Kant's Epistemology: Reason, Experience, and Knowledge Formation

Kant's Epistemology: The Genesis of Knowledge

"There is no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. But how is the power of knowing awakened? Is it not by objects that strike our senses and provoke representations themselves, now setting in motion our intellectual capacity to compare them, bind or separate, and thus develop, with the raw material of sensible impressions, the knowledge of objects called experience? Therefore, in the temporal order, no knowledge precedes experience in us, and all knowledge begins with it. (...) But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that all of it originates from experience. It might be that our empirical knowledge is composed of what we perceive through impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge (on the occasion of sense impressions only) provides for itself." — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Indeed, according to Kant, to construct knowledge, two essential elements are necessary:

1. The structure of our reason: This is independent of experience and provides the framework for understanding.
2. Mouldable material: This is the content that the structure of reason will process and develop. As Kant states, "neither concepts without intuition that somehow belongs to them, nor intuition without concepts can give knowledge. Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind." — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

Thus, reason, in Kant's philosophy, is composed of:

1. Forms of Pure Sensibility (Pure Intuition): These are space and time, the fundamental conditions under which we perceive objects.
2. Categories of Pure Understanding: These are pure concepts of understanding, such as substance, causality, unity, and plurality, which structure our experience.

According to this scheme, space, time, and the categories are understood as mere tools or molds through which the subject structures the world of objects. The raw material upon which reason operates consists of impressions or sensations, which provide the content.

Kant's Alignment with Empiricism

Kant contends that if one attempts to gain knowledge using reason alone (i.e., the a priori forms of the subject) without sensory input, these forms would remain empty, and knowledge of objects would be impossible. It is necessary for these 'tools' to have material to shape. The origin of this mouldable material is none other than experience. In this sense, Kant agrees with empiricism, arguing that knowledge is only possible within the terms of experience. This leads him to declare the impossibility of metaphysics as a science, because if it were achievable, objects like God and the soul (metaphysical objects) would need to be accessible to experience.

Kant's Divergence from Rationalism

Despite this alignment with empiricism, Kant notes that sensory intuitions alone do not constitute knowledge. Without the structuring forms imposed by reason (forms that cannot originate from impressions but from the subject itself), sensory input is merely chaos and disorder. Reason provides the necessary framework to organize these raw impressions into coherent understanding.