13. Thirteenth Lecture: From Sensory Input Toward the Highest Values and Construction of Reality
In this intriguing lecture, we analyze the connection between the physical world and the interpretive layers that human minds add to it. Specifically, we refute the idea that the experience of being is generated entirely "inside the head" of a person. Instead, we explore how experience is created in tandem with the faculty of imagination, sensibility, and understanding. While we do indeed experience the physical world outside of us, the "tools" for structuring that experience are "built in"—the a priori forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of understanding. These tools operate seamlessly and unconsciously, allowing us to navigate and comprehend the world, even though we rarely reflect on how they function. We also explore how this mechanics plays an instrumental role in applying moral judgement for forming our actions.
When the explanation of the freedom of a priori synthetic judgment can be seen as the book's goal, the way toward it follows the mechanics of how the human mind works. Namely, the book builds on how we receive sensory information and progresses toward higher values. Let us examine the mechanics of the mind next.
Let us illustrate this with a mundane example. When we wake up in the morning, we first become aware of ourselves as distinct from the rest of the world and our thoughts. This awareness is achieved through our transcendental consciousness (or pure apperception), which allows us to conceptualize our being (as empirical apperception) in the world.
As we open our eyes, we receive sensory input from the things around us (e.g., the ceiling, blanket, floor, etc.). These sensory inputs are then processed by our mind using the a priori forms of intuition (space and time) and categories of understanding. Through this process, we construct our perception of physical reality as a series of organized and distinct objects (e.g., our bedroom), which we can conceptualize further, connecting these to our memories.
Because the objects around us persist from moment to moment, we can start interacting with the world (e.g., getting up) and continue to use our forms of intuition and categories of understanding to make sense of our experience. In this way, our cognitive faculties allow us to navigate and interact with the phenomenal world as it appears to us.
When we want to explore the mechanics of our mind even more precisely, we find that through our senses, we gather raw data and synthesize it in our mind into a unified representation of objects. This process involves the faculty of imagination, which works in tandem with sensibility and understanding (figuratively bouncing back and forth between them) to create our experience of the world.
Once we have formed an understanding of something, we have thoughts that we can operate with inside our minds. We can manipulate these ideas, combine them into more complex concepts, and develop a deeper understanding of the world. Such operations can be seen as interactions between the faculties of understanding and reason. Judgment connects understanding with reason, allowing us to evaluate and apply our concepts to particular instances (similarly to how imagination helps form new understandings as thoughts).
When it comes to moral values, Kant introduces the idea of the categorical imperative as a principle derived from practical reason. This imperative guides our behavior in a way grounded in rationality, leading us toward better, more meaningful, and morally sound actions. In this way, Kant's thought connects our cognition and understanding of the world with our capacity for moral reasoning and action.
In the simplest terms, our imagination connects sensory input and understanding to form ideas; from ideas, we can develop more meaningful concepts with our reason using categorical imperatives as guiding principles and judgment as a connector between understanding and reason.
The Construction of Reality
Kant does not argue that we are trapped in a Matrix-like reality, constructing our world entirely within our minds. Instead, he acknowledges the existence of an external world and emphasizes that our cognitive faculties shape our experience of it. Our understanding interacts with the world and adds a layer to it through our forms of intuition (space and time) and categories of understanding.
In other words, the world exists independently, but our perception and knowledge of it are influenced by how our minds process and organize sensory input. This approach allows Kant to address the challenge of Hume's skepticism, exemplified in the case of the billiard ball example.
Hume argued that nothing is inherent in the billiard balls that can explain the causality between one ball hitting another and the subsequent motion. Kant agrees with Hume that we cannot directly observe causality in the objects themselves. Instead, the connection between cause and effect is provided by our cognitive faculties. According to Kant, the explanation must be "in Hume."
Our intuition of space and time, combined with the category of causality, enables us to make sense of the sequence of events and the relationship between cause and effect. This added layer of understanding allows us to experience the world more fully and grasp the underlying principles that govern it.
In the simplest terms, the physical world exists; however, it is not the same for every living being. As humans, we experience things and interactions between them through our subjective forms of intuition (space and time) and apply our pure concepts ("built-in" categories of understanding) to them. That is how we construct our reality of the physical world, which still exists independently of our minds.
