Reality: Section E

• What does Kant mean that we "Constitute" our world? Are there other ways to "Constitute" the world according to Kant?

"We constitute our  own experience in the sense that we provide the rules and structures according to which we experience objects, as objects in space and time, as governed by the laws of nature and relations of cause and effect. Kant writes, 'the understanding does not derive its laws from, but prescribes then to,nature.'" (Solomon et al, 231) This is Kant's understanding of how we constitute our world, or in other words, how we make it a whole. Kant suggests that we make sense of everything by imposing rules upon it, in a sense we are constructing our own reality, "reality has no existence that we can understand except as we constitute it through our basic concepts." (Solomon et al 231) Philosopher before Kant had a differently philosophy asking, "How can we know that our ideas correspond with the way the world really is?" , or in other words, how can we know if our vision of the world/ reality are true? Kant rejects this way of thinking, instead asking, "How do our ideas constitute the world?" (Solomon et al, 231) As such, it can be suggested that Kant's main philosophy was that our reality is merely a perception of what we believe to be reality.