What is the difference between Subjective Validity and Objective Validity?
Subjective Validity is bias opinion, which a person will consider them as a statement to believe in if the opinion is significant or meaningful to them. It is based on their experiences that a person had gone through. Subjective Validity is more of a posteriori judgment where they are dependent on experience and empirical evidence. An example would be a dream that only happens in a person's brain, but never existed or happened in real life.
Objective Validity is a priori judgment according to Kant, which they are independent of experience. The way Kant uses the term experience differs from existing usage in the degree experience, understanding in its modern use, must be objective validity in order to classify as experience in Kant's sense. This means that he is making the experience possible (real); they must have a truth value, which do not have to be 100% true. He talks about something is only a judgment if it is objective validity, otherwise it might have a well formed of judgment.
According to Kant, appearance is pure concepts on understand. "Now reason clearly sees: that the sensible world could not contain this completion, any more than could therefore all of the concepts that serve solely for understanding the world: space and time, and everything that we have put forward under the name of the pure concepts of the understanding. The sensible world is nothing but a chain of appearances connected in accordance with universal laws, which therefore has no existence for itself; it truly is not the thing in itself, and therefore it necessarily refers to that which contains the ground of those appearances, to beings that can be cognized not merely as appearances, but as things in themselves." (105) This shows that the world that we see in our eyes are nature where everything are chained together. All actions of rational beings in that degree are appearances, which are subjected to natural necessity, but with the respect to the rational subject and faculty of acting with reasons are free. (97) For some causes, appearance might not even exists, in this case, it would be taken as a thing in itself, and for the effects would have taken as appearances, which is understanding of nature. Thing in itself would be entitled to freedom as Kant mentioned and therefore nature and freedom will be attributable without contradiction to the same thing, which means the case as appearance and the case as thing in itself will be different.
What we experienced and observed in life lead us to an understanding of phenomenon. What we human do in the world and experience that we have come to bring us to the level of nature. This brings us to a question of what is nature. What is Nature? Nature in terms of phenomenon are all the objects that conformity to law. "It states that the more people attempt not to conform to certain stereotypes and shared identities, the more they actually do conform to those stereotypes and identities." Nature is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. Nature refers to the phenomena of the physical world and to life as well.
Another important distinction in what makes objective judgments valid a priori judgment, before experience, are the things or concepts that conform to laws must be universal (unconditional) and necessary (not contingent). Judgments of perception produce experience from the appearances. Appearances are things that are constituted by space and time. Those appearances that represent forms of intuition, according to Kant in space and time, and pure concepts of the understanding are synthesized to become objectively valid. Once appearances become understood knowledge becomes systematic and valid.
ReplyDeleteI am still not clear about what constitutes subjective validity. It could be that the Validity are just pure concepts (not understood) without any forms of appearances. And the perceptions are presently probable but valid?
Something that I found very “enlightening,” but not mentioned in your post on the “Main Transcendental Question, Third Part,” was Kant’s discussion on deistic concepts, theism, and the boundary of pure reason. Discussing the contradictions arising between dogmatism and skepticism in relation to theism, Kant proposes what he calls the middle way, “which we are advised to determine for ourselves as it were mechanically (something from one side and something from the other), and … that can be determined precisely, according to principles” (111). This is the middle way between what is known and what is impossible to know -- the boundary between experience and possible experience. Just as Kant established the difference between a thing in itself and appearances, but established “a middle way” by not denying the existence of the thing in itself, he does a similar thing here with the possibility of God by not looking “upon the field of possible experience as something that bounds itself in the eyes of our reason” (111). Reason cannot prove God’s existence, but it cannot disprove the possibility, and cannot be used to deny one’s belief in God.
ReplyDelete[SIDE NOTE. Eastern and Western philosophy comparative observation: This Kantian middle way is not to be confused with the Buddhist middle way, or middle path -- although, interestingly enough, part of the Buddhist middle way also deals with contradictions between the world of appearances (of them having actual phenomenal existence) and the true nature of the world (all things being “empty,” having no lasting absolute identity).]
The middle way of Kant, as a path between dogmatic and skeptical reason, ties directly into his concept of boundaries and limits. Since both appearances and the thing in itself are contemplated in one’s reason, a boundary becomes set between what is known in experience and what is unknowable (111). Kant states, “reason is neither locked inside the sensible world nor adrift outside it, but as befits knowledge of a boundary, restricts itself solely to the relation of what lies outside the boundary to what is contained within” (112). Therefore, these metaphysical boundaries are important in helping one examine the relationship between the known and unknown, between appearances and the thing in itself, between experience and things beyond experience.