A COLLECTION OF CHARTS ON KANT’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE:

1. A COLLECTION OF CHARTS ON KANT’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: The mind makes the world rather than the world makes the mind. Kant declared metaphysics is impossible. Transcendental Idealism- Saving Science: An Alternative to Skepticism and Dogmatism. What can I know? What should I do? For what may I hope?

2. In summary: What is the Structure of Rational Thought: 1. The Categories of Thought and Forms of Intuition; 2. The Self and the Unity of Experience 3. Phenomenal and Noumenal Reality 4. Transcendental Ideas of Pure Reason as Regulative Concepts 5. The Antinomies and the Limits of Reason 6. Proof of God’s Existence

3. Principle Arguments/Divisions of the Critique of Pure Reason: 1st Division: Any cognition must be based on perception and conception. Objects of our knowledge conform to our cognition. 2nd Division: Transcendental Analytic: Kant understood the distinction between sensibility, that is, perception, and understanding, that is conception, as bound up with another fundamental distinction, that between receiving information and sorting and combining that information. 3rd Division: Transcendental Dialectic: Main task is to reveal metaphysics as a product of misunderstanding the ideal character of the systematizing principles of reason. Despite their great utility for science, the tendencies of reason to seek ever deeper, more systematic explanations leads to metaphysical questions that are beyond our abilities to answer.

4. Structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Preface General Logic: Applied Logic: Introduction Doctrine of Method: Part 2: Reflections on the methodological implications of that theory whereby he contrasts mathematical & philosophical proof, between theoretical & practical reasoning, between his own method & dogmatic, empirical, & skeptical methods of philosophy. Four sections are: Doctrine of Elements: Part I: An Exposition of his theory of a priori cognition & its limits Transcendental Aesthetic: Considers the a priori contributions of the fund. forms of our sensibility (namely, space & time), to our knowledge. Transcendental Logic: Considers the a priori contributions of the intellect, both genuine & spurious, to our knowledge. 1: In “Discipline of Pure Reason” Kant provides an ext. contrast between nature of mathematical proof & philosophical argument, offering important commentary on his “transcendental” method. Transcendental Dialectic: Spurious attempt of reason working independently of sensibility to provide metaphysical insight into things as they are in themselves. Analytic of Concepts: Argues for universal & necessary validity of pure concepts of the understanding, or the categories (e.g., concepts of substance & causation). Transcendent-al Analytic: The conditions of the possibility of experience & knowledge 2: In “Canon of Pure Reason,” Kant prepares the way for his subsequent moral philosophy by contrasting method of theoretical philosophy to that of practical philosophy, & giving the 1st outline that runs through all 3 critiques: practical reason can justify metaphysical beliefs about God, & freedom and immortality of soul although theoretical reason can never yield knowledge of such things. Analytic of Principles: Argues for the validity of fund. principles of empirical judgment employing those categories (e.g., principles of conversation of substance & universality of causation). 3-4: In the “architectonic of Pure Reason” & the “History of Pure Reason,” Kant recapitulates the contrasts between Kant’s own philosophical method & those of the dogmatists, empiricists, & skeptics which he began, treating these contrasts in both systematic & historical terms. Here he outlines history of modern philosophy as transcendence of empiricism & rationalism by his own critical philosophy. (1) Concept of Pure Reason & (2) On the Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason: Kant explains how pure reason generates ideas of metaphysical entities such as the soul, the world as a whole, & God & then attempts to prove the reality of those idea by extending patterns of inference which are valid within the limits of human sensibility beyond those limits. “Inferences” divided into 3 sections: “The Paralogisms of Pure Reason”, “The Antinomy of Pure Reason”, & “The Ideal of Pure Reason” –Exposes metaphysically fallacious arguments about soul, world, & God.

5. Central Divisions of Thought: • Transcendental Aesthetic: Kant argues that space and time are subjective forms of human sensibility, through which the manifold of sense is given to the mind, rather than ether self-subsisting realities (Newton) or relations between subsisting things (Leibniz). He also argues that only the conception of space is capable of accounting for the possibility of geometry, which he equated with Euclidean geometry. • Transcendental Analytic: By means of a “transcendental deduction” he argues that certain pure concepts or categories, including substance and causality, are universally valid with respect to possible experience, since they are necessary conditions of such experience. On this basis of these results, he then argued for a set of synthetic a priori principles regarding nature, considered as the sum total of objects of possible experience. Prominent among these are the principles that substance remains permanent throughout all change and they every alternation has a cause. This latter is usually viewed as Kant’ response to Hume’s sKepticism regarding causality.

6. Transcendental Aesthetic: Space and time are subjective forms of human sensibility, through which the manifold of sense is given to the mind. This is contrast, for example, to self-subsisting realities (Newton) or relations between subsisting things (Leibniz). The only the conception of space is capable of accounting for the possibility of geometry, which he equated with Euclidean geometry. Transcendental Analytic: Understanding is equipped with a set of a priori concepts or categories (for example, causality and substance) which are required for the knowledge of an object or an objective realm. From this Kant concludes that all objects of possible experience must conform to these categories. Transcendental Idealism: His overarching metaphysical doctrine. The world as known to creatures like ourselves, who rely on perceptual experience & conceptual understanding, is not the world of ‘things-in-themselves’-of things as they are indep. of cognition, but of ‘appearance.’ We have knowledge only of ‘phenomena’ (things in the sensible realm), & not the noumena-which are knowable only by God, capable of non-sensory ‘intellectual intuition.’ For ex., we experience world as spacio-temporal, even though space & time are ‘forms of (our) sensibility’, not features of reality-in-itself. Kant favorably contrasts his transcendental idealism w/ transcendental realism & empirical idealism, which hold that our knowledge extends to things-in-themselves, & that objects of experience aren’t grounded in extra-mental reality. Transcendental Deduction: A name for the reasoning which simultaneously justifies both the applicability of the pure concepts of understanding (categories) to objects of experience & the objectivity of experience itself. Starting from the fact that all my representations are grasped together in one consciousness (the unity of apperception), the argument asserts that such unity is possible only because synthesized according to the rules contained in the pure concepts.

7. Transcendental Deduction: • The objective validity of certain pure or a priori concepts (the categories) is a condition for the possibility of experience. Among the concepts required for having experience are substance and cause. • Their apriority consists in the fact that instances of empirical concepts are not directly given sense experience in the manner of instances of empirical concepts such as red. This fact gave rise to the skepticism of Hume concerning the very coherence of such alleged a priori concepts. • Now if they don’t have objective validity, as Kant tried to prove in opposition to Hume, then the world contains genuine instances of the concepts. • The feature of experience on which Kant concentrates is the ability of a subject of experience to be aware of several distinct inner states as well as belonging to a single consciousness. • Refutation of Idealism shares a trait with Transcendental Deduction: • a. One is conscious of one’s own existence as determined in time, i.e., knows the temporal order of some of one’s inner states. According to the Refutation, a condition for the possibility of such a knowledge is one’s consciousness of the existence of objects located outside oneself in space. If one is indeed so conscious, that would refute the skeptical view, formulated by Descartes, that one lacks knowledge of the existence of a spatial world distinct from one’s mind and its inner states.

8. What is Kant’s Contribution? • Recognizing the limits as well as the power of reason, his three great Critiques of reason and judgment, Kant provides what can be seen as the culmination and synthesis of both rationalism and empiricism, while at the same time rejecting the underlying idea that our knowledge of the true world is either inferred from experience or discovered by way of reason.

9. Though Rationalists & Empiricists followed different paths, they both reached the same skeptical dead end: Empiricists, who argued that we have access to the actual world in sense perception, held that what we perceive are ideas caused in us by things outside of us (e.g., impressions lead to ideas). Thus, we only know our own ideas. Since the rationalists had written off perception as mere confused thinking, their theories remained only speculation, incapable of being verified or refuted. “Meanwhile, the working scientists, unperturbed by philosophical doubts about the nature of their subject, had been making advance after advance, and the Hobbesian vision of the world that was thoroughly mechanistic seemed about to be fulfilled in detail. Hence Hobbe’s challenge to the traditional religious and teleological view of the cosmos was more formidable than ever. It had begun to occur to scientists that they might get on very nicely without the hypothesis of a God; as regards morality, it seemed clear that in a completely deterministic universe obligation cold be only a vain and chimerical delusion. It was therefore no longer necessary to protect the infant science of physics from the theologians. Indeed, the show was now on the other foot. It looked as if traditional values were becoming subjective illusions in a world of neutral fact” [W.T. Jones, History of Philosophy, Kant, 16].

10. Kant’s Epistemological Project is to forge a third way between dogmatism & skepticism: Dogmatism Rationalism Skepticism Empiricism Synthetic A Priori • A priori present forms are given by the faculties of the human & experience (what is given in experience). • It is the human mind that constitutes the way the world is (tinge of Berkeley) within space time and time. • 3. His project is two=fold: It is both secure & limit knowledge. It is secure because the human mind brings a priori intuition and concepts to experience in contrast to Hume who states that our impressions form ideas, thus leading one to skepticism). On the other, there is a limit for anything that is outside of space & time is beyond our personal experience.

11. His Strategy: • The Problems of knowledge and the foundation of science are addressed with his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). • Within the realm of phenomena and the world as we know it, experience presupposes sensibility (intuition) and understanding, that ‘faculty’ which orders and organizes our sensations with the help of the imagination so that they become and experience of something. • We constitute the “objects” of our experience out of our intuitions, locating these objects in space and time and in causal relationships with other objects. Without the concepts of the understanding, Kant claims our intuitions would be blind. • But without sensations our concepts would be empty. Experience is always the application of the understanding to sensations, and the world as we know it is the result.

12. Basic Vocabulary: 1. A Priori knowledge (knowledge independent of experience) 2. A Posteriori Knowledge (knowledge derived from experience) 3. Concept: is in fact nothing other than a power to make judgments of a certain kind. To possess the concept “metal”, for example, is to have the power to make judgments expressible by sentences containing the word ‘metal’ or its equivalent). 4 Judgment: To think is to judge in contrast to knowledge which is the end product of judging; judging is a kind of putting together. 5. Manifold: Expression Kant uses to refer to the data supplied to the mind through sensation. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he argues that these data are given in accordance with the mind’s form of sensibility, space and time, and that their unification, which is necessary for experience, is brought about through the synthetic activity of the imagination guided by the understanding. 6 Knowledge: “a cooperative affair between the knower and the thing known; it is the end product of judging. 6. Transcendental: the conditions that make an experience of objects possible). 7. Transcendental logic: a. Logic is concerned with the kinds of putting together that occurs in judgment; b. Transcendental: the conditions that make an experience of objects possible. There is transcendental “Analytic” (proper use of logic whereas the Transcendental “Dialectic” is concerned with its improper use.

13. While the forms may be discovered by a consideration of the constant and universal element in our knowledge (e.g., space and time), matter is that which may change and vary. Built-in Structure, basic rules of the human mind (not innate knowledge): That which is produced by external influences is called “matter.” • 3 A Priori Present Forms: • Intuition: space & time are pure forms of intuition (modes of ordering): • Space is a way in which mind orders things; it is a datum of outer sense; • Time is temporal order (coming before, after or simultaneous with other experiences we have; time is a form of inner sense, that, is our awareness of ourselves and of our inner state). • Of understanding = concepts (e.g., Logic, that is, the art of thinking) • (c) reason: the task of reason • to form absolute totalities. Without concepts of the understanding our intuitions would be blind; but without sensations, our concepts would be empty. Experience is always the application of the understanding to sensations, and the world as we know it is the result. That which is given by faculty itself is called “form” • 1. The way we experience the world is conditioned or structured by the way we can know (spacial -temporal conditions): the principles of sensibility. • Anything beyond space & time is beyond the domain of the construction of our mind.

14. The Self and the Unity of Experience: What makes it possible for us to have a unified grasp of the world about us? 2. This leads Kant to say that the unity of our experience must imply a unity of the self. 1. Mind transforms the data given to ourselves into a coherent and related set of elements. 4. To have such knowledge involves, in various sequences, sensation, imagination, memory, and powers of intuitive synthesis. 3. The unity of our experience must imply a unity of itself, for unless there was a unity between several operations of the mind, there could be knowledge of experience. 5. Our self-consciousness is affected by the same faculties that affect our perception of external objects. Thus, I bring to the knowledge of myself the same apparatus, & thus, impose upon myself as an object of knowledge the same lenses through which I see everything. Just as I do not know things as they are apart from the perspective from which I see them, so also I do not know the nature of this “transcendental unity of apperception” except as I’m aware of the knowledge I have of the unity of the field of experience. What I am sure of is that a unified self is implied by any knowledge of experience.

15. Three Key Faculties which are indispensable for human knowledge • Sensibility: Pure forms of intuition, space, & time: • The object is given by means of an affection upon the mind. • The capacity of the mind to be affected is called sensibility (receptivity). The effect of the object, the material of sensibility, is called sensation. • The pure forms of intuition are space and time. • 4. The relation to an object by means of sensation is called empirical (a posteriori). • Understanding: Pure concepts of understanding, the categories: • The object, an indeterminate manifold of intuition, is thought. i.e., determined. • The capacity to determine an object, i.e., to create representations of one’s own accord (spontaneously), is called understanding, the faculty of concepts (rules). • The pure concepts of the understanding are the categories. • 4. The relation to an object by means of the categories of the understanding is called pure (a priori). Judgment: The Transcendental schemata & principles of pure understanding: Judgment is the faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e. of discerning whether or note something falls under a given rule. The conditions of the possibility of applying pure concepts of the understanding to appearances are transcendental specifications of time: they are both conceptual & sensible: the transcendental schemata, a transcendental product of imagination.

16. AN ILLUSTRATION OF KANT’S SYSTEM: SAUSAGE MACHINE Percept is the raw material of human knowledge, that is, the sense information that enters the mind through the forms of sensibility “Concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind. Forms of Sensibility Space Time Percepts Percepts CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING: Entering the box of Kant’s sausage machine brings to what called categories of understanding. There are 12 categories by means of which the human mind shapes, influences, and affects the raw material of human knowledge that comes from sense experience. What enters the mind through the forms of sensibility, what Kant calls percepts, is never an object of knowledge at that time. Human consciousness of the objects of knowledge only begins once the categories of the human understanding have added form or structure to the sensible content. If you take away the categories, then all you have is a collection of colors, sounds, etc. that add up to nothing. Thus, human knowledge, has two necessary conditions: (1) the form supplied by the mind (otherwise known as the categories) and the content supplied by the senses. Neither condition is sufficient by itself to produce knowledge. Concepts 1. Nozzle is device by which cuts of meat enter into machine (the Forms of Sensibility: Space & Time). Kant denied that space and time exist independently of the human and are somehow perceived outside the mind. Rather, Kant argued that space and time are added to our perceptions by the mind. Thus, everything we perceive (sense experience) appears to us as though it were in space and time.

17. AN ILLUSTRATION OF KANT’S SYSTEM: COIN COUNTING MACHINE: Unsorted Coins represents the percepts, the raw material of knowledge. Forms of Sensibility Space & Times: Forms of Sensibility Just as the machine sorted out the different coins, so the mind functions as a manifold that places our percepts into appropriate categories and produces the class concepts that advance the knowing process. The gears inside of machine represent the categories of the understanding.

18. Kant’s Critiques: • In Kant’s critical philosophy, he contends against earlier rationalists like Descartes and Leibniz with their un-provable pretensions of reason. • In his practical philosophy, he rejects the subservient role accorded to reason by British empiricists like David Hume. Hume, once declared: “Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.” (Treatise, 3.1.1.11).

19. Noumena (are objects we have no sensible intuition and hence no knowledge at all; these are things-in-themselves (e.g., God, soul,& freedom of the will; they are undecidable by human reason) While we cannot help thinking that there is something that exists beyond space and time. In fact, reason demands ultimate intelligibility but we are limited. It keeps trying but we are unable to probe beyond space and time because we are bound to spacial and temporal conditions of the mind, that, is, our subjective constituting apparati. Thus, Kant denies that noumena as objects of pure reason are objects of knowledge because reason gives knowledge ONLY of objects of sensible intuition (phenomena). What reality is like in itself, apart from our human perception and cognition is completely unknown and unknowable. NO CAPABILITY TO TRANSCEND OUR OWN LIMITATIONS! Phenomenal: The world of ordinary sense perception & of science: It is spatial & temporal. Space & time are “molds” into which our experience is cast. Everything we perceive & think is filtered through our mind & senses.

20. Kant’s Notion of Cognition: • We cannot lift the restrictions of our cognition. • We cannot determine whether the objects we do cognize are as we cognize tem to be, if we abstract from our cognition. • If we can know objects only through sensory data they cause in us, then there is no other route to the objects that would confirm or deny that they are as our interpretations of the sensory date take them to be. • Thus, to make the restriction “of which we can have cognition” evident, Kant characterizes the objects of cognition as “phenomenal.” This means that the natural world described by science is only “phenomenal because although science allows us to explain and predict the behavior of the objects we cognize, it has no resources for disclosing the properties of the world INDEPENDENTLY OF OUR COGNITION.

21. KANT VS. PLATO: Noumena: The world as it actually is. It is what reality is apart from human cognition & perception are completely unknown & unknowable. Noumena are Platonic Ideas and Forms: Space and time are the molds into which we our experiences are cast. Phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses. • For Plato there is the possibility for one to become familiar with the eternal forms whereas for Kant, there is no possibility. Why? They could not be decided in the progress of science nor can be revealed as necessary for cognition (B, pg. 827). • For Plato we should strive to intimately know the Forms whereas for Kant it is useless to pursue what we cannot ever know. It is undecidable by human reason. • Both agree that we can’t take reality as given in the senses to be ultimately reality. • 4. Plato’s theory drives us to mysticism whereas Kant drives us to agnosticism for we can’t know or deny noumena; it is just impossible for us to know; we just can’t affirm or deny that ultimate reality is given to the senses because the structure of our mind is spacially and temporally conditioned.

22. Hoffding’s comment on Plato and Kant is interesting: Hoffding writes: The old opposition, which originated with Plato, between noumena and phenomena, the world as it is in itself and is known by thought on the one hand, and the world as it presents itself to the other senses on the other, seemed now about to receive a fresh confirmation as his hands. And the sharp distinction between perception and understanding seemed also to show that their spheres must be different [Ibid., 46].

23. Plato’s Cave:

24. The world as we perceive it with ourselves and understand it, is adapted to our mode of perception and cognition. Therefore, the real world is “filtered” through both our human mind and human senses and it is only as thus “filtered” that we can be aware of it.

25. The world as we know it must “conform to our faculties” our subjective constituting apparati. In other words, what we see and think depends on the nature of our mind. Or said differently, it is the nature of our mind that determines the nature and scope of our knowledge rather than the nature of reality itself. It is the human mind that constitutes the way the world is.

26. Since our mind and senses are always with us (unlike sunglasses with which we can remove and “see reality as it is”), all we can have is knowledge of the phenomenal world, that is filtered through the sense organs and minds we possess. Why? The way we experience the world is conditioned by space and time.

27. Kant’s System of Forms Involves 3 Groups: • 3. Ideas of Reason: Three Ideas: Soul, God, and World. Consider the following by Hoffding:

28. Soul, World, and God: Involuntary craving of consciousness to reach a conclusion, an immovable hook: • Hoffding writes: We seek for a definitive knowledge of inner experience, a definitive knowledge of outer experience, and a definitive knowledge of the origin of all things in existence. Kant attempts to prove that these Ideas are not invented, but proceed from the very nature of reason itself, by showing that they correspond to the three forms of conclusion which are ordinary distinguished in logic (the categorical, the hypothetical, and the disjunctive form). But this deduction is very strained…. he is right in tracing the Ideas of the soul, the world, and God to the involuntary craving of consciousness to reach a conclusion to affix the chain of thought of consciousness to reach a conclusion, to affix the chain of thought to a fixed and immovable hook, to form an absolute synthesis in imitation of the synthesis which is the fundamental form of thought.”

29. WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF SPACE AND TIME? • Hoffe points out that the “essence of space and time” is very controversial. Consider: Are they something object and real or merely something subjective and ideal (Berkeley)? And if they are real, they constitute substances (Descartes)? Or are they properties of divine substance (Spinoza) or Are they a relation between finite substances? (Leibniz?). What is Kant’s solution to these difficulties? “Space and time are something quite different from all other familiar entities; they are a priori forms of our (human) outer intuition and inner sensing.”

30. WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF SPACE AND TIME? • Hoffe notes: Because empirical knowledge is not possible without outer and inner sensations, and these are not possible without space and time, ‘empirical reality’ is to be accorded [agree] to the pure forms of intuition (B 44 with B 53). In contrast to the ‘dogmatic idealism’ of Berkeley (1684-1753), who according to Kant takes space together with all things as merely imaginary (B274), space and time are for Kant objective: without them objects of outer and inner intuition, hence of objective, cannot exist. It does not follow, however, that space and time subsist in themselves and in the form of substances, properties, or relations. On the contrary, they are the sole conditions under which objects can appear to us; they have, says Kant, ‘transcendental ideality’ (B 44 with B 52). With this theory Kant rejects Newton’s notion of space as God’s infinite, uniform sensorium and thereby shows that he recognizes Newton’s physics as a paradigm of exact since without uncritically accepting its philosophical presuppositions [Hoffe, Immanuel Kant, 63].

31. Kant’s Example of an Analytic Judgment vs. Synthetic Judgment: • The statement, “all bodies are extended is an example of an analytic judgment whereas “all bodies are heavy” is an example of a synthetic judgment. • Why? “Extension” is a part of the concept “body” whereas “weight” is not. Critique: For some: Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic proposition is no wholly satisfactory. It is clearly intended to be universally applicable to propositions of all kinds, yet not all propositions are structured in the simple subject-predicate form he uses in his definition. The notion of ‘containing’ is metaphorical and although the distinction is clearly to be a logical one, Kant sometimes speaks of if as if it were a matter of psychology. Some later philosophers tried to tighten up the distinction, and others tried to break it down; but it retained a permanent place in subsequent philosophical discussion [Anthony Kenny, The Rise of Modern Philosophy, 3:157].

32. What is Transcendental Logic? • It is called “logic” because it is concerned with the kinds of putting together that occur in judgment (in contrast to the immediate, sensuous putting together discussed in the Aesthetic); • He called it “transcendental” because he is not concerned with the content of experience, but with the conditions that make an experience of objects possible. • Remember, for Kant, to think is to judge; knowledge is the end product of judging; and judging is a kind of putting together: A direct, sensuous component and a conceptual, structural component.

33. What is Transcendental Logic? • Certain judgments must be synthetic a priori in order to provide an underpinning for the inductive procedures of the sciences. Remember: • he did not hold that all judgments in the natural sciences are a priori (in contrast to mathematical judgments which are).

34. 2 Elements in Judgment (to think is to judge): According to Kant, there are 2 different components that are always involved in judging: a direct, sensuous component and a conceptual, structural component. The difference between the components is like the difference between a guidebook on Leavenworth and a direct experience of it. Leavenworth, Washington

35. 2 Elements in Judgment (to think is to judge): A man might study the book and tell us a lot about the community. But he has never been there, then his knowledge of it is, in Kant’s terminology, “empty.” He lacks a concrete filling of perception and feeling: experiential element. On the other hand, the one who visits Leavenworth but went through it so fast has no knowledge of it; he is, using Kant’s term, “blind” for he lacks the knowledge that would structure, organize, and focus on the sensory experience: There is not a structural or relational element (a conceptual ordering of the precepts and feelings are needed). Leavenworth, Washington

36. When an experience is brought under a concept can it be identified or known for what it is. • Most rationalists, from Plato to Descartes and his successors, had taken it for granted that cognitive processes form a continuum: they regarded perception as a “confused thought-, that is, as the same sort of activity as reasoning, differing only in degree of adequacy. • Though the empiricists did not maintain that perception is confused, they did not draw the Kantian distinction between percepts and concepts, for the treated concepts as fictions or even merely as words.

37. When an experience is brought under a concept can it be identified or known for what it is. W.T. Jones writes: Hence, then, is another reason why Kant’s theories can be regarded as a watershed in the history of philosophy. On the whole, 19th-20th century philosophers have accepted Kant’s distinction between percepts and conceptions, with the limitations that this entails regarding the direct, immediate knowledge of the self and its world. Those philosophers who did not nevertheless had to deal with the distinction Kant had drawn, philosophy could not return to its pre-Kantian course.

38. How are synthetic a priori judgments possible? • Experience provides the content (synthetic) and mind provides the structure (the a priori element which includes intuition and concepts with spacial-temporal framework) in which the content from experience is organized and understood.

39. The General Problem of Pure Reason: How are synthetical a priori judgments possible? 4 Logical Classes: A Posteriori A Priori • analytical a posteriori: This is null class since all analytical judgments are universal & necessary. 2. analytical a priori: Warranted by law of non-contradiction Analytical 3. synthetical posteriori: Warranted by experience. • synthetical a priori: • Warranted by an organizing principle of the mind. Synthetical • We have two pair of judgments: a priori-posteriori and analytical-synthetical. • 2. These pairs yield four logically possible classes. • Synthetical a priori: While all our knowledge begins with experience (as • Locke and other empiricists insists), it does not necessarily follow that it all • arises out of experience. All knowledge contains elements that are not • drawn from experience but supplied by the mind itself.

40. Example: Collies are Dogs: • Analytical Judgment: The predicate is covertly contained in the subject and may be obtained by analysis of it. • Synthetical judgment the predicate is not contained in its subject. “Some collies are sable and white” is an example. Sable and white is not a part of the definition of collies. • Class 2: Analytical A Priori (warranted by law of non-contradiction): Since being a collie is part of the definition of a dog, we would contradict ourselves if we asserted that a collie is not a dog. • Class # 3: Synthetical a posteriori (warranted by experience): The judgment: “This collie is sable and white” is warranted by the visual experience of the dog’s fur.”

41. Kant writes: “But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself. If our faculty of knowledge makes any such addition, it may be that we are not in a position to distinguish it from raw material, until with long practice of attention we have become skilled in separating it. This, then, is a question which at least calls for closer examination, and does not allow of any offhand answer: whether there is any knowledge that is thus independent of experience and even of all impressions of the senses. Such knowledge is entitled a priori,and distinguished from the empirical, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.” But what is his justification for synthetic a priori?

42. Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments: Synthetic Judgment: Synthetic Judgment is a proposition the predicate concept of which actually contains more information than is contained or thought in the subject concept. Therefore, the predicate concept in a synthetic judgment actaully amplifies, or adds to, what is contained in the subject concept. So, in cases that are synthetic we appeal to something beside our understanding of X (e.g., empirical experience). Analytic Judgment: The predicate concept merely explicates what is in part or in whole contained with the subject concept. Remember Hume claims that matters of fact or existence are knowable, if at all, only a a posteriori. While Kant agrees with Hume that all a posteriori (or empirical) judgment are synthetic, Kant denies that all synthetic judgments must be a posteriori. Upshot, if we accept Hume’s assumption that no synthetic judgment may be known a priori, it would follow that causal knowledge is impossible.

43. The Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Judgments: Both rationalists and empiricists divide all judgments into two kinds: 1. a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge without experience; 2. a posteriori knowledge, that is, knowledge only by reference to experience. Kant accepts this distinction but add his own distinction! What is apodeictic knowledge? Descartes, Hume, & Kant believed that any judgment the truth of which is knowable a priori expresses a necessarily or universally valid truth. Kant calls such truths “apodeictic.” Apodeictic means they can be known to be necessarily true, without absolute certainty, independently of any sense experience. How is apodeictic knowledge to be understood?

44. What are Synthetic Judgments? • Consider Otfried Hoffe’s definition: Synthetic judgments which ‘flow’ a priori from the pure concepts of the understanding under the conditions of the schemata and upon which all other a priori knowledge rests are principles of the pure understanding: for analytic judgments the law of non-contradiction, for synthetic judgments the axioms of intuition, the anticipations of perception, the analogies of experience (e.g., the principle of causality) and the postulates of empirical thought.

45. What is an analytic judgment? According to Hume: 1. all a priori knowledge can concern nothing more than relations between ideas. 2. What is distinctive about all true judgments concerning relations between ideas, is that their denial will involve a contradiction. Understood this way, their a priority is a matter of course, and their necessity and universal validity issue from the absolute necessity and universal validity of logic.

46. What is an analytic judgment? 1. In essence, Kant calls analytic those judgments Hume would say concern relation between ideas. 2. Analytic judgments express nothing in the predicate of the judgment that has not already been thought in the concept of the subject. For example: “All bachelors are unmarried” will be analytic judgments. The predicate concept, “being unmarried” is already contained in the relevant subject matter: “being a bachelor.”

47. What is an analytic judgment? 1. In essence, Kant calls analytic those judgments Hume would say concern relation between ideas. 2. Analytic judgments express nothing in the predicate of the judgment that has not already been thought in the concept of the subject. For example: All bachelors are unmarried will be analytic judgments. The predicate concept, “being unmarried” is already contained in the relevant subject matter: “being a bachelor.”

48. The justification for an a priori judgment is the same for relations between ideas: 3. Like Hume, Kant asserts that what is distinctive about analytic judgment is that they all wholly depend for their truth on the principle of contradiction. In other words, when true, their denial would express a contradiction. 4. According to Kant, then, analytic truths are knowable a priori; and they are knowable a priori for precisely the same reasons that truth concerning relations between ideas are knowable a priori for Hume.

49. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: • In view of Prolegomena, Kant is particularly interested in investigating the possibility that metaphysics might “be able to come forth as a science.” • But what qualifies as a science, is at least, to be a discipline with a subject matter capable of genuine and systematically justifiable knowledge.

50. Synthetic A Priori Judgments: • Kant agreed with Hume that genuinely metaphysical claims are never merely analytic. Consequently, they must be synthetic. • Kant also accepted Hume’s claim that empirical, or a posteriori, knowledge of necessary truths are impossible. • Kant insisted that the truth of a metaphysical claim can only be known a priori. But here’s the problem…