EXPERIENCE--Sarah Knoth

Kant uses several highly technical words in this piece, but I chose to go with a word that we are all a bit more accustomed to even though Kant still brings uncertainties to our reasoning about this word. According to the OED, one of the main definitions of experience is as follows: "2. Proof by actual trial; practical demonstration. to put in experience: to fulfil in practice." I found that, even through all the extreme philosophical and mathematical garble, that the whole article and argument comes down to the essence of experience or lack thereof; we probably wouldn't be reading this text if we didn't understand that we have the cognitive ability to analyze our experiences. The last sentence of the first paragraph not only begins the journey into the explanation of pure reason but it also gives us simplicity to his thoughts: "As far as time is concerned, then, no cognition in us precedes experience, and with experience every cognition begins." Kant provides a conundrum of information on the possibilities of the attainability of knowledge; to me, Kant often times swaps the words experience and perception interchangeably. The question I continued to ask myself while I read Kant's piece (and now I will ask you to ask yourself) was: Can perception exist without experience? I realize Kant discusses the different ways of discerning the possibilities of such but what is life without experience and the recognition of those experiences? It does no good for anyone to have knowledge within you (a priori) if there is no way to understand it, so a posteriori seems to be Kant's more reasonable direction for understanding knowledge because even if we do have this a priori knowledge, we still have to take the knowledge we've worked our whole lives to obtain in order to read through the files in our brains that we, according to Kant, didn't even know we had. I hope this makes more sense than Kant's article. 

-Sarah