posted
I'm terrible, I know, but I've a term paper due in an hour and I have to cut this passage up but I don't know where to begin. I was thinking where I could find intelligent people so early in the morning and immediately thought of you all. Any advice on what I should do? Besides getting better work habits ._.?
"There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce representations, and, by combining or separating them, work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is entitled experience? In the order of time, therefore, we have no knowledge antecedent to experience, and with experience all our knowledge begins. But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself. If our faculty of knowledge makes any such addition, it may be that we are not in a position distinguish it from the raw material, until with long practice of attention we have become skilled in separating it."
That's from the Critique of Pure Reason.
Philosophy made me more confused than I ever was before. Sigh.
Posts: 147 | Registered: Jun 2005
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When you don't have a term paper due, I'd be glad to chat with you some about philosophy in general (I'll be reading Kant this semester as well), and what the general rules of writing on philosophy are. (Hint - it's not like an English essay at all.)
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I won't do it for you, but I can offer suggestions. Try making a list of how he uses or defines these words:
knowledge (and "faculty of knowledge") sensible impressions senses objects experience representations raw material
Think of it like a puzzle. Even if you don't understand the puzzle parts, you can figure out how they fit together. That should get you started.
And, should you wish to put forth your ideas here, I'll (briefly) critique them by asking directed questions.
This doesn't count as doing it for you -- it's just what you should have been doing with your friends and family for the last 2 weeks. Tossing ideas around. *grin And don't ever do it again.
Edit: Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and ask for an extension. I was always insanely easy to get an extension from, up until 5pm the day before the paper was due. Then I cranked down. But if you are desparate and will be asking for an extension because you can't turn the paper in, then:
1) apologize 2) offer to take a grade cut 3) set a date and time when you'll have it in (Monday 8 am?) 4) explain in detail how you will make sure this doesn't happen again -- give a specific plan
posted
Also try to break down Kant's sentences into easier-to-understand English. Go at it phrase by phrase, always asking yourself "what is he trying to say here?"
If you could read it in German, this would be a lot easier, because in German philosophy long sentences are the norm, and they make much more sense before being translated. Kant's still just as dry in the German, though.
Just remember that this is a translation of philosophy, so the wording is going to be awkward. Try to re-write it so it makes more sense to you.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
(Yeah. What Jhai said. Kant can be tough, but it isn't mishmash -- the sentences really do mean something, and it's worth the effort, regardless of whether you end up agreeing or disagreeing with him.
Reading original works in philosophy is like marathon training for the mind. Makes you stronger, faster, better. And more bionic.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
Be glad you don't have to try reading it in the original German -- the English translation's much clearer.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I prefer the German, actually - especially for Nietzsche, although Kaufmann does a very good translation.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
That's why I always preferrd to read Locke and Hume - they wrote in English (or Scotts ;-)), but I never meddled in Kant's German texts. Then again, I've only recently been into philosophy.
Try reading a passage in 70 year-old technical Hebrew, with all sorts of wierd words from the day that footnotes were written in Rashi script. Try doing it in a class, it's a little annoying.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I'd like to clarify: most of us don't have a "no helping with homework" policy. We mostly have a "DO your own homework" policy. We will help, give hints, offer resources. We just won't do the work for you. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Pshaw- you guys are all far too heartless. Help with reading comprehension isn't "cheating". Here is what Kant is saying:
Knowledge has to start somewhere, and the place that it starts is with the sensory inputs (what he calls experience). Basically you don't have anything to think about until you stuff your head full of raw data like sounds, smells, sights, emotions etc. Once you have a bunch of raw data in your brain you can manipulate it- you have things to think about. The manipulation by your brain of sensory inputs- the way that you make sense of things- is metasensory. It requires the sensory inputs but is not caused by them.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: Knowledge has to start somewhere, and the most likely "starting place" of knowledge is our own observations: our senses, our emotions, and our memories of experience. But it's entirely possible that our brain is manufacturing these inputs, or that they are being placed there in some other way without the actual experience having occurred -- so that there is in fact a second level of abstraction between an event and our understanding of it.
In other words, you may fondly remember having eaten some cake. Your memories of cake come from your sense impressions -- the taste, the smell, the look of the cake. Someone may have told you about other types of cake that you have not eaten. And so you have a broad range of knowledge about cake -- or so you suppose.
But what if you have never in fact eaten cake? What if all your memories are in some way flawed, placed there through hypnosis or delusion? What if you, of all the people in the universe, perceive the flavor of cane sugar in exactly the same way everyone else perceives the flavor of chipotle pepper?
Is your experience with cake invalid? Have you never in fact experienced cake? And how would you know?
Most classically, this question can be boiled down to this: what does the color yellow look like to other people? How, in other words, do you know that the inputs that your brain uses to produce knowledge are themselves valid, and that you're not just hooked up to a giant machine-run Matrix?
(To understand what Kant is saying, it would be most useful to figure out what he means by "faculty of knowledge" and "sensory impression.")
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
And guys - I believe part of his assignment was "to cut this passage up," which is basically explaining in essay form what the passage means - what Kant is trying to say.
It's a commen task philosophy teachers give when students are reading original texts, since it allows them to makes sure that the students understand what they're reading.
So I'd say explaining the passage to him is basically doing his homework. If Kitsune were an unethical person (not that I think he is!) he could just copy what some of you wrote and turn it in. CT and I gave him ideas to go about solving it by himself, which will help him a lot more in the long run.
So, yeah. Do what Ketchupqueen said: help him with the work, don't do it for him. Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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