Philosophically, There Is A Necessary Nexus Between Being As The Object of Knowledge and Knowledge

American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) 2019
American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR)

e-ISSN :2378-703X
Volume-03, Issue-09, pp-63-66
www.ajhssr.com
Research Paper Open Access
PHILOSOPHICALLY, THERE ISANECESSARY

NEXUSBETWEEN BEINGAS THE OBJECT OF
KNOWLEDGEAND KNOWLEDGE
Dr. Dynesius Nyangau
(Humanities, Chuka University, Kenya)
Corresponding author: Dr. Dynesius Nyangau
ABSTRACT: This paper looks at the question of validity and justification of knowledge from the perspective
that without being there can be no knowledge in the first place. It advances an argument that being is a condition
sine qua non for any knowledge’s theory. The paper looks through problem under investigation through Kantian
epistemology as contained largely his Critique of Pure Reason which is adequate response and resounding
agreement and disagreement with the rationalists in their assertions and negations.
Keywords- Being, Empiricism, Knowledge, Object, Rationalism, Subject.
I. INTRODUCTION
This paper proceeds by looking at the response offered to the irreconcilable differences between the
empiricists and the rationalists as contained in the Critiques of Pure Reason authored by Kant. After
acknowledging and bringing to the fore the critical issues contained in the analysis by Kant in which he both
agrees with the assertions and disagrees with both in their negations, it goes further and uniquely advances the
view that the knowledge that we actually seek to validate depends on the existence of being in the first place.
II. KANT’S CONTRIBUTION AND SIGNIFICANCE

Through his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant aimed at addressing the epistemological challenge posed by
empiricism and rationalism. In line with the philosophical principle nihil est in intellectu nisi prius in sensibus
fuerat meaning that nothing is in the intellect unless it was first received or facilitated by the senses (Aristotle),
Kant’s begins his epistemic questioning with the matters either experienced or observed. Kant notably agrees
with both the empiricists who assert that knowledge is aposteriori and rationalists who hold that knowledge is
apriori. He further disagrees with both the rationalists and empiricists in what they negate, he affirms that the
rationalists were wrong to deny that knowledge cannot be acquire aposteriori and equally disagrees with the
rationalists in holding that knowledge cannot be apriori.
Apriori understanding not only comprises metaphysics but also all expertise, such as psychology and
metaphysics, which is autonomous of experience. This implies that the non-material beings are also apriori. The
idea that pure elements of expertise are valid can be explained by saying that in transcendental deductions and
critiques they make ordinary empirical experiences possible. Something possible must meet the conditions
required for its existence, in other words, it must have sufficient conditions for it to be.
Questioning how a thing is an attempt to understand how it exists, interpret and relate to its occurrence.
This can be achieved by first showing or highlighting observable real events to demonstrate that these
occurrences require interpretation and then contend for the finest possible answer. Once we have excellent
reasons to accept some reasoning, we can derive logical findings from our theoretical ideas.
Knowledge should and always be the climax and the apex of intuitions and ideas and the collaboration
between sense and comprehension, which is needed as such. This is affirmed by Hartnack when he opines as
follows:
AJHSSR Journal P a g e | 63
What is not conceptualized (that is, not understood through concept means), and does not emerge in time and
space, does not, as Kant suggests, satisfy the needed requirements of being known. It cannot only be thought
and understood (and hence not conversed about); it cannot even be said to exist.
Hartnack alludes to the fact that according to Kant knowledge must be of something that exists and
confirming the necessary nexus between epistemology and metaphysics, and as we saw earlier the denial of the
possibility of metaphysics by Kant as he has been understood by some scholars is apparent. We have also seen
that there are some abstract ideas, which do not occur from knowledge outcomes, but rather from circumstances
of knowledge. Strawson says the following in regards to this:
It is as if there is no manner to instantiate thoughts in your knowledge except if you are aware of your
cases in moment and room. As a result time and room are merely types of a person's sensitivity that are regarded
in us as an individual aware of multiple items that can be introduced into ideas.
III. EXISTENCE PRECEDES KNOWLEDGE

Thought with no content is hollow and; intuition with no concept is visionless (Gedanken ohne inhalt
sind leer; auschauungen ohne begriffe sind blind.) This statement asserts the contrast between intuition and
concept but their difference establishes a unified whole when the process of knowing is undertaken. This implies
that understanding is a mixture of ideas and intuitions. One may not claim to have knowledge in the absence of
either thoughts or intuitions. If we think without content, we examine ideas, and yet we understand that learning
includes something that happens and that the sensations provide. As stated bellow, our knowledge results from
existence of being:
Two different perception modes: causal efficacy and presentational immediacy. Presentational
immediacy is focused on the perceptions of the elements of senses such as size, colour, and shape. The term
presentational immediacy is used about the immediate impression of the contemporary outside world via which
a person’s causal efficacy and senses give a picture of objects as affecting him or her or in other words, and it
gives the person a general sense of existence. What we do not fully understand, however, in the causal efficacy.
Thinking is not equivalent to knowing because it is possible to think without content and cannot say
that we understand, it's wrong to take the perspective we understand by simply imagining. Although the
emotions are not thinking, the perception is sensitive, an aesthetic and a logical interpretation must develop
knowledge, because neither of them is capable of producing only knowledge. The role of positive sciences is
implied when we talk at the level of knowing as distinguished from thinking as an activity.
Without a synthesis of what has been received temporally and conceptually, it would be unimaginable
to think of knowledge. We can claim that through sensibility and comprehension we are willing to understand
through intuition and reflection; moreover we can tell that it also involves and inherently also proves the
presence of what we know every moment we speak about knowing. It is never an option to negate the existence
of the known.
To think or to intuit is never exclusively applicable and no epistemologist worth their salt in the modern
day may hold such a view without being unfair to the analysis made herein. This does not imply that one is
secondary than neither intuition nor thinking is superior to the other. Both are essential for the reason that neither
of them on their own without the aid of another can yield to knowledge. Wisdom comprises intuitions and ideas
of room, moment and categories, or their mere shapes.
There being no unique differentiation between responsiveness and comprehension, it calls for a deeper
reflection to justify the possibility of knowledge. The separation of the two faculties is for the purpose of
systematically and critically examining what is received through sensibility and what is intuited. In practice it
may not always be the case that one faculty is exclusively useful in resolving challenges in life that require
human knowledge to address.
IV. A PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION OF WHETHER KNOWLEDGE CAN BE

ACHIEVED BY UNDERSTANDING HOW THE SUBJECT RELATES WITH THE OBJECT
The relationship between the object of knowledge and the subject remains central if we must find that
which we can present as justified true belief. We must then find the components of knowledge-situation with
respect to subjective and objective knowledge. The theory of representative found considerable support among
other philosophers who used it to advance Critical Realism.
One may hold that that in the absence of the observational perceiver and active awareness in the object
perceived, the object of perception would be as good as moot and existentially valueless, which may not be
entirely without merit or value if examined critically. The question therefore is, can an object exist or claim to
exist without some kind of mental animadversion? Answering this question in the affirmative or negative would
raise critical and worth philosophical issues worth our attention.
Is it possible to make sense or ascribe a description to something completely unperceivable? What
would be the reality, nature and configuration of that something in the overall scheme of epistemological
pursuit? Conceding that something cannot exist or subsist in the absence of our noticing it would further lead to
the question of who creates an object and confers on it an independent objective existence. Regardless of how
unique our apprehension of a thing may be, it may not in itself be responsible for the coming about of the
apprehended thing, meaning that things are independent of our perception of them.
The question then is, how we come to make any sense of the things that independently exist without our
inquiring mind? The existence of things must ultimately be determined by man even where his subjective
judgmental capabilities are employed; meaning that they at least in a sense derives their meaning, status and
sense from the observing, apprehending and cognizing mind. Subjectivism focuses on the topic of understanding
and assigns to the item all apparent or cognized attributes.
The content and the object cannot be identical even though there exists an intimate relation, especially
since we cannot deny that the sense data, the constitutive element of the content, acquires its reality and origin
from the object sensed. If there is no sensation, no data or content is available. We have to acknowledge this
logical fact that the object precedes the data that is ultimately educed from it.
V. EXAMINING THE NEXUS BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND BEING

By dividing reality into noumena and phenomena, Kant introduces a new and unique way in finding
ground for justification of knowledge. As explained by him reality is at two levels, reality as it is intself
(noumena) and reality as it appears to the knower (phenomena). Whatever that is contained in the universe and
which is what is knowable to us, does not become known as that which exists without the mind that knows it.
This implies that the things we think belong in the globe constitute a true portion of our personal knowledge but
do not occur apart from that personal knowledge and do not transcend our thoughts. The noumena according to
Kant is transcendentally real, exist in and of itself and neither experienced directly nor indirectly.
According to Kant, noumena are classifications of mind and their arrangement lead to phenomenal
objects, where they relate to reality. Phenomenal objects do not constitute analogues, copies, representations or
anything similar to the noumena because the noumena causes phenomena but does not resemble them in any
way. Kant rightly held that in claiming that the effect can be completely unlike the cause. That is like the mind
interacting somehow with noumena, but Kant believes that noumena is never immediately experienced by the
mind.
With the understanding of noumena as reality and phenomena as the world we experience, it must thus
be concluded that we never get past our experience to reality as it is in itself. It can also be logically concluded
that truth is found in the noumena since that is reality. Postmodernists on their part and to their credit have
argued that since we Kant say anything about the noumena, we ought to completely ignore it. Kant asserted the
existence of the noumena without offering a justification of its existence. Postmodernists argue that we should
just get rid of this extra luggage and concentrate exclusively on what we experience.
The synthetic division of perception and perception itself is so far from comparable with the internal
feeling that the latter can be applied preferably to all reasonable intuitions of items and to the many intuitions, by
the title of organizations, as the source of all combinations; on the other side, inner meaning includes the pure
type of intuition without a total and has no certain intuition and this can only be achieved by knowing the
concept of the manifold through the transcendental intervention of fantasy.
Epistemology as we have seen earlier is the study of knowledge, what knowledge is, how it is justified,
and what we can know and how. Questions in epistemology include but are not limited to the following: What
constitutes knowledge? To which the standard response is knowledge is justified true belief. Is there a certain
foundation on which to build our knowledge or is all knowledge relative or uncertain? Do we perceive things as
they are (direct realism), some kind of sense-data that is immediately related to how (indirect reality) situations
are, or perhaps only mental representations (idealism)? Metaphysics, on the other hand, is a study of what exists
as such.
Epistemology seeks to address the question of what we know while metaphysics simply studies all that
is as long as existence is affirmed and this does not exclude our own process of knowing. In other words, the
application of metaphysics includes all that epistemology studies while the converse is not the case since
epistemology on its part is limited in method and scope. As explained in the Critique, the synthetic division of
perception and perception itself is so far from comparable with the internal feeling that the latter can be applied
preferably to all reasonable intuitions of items and to the many intuitions, by the title of organizations, as the
source of all combinations; on the other side, inner meaning includes the pure type of intuition without a total
and has no certain intuition and this can only be achieved by knowing the concept of the manifold through the
transcendental intervention of fantasy.
The perceived or experienced objects of the world arise out of a combination of the data that belong to
them alone and our way of representing that data as seen in the categories of time and space which is our way of
representing what exists. According to Kant, all the basic metaphysical ideas such as meaning or cause are
actually intrinsic in our aspects of arranging knowledge.
Restricting all our possible comprehension to the world of appearances, implies that that which appears
and whose basis we then articulate what later becomes part of human knowledge is indeed affirming existence of
the known and further confirming its existence and its necessary nexus to knowledge which is only an end
product and a beginning of being.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper philosophically argues that it is impossible to attain knowledge without the existence of the
object of knowledge. It concludes that there is an undeniable necessarily relationship between being and any
theory of knowledge because any knowledge would always be knowledge of being. Knowledge and being are
therefore interrelated and interdependent, and that being on which knowledge depends indeed include the
knower or the thinker. The paper focus the possibility of knowledge and its justification beyond the discussion
about subject object relationship of the affirmation of the empiricists or rationalists by asserting an equally new
and unique approach which is the thesis that all knowledge is always about being.
REFERENCES
[1] Justus Hartnack, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: An Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. M.
Holmes Hartshorne (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001),28-29.
[2] Ibid., p. 144.
[3] Peter Fredrick Strawson, The Bounds of Sense: On Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (London: Routledge,
1966), 20.
[4] Dynesius Nyangau, “A Metaphysical Approach to Environmental Sustainability: Alfred North
Whitehead's Process Philosophy” (M. A., University of Nairobi, 2016), 70-71.
[5] Fredrick Coplestone, A History of Philosophy, Vol. VI (New York: Image Books, 1964), 63-78.
[6] Ibid, 96-100.
[7] Hoffe Otfried, Immanuel Kant, trans. Marshall Farrier (New York: State University of New York Press,
1994), 54.
[8] Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, (Hamburg: Jens Timmermann, 1781), 194-195. Quoted from
orinila Germany text. “Die Apperzeption und deren synthetische Einheit ist mit dem inneren Sinne so gar
nicht einerlei, daß jene vielmehr, als der Quell aller Verbindung, auf das Mannigfaltige der
Anschauungen überhaupt unter dem Namen der Kategorien, vor aller sinnlichen Anschauung auf Objekte
überhaupt geht; dagegen der innere Sinn die bloße Form der Anschauung, aber ohne Verbindung des
Mannigfaltigen in derselben, mithin noch gar keine bestimmte Anschauung enthält, welche nur durch das
Bewußtsein der Be-stimmung desselben durch die transzendentale Handlung der Einbildungskraft”
[9] KantImmanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 194-195. From German text, “Da dieses Verfahren nun eine
wirkliche Erkenntnis a priori gibt, die einen sichern und nützlichen Fortgang hat, so erschleicht die
Vernunft, ohne es selbst zu merken, unter dieser Vorspiegelung Behauptungen von ganz anderer Art”

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) 2019

American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR)

PHILOSOPHICALLY, THERE ISANECESSARY

Keywords- Being, Empiricism, Knowledge, Object, Rationalism, Subject.

II. KANT’S CONTRIBUTION AND SIGNIFICANCE

III. EXISTENCE PRECEDES KNOWLEDGE

IV. A PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION OF WHETHER KNOWLEDGE CAN BE

V. EXAMINING THE NEXUS BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND BEING

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