created by margotiii on 08/09/2020 at 00:09 UTC
161 upvotes, 12 top-level comments (showing 12)
In science, the Copernican revolution was the insight that forever changed how we viewed ourselves in the universe. We began to view ourselves more humbly and realized the universe did not revolve around us.
Why do people say Kant’s ideas were like the Copernican Revolution of Philosophy? From what I know about Kant’s work and his broader contribution to the enlightenment, I don’t understand what warrants this description of his ideas.
Comment by [deleted] at 08/09/2020 at 00:31 UTC
109 upvotes, 4 direct replies
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Comment by Shitgenstein at 08/09/2020 at 01:33 UTC
28 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Here's Kant's own comparison to Copernicus' revolution:
Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them *a priori* through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an *a priori* cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revolve and left the stars at rest. (CPR, Bxvi)
So the analogy to Copernicus's revolution comes in rethinking the relation between objects and our cognition in a way similar to Copernicus' rethinking the relation between the movement of the Earth and the Sun.
Some critics assert that Kant's system amounts more to an inverse relation to Copernicus, such that objects 'revolve' around our cognition rather than our cognition 'revolving' around objects, but I don't think that's an accurate representation of Kant's system or the the analogy: the analogy runs on finding an impasse from the traditional relation and seeing if greater success would come from inverting it.
Comment by DrawDiscardDredge at 08/09/2020 at 00:29 UTC*
80 upvotes, 4 direct replies
This is a very long topic, but a tl: dr of it is as follows:
Prior to Kant, Philosophers generally thought of the world as something strictly distinct from us and we were merely passively perceiving it. (or that our perception was the entirety of the world in the case of the idealists)
Kant dramatically changed that vision demonstrating that we are actively, *constructing* the world with our perception by imposing our conceptions of space, time, color, shape, and all the other "categories of experience."
Thus, inverting our relationship to the world.
Here is a longer well sourced version:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#KanCopRev
Comment by dungeonmeisterlfg at 08/09/2020 at 01:58 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It's Kant's analogy, and it serves an explanatory function.
It's a layered analogy, too. The primary aspect is about cognition's relationship with the world. Before Copernicus, people believed the stars to rotate around the Earth. Copernicus suggested that it may be the movement of the Earth giving the apparent movement to the stars. Kant compares this to human cognition, suggesting that the form of objects is given by the activity by the mind where it was previously believed that the activity of the mind followed the form of objects.
There is also a secondary aspect concerning the nature of rational inquiry (Kant makes a number of side remarks in the *Critique* that could stand alone as philosophy of science), where Copernicus was able to make new progress by assuming a new perspective. Kant considered metaphysics to have stalled in such a way to benefit from a similar perspective change.
The situation here is the same as was that of Copernicus when he first thought of explaining motions of celestial bodies. Having found it difficult to make progress there when he assumed that the entire host of stars revolved around the spectator, he tried to find out by experiment whether he might not be more successful if he had the spectator revolve and the stars remain at rest. Now, we can try a similar experiment in metaphysics, with regard to our intuition of objects. If our intuition had to conform to the character of its objects, then I do not see how we could know anything a priori about that character. But I can quite readily conceive of this possibility if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the character of our power of intuition. *(Preface of the Critique of Pure Reason)*
Like explaining the motion of the stars by understanding the motion of the Earth, the "revolution" of the Kantian perspective gives us an option of grasping reality by grasping that which gives reality its form - the innate structure of human cognition.
As a final statement, it can sound like this was some sort of purely experimental perspective shift that just happened to spark Kant's imagination. This is not the case, Kant makes this comparison to make the nature of project clearer.
Comment by Breyand at 08/09/2020 at 15:35 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
"We began to view ourselves more humbly"
Kant's philosophy achieves quite the same on a epistemological level, it's a philosophy of limits.
Comment by balderdash9 at 08/09/2020 at 03:58 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Kant himself endorsed the comparison in the first Critique (Bxvi). The gist of it is, Geocentrism came with a number of problems. Said problems went away when we underwent a conceptual shift; the solar system doesn't revolve around us, we revolve around the sun.
Similarly, Kant argues that synthetic a priori knowledge (e.g., math) isn't possible under the presupposition of transcendental realism (i.e, empirical objects exist the way that we represent them independently of us). Instead of our cognition conforming to the world, the world must conform to the conditions of experience. This allows Kant to explain synthetic a priori knowledge. So, transcendental idealism, wherein sensible faculties constitute the possibility of the objects of experience is the shift we need to undergo in order to explain our objective cognition of the world.
Comment by elricosmit at 08/09/2020 at 09:00 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
What I’d like to add to all the contributions explaining the metaphor is the implications of Kant’s theory in the Critique of Pure Reason on how ALL human knowledge is to be viewed as after this theory. My Kant teacher has said that every (serious) philosopher after Kant needs to have an opinion on Kant’s theory, because it concerns all human knowledge on a fundamental (or as Kant calls it, ‘transcendental’) level. The full weight of this theory to me came when I understood the transcendental deduction, which (and I treat it very lightly here...) tells us that all human knowledge, or human-like knowledge (so even “aliens” that have a similar way of getting knowledge) HAS to conform to Kants theory of the a priori concepts of understanding. Before that, Kant says that all experience has to conform to the a priori forms of time and space (ie. Transcendental Idealism), which are not “out there in the world” but actively created by our minds.
What this means is that even if you were to try and deny Kants entire theory and give another theory, doing this, your different opinions and knowledge already conform to the conditions of knowledge as stated in Kants theory. So does all your knowledge about the Copernican revolution, and including even all non-western human knowledge existing in the most remote parts of Earth. Kants theory in the CPR is ultimately about the conditions of what it means “to know” for all humans.
This is what makes the theory transcendental, for it concerns the very necessary conditions on which human beings can say that they have knowledge or experience of something. It is both an epistemological theory and an ontological theory, because if we were to pose something as existing (like an ontological entity called “ideas” in Plato) we FIRST need a way of knowing that ontological theory: and human knowledge as said before has to conform to certain conditions that Kant gives in his theory. This is where the real copernican turn is according to me: whatever exists is not prior to whatever we know: whatever we know defines to us humans whatever exists. Kants psychological epistemology is prior to any ontology, for all the knowledge of such an ontology (created/theorized by ANY human) has to first conform to the conditions of knowledge stated by Kant.
P.S. Kant, being a devout christian, has said himself that, unfortunately according to this theory, the existence of God can ultimately not be ‘known’, because the human knowledge apparatus doesn’t have the means for it. It is not possible for the existence of God to be knowledge in the sense that we can know that there is a phone in my hand. This is the reason why Kant turns to a different type of reason instead of the theoretical reason, i.e. the practical one.
Comment by [deleted] at 08/09/2020 at 02:05 UTC
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Comment by nrvnsqr117 at 08/09/2020 at 02:22 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I haven't read enough Kant to speak on him but here[1] is the opening paragraph to Zizek's *The Sublime Object of Ideology*, which explains what a Copernican revolution is.
1: https://i.imgur.com/iOfumSi.png
Comment by [deleted] at 08/09/2020 at 05:11 UTC
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