Kant, Hume, Mill on Experiencing Knowledge

For Kant, as he states in the Critique of Pure Reason, "all our knowledge begins with experience" (Solomon 317). He also states, though, that it does not follow that all knowledge arises out of experience, since even empirical knowledge is filtered through what may be imperfect sensory impressions and since our own faculty of knowledge may also supply elements from itself. Kant postulates two forms of knowledge, a priori knowledge that is independent of all experience and of all impressions of the senses, and empirical knowledge that is a posteriori, or based in experience. Kant explains this further by expanding on the concept of a priori knowledge to indicate that it means that it derives from a universal rule, with the rule itself derived from experience. Thus, experience remains the beginning point of knowledge.

Kant further divides the concept of a priori knowledge into two subsets of judgment, analytic and synthetic judgments. He says that judgments to be considered are those in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought, and such a relation can take two possible forms. If the predicate B belongs to the subject A, meaning that it is something which is covertly contained in the concept A, then the judgment is analytic; if the predicate B lies outside the concept A, though it stands in connection with it, then the judgment is synthetic. Analytic judgments cannot be based on experience, and the idea of doing so is absurd in Kant's estimation. Sy

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possible. Kant is answering Hume's skepticism in some degree. Hume follows Locke and sees all human knowledge as deriving from experience. He sees the contents of the mind as perceptions, implying that they have been observed in some empirical fashion, and he divides these perceptions into impressions and ideas. Impressions derive from the immediate data of experience through the senses, while the latter, the ideas, are seen by Hume as the copies or faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. Another way he differentiates the two is in terms of their vividness, or the degree of power with which they infuse themselves into the mind. The perceptions which have the most power and enter the mind with the most force are called impressions, and these include all our sensations as well as our emotions and passions. Ideas, on the other hand, are the faint images appearing in thinking and reasoning. They are somewhat like recollections of the earlier, stronger impressions. In a broad sense, Hume is trying to differentiate between the immediate data of experience and the thoughts we have about that data. However complex this analysis of the different types of ideas and impressions may get, the underlying truth of the ap

Category: Philosophy - K