Antonio asked:

Could you explain with an example how Kant understands space and time?

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One of the things that sticks in people's minds about Kant's philosophy is the idea that space and
time are merely ways in which we perceive the world, the idea that the world in itself is neither in
space or in time. It seems almost as if he believes that inside the human mind is something like
spectacles, which force us to experience things in the way that we do. The spectacles make things
lookas if they are in space. The spectacles make our experiences seemto happen in time.

If that were true, then one might speculate what would happen if we could succeed in removing our
spatio-temporal spectacles. According to Kant, however, the very idea that we could see things 'as
they are in themselves' is absurd.

What is characteristic about the human situation, or indeed the situation of any finite beings, is that
we have to piece together a theory of the world from bits and pieces of evidence based on what is
given to us in perception. Kant provides some compelling arguments why our experiences must be
structured in certain ways in order to make any sense at all. Time is the 'form' in which experiences
come to us, space is the 'form' in which we build up a picture or theory of a world outside our own
minds.

In reality, there doesn't have to beany time, in order for human experience to exhibit a time order,
there doesn't have to beany space, in order for human beings to interpret their experiences as the
perception of objects in space.

Here's an example from science fiction which illustrates Kant's view of space. The film, The Matrix,is
based on this idea. In the film, computer scientists of the future have succeeded in writing a program
which accurately models a spatial world and the people who inhabit it. The program not only
describes their movements and speech, but also their experiences and thoughts. The individuals
contained in the program are not merely pictures or representations of people, they arepeople. They
perceive a 'real' world of objects in space, and other people moving about and communicating with
them. In reality, they, and their world are nothing more than electrical currents going round the circuits
of a supercomputer.

This is fantastical. But it is not a lot less fantastical than the idea that one day a supercomputer might
be programmed with 'artificial intelligence'.

Kant argued that it is impossible to provide a rational proof of the existence of God. But he does talk
of what God would be like, if he existed. God sees the whole of reality by 'intuitive perception'. We
have to piece together a picture of the universe. God sees everything all at once. So God doesn't
'see' the space and time that we see. What he sees is the unknown 'something', the Matrix, which
causes us to see things in space and time.

Geoffrey Klempner