I’ll have to be honest, when I first read the text by Immanuel Kant, I understood nothing. It was all so abstract and even though I grasped the basics, the very meaning was lost on me. However, after the Monday lecture, things started to fall in place. Then after the seminar, (and after having skimmed through the text once again), I think I’m starting to understand what it was all about.
Basically, the entire discussion is about the world and our knowledge of it. The argumentation goes that we see with our mind, and not objectively with our eyes. Thus we all perceive things differently, and therefore cannot understand the world as it is without tainting it with our own opinions. One could say that there are as many worlds as there are people, since each and every one of us is the main character of our own story and perceive things from a first person view.
Kant argues exactly this, that we can’t be truly objective about things, so if we truly want to gain knowledge we have to “climb down from God’s point of view” and investigate objects as we see them. This is also what is meant by a priori, that objects can be assigned attributes based on what we know about them without having actually investigated them in person.
So while Kant says that we cannot ignore our senses, Plato argues that we can and should ignore them in order to see the world as it is. I myself have always kind of thought that you can be objective if you just distance yourself far enough, but am now having second thoughts. Perhaps it is impossible, since people do have opinions about everything, even though we don’t want to admit it (they could be subconscious of course). If one wants to be objective, one would have to distance him or herself entirely from life, which sounds like a tedious task if you ask me. But what I've understood from this weeks discussions is that there is no real answer when it comes to philosophy. Just perceptions.
Another conclusion of this week’s theme could be that we have to keep in mind that all people are different, and thus perceive the world differently. If one would relate this to our field within media technology, it would be that systems and products we develop and/or work with have to take this into consideration. The same goes for all kinds of research and investigation really. But that’s just how I perceive it.
Hi!
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting to read your reflections on the first week. I felt the same that the seminar and the lecture clarified a lot of the previously difficulties with understanding Plato and especially Kant! I also liked your statement that there are as many worlds as there are people - that is probably true. I think it's always so easy to just assume that people around us should see everything in the same way, but we are all individuals!
Hi
ReplyDeleteI think I almost get the same with you in the 1st theme.From the cognition of humans,I remind one sentence is "Our world is always our world " We can't see the truth objectively.We just see the tip of iceberg. even we could not say some principle we get from the outside changes is truth. It's very practical to use in the academic research to make the work more critical and dialectical.Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing us with your thoughts. Nice perspective to relate the seem-like abstract philosophy to our future career, says media technology, now that the name of our course is called "theory and method for media technology". Your conclusion match with what I thought, that everybody perceive the world differently as they recognize the world. Really like your post!
ReplyDeleteGreat reflection! I think it's really cool that this themes reading actually changed your point of view on objectivity. Also, I really liked the bit: "The argumentation goes that we see with our mind, and not objectively with our eyes. Thus we all perceive things differently, and therefore cannot understand the world as it is without tainting it with our own opinions." - A nice brief summary.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked the fact that you tried to connect the texts of this theme to our field of study, which if I'm not mistaken is not a formal part of the reflective task but still very important. It made for a nice ending to the text and made it more interesting to read. "If one would relate this to our field within media technology..."
Hello Ellinor!
ReplyDeleteI must agree with the other commentators, great reflection! When reading your reflection I felt that you explain the core thoughts that this theme is about! It was also nice to hear that you perspective on objectiveness has changed because of the literature, as well as your parallells to our field of research. Personally I haven't reflected anything about the content of the course so far in relation to to the field of which we are studying, your post reminds me that this might be a good idea on the rest of the reflections! :)
Thank you for sharing your excellent thoughts!
Are you sure about what you said in the fourth paragraph? Do you think that your statement "Plato argues that we can and should ignore [our senses] in order to see the world as it is » is right? Because I have the impression that we can’t ignore our senses, they are a part of us. Therefore we can’t see the world as it is, because only God can do it and we are not Him.
ReplyDeleteFor me, this question about objectivity is really tricky. Because, at first you have to define what is objectivity. Is it ignoring our senses and our subjectivity to see the world in itself? or is it taking into account scientific methods/rules and not taking care of our own opinion? A definition has to be found before any discussion. I think it a way to have a guideline and not to go to the wrong way answering maybe non-sense questions.
But like you, I don’t have THE answer and maybe you’re right there is no really ONE answer to philosophical question.
I like your reflection. It seems that you have really taken the time to reflect on what we have learned and more importantly why. You have summarized this theme very well by using a structure that makes it easy to follow how your thoughts and opinions have developed. I agree with you on that there are never any real answers when it comes to the topics of Theme 1. And if we can or can't be objective is definitely a head-scratcher. I don't believe that someone can be completely objective since we all have a subconsciousness as you say. But then what is objective enough?
ReplyDeleteI liked your connection of this theme to our field! Something I myself didn't think about doing at all and could try to do for the next theme.
It was an interesting take on the articles we read applying them to media technology, because as you stated, on first impression it all seems rather abstract and far from direct application to everyday life. Still, the distinction between a priori and a posteriori is one that I have found to not only be relevant within an academic context, but also in more practical professional application - that is, it forces us to consider where and how we have obtained the knowledge that we so often take for granted.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you put in effort to compare the given theories on empiricism. Your reflections, in general, really transfer that you thought about the philosophies of Kant and Plato quite a bit and did not just list what was spoken in he seminar. Well done! I also appreciate that you put the week's topic in relation to your field of study. It is indeed a fabulous idea and I will now start to reflect about this too.
ReplyDeleteYour statement on objectivity got me thinking about my stance on this: I actually think that Kant believes in the ideal of objectivity. He generates it with the set up of his faculty of understanding and with this given ability to judge a priori, he actually found way to experience the world objectively.
Hello Ellinor!
ReplyDeleteGreat posts, I read the pre- and post reflection and I think you managed to summarize in a good way that was easy to understand. I agree that the texts were difficult at first and that the lecture and seminar helped out a lot!
I really liked this part: "One could say that there are as many worlds as there are people, since each and every one of us is the main character of our own story and perceive things from a first person view". I think you wrote it well and it's an interesting point of view. I also liked the part about objectivity and I agree that we use it in a slightly different way in our everyday life than the philosophers do. I guess we will never be completly objective, but we all use the term on the same conditions and with the same intention.
Keep up the good work!
Great reflection Ellinor!
ReplyDeleteThere was one thing I thought about a little differently where you write: "Kant argues exactly this, that we can’t be truly objective about things, so if we truly want to gain knowledge we have to “climb down from God’s point of view” and investigate objects as we see them.
As I see it, "God's point of view" is meant to be the truly objective view on the world, since we would need to be god (that is everything) to truly be able to perceive everything in the world. Our own senses and cognition limits us in comprehending the external reality that surrounds us and only allows us to sense some things (we can see, we can hear etc, but there are a lot of senses we don't have for example). We're also limited by our mind in how to interpret these objects in the external reality.
To me, this leads to what you say in the beginning, that we all have our own reality.