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Title: A COLLECTION OF CHARTS ON KANT


1
  • A COLLECTION OF CHARTS ON KANTS 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 Gods 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 Kants 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.
Transcendent-al Analytic The conditions of the
possibility of experience knowledge
Analytic of Concepts Argues for universal
necessary validity of pure concepts of the
understanding, or the categories (e.g., concepts
of substance causation).
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 Kants 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 Humes 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 arent 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 dont 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 ones own existence as
    determined in time, i.e., knows the temporal
    order of some of ones inner states. According
    to the Refutation, a condition for the
    possibility of such a knowledge is ones
    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 ones mind and its
    inner states.

8
What is Kants 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 Hobbes 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
Kants 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 twofold 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
    minds 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 Im 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 ones 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 KANTS 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 Kants 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 KANTS 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
Kants Critiques
  • In Kants 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
Kants 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 cant take reality as given in
    the senses to be ultimately reality.
  • 4. Platos theory drives us to mysticism whereas
    Kant drives us to agnosticism for we cant know
    or deny noumena it is just impossible for us to
    know we just cant affirm or deny that ultimate
    reality is given to the senses because the
    structure of our mind is spacially and temporally
    conditioned.

22
Hoffdings 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
Platos 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
Kants 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 Kants 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 Newtons notion of
    space as Gods infinite, uniform sensorium and
    thereby shows that he recognizes Newtons physics
    as a paradigm of exact since without uncritically
    accepting its philosophical presuppositions
    Hoffe, Immanuel Kant, 63.

31
Kants 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
  • Kants 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, 3157.

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 Kants
    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 Kants 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 Kants
    theories can be regarded as a watershed in the
    history of philosophy. On the whole, 19th-20th
    century philosophers have accepted Kants
    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
  1. 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 dogs 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 Humes 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 Hoffes 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
Kants 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 Humes 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 heres the problem

51
Synthetic A Priori Judgments
  • For Hume, metaphysical knowledge must be
    impossible precisely because metaphysical claims
    are both necessary and synthetic.
  • Why? For Hume, synthetic truths can be known, it
    at all, only a posteriori, and since necessary
    truths can be known only a priori, it will
    follow-as Hume sees things, that synthetic a
    priori knowledge is impossible. And since any
    genuinely metaphysical knowledge will, by its
    very nature, be a synthetic a priori judgment, it
    follows that metaphysical knowledge is
    impossible. There can be no rationally
    justifiable metaphysical claims or principles.

52
How is Synthetic A Priori Knowledge Possible?
  • If Kant can successfully defend the possibility
    of synthetic a priori knowledge, then, whether
    not he goes on to establish its actuality-he will
    thereby have successfully undermined Humes
    general skeptical strategy. Whats Humes
    argument?
  • No necessary and universal truth can be
    established a posteriori (Kant agrees here)
  • Only analytic truths are capable of being
    established a priori (Kant disagrees here).

53
Critical Distinctions
Analytic Judgments Their predicates are wholly
contained in their subjects. For example All
bachelors are unmarried.
Synthetic Judgments Their predicates are
distinct from their subjects. Add new information
about the subject. For example All bodies are
heavy.
54
Critical Distinctions
Analytic A Priori warranted by law of
non-contradiction. Synthetic A Priori Not only
are possible but in fact serve as foundation for
mathematics natural science. Applied this
synthesis to aesthetics, political philosophy,
ethics.
Analytic Posteriori is not a real possibility
Synthetic
Posteriori Warranted by experience.
55
Critical Distinctions
  • A Posteriori Judgments
  • Based on experience
  • Are contingent, forever tied to the circumstances
    of experience.
  • For example,
  • This door is red.
  • The dog is wet.
  • A Priori Judgments (independent of experience)
  • Based on Reason
  • Are Necessarily True.
  • For example,
  • 1 1 2.

56
How is Synthetic A Priori Knowledge Possible?
  • There are two domains of knowledge the
    possibility of which depends upon the existence
    of synthetic a priori judgments mathematics and
    natural science.
  • Kant assumes in the Prolegomena that we possess
    mathematical and natural scientific knowledge.
  • Hume believed that the necessity and a priority
    of pure mathematics are always analytic (using
    Kants terminology). But Kant will show how this
    is wrong.

57
Synthetic Status of Mathematical JudgmentsTheir
truth does not follow from logic their truth is
not ascertained by analysis of the concepts
involved. Two examples
5 7 12 (judgment). The concept of the sum of
seven and five contains nothing besides the
idea of their union in a single number-the
particular number itself is not part of or
contained in the thought. You will not develop
12 in the concept.
Concept of a Triangle The concept of a triangle
amounts to something like a figure enclosed by
three sides and possessing three angles. But
surely it is a universally valid geometric truth,
knowable a priori, that the sum of the interior
angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two
right angles (1800).
58
Kant writes
  • All mathematical judgments, without exception,
    are synthetic. This fact though incontestably
    certain and in its consequence very important,
    has hitherto escaped the notice of those who are
    engaged in the analysis of human reason.

59
Kants Justification for believing that math is a
priori?
  • All of minds objects have spatial
    characteristics, meaning that the mind organizes
    its experiences spatially.
  • The apriority of space validates the claim of
    geometry to bean a priori and synthetical science
    because geometry is the science of space.
  • We can think of space without objects in it but
    we cant think of objects that are not in space.
    Thus, our experience of space is prior to, and a
    condition of, our experience of objects.
  • Thus, space is not an independently existing
    entity but a way in which the mind organizes its
    experience. What the geometrician investigates
    is not the properties of outer objects but the
    modes of faculty of intuition (outer perception).

60
Kants Justification for believing that math is a
priori?SPACE IS A FORM OF THE MINDS
APPREHENSION OF THE WORLD
  • Kant writes
  • Geometry is a science which determines the
    properties of space synthetically, and yet a
    priori. What, then, must be our representation
    of space, in order that such knowledge of it may
    be possible? It must in its origin be intuition
    for from a mere concept no propositions can
    obtained which go beyond the concept-as happens
    in geometry. Further, this intuition must be a
    prior, that is, it must be found in us prior to
    any perception of an object and must therefore by
    pure, not empirical, intuition. For geometrical
    propositions are one and all apodeictic, that is,
    are bound up with the consciousness of their
    necessity for instance, that space has only
    three dimensions. Such propositions cannot be
    empirical or, in other words, judgment of
    experience , nor can they be derived from any
    such judgments.
  • How, then, can there exist in the mind an outer
    intuition which precedes the objects themselves,
    and in which the concept of these objects can be
    determined a priori? Manifestly, not otherwise
    than in so far as the intuition as its seat in
    the subject only, as the formal character of the
    subject, in virtue of which, in being affected by
    objects, it obtains immediate representation,
    that is, intuition, of them and only in so far,
    therefore, as it is merely the former of outer
    sense in general.

61
Regarding the Triangle Kant writes
  • Critique of Pure Reason
  • Suppose a philosopher be given the concept of a
    triangle and be left to find out, in his own way,
    what relation the sum of its angles bears to a
    right angle. He has nothing but the concept of a
    figure included by three straight lines and
    possessing three angles. However long he
    meditates on this concept, he will never produce
    anything new. He can analyze and clarify the
    concept of a straight line or of an angle or the
    number three, but he can never arrive at any
    properties not contained already in these
    concepts.
  • Once will not merely analyze the concept of a
    triangle and arrive at the knowledge that the sum
    of the interior angles of any triangle is equal
    to the sum of two right angles.
  • One must not merely rely on understanding of the
    concepts involves but must also appeal to
    intuition.

62
Space and Time as the A Priori Forms of
Intuition
  • Time Every object is presented to us as
    situated in time.
  • Space Every external object is presented to us
    as situated in space.
  • No object, whether an object of inner sense or
    an external object (an object of outer sense)
    will count as presented to us except insofar as
    it is presented to us as situated in time and
    surely no external object will count as presented
    to us unless it is presented to us as situated in
    space and time (see sec. 10 of Prolegomena)

Intuition is a basic cognitive faculty whereby
our mind casts all of our external intuitions in
the form of space, and all of our internal
intuitions (memory, thought) in the form of time.
63
Space and Time as the A Priori Forms of
Intuition
Space is not an empirical concept that has to
be derived from outer experience Critique of
Pure Reason, 38.
Time is not an empirical concept that can be
derived from outer experience Critique of Pure
Reason, 46.
64
How can make this claim that space and time are a
priori principles of sensibility?
  • Lets consider two possibilities.
  • 1. Our sensations come in a particular temporal
    order, the order of the sensation is not another
    sensation. For example, I see lightening and
    hear thunder-the order of the sensations is not
    another sensation.
  • Problem Our representation of relative spatial
    position (above, below, to the left of, between)
    depend on the positions of objects in the world.
    Our sense organs are well designed to register
    such relations.
  • 2. Lorne Falkenstein understands space and time
    as orders of sensations. On this view, it
    would be the organization of the retina, for
    example, that accounted for our representing the
    moon as above the horizon. The orders would not
    be arbitrary, but grounded in the constitution of
    our sense organs. The benefit is that it honors
    Kants insistence that some features of sensory
    perception go beyond anything that is directly
    sensed, yet it avoids the charge that these
    additional features, created by the mind are
    simply arbitrary.
  • The orders of our sensations are grounded in the
    constitution of our sense organs.

65
The Case of the Red Apple
  • In opposition to the Empiricists, Kant argues
    that cognition was possible only because the
    understanding combines information
    spontaneously, according to its own rules
    whereas the empiricists argue that the senses
    take in information, which then becomes
    associated into complex concepts and judgments
    according to the patterns in the sensory data.
  • For example, the complex concept of an apple
    would be formed by the constant association of
    the round, shape, red color, distinctive taste,
    and smell of it. Constant association of these
    properties in sensory experience produces
    associations of them in the mind, the concept of
    an apple, the judgment apples are red, and so
    forth.
  • In contrast, Kant believed that concepts and
    judgments require spontaneous combination
    according to the minds own rules. A priori
    concepts would be those concepts that were
    produced by the rules governing the minds
    combining activities, insofar as those activities
    were necessary conditions for the production of
    any concepts and judgments whatsoever. Since
    cognition requires concepts as well perception,
    these activities and the concepts they construct
    would be necessary for all cognition.

66
The Case of the Red Apple
  • As a spatio-temporal framework is necessary for
    sorting hallucinations from perceivings of real
    objects, so too is a framework of beliefs about
    various kinds of substances and their properties,
    and the causal relations among them. The forms
    of intuition make cognition possible by combining
    sensory representations into a unified system of
    relations among substances and their properties,
    causes and their effects.

67
Kant Combines Rationalism and Empiricism
according to Patricia Kitchers Immanuel Kant
in pg. 237.
  • In support of Empiricism
  • He agrees with empiricists who deny any
    particular causal relation or substances can be
    determined a priori.
  • Human faculty of understanding actively sought
    substances and causes in the sensory data. With
    new evidence, crude beliefs will be replaced for
    sophisticated ones.
  • In support of Rationalism
  • They were right about the need for causes and
    substances, because any background system of
    belief adequate to distinguish objects from
    illusions must represent objects of cognition as
    particular kinds of things that causally interact
    in particular ways.

68
Kants Answers to Locke
  • Kants answer to Locke is that substance is not
    inferred from properties. It is the principle of
    organization according to which we experience a
    thing and its properties to begin with.
  • All of our knowledge begins with experience (and
    is based on sensations), but the basic categories
    of our experience are not learned from experience
    but instead are brought to experience, as a
    priori organizing principles.

69
But if we constitute our world, could we not do
as we please?
  • Could we not choose to perceive a world with more
    than three dimensions of space? Could we not
    reverse time? Could we not choose to see the
    world as Leibnizian monads or substantial
    Berkelean ideas?
  • Kants answer is No!
  • We do not choose the sensations that form the
    basic material of our experiences.
  • Nor can we choose any alternative to three
    dimensions of space and irreversible
    one-dimensional time. Nor can there by different
    sets of categories, different ways of organizing,
    interpreting, or constituting or experiences.
  • The categories that form the basic structures or
    rules of the mind are universal and necessary.
    There are no options, no alternatives. To prove
    this Kant offers us a formidable Transcendental
    Deduction of the Categories, showing not only
    that the categories are necessary for every
    experience but that there could not be any
    alternative view of the world. It is a
    remarkable combination of radical re-thinking and
    conservative support of our common sense and
    scientific view of the world.

70
Metaphysical Deduction of Categories
  • A. Kant took from Aristotle the notion of
    category. Aristotle attempt to draw up a list
    of different types of things which might be
    predicated of an individual.
  • B. The list contained ten items substance
    (e.g., human), quantities (e.g., four-foot)
    qualities (white or knowledge of grammar)
    relations (e.g., double), places (Paris), time
    (e.g., yesterday) positions (e.g., sitting),
    havings (e.g., having shoes on) doings (e.g.,
    cutting), and sufferings (e.g., being cut).
  • C. It is hard to know how seriously Aristotles
    scheme was meant as an ultimate classification of
    types of predication. Kant, at all events,
    rejected the list as hopelessly unsystematic.
  • D. In its place, Kant offers his own metaphysical
    deduction of the categories based upon the
    relationship between concepts and judgments. A
    concept is nothing more than the power to make
    judgments of certain kinds. The different
    possible types of concept are therefore to be
    determined by setting out the different possible
    types of judgment.
  • E. What Kant is doing that is new is that he is
    deriving from these classification of judgments
    is anew and fundamental classification of
    concepts

71
These are categories of thought which deal more
specifically the way the mind unifies or
synthesizes our experience. The mind achieves
this unifying act by making various kinds of
judgments as we engage in the act of interpreting
the world of sense.

Judgments
Categories
Fixed Forms or Concepts
Universal Particular Singular Affirmative Negativ
e Infinite Categorical Hypothetical Disjunctive
Problematic Assertoric Apodictic
Unity Plurality Totality Reality Negation Limitat
ion Substance Cause Interaction Possibility Exis
tence Necessity
Quantity
When we assert a judgment of quality we have in
mind one or many.
Quality
When we assert a judgment of quality we make
either positive or a negative statement
Relation
When we assert relation, we think of cause
effect, on the one hand, or the relation of
subject predicate on another.
Modality
When we assert modality, we have in mind that
something is possible or impossible
72
All these ways of thinking are what constitute
the act of synthesis through which the mind
strive to make a consistent single world out of
the manifold of sense impressions. Manifold
refers to the data supplied to the mind through
sensation. These data are given in accordance w/
the minds form of sensibility, space and time,
that their unification, which is necessary for
experience, is brought about through the
synthetic activity of the imagination guided by
the understanding.

Judgments
Categories
Fixed Forms or Concepts
Universal Particular Singular Affirmative Negativ
e Infinite Categorical Hypothetical Disjunctive
Problematic Assertoric Apodictic
Unity Plurality Totality Reality Negation Limitat
ion Substance Cause Interaction Possibility Exis
tence Necessity
Quantity
When we assert a judgment of quality we have in
mind one or many.
Quality
When we assert a judgment of quality we
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