An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Immanuel Kant is an 18th century philosopher, belonging to the era of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is an intellectual epoch where reason triumphed over faith. Kant is arguably one of the greatest intellectuals of all time, and his Critique of Pure Reason is considered his magnum opus. It was published when he was 57, so he had a whole lifetime to meditate upon the nature of reason. So don’t expect the book to be an easy read. It is precisely for this reason that an introduction to it can be helpful, to understand what his project is about and its broad strokes.

Kant wrote Critique to enquire into the nature of reason, laying the path for that by first examining how we perceive and understand things.

A Meditation on Meditation

First off, I just want to relate my thoughts and experiences on meditation. I am not a spiritual guru, nor some kind of mindfulness expert. I only have my own experience and my rather modest reading on meditation to talk about, but I think it can be helpful for those who have tried it and “failed” or who don’t really have any inkling on what meditation is about.

How We Learn, According to Augustine

According to Augustine (d. 430), we do not learn about the things themselves through words, since if we did not already know what words like green, room and cabinet mean, the word will not teach it to us. However, words do have a function – they prompt us by directing our attention to “remind us to look for things.” (The Teacher, p. 137, l. 170) We have to be prompted, to compare what we have been told, to consult our “inner light” (p. 140, l. 31), that is, God, to make the judgement if what is told is true. 

Leibniz Explains How to Become Happy

Human beings are never at rest, not even in sleep, according to Gottfried Leibniz. We are constantly bombarded by small perceptions, most of which we are unaware of, which incline us to certain actions. Because our nature wants to be more at ease, these small perceptions give rise to small impulses to overcome small obstacles. This overcoming gives us small joys, which can translate into a larger happiness if we use our experience and our reason to guide us in deciding which small impulses to allow and which to forbid.

Leibniz’s Solution to the Mind-Body Problem

The aim of philosophy, according to Leibniz, is to explain how God does things, “how things are brought about by the Divine Wisdom in conformity with the particular concept of the subject.”[1] In his Discourse on Metaphysics, he already establishes that each substance’s nature already contains all the predicates[2] and is like a “mirror” of all that is in the universe.[3] Leibniz explicitly assumes that God is the creator of all things and the universe – He is the “architect of the machine of the universe,”[4] and being omniscient, knows all the predicates contained in each thing including the future, which is hence predetermined.

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Each substance is acting in its own “sphere”[5] but yet there seems to be an “appearance”[6] of communication between things. For instance, when ball A hits ball B on a billiard table, it seems to cause ball B to move, even though based on Leibniz’s metaphysics, both balls are independent, each doing what it does because it is already predetermined in its nature rather than because of a causal interaction with each other. Leibniz attempts to explain how this is possible in his article, A New System of the Nature and the Communication of Substances. He then builds on this theory to explain the mind-body problem, or how can an immaterial soul and a material body of a person interact.

Is Artificial Consciousness Possible?

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

Can machines become conscious or is artificial consciousness (AC) an impossible dream? If AC is possible, would we want to create it? This paper will attempt to answer the first question using Hartmann’s framework developed in New Ways of Ontology, where he carries out an ontological investigation into the structure of the world. I will contrast his four ontological strata with potentially fruitful approaches in the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and consider what is needed to remain on the right track. The answer to the second question depends on the first – to aim for AC or to avoid it, we need to understand whether and how it can happen.

Are Intermediaries Needed in Cognition?

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,[1] the Bible tells us in the opening verse of the first book of Genesis, which narrates the literal genesis of the universe. In another book of the Bible, the Gospel of John, written thousands of years later to chronicle the epochal event of the Christian faith, the life of Jesus, a similar phrase was used, no less poetic and awe-inspiring but somewhat more opaque: In the beginning was the Word.[2] What was the relationship between God, his Son and the Word? Augustine of Hippo answers this question in De Trinitate. According to Panaccio, Augustine’s main idea is that in order to understand the Trinity, the human mind needs to be examined since human beings are made in God’s image,[3] and hence the “spiritual part of man must be the best image there is among all creatures of the Divine essence.”[4] For Augustine, the relation between God and his Son is like the relation of the mind and the mental word. The mental word is expressed externally by the spoken word, just like how the God is expressed to the world by an incarnation which is Jesus. [5]

Of Bats and Men: What Does Subjectivity Mean for the Study of Consciousness?

 How does the mind relate to the body, given that the mind is mental while the body is physical? What is the connection between mental and physical properties?[1] In his article “What is it Like to be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel makes clear from the first sentence that his aim is to address the mind-body problem with a focus on the mind part of the problem: “Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.”[2] The human body, as a physical entity, is arguably easier to understand than that of the mind. Biology is a well-established science, with a firm grasp on the functioning of the body down to the cellular and molecular level (i.e. DNA), while our understanding of the mental phenomena of the mind is by contrast still in its adolescent phase, studied in a series of fledgling disciplines such as cognitive science, neurology and psychology.