display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
9 ideas
| 2045 | Perception is infallible, suggesting that it is knowledge [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Perception is always of something that is, and it is infallible, which suggests that it is knowledge. | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 152c) |
| 2067 | Our senses could have been separate, but they converge on one mind [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It would be peculiar if each of us were like a Trojan horse, with a whole bunch of senses sitting inside us, rather than that all these perceptions converge onto a single identity (mind, or whatever one ought to call it). | |
| From: Plato (Theaetetus [c.368 BCE], 184d) |
| 18264 | We know the shape of a cone from its concept, but we don't know its colour [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The shape of a cone we can form for ourselves in intuition, unassisted by any experience, according to its concept alone, but the colour of this cone must be previously given in some experience or other. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B743/A715) | |
| A reaction: Coffa says this gives a 'transcendental twist' to the primary/secondary distinction. The distinction doesn't seem to help much, since you clearly don't know the shape of a pebble from its concept. Is the angle of the cone part of its concept? |
| 21447 | I can make no sense of the red experience being similar to the quality in the object [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I can make little sense of the assertion that the sensation of red is similar to the property of the vermilion [cinnabar] which excites this sensation in me. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 290) | |
| A reaction: A sensible remark. In Kant's case it is probably a part of his scepticism that his intuitions reveal anything directly about reality. Locke seems to have thought (reasonably enough) that the experience contains some sort of valid information. |
| 5532 | Colours and tastes are not qualities of things, but alterations of the subject [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Things like colors, taste etc. are correctly considered not as qualities of things but as mere alterations of our subject, which can even be different in different people. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B045/A29) | |
| A reaction: This acceptance of the category of 'secondary' qualities shows that Kant is not totally daft about reality. He 'considers them as' alterations in the subject, but how does he view primary qualities? Not, I think, as features of the noumenon. |
| 16924 | I count the primary features of things (as well as the secondary ones) as mere appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I also count as mere appearances, in addition to [heat, colour, taste], the remaining qualities of bodies which are called primariae, extension, place, and space in general, with all that depends on it (impenetrability or materiality, shape etc.). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 289 n.II) | |
| A reaction: He sides with Berkeley and Hume against Locke and Boyle. He denies being an idealist (Idea 16923), so it seems to me that Kant might be described as a 'phenomenalist'. |
| 16913 | I can't intuit a present thing in itself, because the properties can't enter my representations [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It seems inconceivable how the intuition of a thing that is present should make me know it as it is in itself, for its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 282) | |
| A reaction: One might compare this with Locke's distinction of primary and secondary, where the primary properties seem to 'migrate into my faculty of representation', but the secondary ones fail to do so. I think I prefer Locke. This idea threatens idealism. |
| 2774 | Kant says the cognitive and sensory elements in experience can't be separated [Kant, by Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Kant maintains that it is impossible to draw a suitable distinction between the cognitive and sensory 'elements' in sensory experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 8.4 |
| 23454 | Appearances have a 'form', which indicates a relational order [Kant] |
| Full Idea: That which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations I call the 'form' of appearance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B034/A20) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, which figures prominently in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Presumably the noumenon is responsible for generating the form in the appearances, and we infer the order of the world thereby (though we can't prove it). |