Immanuel Kant

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asked 5 years ago

Hello Rabbi!
This is Nathaniel Miller from Ma’ale Gilboa Yeshiva.
I would be happy if you could answer a small question for me.
I recently read your book God Plays Dice and I wanted to know how you relate to Immanuel Kant’s position that says we cannot prove anything beyond time/space/… because of our limited cognitive perception.
Because if we accept this view, all the proofs for the existence of a higher power in the book and in general lose their force.
If you don’t accept the concept, I would be happy for you to explain why, and if so, how does it work out?
thanks

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מיכי Staff answered 5 years ago

Too general a question. Kant also argued for the existence of the thing itself, which is beyond our perception (this is Zeitlin’s criticism). We have claims and even proofs for many things that are beyond our perception (such as the laws of nature and theoretical entities, none of which are perceived directly but through implications, and from the implications we learn about the thing. Thus we learn from the implications, i.e. the world, about the God who created it). We cannot see and perceive things except within our conceptual and cognitive framework. But there is no obstacle to concluding about the existence of other things beyond these frameworks.

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י replied 5 years ago

Is there perhaps a connection to the challenge to the cosmological view that it is impossible to learn about things before time was created?

מיכי Staff replied 5 years ago

I didn't understand. Maybe you mean another argument I brought from Geffen, that if time is a human category and does not exist in reality, then there is no question of the antiquity of the world. And I rejected that and said that even if time was created with man, now that he puts on these glasses he can also look through them into the past.