Apart from reading the assigned literature I spent some time reading up on Kurt Gödels work on the subject of incommensurables, mainly wikipedia, and took some time to read about Bertrand Russels ideas on solipsism. My main question for the seminar was what Gödels incompleteness theorems implied for the acquirement of knowledge. My initial thought was that the theorems works best with a solipsist world view but my understanding of Kants transcendentalism has since improved and I am not really leaning towards anything at the moment. Reading the Plato dialogue and the Preface to Kants critique of pure reason was really interesting. I've spent time before thinking of these issues but have not read these texts. Kants transcendentalism is a great perspective of knowledge, yet quite hard to grasp. Before the seminar I had kind of grasped the idea, but it wasn't until the middle of the seminar that I felt more confident about the concepts. Both expressing my own thoughts and listening to what others had contemplated contributed a great deal to my understanding of Kants theory.
I really enjoy thinking of these greater philosophical questions and I know that my new understanding of theory of knowledge will influence both my everyday and my scientific thinking. Above all I have learned that the way we interpret knowledge will influence the way we look at science and its discoveries. I am interested in human perception and I think that the way one looks upon knowledge can be quite important for setting the grounds, so to speak, for research in that area. I believe I will have that in mind when reading articles on perception and possibly when "designing" my master thesis.
In the seminar I tried to participate as much as possible since I find this topic really interesting and have a lot of thoughts to express. I believe that I contributed with some ideas that others had not thought of and could fill in where some of the ideas posted lacked or needed clarification by example. I hope that most people in the seminar understood my question regarding Gödel. I tried to explain his theorems and my thought of the connection between solipsism, Kant and Gödel. I also made some efforts to concretize and look upon these questions from a more technical or mathematical point of view which was really interesting for me since I hadn't gathered my thoughts on this before the seminar but rather found them during the seminar. I think and hope that others found that to contribute to their understanding of this topic.
Throughout this week I have learned to conceptualize and distinguish; knowledge, perception, truth, empiricism, transcendentalism; and some implications for different interpretation of these concepts. What is astounding to me is how important these concepts are for the understanding of science.
Hi Andreas,
SvaraRaderaI consider it very fun and interesting that you during the seminar gather your thoughts or coming up with new ideas or approaches. I also work like this, its often I go to a seminar with my own thoughts sorted out. And then when you hear other discussing you come up with new thoughts. That we listen at our classmate’s thoughts during the seminars and hear other interpretations makes us perceive things in other kind of ways, which also definitely comes along with this theme as well.
Very good written reflection! You say that you have though a lot about how people see knowledge and I have also thought about it and one thing that popped into my head was how do you think the perception differs from KTH student and SSE (handelshögskolan) students for example?
SvaraRadera