Friday, 30 September 2016

Theme 5, Blog Post 1: Design Research 

1. By definition empirical data is data acquired through the senses, thought experience and experimentation. Therefore, Fernaeus and Tholander acquire empirical data in the form of observations of children’s interaction with the experimental design in “tangible programming space”, whereas Lundström gathers empirical data through a trial-and-error practical design exploration.

2. I believe it can be considered “knowledge contribution”, perhaps even more so than quantitative and qualitative research, I would say, because it is practical and as such explores the real world hands-on, through actual experience and every mistake helps the researchers learn and guides them in the right direction, even if they still have a long way to go.

3. The choice of design intentions is… well, intentional depending on the goal of the researchers. In both readings on the theme, the research revolves around the user experience of a piece of technology – the children and the electric car driver. In both cases, the design intentions are aimed at improving the design (in general) of the technology being researched for the benefit of the user.

4. If I understand the question correctly, I would say it is replicable. Innovation in technology is never-ending and improvements can vary – from insignificant to huge. Therefore, one might think it would be useful to conduct new research on a more recent, yet negligible, technological improvement, using “old” tools or to research an “old” improvement using new tools, or exploring small new improvements with the help of new tools.  

5. I think an important difference between design research and other research practices is that the former is open about its subjectivity and its aim for a certain outcome, as well as about the reasons behind this subjectivity, whereas the latter usually strives to be as impartial as possible and to avoid skewing the information towards a desired result.     

Monday, 26 September 2016

Theme 3, Blog Post 2: Research and Theory 


The lecture and seminar helped me consider the different definitions of theory. To me the most important one of them is also the most common – theory as a hypothesis, a speculative or unproven assumption. Its significance, in my opinion, stems from it being a challenge, a drive for the production of knowledge. Theories help produce knowledge by motivating academics and scientists to test them. Regardless of whether e theory turns out to be true or false, new knowledge is produced. In the seminar, however, we discussed that theories have authority until they are disproven by new research or replaced by other theories. But even then they remain valuable.

In relation to that we discussed that the words “fact”, “proof” or “truth” should not be used in relation to theories, because we constantly produce knowledge about the world around us and, at the same time, there is so much left to be discovered, that a theory can be bettered at any time.

In the lecture, we talked about how concepts are not in themselves theories but can together serve as an explanatory theoretical framework. For instance, in my Bacherlor’s thesis I wrote about the social unrest in the UK because of the, then, forthcoming opening of the British labour market for Bulgarian and Romanian citizens on January 1st, 2014. My aim was to prove that this social unrest was a moral panic – unfounded, irrational fear fueled by the right-wing media and politicians in the country. So I used (among others) the sociological concept of moral panic along with the concept of dehumanization of “the other” as theoretical framework for my research.

A tested theory that is supported by empirical data, acquired through research, can also be used to confirm or disprove results from previous research, but more importantly, to come to new theories, make predictions about the future, produce knowledge by explaining new phenomena, the reasons behind them and the connection between them and expanding past research.



Friday, 23 September 2016

Theme 4, Blog Post 1: Quantitative research

My selected article is A study of content diversity in online citizen journalism and online newspaper articles by Serena Carpenter. It was published in 2010 in New Media & Society (Impact Factor of 3,110).
In her work, Carpenter uses quantitative content analysis (QCA) to study the diversity of topics and the use of hyperlinks and additional attributes, such as photos, videos and graphs, in online citizen journalism and newspaper articles in the United States. The corpus of the study consists of 962 online articles (480 newspaper and 482 citizen journalism articles) published by regional newspapers and citizen journalism websites for a period of 1 month.
QCA aims to “identify and count the occurrence of specified characteristics or dimensions of texts, and, through this, to be able to say something about the messages, images, representations of such texts and their wider social significance” (Hansen and Machin, 2013:85).
According to Hansen and Machin, it is “particularly well suited for revealing trends and patterns in […] large quantities of communication”. Such large quantities, I think, are important, when one is trying to provide a wide and somewhat detailed view of the diversity of online newspaper and citizen journalism coverage, as is the aim of my chosen article.  
The method is also “highly flexible and adaptable [and] easy to use” (Hansen and Machin, 2013:85). It is also preferable to qualitative methods, when one is personally involved in the topic they are researching, because it removes the possibility of one’s personal bias affecting the research results, whereas qualitative methods are based on one’s “[assessment of] the data through their own subjectivities” (Thody, 2006:143).    
QCA’s claim to objectivity, however, is a bit problematic, I think, because, as we established in Theme 1, there is no such thing as objective knowledge and objective perception. Moreover, it does not allow for in-depth analyses of media content. Or, as Hansen and Machin put it, QCA “does not analyze everything there is to analyze in a text (no method could, nor would there be any purpose in trying)” (2013:88).
One thing I think is problematic with this study is that it is too ambitious and yet fails to serve its purpose. I don’t think a corpus of 962 articles published for a period of 1 month is enough to provide an adequate picture of the diversity in online newspaper and citizen journalism coverage in the whole of the United States.
Moreover, as the author admits, the fact that the websites that were researched are focused on geographic areas is a serious limitation. Perhaps she should have focused on one particular state and picked a longer time period for her research to make it more manageable and representative. 

Or she should have gone big and looked at a number of national newspaper websites, because those have much larger readerships and, I think, are the ones that have a real impact on readers and the society in general. Hense, their content diversity is much more important and representative of content diversity in the whole of the United States.  
Sources:
  • Thody, A. (2006) Writing and Presenting Research, London: Sage
  • Hansen,  A.  and  Machin,  D.  (2013) Media  &  Communication  Research  Methods, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan




Sunday, 18 September 2016

Theme 2, Blog Post 2: Critical Media Theory


In the lecture and seminar we talked about an aspect of the Enlightenment that I had not considered in my first blog post on theme. The Enlightenment was about expanding our knowledge and establishing a hierarchy of dominance over nature. However, the point I missed was that the Enlightenment backfired, as it actually created a new hierarchy and, thus, perpetuated inequality – the strong (ruling class) continued to oppress the weak (working class) in capitalist, as well as in fascist and communist societies.  

In my first blog post, I considered dialectic only as a method of discussion, without focusing on the dialectical concepts in Benjamins text. When applied to two opposing concepts, dialectic seeks to use the best of both in order to create something better – a painter describes the world in one way and a photographer – in another, but separately both fail to fill certain gaps. However, Benjamin suggests that if we combine the advantages of each of them, we could achieve a more complete picture of the world. This, it became clear in the seminar, is the epistemological view on dialectic.

However, we also talked about the ontological view – that there is a thesis and an antithesis, which, when combined, come to a synthesis, a sort of higher truth. According to Marx, history works in the same way. For instance, we have a capitalist society (the thesis). In opposition to it a revolution breaks out – the antithesis. As a result of both, ideally, a class-free society would emerge (the synthesis). However, not long after, this synthesis becomes a thesis, then another antithesis follows and then the cycle repeats itself. 

During the seminar I realized I had considered only one aspect of nominalism. I had overlooked Adorno and Holkheimers stance against it. When the Nazi party took power in Germany, the two turned against nominalism, because it eventually turned people into mere observers of the surrounding world and stopped making efforts to change society for the better. Here, in order to explain things to myself, I asked Henrik if this means that nominalism prevented the formation of an antithesis in society, a kind of opposition to Nazism. And he said "yes". 

When it comes to myth, in my initial blog post I had not considered Adorno and Holkheimer’s view of Enlightenment as myth in the sense that it too, like myth, does nothing more than reproduce already existing patterns and knowledge in nature and society and is, thus, useless. Just as the enactment of a hunting scene cannot influence the outcome of the actual hunt, people can only observe and reproduce, but not influence, the regularities in nature. Regardless of whether you choose an empirical or a rationalist approach to the question of 1 + 1 = ?, the answer is always 2, and if you get another answer to that question, it doesn’t mean that you’ve come to new knowledge, but that you’ve made a mistake.

This helped me understand why the Enlightenment didn’t deliver on its promises and actually perpetuated inequality – seeing that they were trapped in this cycle of constant reproduction of existing knowledge and models and that they could not change society, people just conformed to the norms of the system they lived in, be it capitalist, fascist or communist, and stopped fighting inequality and the ruling class. However, according to Adorno and Holkheimer, there is a way out of this cycle – the revival of the concept, which is a vision, created by people (with no equivalent in nature) that aims to make society better. 

One such example is the fight for LGTB people to have the same rights as heterosexuals (a positive concept). Funny though, how many other animal species exhibit homosexual, but not homophobic tendencies (homophobia being a negative concept). Maybe homophobia is another form, and the result, of our tendency to reproduce the hierarchy of dominance in nature – the strong lion preys on the weak gazelle; a homophobe oppresses an LGBT person? Only the lion eats the gazelle to survive, whereas the homophobe oppresses the LGBT person to feel more superior, which is a matter for psychology to resolve. But I think it's worth some thought.

With regard to the revolutionary potentials of culture, neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony (which I discussed before the seminar, while writing my first blog post on Theme 3, as well as in the seminar) sort of “came to the rescue” and provided more in-depth understanding of Adorno and Holkheimer’s skepticism. Gramsci, who died several years before the two Germans fled to the USA, argues that the ruling class doesn’t attempt to smother acts of resistance, but rather gives them just enough space to create the illusion that opposing or radical views are allowed, and contains and, sort of, “disarms” those views so that they have no consequences for the status quo.

The concept of hegemony, I think, adds to Adorno and Holkheimer’s argument that popular culture distracts people from the important societal matters and creates “false needs”, as even those who are not distracted and see the issues in society, are kept powerless by being allowed to disagree only to a point where they think they have some authority and impact, which, in fact, they don’t.      

Friday, 16 September 2016

Theme 3, Blog Post 1: Research and Theory


According to Sutton and Staw, theory is the answer to the question “Why?” Theory aims to establish a connection between phenomena and to explain why acts, events, structures and thoughts occur, as well as why they occur at a particular moment and in a particular sequence. Gregor adds a looser definition of theory – “a mental view”, a “contemplation” or an idea of how something should be executed. In that sense, theory is something that enriches and/or tries to enrich our comprehension of the surrounding world. To do so, it has to rest on a traceable logic, otherwise our understanding will not be complete. 


To understand what theory is, it’s also important to at least briefly explain its aims. Gregor distinguishes between 5 types of theory based on their goal:
  • Theory for Analyzing – Describes and analyzes a phenomenon, but not its causal relationships to other phenomena. It makes no predictions. Answers the question “What is?”;
  • Theory for Explaining – Explains a phenomenon and the reasons behind it. Answers the questions “What is?”, “When?” and “Where?”, but mainly “How?” and “Why?” Makes no predictions;
  • Theory for Predicting – Aims to predict a phenomenon and/or its outcomes, but doesn’t state the reasons behind them, nor does it explain in detail the causal relationships between variables. Contains testable propositions;
  • Theory for Explaining and Predicting – Aims to predict a phenomenon and/or its outcomes and states the reasons behind them. Explains the causal relationships between variables. Contains testable propositions;
  • Theory for Design and Action – States how something should be done; gives directions (methods, techniques, etc.).
Theory, Sutton and Staw argue, is NOT: 
  • A list of references with no explanation of the authors' concepts and arguments and how those relate to the theory that is being constructed or tested;
  • Data with not explanation of what it suggests and why it is important (why it has been or will be observed);
  • Diagrams that don't show causal relationships and/or how a process unfolds over time, and are not accompanied by an explanation of their importance; 
  • A list of variables and constructs with no explanation of the reasons behind them or the connection between them.
  • A hypothesis and/or prediction with no statement of the reasons something is expected to occur.

My journal of choice is New Media & Society (Impact Factor of 3,110). It has been around since 1999 and publishes research in communication, media, cultural and political studies, sociology and anthropology, among other fields.

The article I have chosen (Cooperation with the corporation? CNN and the hegemonic cooptation of citizen journalism through iReport.com by Farooq A. Kperogi) is one I read while doing my Bachelor’s degree in Journalism. I chose it because at the time it made a strong impression on me and because now I want to challenge myself and my initial perception of it and see whether, having read the two articles on the theme, I will view it differently, especially since I have to be critical of it in this blog post.

In this article, Kperogi is using qualitative content analysis to examine CNN’s online platform for citizen journalism, iReport, for a period of 1 month, between April and May 2008. He refers to Marxist theory, and more specifically, to Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony to explain: 
  • How the CNN strategically pretends to "negate the canons of journalistic orthodoxy" (p.324) and agree on a seemingly egalitarian definition of what constitutes news (“it’s just something that happens someplace to someone. Whether that something is newsworthy mostly depends on who it affects – and who’s making the decision. On iReport.com, that is you!” (iReport's "About us" page quoted in Kperogi, p.319)), while at the same time retains, and even enhances, its authority to decide what qualifies as news by choosing what user-generated material to use in its newscasts. Moreover, Kperogi examines the "Assignment Desk" section on the iReport website, "where CNN producers list topics for 'iReporters' to invstigate and report", thus, "[setting] the agenda for citizen journalists" (p.321);
  • Why citizens voluntarily supply the CNN with free content, which the corporation generates profit from; and how, through iReport, the CNN gains access to a “a mine of free labor from all over the world” (p. 321). Kperogi points out that after he conducted the study, until shortly before the publishing of his research, citizens had generated over 200 000 news videos on iReport. 
On these two points, Kperogi refers to Gramsci’s theory that in capitalist societies the ruling class maintains its hegemony by manipulating the working class into believing its (the working class’s) values are “the ‘common sense’ values of all” (p.323). As a result, the subordinate groups are blissfully unaware of, and consent to, their subordination. 
  • How the CNN maintains the illusion of giving authority to the subordinate classes by allowing “resistance” in the form of more radical views and criticism against itself and the dominant class to be expressed on iReport. Here Kperogi argues that the CNN maintains its hegemony not by smothering the opposition, but by carefully containing it.  

In that sense I think Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is of the explanatory type – it explains how the dominant class maintains its authority, how the subordinate classes are kept subordinate and why they reconcile with their subordination. It also provides an in-depth understanding of the relations between the ruling and the working class and their values. It does not, however, offer a way out of the position of subordination, nor does it give any predictions about how far the ruling class might go in its manipulations, nor what the latter might result in in the long run. 

Monday, 12 September 2016

Theme 1, Blog Post 2: Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science


Reading Plato and Kant was my first “close encounter” with philosophy and as such it was a very difficult one. Even after the lecture things were not as clear as I had hoped, so before the seminar I once again turned to Martin Heidegger’s Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and also to Jonathan Bennett’s website earlymoderntexts.com. The readings for the second theme were very useful as well, because they helped me see the relevance of Kant’s work in a more “recent” (20th century) context.  

In our seminar group we talked about whether we can know the world as it is in itself or “detach” ourselves from who we are as individuals – from our race, gender, nationality, sexuality, upbringing, previous experiences, etc – and look at the world as objectively as humanly possible. I expressed the opinion that pondering what the world is in itself is pondering what it would be like if there were no living things to experience it, in which case there would be no one asking these questions. In other words, it's pointless.
I think we can only try to imagine how we would perceive the world if we were of the opposite sex, of a different race, nationality or sexuality, if we were brought up differently – these aspects of our identity may vary and, thus, our perception might vary with them, but they would nonetheless influence how we experience the world. I agree with Kant's argument that there is no knowledge of the world that is independent of our experience of it. The world is, in fact, what we experience it and different people do so differently, which I think is good, because each of us adds to, or picks up from, it a different nuance, making it more diverse and colorful.
We also discussed how constantly scrutinizing our perception might make us feel about ourselves and the world; that constantly critiquing and doubting our senses might make us miserable and unconfident, but, at the same time, if we never reflect on ourselves and question our perception, we cannot evolve and grow as individuals. In relation to that I remember a quote by Ernest Hemingway: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” In order to not be blissfully dumb or miserably intelligent, think we should always maintain a healthy dose of skepticism and doubt, but nevertheless live in the here and now. 
Having previously studied Journalism, in my own time I also thought about Kant’s work in relation to the consumption of media content. When I did my Bachelor’s degree, we talked about how social media (among others) allows us to choose the journalistic content we consume (for instance, we choose to follow, say, the Guardian or the Sun on Facebook). By “liking” certain Facebook pages (and not others), we allow the platform to form a “portfolio” (adequate or not) of our interests. It then starts to bombard us with “recommendations” of pages we might want to follow. 
Eventually, we might find ourselves surrounded by information that corresponds with, encourages, confirms and hardens our political, social, cultural, etc., views and interests. We create our own little world in which what we think is right, true and sufficient, and become deaf and blind for different and/or opposing views and for all the diversity in the world. This is potentially dangerous and, I think, leads to spiritual, social, cultural and intellectual stagnation. We should actively maintain an open mind, get our information from a variety of sources, be accepting of others' opinions and, as mentioned above, maintain a healthy dose of skepticism.   




  

Friday, 9 September 2016

Theme 2, Blog Post 1: Critical Media Theory


What is “Enlightenment”?

From what I understood, the Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in 17th and 18th century Europe which praised reason and science as instruments for the improvement of people’s condition and the achievement of freedom from authority, domination of man over nature, and knowledge of the world. The Enlightenment was strongly influenced by the scientific revolution of the 17th century and, in turn, gave rise to revolutionary developments in the humanities.

What is “Dialectic”?

Dialectic is a method of discussion between people with different or conflicting viewpoints, whose aim is to reach the truth by means of logic and reason. Dialectic is different from debate in that in the latter each participant aims to either persuade the others of his/her viewpoint or to dissuade them from their own. The dialectic method, I think, is evident in the dialogue between Socrates and Theaetetus - the wiser and more experienced Socrates does not aim to refute Theaetetus’s reasoning for the purpose of “winning”, but rather asks him questions and tells him stories to challenge and, at the same time, guide his thought, and their discussion as a whole, to the truth about what knowledge is.    

What is “Nominalism” and why is it an important concept in the text?

From what I understood, nominalism is a stance which opposes the use of abstract general words for the purpose of putting things that share similar traits in the same category, as well as the assumption that such categories exist. I think nominalism is an important concept because Adorno argues that generalizations strips human beings of their qualities, individuality and identity, ignores their individual needs and ascribes needs to a whole group (of people) which rarely correspond to those of the individual and are, therefore, in a way false (also see answer to question about revolutionary potentials below). In other words, human beings become faceless pawns in an easily manipulated herd that is forced into unrepining consumption.

What is the meaning and function of “myth” in Adorno and Holkheimer’s argument?

In Adorno and Holkheimer’s words, myth is “false clarity”. In ancient times men created myths to explain things that they could not understand and/or were afraid of because their knowledge of the world was limited. The Enlightenment sort of made the promise that reason and science would answer all questions about the world we live in. And, like myth, the Enlightenment was a search for explanation. However, according to Adorno and Holkheimer, the Enlightenment unconsciously reduced the world to mathematical equations and the natural sciences and dismissed anything that cannot be known through those sciences (for instance God) as myth. Therefore, Adorno and Holkheimer argue that, like myths, the Enlightenment created false clarity and fear of the “unknown”, instead of leading mankind to the truth and knowledge it had promised. Moreover, Dominic Strinati writes that the scientific rationality of the Enlightenment produced a “potential for extensive and effective social control” (2004:50). I think that is why the two authors say that “myth is already Enlightenment, and Enlightenment reverts to mythology”.   

 In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

The substructure, also called “base”, consists of the forces and relations of material production, such as raw material, equipment, workers and so on (Storey, 2008) . The base is what provides society with material goods for consumption and trade. The base is the foundation on which the superstructure - the totality of political, cultural, religious and other institutions and “definite forms of social consciousness” that these institutions create (Storey, 2008:3) - is built. Changes in the base influence the superstructure and vice versa. However, changes in the superstructure take much longer to influence the base.

In German Ideology, Marx says: “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production” (quoted in Storey, 2006:68). If we put this base-superstructure model in the context of today’s capitalist society, the base produces a variety of low-quality goods for consumption that break down fast, so there would be more rapid circulation of products and, hence, of profit. Simultaneously, the media, as an element of the superstructure, encourages consumerism through advertising, which, as John Berger says in Ways of Seeing, aims to create the illusion that we have the freedom to choose between one brand/product and another, and to convince us that we and our lives would be much richer and more complete and fulfilled if we buy “this” watch or “that” smartphone. In this particular example the superstructure (the media) is encouraging people to consume more and more in order to sustain and feed the base.   

Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

Benjamin believes culture has revolutionary potentials in that it allows people to stop being just spectators/consumers of content and, at any given time, also become creators who share their views and possibly influence others. Adorno and Holkheimer argue the opposite – that film, music and popular culture in general, distracts people from societal issues and turns them into obedient slaves of the capitalist consumer culture. As Strinati puts it "the culture industry [...] shapes the tastes and preferences of the masses", creates "false needs" and "works to exclude real or true needs, alternative and radical concepts or theories, and genuinely [threatens] political opposition" (2004:55-56). 

Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

I think what he means is human beings are animals and, as such, our senses are a creation of nature and our perception is naturally determined. However, it is also historically determined, because our previous experiences and the cultural environment we have been brought up in, too, have influence over our sense perception. I will give a current example of what I understand by that. In the past several years Turkish TV series have become very popular in Bulgaria (where I come from), which many people are oppose to, because Bulgaria was under Ottoman slavery for nearly 500 years. Because of this historical precondition, Turkish TV series are considered by their opponents as a means of cultural assimilation. I would assume that if a Turkish series launched on a Swedish television channel, it would not be perceived in that way.  

What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?


Aura is the uniqueness, authenticity and authority of an original work of art. The earliest art objects, he writes, had a ritualistic function – they were used in religious practices – which gave them an aura. When a historical artwork is mechanically reproduced, its aura disappears, because it ceases to be unique. Moreover, mechanical reproduction makes works of art more accessible to the masses or, in Benjamin’s words, “brings things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly”. In that sense, I think he means that the more unattainable something is, the more powerful its aura. He explains that by referring to natural objects, such as a mountain range. By looking at a strikingly beautiful mountain from afar or when standing at its foot, one can sense its aura in a way that he would not be able to, if he were atop that mountain. 

Sources: 


Storey, J.(2008) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture (5th edition) London:Routledge 

(I used different editions of the same book, because I did not have access to all the pages of the 3rd edition on Google Books. My apologies!) 


Friday, 2 September 2016

Theme 1, Blog Post 1: Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Science

1. In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

I believe what Kant is trying to say is that the assumption that “all our cognition must conform to objects” – put simply, that all knowledge comes from/is dependent on sensory experience and observation (a posteriori) of physical objects in the physical world (seeing them, touching them, etc.) – is of no use when it comes to the metaphysical. Martin Heidegger defines metaphysics as “the science of supersensible things which are not accessible to experience”, such as God and the soul (1997:10). Since God is not accessible to the human senses like sight and hearing, knowledge of God and whether he exists cannot be acquired through sensory experience, but rather requires a priori (independent from experience) reason.

2. At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Socrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call "empiricism"?

When Socrates argues that people do not see or hear “with” their eyes and ears, but rather “through” them, I think he means that the eyes and ears are merely organs of the body, instruments that independently “deliver” form/colour and sound. These organs cannot process sound or colour by themselves into knowledge; they are merely windows. Moreover, during their discussion, Socrates and Theaetetus establish that senses can be deceptive; that they can lead us into thinking we are awake when we are, in fact, dreaming, and vice versa.

In that sense, I think Plato (indirectly, through Socrates) and Kant argue against the theory of empiricism, which holds that all knowledge comes from sensory experience, observation and experimentation, or, as put in Encyclopædia Britannica (see "Empiricism"), "all concepts originate in experience; all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be experienced..." They believe something more is necessary, something that translates sensory data into knowledge (otherwise perception is nothing more than perception). 

According to Socrates, this necessary “processor” of sensory data is experience and education. Kant, on the other hand, as mentioned above, refers to it as “(a priori) reason” - an innate idea which does not conform to, and exists independently from, objects and our experience of them. Reason, allows us “to proceed from the knowledge of the sensible to that of the supersensible” (Kant quoted in Heidegger, 1997:11). Therefore, rationalism – the view that reason is "the chief source and test of knowledge” – might be more useful when trying to solve the problems of metaphysics (Encyclopædia Britannica, see “Rationalism”).


Used sources:

Encyclopædia Britannica at https://global.britannica.com


Heidegger, M. (1997) Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (3rd edition), Bloomington &Indianapolis: Indiana University Press