PHRASE-NICK SEXTON

Phrase: "But although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that account all arise from experience."

In the first section of Kant's Introduction he states that all knowledge (or cognition) begins with experience. He goes on to say that although knowledge begins with experience, it does not always arise out of experience. The phrase I chose (shown above), exhibits these statements. The phrase is important because it is the premise for Kant's investigation of what pure reason can really determine without the aid of the senses. Kant wonders if we can discover important truths out of pure reason, that is, without experience. Kant goes on to differentiate between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, as well as between synthetic and analytic judgments. According to Kant, mathematics and principles of science contain synthetic, a priori knowledge. With this in mind, humans must be capable of using pure reason to know important truths. However, Kant says ultimately that human perception has too much of an impact on what we know. In other words, our knowledge is greatly impacted by how we percieve things in the world around us.


Links to sources:
www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kant/section1.html

http://userpages.bright.net/~jclarke/kant/intro.html