure thought he says

means what is left when one removes from

our experience everything that belongs

to the senses he continues that every

cognition is called pure that is not

mixed with anything foreign to it

pure thoughts receives organizes judges

and applies concepts to the raw data of

experience

can't also cause pure thought the

understanding because

well it attempts to understand the world

youvel writes that the senses supply the

understanding with a crude element that

is not yet a real object but only the

material for it

and the understanding a spontaneous

factor must order and shape this

material according to its the

understandings own a priori modes of

operation

counts responding to two traditions in

philosophy that were new at the time

the empiricists as we've seen like q

who argued that all knowledge comes from

experience and the rationalists people

like descartes and spinoza who argued

that reason is the way to secure

knowledge like mathematics

can't carves a path that requires both

it's a mixing of them and it's how that

happens that's important for him

famously he says without sensibility

that's senses no object would be given

to us and without understanding that's

thinking

none would be thought

thoughts without content are empty

intuitions without concepts are blind

can't takes complex bewildering twists

and turns towards his proof of this he

takes different pathways towards the

same goal

i'm going to focus on the three central

ones from them pure reason can be

glimpsed and understood

the technical names are the

transcendental aesthetic

the metaphysical deduction

and the transcendental deduction

but don't worry about them sounding

technical just focus on that peak and

together we'll meander our way towards

it

okay so what is that first path what's

pure and necessary and fundamental and

universal and a priori to receiving any

of that data from the environment from

the senses what's the first part of our

pre-empirical toolkit

time and space

cant is always asking this question

what must be the case

for this to be true

what are the conditions that make this

possible

and the first thing that kant claims is

that space and time are the universal

forms of all intuitions space and time

are the preconditions for experience

those inputs to happen at all

and it doesn't come from the senses from

outside because to even have sensations

in the first place we must have some

kind of intuitive framework to receive

them

this idea is the first stone laid in

kant's transcendental method

speaking of stones for me to even

experience an object whether i see it

hear it touch it i must be able to place

it in space

separate from other objects and

importantly as distinct in space from

myself

as something separate from my

consciousness

we have to have

what can't cause pure intuition

a framework of space and time that the

experience

can happen in

kant says

space is not an empirical concept that

has been drawn from outer experiences

because in order for certain sensations

to be related to something outside me

the representation of space must already

be their ground in other words our

experience of space is not something we

learn empirically it's presupposed to

even have empirical experiences a tool

because

in order for us to even say something is

over there the over thereness is assumed

in the judgment

when i say this is over there the very

quality of this nurse must be recognized

as something i've carved out in space

what am i doing when i say this

i'm delimiting this as a thing in space

separate from me

relative to other things time functions

in the same way for me to even

understand that one thing follows

another for me to say something happened

after

something else before

and after are assumed in the recognizing

of a moment

we have to have carved out a period of

thisness in time a moment

separate from other moments

and so space and time are pure

intuitions they're the sea

that everything else swims in but we can

learn something else from this too

something radical

that this pure intuition is about being

able to perceive particulars within a

totality

by being able to recognize carve out

select pick out designate a particular

unit of space

in this case the stone or a particular

unit of time

now

then

when

again a particular

in a totality

jovel writes that pure intuition works

by perceiving a priori a basic singular

unit in geometry it's a unit of space in

arithmetic the number and transcends it

towards other units of the same kind

existing outside it

for us to perceive the world a tool we

must have an innate grasp of what is

inside of us and outside of us what is

here and what's there without which

everything would be everywhere at once

and an innate sense of succession of

something following another thing in

time without which everything would

happen

at once

what this assumes to be able to

distinguish points on these spectrums is

that we can splice them up that i can

locate

isolate analyze focus on single

particular points

and this leads to another radical

implication a consequence of this

that carving out units is the basis of

mathematics once i can say one rock or

one moment in time i can conceive of

that being another unit then another

then i could add them together i could

multiply them subtract them divide them

so kant says that the very idea of

mathematics is presumed in having any

experience at all

writes simply that the number five is

the product of a construction that adds

the basic numerical unit to itself and

stops at the fifth place

mathematics is transcendental a priori

universal pure thought that does not

come from

out there from experience

again it means that pythagoras did not

have to go around the world with the

magnifying glass searching for his

theorem in the wild the question though

is whether he could have imagined it

with no sensory input

at all

[Music]

okay so space and time are pure forms of

intuition through which we are connected

to the objects of empirical experience

but this is still something passive

it's the common landscape of the

universe something we swim in swim

through

but can't also needs to prove that we

bring something to the table to do the

thinking that on this landscape of pure

intuition we are doing something and in

short

that something is the forming of

concepts

we do this

by categorizing our experience

kant calls the metaphysical deduction a

mere clue to the discovery of all pure

concepts of the understanding and it's

the second pathway

up towards the peak of pure reason

before we get to that third and main

path

first what is a concept

well in general a concept is an abstract

idea

the way we think the way we hold

something an object or an idea a thought

or an image in our heads

are everything

in fact they're the only access to the

world outside of us that we truly have

okay so i have a concept of water for

example what it's like what it does

where to find it and so on

i can't see the other side of this

bottle but i have an idea of it and

where it fits in nonetheless

in concepts of the way we focus on the

parade of experience around it

they're the very way we experience the

way we select and organize

without some way of focusing the parade

of experience is just that a parade

passing us by

float by float act by act

we need something that focuses that

selects one of the floats one of the

ants one of the dancers one of the

lights

exactly what we do when we watch a

parade we change our focus move our

necks and suddenly a whole different

perspective is within view

so what's going on when we do this

once again kant asks what must be the

case for this to be possible

concepts are something like how we

create those containers for our

experiences of the world to fit into

containers that are ours that are pure

thought

they are innate to us but they have no

content of their own because they need

something to fill them before they're

anything at all

something to organize something to give

shape to

concept to the way we understand the

world and we judge what we experience so

as to categorize it through concepts

in fact all thinking is understanding

and all thinking uses categories

it's the job of our pure understanding

to organize that data we receive to

judge where it fits to recognize

patterns

if it doesn't do this what job would it

have

we'd be placid docile receptors just

soaking everything in like sponges

he calls the understanding discursive

which he gets from the latin running

through we run through our experiences

and when we run through something we

make judgments

let's imagine i was born yesterday which

some people say is true

and the first thing i see is this leaf

i recognize certain qualities

it's green it has a particular shape

it's found on a tree or on the ground

it's light

but

it's singular

i've carved it out in space and time

now

i come across

another object

it looks similar

i recognize that it too has this quality

of greenness to it that's two instances

its shape is different but similar to

now i see the grass as green

but it's different to a leaf it has a

different shape it's found

elsewhere

i find another leaf

this time on a tree in a different place

but it looks it feels it smells

very similar

what's happened here

i've identified an object as separate

from its surroundings

i've judged that a part of it seems to

have a certain quality that differs from

other parts of the environment in my

view

greenness

softness

lightness this particular shape

i focused on each of these properties

drawing them out from the leaf as a

whole then i've unified them back into

the concept of a leaf as a whole

for me to recognize it again

philosopher jill vons baraka writes that

judgments are acts in which the

understanding unifies diverse

representations into a single

more complex representation of an object

the judgment splits the world up into

different parts

analyzes it then unifies it back

together again into a representation of

an object or an idea

i see this tree i split it into its

colours it shapes the bark the leaves

the wind rustling through it i might

later include its roots or scientific

knowledge about photosynthesis say or

ideas about where the tree came from or

its different species but ultimately i

unify it into a concept of a tree

conceptual thinking unifies distinct

representations of the world by making

judgments about them this is one of the

roots of all thinking

[Music]

everything whether it's objects like

leaves and trees or ideas like democracy

or love looks for the distinct parts

that make up the unified concept

goya writes that the premise of kant's

argument is that all cognition involves

the combination of concept into

judgments which in the first instance

subsumes more particular concepts

under more general ones

like the particular concept of bark and

the general concept of tree or the

particular concept of a specific shade

of brown under the general concept of

brownness or the particular concept of

all of these things under the general

concept of nature

now the question becomes what are the

rules that govern this process

how do we unify our representations

how do we combine them together what

rulebook are we judging by

kant's answer is the categories now

bear with me here all thinking is

judging by applying the categories

like space and time the categories are

the conditions for having any

understandable experiences

at all now this next bit gets a little

bit technical so don't worry too much it

doesn't matter too much but there are

four main categories each with three

subcategories

philosophers have criticized counts here

for various reasons but it's the idea of

these rough set of categories that's

important for us and important for

understanding can't

the four main ones are quantity quality

relation and modality and don't get too

bogged down in this but

it's the way we judge particular

representations and unify them into

concepts

it works like this

a quantity of judgments is either

universal particular or singular it's

just the way we carve up units and say

all of them

some of them or one of them

for example all leaves come from plants

or

some

leaves a green or a leaf is in my pocket

universal

particular

single

quality is the affirmation of some

predicate that an object has quality is

the r in some leaves are green

it's our ability to recognize that some

unit a unit we carve out is different in

quality from for example the air or the

ground or the rest of the plants or

myself or the birds that surround it

there's also relation if something

happens something else happens if then

statements

we might always find a leaf by a tree

for example so it would be if tree then

leaf or it might be exclusive either or

we never find a leaf growing out of

concrete say

and then there's modality that's

statements about existence say or

whether something is being asserted or

not or held in the mind or not

in this we also have the idea of

possibility this might be right or might

not or this is here now or that is not

[Music]

okay but back to the path

the particulars of the categories aren't

too important for an introduction but

what is

is that we have a universal a priori

pre-experienced transcendental set of

categories that we use to run through

experience

judge it understand it and organize it

into sets of ideas

what we have

if count is right

is quite incredible

it's the foundation of knowledge itself

this is the heart of kant's philosophy

the third path up to the peak it's here

that kant argues that the concepts like

quantity and quality

apply to experience

synthesize experience spontaneously

and that through them

experience becomes our experience

that the whole process requires an

identity that's persistent through time

like the previous two paths he's asking

what must be true for thought to happen

at all

what is transcendental

he starts from a simple premise

what are the conditions of the

possibility of the i think

itself

it's really a common sense question

if we were just receiving experiences

like hume thought what would the i think

even mean

after all we'd just be passive we'd have

no way of distinguishing our

representations of the world from the

world itself we'd receive the world but

we wouldn't have concepts like cup

walking cloud life

we wouldn't even be the containers that

the experience was poured into

because we wouldn't have any containers

at all we'd just be this amorphous mass

that was just drawn from and shaped by

everything around us

in having a representation of an object

in thinking about

this apple

its redness its sweetness its location

of turning it and remembering what the

side i can't see looks like in

remembering

what the inside smells like from a

previous experience i'm obviously aware

that what i'm thinking about is an apple

that is my idea of the apple

that i'm constructing a concept

let's go back to that empirical chaos

can't start with that simple premise

that all of my representations of the

world are inherently complex a whole of

compared and connected representations

as he puts it

the world

any snapshot of it

is seemingly irreducible

full of objects and impressions and

sense data that could be cut up in a

dizzying and infinite number of ways

this doesn't just apply to space to a

snapshot of the world around us

but to time too

pause for a moment

listen to and look at your surroundings

the speed of things vary

the bird song comes and goes the water

flows

the rain moves at different speed maybe

quickens

the clouds move

hunger appears

some things are long

large and steady others small and

fleeting

kant says they must all be ordered

connected and brought into relations

for example if i'm trying to understand

the apple or the leaf or the tree

i'd watch them and experience them over

the course of a year say through the

seasons as the leaves shed and the fruit

fools and find something new to add to

my understanding of the concepts of

apple leaf or tree

now the key to this is synthesis

it's only in spontaneously recognizing

the world in its parts

breaking them down

then unifying them synthesizing them

back together into unities that i do any

thinking at all

this is the carving out of units in

space and time that i talked about

earlier

take a look at this pillow it has so

many colors shapes intersecting parts

threads

how do you decide where to focus

in the very act of focusing of looking

through of touching of smelling

hearing even

we synthesize either a part of it or all

of it

into a unity

it's also true that space and time can

be cut up infinitely even more so today

with microscopes and hearing equipment

i can look at a part of an apple

it's hard in some places and soft in

others it's found on a tree but can be

picked up it can be cut up into many

parts the number of shades it has is

immeasurable the feel of the stalk the

inside and the outside are all different

to experience the stalk say i've

synthesized its parts its brownness

roughness its shape into one unity and

excluded the rest of the apple

the key is we separate into parts into

units

and then

synthesize back

into holes

but again kant goes further

he makes the point that for us to even

begin to construct a concept out of

experience we also need memory and

imagination he writes

apprehending identifiable objects

requires reproducing and imagination the

previously apprehended parts

we have to recall parts of the apple

even if it was just milliseconds before

to synthesize those parts into a single

concept

apple

we can't see the back we have to

remember what it tasted like in fact me

and you are looking at different sides

right now we have to remember where we

found it and this applies to everything

we experience

previous representations have to be

recognized as being related in some way

to present themselves as unified

representations

and this is true for exclusion too

it's only in recognizing that the

redness of the object that i just looked

at is different from the brown branch

and the green leaves that i'm now

looking at where it grows that i

recognize that the red quality of the

apple along with its other qualities

makes it something to focus on and

conceptualize a tool

this doesn't just apply to simple

objects like apples but every thought we

have every concept we have

democracy mountaineering love friendship

they all require breaking phenomena into

parts then reunifying them into a

concept recalling separate parts of it

to do that

this is the basis of thought

fundamental for pure reasoning

it can't now brings the categories back

into the picture to do any of this to

synthesize to use our memory or

imagination to recognize how our

different experiences are related we

must use the categories we have to count

we have to recognize quality we have to

exclude parts and so on

even if we're not doing it consciously

we have to do these things in the

abstract

[Music]

this has been called the embryo of

kant's philosophy the core the middle

the center the foundation

the top

the summit

the terrifyingly titled the

transcendental unity of a perception

it's the bringing of all of this

together

kant synthesizes it all into a quote

unity of consciousness that precedes all

data of the intuitions or a quote pure

original unchanging consciousness

applying the categories counting through

the world recognizing qualities

affirming and denying requires a

thorough going thread

a consistent self-same unity that's

required for any experience

to happen at all

you're right

we are conscious a priori of the

thoroughgoing identity of ourselves with

regard to all representations that can

ever belong to our consciousness

remember that phrase discursive that

running through

well it's central

it's at the center it's the me taking

the roots up to the mountain top it's

the eye synthesizing it all together

the world

space and time

experience

me

he says the i think must be able to

accompany all my representations for

otherwise something would be represented

in me that could not be

thought at all

which is as much as to say that the

representation would either be

impossible or else at least would be

nothing for me

this unifying can only be done by some

singular activity of a unified

independent consciousness which one

becomes aware of through the process of

understanding

through judging through time through

fabricating our ideas of the world

through constructing through counting

through looking at qualities we build up

the world for ourselves

self-aware and self-conscious

of the world

as my experience of the world

he writes that

we can represent nothing as combined in

the object without having previously

combined it ourselves

and that among all representations

combination is the only one that is not

given through objects

but can be executed only by the subject

itself since it is an act of itself

activity again this requires the

categories because to judge and organize

any experience at all i must be able to

carve out a unit to judge to compare it

to other units to recognize its

qualities to count it and so on

baraka says that i then judge that each

of these judgments belongs to me and i

find that quote i can make judgments

about one representation

some representations and all of my

representations

what he's saying is that in the very act

of recognizing a representation of the

world

in sight say in carving out to

particular units in time say in

excluding a different part or in

synthesizing it back together again

we're doing something that's not given

in experience

[Music]

we're doing something that's truly mine

unifying can only be done by a single

unity

a thread a core

central meanness

and that cannot be given by experience

that is the summit

of pure reason

the unity centers everything

space and time for the vessel

judgment synthesizing and understanding

of the process and the categories of

splitting up counting recognizing

qualities and so on the tools the rules

along with our imaginations and our

memory to do all of this to survey

everything

this combined is the center of count's

project

a priori

universal

required

necessary from which everything else can

be experienced and understood

but remember that kant says that

experience is required too

so we should now be in a better position

to understand it's famous and

influential phrase

thoughts without content to empty

but intuitions without concepts

are blind

can't wrote a lot and we've covered as

much as we can in a video the first

critique of pure reason but he went on

in later texts to apply this to

practical reason

how pure reason informs how we choose

what to do what political systems we

might use what we find beautiful for

example and he began this later project

in his 1785

ground work of the metaphysic of morals

his starting point is this

if what we found at the summit is the

only thing that is universally

guaranteed a priori from which all else

is surveyed then it must be the highest

good it must be the only thing we can

absolutely depend on rely on

it's what he calls an end in itself

can't wants to unleash the reason that

we have within us

he said famously in his essay what is

enlightenment that enlightenment was

man's emergence from self-incurred

immaturity

that immaturity was not using the reason

that we are endowed with

and just as kant wants to find pure

reason stripped of any experiential

content

something that's ours to rely on he

wants to find a moral code that's pure

too

one that doesn't rely on anything

outside of us

he called hume's philosophy a wretched

anthropology

if we reduce morality to just what we

experience what we see other people do

say well

people do some pretty horrible things to

one another it seems that many people

don't care about morality at all

and it doesn't seem that nature gives us

too many clues either

so morality must come from elsewhere

as kenneth westphal writes by definition

pure practical reason emits all

corporeal desires motives urges

inclinations or preferences and all a

consideration of the agent's capacities

and resources for achieving ends

counts in search of a moral compass

that's cleansed and stripped of anything

outside of itself

that could sway it

because

if as hume thought our morality comes

from our feelings our sympathies towards

others instead of from reason

then how do we ever condemn those that

have no feelings towards others those

that just don't care that are selfish

psychopathic even

how can we ever say that anyone is wrong

if empathy and sympathy are the basis of

morality and they simply don't feel

those things

for count

reason is so important that we have a

duty to it because having the ability to

reason implies we have something else

freedom

he writes if only rational beings can be

an end in themselves this is not because

they have reason but because they have

freedom reason is merely a means

david misselbrook writes that kant

started with the fact that mankind's

distinguishing feature is our possession

of reason

therefore it follows that all humans

have universal rational duties to one

another centering on their duty to

respect the other's humanity in a later

work the metaphysics of morals count

says

what characterizes humanity as

distinguished from animality is the

capacity to set oneself and end any end

whatsoever

humans can set goals and use reason to

meet them it's this that makes us human

what this means is that we shouldn't use

people treating them as means to our

goals without their consent we should

respect their capacity to reason for

themselves to set their own ends as

can't called it

he famously writes that so act that you

use humanity whether in your own person

or in the person of any other always at

the same time as an end never merely as

a means

each of us only has access to the

outcomes of our own reasonable thinking

we set goals and reason how to achieve

them

i might freely set a goal to come down

the mountain and you can tell me that

one way is better than another but if

you force me down against my wishes

you've gone against the reason of

another

the only thing we can all trust

absolutely

each person sets their own ends

each person is an end in themselves

this belief

is the grounds of what kant called the

categorical imperative

[Music]

reason for count was the path to

morality because all other things

love sympathy friendship charity can

wax and wane be felt one minute and gone

the next instead we should rely on

reason and duty to do what reason

commands

he said nothing is left but the

conformity of actions as such with

universal law

which alone is to serve the will as its

principle that is

i ought never to act except in such a

way that i could also will that my maxim

should become a universal law he called

the result a categorical imperative

categorical

meaning unconditional

always true and imperative meaning

something that we know we ought to

follow

so how would this work well first we

should formulate a maxim a test to see

if something is moral or not

a maxim is a principle for acting

i will give this spare change to charity

i will drop this litter or trash here i

will steal this sandwich i will lie to

my friend i will drive faster i will

cheat on my exam

kant says that the first way to see if a

maxim conforms with reason to see

whether it's moral or not is to ask

whether it could become a universal law

without any contradictions

kant asks would it be logically possible

for everyone to do this if it was

universalized

is there a contradiction in conception

take breaking a promise

then ask if everyone broke promises when

they wished what would it mean to

promise in the first place

nothing

the institution of promising itself

would break down wouldn't function would

become untrustworthy

there's a contradiction in conception

james pfizer writes that if such deceit

were followed universally then the whole

institution of promising would be

undermined and i could not make my

promise to begin with

or take stealing

if everyone stole from each other

whenever they wished then the idea of

any personal property at all would

become meaningless

and in cheating the institution

whether it's the institution of the

rules of a card game or the procedure of

an exam at school the expectations and

the rules that govern the activity would

fall apart and become pointless once

everyone starts cheating

if

when universalizing

maxim we get a contradiction in

conception then kant says we have a

perfect duty not to do it but we should

also ask whether the maxim is something

i could rationally will for myself and

for others

some things do not contradict themselves

when universalized

but are still clearly intolerable

he writes the rule of judgment under

laws of pure practical reason is this

ask yourself whether if the action you

propose were to take place by a law of

the nature of which you were yourself a

part

you could indeed regard it as possible

through your will

take

laziness for example or not helping

someone in need they don't contradict

themselves when universalized but they

don't aid reason in pursuing ends if

everyone did it

can't sees that we all need aid

sometimes so a world where no one helped

each other would obviously be a bad one

one more inhospitable to reason itself

pfizer says that two types of

contradictions emerge one an internal

contradiction with the proposed

universal rule and the other a

contradiction between the proposed

universal rule and another rational

obligation that treats reason as an end

in itself

[Music]

the next formulation of the categorical

imperative is to ask whether we're

treating people as people with goals

themselves he says

act in such a way that you treat

humanity whether in your own person or

in the person of any other never merely

as he means to an end but always at the

same time as an end this means that not

only should we avoid manipulating using

and blocking that freedom in others but

that

even more than this we should actively

pursue aiding it in others we should not

only avoid treating people as

instruments for our own gains but we

should find ways of helping them in

achieving their ends because

that's what we'd rationally will for

ourselves

and that's what furthers and expands

rationality in total

to take one example in asking whether i

should help someone in need not only

should we pursue it if we see someone is

in need but we should actively seek it

out if we can within a balancing of our

other responsibilities and our own

rational life plans and goals because it

will help them achieve their own goals

their own ends as humans and if everyone

did it it would help us achieve our own

goals and our own ends ourselves

finally we should ask whether we are

seeing that every rational being must

act as if he were by his maxims at all

times a law-giving member of the

universal kingdom of ends

in short this means thinking about

whether if everyone was rational

everyone followed each other's moral

laws if everyone respected each other

the maxims would all hang together

think about traffic lights i have a

maxim to stop or go at a certain time

if everyone cheated the traffic lights

then the traffic lights would be

pointless and this all hangs together

and my stopping or going hangs together

with traffic coming the other way the

maxim fits the maxim of the pedestrian

to wait patiently for their turn to

cross our moral ideas in other words

should be symmetrical so as to be

universalizable otherwise there would be

chaos

alan wood writes that rational beings

constitute a realm to the extent that

their ends form a system in which these

ends are not only mutually consistent

but also harmonious and reciprocally

supportive

well

in writing these works around the time

of the french revolution

at the onset of the truly modern world

at the end of the enlightenment

immanuel kant changed everything

for example

goya writes that kant's idea that

humanity must be treated as an end in

itself and never merely as a means has

gained wide acceptance in modern moral

thought and philosophy

and while the liberal consequences of

this have had a huge effect on our

politics the question has to be asked

has its implications been fully realized

do we treat each other as ends not as

means

he was immediately immeasurably and

inimitably influential the idea of

focusing on that relationship between

experience and conceptual thinking

started a revolution in philosophy known

as german idealism that led to thinkers

like hegel and marx much of the modern

intellectual world

and modern politics too and in many ways

he began to put an end to many of the

intellectual arguments that defined the

enlightenment

this was because for many kant had

proven that you couldn't get beyond

immediate experience and thought

any grand theories that tried to

disprove or prove god say or whether

there was a beginning to time were

in their very nature

pointless

and graspable

in this sense he was a very conservative

figure carefully attending to the

matters at hand but also

strangely a very radical one we can all

think for and guide ourselves

but once you've been to the top of the

mountain once you've got a glimpse of

pure reason been convinced of your own

truly your own

powers of rational thought

of applying careful categorization to

the world of recognizing qualities

counting carefully where and in what

ways those qualities are found

you'll notice you doing this everywhere

in ideas and objects in facts and

feelings in relationships philosophies

pursuits passions and products how we

judge

in what ways we understand

how we reason through the world

well

it's

everything

[Music]

if you're interested in learning more

about can't please make sure to check

the sources in the description i've

added a few comments and listed them in

the order i think they should be read to

understand him because well he is a

difficult thinker so have a look at that

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thank you so much i've really enjoyed

making this one

see you next time