This week
in Theory and Method for Media Technology I have been forced to think in a way
I am not used to, a philosophical way. When writing my first text on this
week´s theme, I tried to break down what every word meant in an aim to
translate the thoughts of Kant and Plato. After the lecture and the seminar on
the theme I realise that it is not as simple as I first thought, you have to
understand the bigger picture to really understand these philosopher´s
thoughts.
During the
lecture, I got frustrated because I did not really understand when our lecturer
Johan Eriksson tried to explain Kant´s and Plato´s thoughts of what knowledge
is. I think I could have to do with the
fact that the lecture was in English. To follow a philosophical reasoning in another
language than Swedish can be quite hard. Also the lecturer said that he had not
prepared to hold the lecture in English, so that can be a reason for why I had
a hard time understanding his reasoning. He brought up a lot of interesting
theories as theological vs. mechanical worldview, absolute and anthropological qualities, and analytic
and synthetic judgement.
Kant´s main
question was: how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible? And the answer: Let
us assume that our faculties of knowledge do not conform to objects, but that
objects conform to our faculties of knowledge. Faculties of knowledge are
referring to time and space as our faculties of intuition and categories of understanding.
During the
seminar I got an understanding of what this really mean. Kant was moving from a
theological worldview to a mechanical worldview, where the world should not be
judged from God´s perspective but in how the world is experienced and judged (a
paradigm shift). The world is adapting after our experience capacity. It is
impossible to know anything about the world itself; you cannot consider the
object itself without a relation to human. “Knowledge requires knowledge” is a
quote I bring with me from the seminar.
I also tried to translate every single word in Kant's text to try to understand what they meant but didn't succeed.
SvaraRaderaRegarding the lecture, I found it hard as well but I don't think it would be much easier if it were in Swedish. This is a difficult way of thinking.
When you are saying "knowledge requires knowledge", do you think that experience is the same as knowledge? because i think knowledge requires experience.
I agree with you. The first weeks' theme also made me very frustrated and I read the questions over and over again. I remember that on the introduction Leif said that Kant on purpose wrote the text in that way because only those who are smart enough to read and understand it deserved to be enlightened by his "great" thoughts, or something like that. Pretty arrogant if you ask me. Interesting quote from the seminar that you bring up.
SvaraRaderaPhilosophy seems to be such abstract "knowledge", can it even be considered knowledge if it can't be empirically proved?