Theme 1: Reflection

Week 37 and the first theme, which was Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science, has come to its end. In the beginning I found both of the texts we were supposed to read really hard to understand, they were long and quite complex. The lecture and the seminar helped me a lot to understand. I took the opportunity to ask all the questions I had from the texts and from the lecture during the seminar. I think misunderstood some part of Kant’s Critique of pure reason when I only had read the text. What I wish I had done for this week was to start earlier, that would have given me much more time to reflect about the texts before the first blog post and before the first lecture.

From this week I have learned that Kant is discussing the basics in time and space. He tried to understand what the world means in itself. And I thought it was interesting what was brought up at the seminar, that we don’t know about the world in itself. Since “in itself” is a concept that will die along if all people dies. The teacher asked us if the world will still exist if all people dies and as I understand from the seminar the answer will be no. This example goes along with the quote “Concept without perception is blind, and perception without concept is empty” and I believe that is what Kant means with object must conform to our cognition.

I also learned from the lecture about Kant’s categories, which is based on our conception. Those categories are very basic and becomes the structure of our world.

Table of Categories:

Quantity Quality Relation Modality

unity reality subsistence possibility

plurality negation causality existence

totality limitation community necessity

Before the lecture I had what the teacher called "the schoolbook version" of what Kant is saying in my mind. That we can only see what is perceived to us, like we see the world through glasses we cannot take of.