Question

According to Kant, time is a pure intuition, meaning (in part) that its existence depends on the nature of human cognition. According to this doctrine, Other beings could in principle not experience time though they live in our universe. There are other accounts of time as well which attack the idea of time as an independent physical reality and make it something else. I find that I am unable even to grasp what it would mean for these sorts of things to be true.

It's not the same with space. Space is another pure intuition according to Kant, and in the case of space, I believe I can at least grasp the concept that space is just how humans intuit the relationships between objects. Other sorts of beings might have very different intuitions of space. Imagine, for example, a blind creature who lives in water and can't swim but can only crawl along the bottom. Such a being might detect objects through sound. What we see as distance, this being hears as volume. Horizontal angle might correspond to what we hear as differences in tone such as the difference in tone between a guitar and a saxophone playing the same notes. Distance above the surface might be represented by pitch. This being could understand position and motion as a theater of sound, having no sense of space as we understand it.

However, the creature would have to have a sense of time similar to ours. It has to recognize that events happen in order, and that there is no going back to a previous event. And the creature would have to have a sense that there are future events that must be prepared for (such as the approach of a predator). How else could it interact with the world? Or, taking seriously the notion that time is a pure intuition, how else could the creature interact with the temporal universe that humans experience in a way that is rational and leads to survival?

The notion of a sequence of events that plods on incessantly, with no possibility of going back or stopping or hurrying forward, and with the need to react to what is coming in the future, based on what is learned from what happened in the past--that's what time is. How could any creature exist in our universe without sensing that in roughly the same way we do?

Answer 1

Kant's conception of time as a pure intuition asserts that it is shaped by human cognition, and empirical knowledge is limited by our inherent perceptual categories. His ideas have later been expanded with Einstein's theory of spacetime. The speculation on how different beings might perceive time challenges Kant's assertions but is ultimately bound by our cognitive framework.

Step-by-step explanation:

Immanuel Kant’s perspective on time posits it as a pure intuition, integral to human cognition rather than a standalone entity in the physical world. This complex notion suggests that time might not exist for other beings as it does for humans, and he extends this framework to space as well. Kant argues that our experiences and understanding of the world are shaped by innate categories of thought, including concepts of time and space, which govern how we synthesize empirical data.

Moreover, through Kant's argument combining rationalism and empiricism, he concludes that humans can never attain knowledge of objects as they truly are, due to the constraints imposed by our sensory and intellectual apparatus. Kant's philosophical legacy was nuanced by Einstein's revelation that space and time are interwoven into spacetime, challenging the classical Newtonian view that they are distinct absolutes. The idea of a creature experiencing the world without a human-like perception of time raises questions about Kant's assertions. While we may speculate on such possibilities, Kant insists that human cognition inevitably imparts a structure on our experiences, suggesting that alternative forms of temporal understanding, if they exist, might be fundamentally beyond our grasp or may align with our own cognitive intuitions to a degree necessary for survival.