Pre Theme 1

 1.In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

Kant argues in the preface of “Critique of Pure Reason” that “Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects.”. This means that when studying an object, we draw conclusions from what we see when examining it to progress our research and establish some property as a priori, an assumed fact that further research can build upon without having to repeat what has already been done. Kant has objections to this method, since not everything is what it seem, which is covered below.

From my understanding, Kant is telling us with “... assume that objects must conform to our cognition. “ that we instead should formulate a hypothesis and perform experiments to see if the object behaves as expected in conditions set by the us.

Kant takes Copernicus as an example to reinforce his point. Our perception of the world at the time was geocentric and Copernicus could not get his research to add up. But by questioning this accepted fact and continued his research with the hypothesis that the solar system is heliocentric, the pieces of the puzzle started to fall in place.

In my opinion, this matches pretty well with how I have learned to perform experiments in school. You don't do it expecting to find an absolute truth, you do it to test a hypothesis to see if the outcome is as expected to draw conclusions or just outright falsify it.

2. At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

Socrates argues with Theaetetus regarding his claim that knowledge is perception, in my opinion mainly because while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, truth is not. By stating that your look through your eyes rather than with them, Socrates want to make a point that while two persons can look at the same object, they will register and associate it differently depending on their previous experiences.

This actually connects back to Kant and not letting our cognition conform to objects. The eye can be fooled like in the example with all our favorite black/blue dress.

The information will be subjective, and as examplified in the text a tall man might look short to one person, while the second person might feel cold while the first is sweating. To me it became obvious that Socrates arguments against empiricism when he brought out the argument that if if true knowledge is decided by sensory input, it would mean that more than one version of truth would exist.