Transcript Lecture 10b: Kant's Metaphysics & Epistemology

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 IdealismSaving Science: An Alternative to
Skepticism and Dogmatism.
What can I know?
What should I do?
For what may I hope?
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
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.
Structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason:
Preface
General Logic:
Introduction
Applied Logic:
Doctrine of Elements:
Doctrine of Method:
Part I: An Exposition of his
theory of a priori cognition &
its limits
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:
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.
Analytic of Concepts: Argues
for universal & necessary
validity of pure concepts of the
understanding, or the
categories (e.g., concepts of
substance & causation).
Transcendental Analytic:
The
conditions of
the possibility
of experience
& knowledge
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).
Transcendental Dialectic:
Spurious attempt of
reason working
independently of
sensibility to provide
metaphysical insight into
things as they are in
themselves.
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.
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.
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 “Inferences” divided into 3 sections: “The Paralogisms of Pure
Reason”, “The Antinomy of Pure Reason”, & “The Ideal of Pure
are valid within the limits of human
Reason” –Exposes metaphysically fallacious arguments about soul,
sensibility beyond those limits.
world, & God.
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.
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 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.
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-inthemselves’-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:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
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.
Though Rationalists & Empiricists followed different paths,
they both reached the same skeptical dead end:
Since the rationalists had
written off perception as
mere confused thinking, their
theories remained only
speculation, incapable of
being verified or refuted.
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.
“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].
Kant’s Epistemological Project is to forge a
third way between dogmatism & skepticism:
Dogmatism
Skepticism
Rationalism
Empiricism
Synthetic
A Priori
1. A priori present forms are given by the faculties of the human & experience
(what is given in experience).
2. 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.
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.
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.
b.
Logic is concerned with the kinds of putting together that occurs in judgment;
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.
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.
That which is produced
by external influences is
called “matter.”
Built-in
Structure,
basic rules of
the human
mind (not
innate
knowledge):
3 A Priori Present Forms:
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.
2.
Anything beyond space & time is beyond the
domain of the construction of our mind.
(a) 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).
(b) Of understanding = concepts
(e.g., Logic, that is, the art of
thinking)
(c) reason: the task of reason
to form absolute totalities.
The Self and the Unity of Experience: What makes it possible for
us to have a unified grasp of the world about us?
1. Mind transforms the data given
to ourselves into a coherent and
related set of elements.
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.
2. This leads Kant to
say that the unity of our
experience must imply
a unity of the self.
4. To have such
knowledge involves, in
various sequences,
sensation, imagination,
memory, and powers of
intuitive synthesis.
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
Three Key Faculties which are indispensable for human knowledge
Sensibility: Pure forms of
intuition, space, & time:
Understanding: Pure concepts of
understanding, the categories:
1. The object is given by means of
an affection upon the mind.
1. The object, an indeterminate manifold
of intuition, is thought. i.e., determined.
2. The capacity of the mind to be
affected is called sensibility
(receptivity). The effect of the
object, the material of sensibility,
is called sensation.
2. 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).
3. The pure forms of intuition are
space and time.
3. The pure concepts of the
understanding are the categories.
4. The relation to an object by
means of sensation is called
empirical (a posteriori).
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.
AN ILLUSTRATION OF KANT’S SYSTEM: SAUSAGE MACHINE
Forms of
Sensibility
Space
Percepts
Time
Percepts
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.
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.
AN ILLUSTRATION OF KANT’S SYSTEM: COIN COUNTING MACHINE:
Forms of
Sensibility
Space & Times: Forms of
Sensibility
The gears
inside of
machine
represent the
categories of
the
understanding
.
Unsorted Coins represents
the percepts, the raw material
of knowledge.
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.
Kant’s Critiques:
In Kant’s critical philosophy, he contends against earlier
rationalists like Descartes and Leibniz with their unprovable 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).
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)
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.
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.
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.
KANT VS. PLATO:
Noumena: The world as it actually
is. It is what reality is apart from
human cognition & perception are
completely unknown & unknowable.
Space and time are the molds into
which we our experiences are cast.
Noumena are Platonic Ideas and
Forms:
Phenomena are things displaying
themselves to the senses.
1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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.
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].
Plato’s Cave:
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.
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.
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.
Kant’s System of Forms Involves 3 Groups:
3. Ideas of Reason:
Three Ideas: Soul, God, and World.
Consider the following by Hoffding:
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.”
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.”
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].
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].
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.
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).
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
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
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.
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.
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.
The General Problem of Pure Reason:
How are synthetical a priori judgments possible?
4 Logical
Classes:
A Posteriori
1. analytical a posteriori:
Analytical
Synthetical
This is null class since all
analytical judgments are
universal & necessary.
A Priori
2. analytical a priori:
Warranted by law of noncontradiction
3. synthetical posteriori:
4. synthetical a priori:
Warranted by experience.
Warranted by an organizing
principle of the mind.
1. We have two pair of judgments: a priori-posteriori and analytical-synthetical.
2. These pairs yield four logically possible classes.
3. 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.
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.”
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?
Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments:
Synthetic Judgment:
Analytic Judgment:
Synthetic Judgment is a
proposition the predicate concept
of which actually contains more
information than is contained or
thought in the subject concept.
The predicate concept merely
explicates what is in part or in
whole contained with 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).
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.
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?
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 noncontradiction, 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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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…
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.
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 Hume’s
general skeptical strategy. What’s Hume’s
argument?
1. No necessary and universal truth can be established
a posteriori (Kant agrees here);
2. Only analytic truths are capable of being established
a priori (Kant disagrees here).
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.”
Critical Distinctions:
Analytic Posteriori:
is not a real possibility
Synthetic
Posteriori:
Warranted by
experience.
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.
Critical Distinctions:
A Priori Judgments
(independent of
experience)
1. Based on Reason;
2. Are Necessarily
True.
For example,
1 + 1 = 2.
A Posteriori
Judgments
1. Based on experience;
2. Are contingent, forever
tied to the
circumstances of
experience.
For example,
“This door is red.”
“The dog is wet.”
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 Kant’s
terminology). But Kant will show how this is wrong.
Synthetic Status of Mathematical Judgments:
Their 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).
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….”
Kant’s Justification for believing
that math is a priori?
All of mind’s 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 can’t 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).
Kant’s Justification for believing that math is a priori?
SPACE IS A FORM OF THE MIND’S 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.
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.”
Space and Time as the A Priori Forms of
Intuition:
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.
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):
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].
How can make this claim that space and time are a priori
principles of sensibility?
Let’s 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 Kant’s 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.
The Case of the Red Apple:
1.
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 mind’s own rules. A priori concepts would be those
concepts that were produced by the rules governing the mind’s 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.
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.
Kant Combines Rationalism and Empiricism according to
Patricia Kitcher’s “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.
Kant’s Answers to Locke
Kant’s 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.
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?
Kant’s 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 rethinking and conservative support of our common sense and scientific view of the
world.
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., fourfoot); 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 Aristotle’s 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:
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.
Fixed Forms or
Concepts:
Judgments: Categories:
Quantity
Universal
Unity
When we assert a judgment of
quality we have in mind one or
many.
Particular
Plurality
Singular
Totality
Affirmative
Reality
Negative
Negation
Infinite
:
Limitation
Categorical
Substance
When we assert relation, we
think of cause & effect, on the
one hand, or the relation of
subject & predicate on
another.
Hypothetical
Cause
Disjunctive
Interaction
Modality
Problematic
Possibility
Assertoric
Existence
Apodictic
Necessity
Quality
When we assert a judgment of
quality we make either positive
or a negative statement
Relation
When we assert modality, we
have in mind that something is
possible or impossible
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
mind’s 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.
Fixed Forms or
Concepts:
Judgments: Categories:
Quantity
Universal
Unity
When we assert a judgment of
quality we have in mind one or
many.
Particular
Plurality
Singular
Totality
Affirmative
Reality
Negative
Negation
Infinite
:
Limitation
Categorical
Substance
When we assert relation, we
think of cause & effect, on the
one hand, or the relation of
subject & predicate on
another.
Hypothetical
Cause
Disjunctive
Interaction
Modality
Problematic
Possibility
Assertoric
Existence
Apodictic
Necessity
Quality
When we assert a judgment of
quality we make either positive
or a negative statement
Relation
When we assert modality, we
have in mind that something is
possible or impossible
ARISTOTLE VS KANT ON CATEGORIES:
According to Aristotle, there are 10 Basic Categories:
Reality, Substance (e.g., human), quantity (two-footed), quality
(knowledge of grammar), relation (double), place (Lothlorien),
time (yesterday), posture (sitting), state (shoes on), action
(reading) & passivity (being cut).
These ten categories can, in turn be understood as taking the
category of substance as fundamental or basic and the other
nine as different ways that a substance can be modified or
qualified. For example, my collie weighs 40 pounds and is
sable and white.
What is crucial for Aristotle’s approach to the categories is that
he took them to give us real divisions in the actual world in
itself as it exists “out there,” i.e., as it is in itself independent of
human thought or language. For him, the categories are the
broadest, real divisions of life.
For Kant, there are 12 categories:
They are not divisions of the world as it is in itself
(noumenal). Rather, they express the divisions of the world
as it is appears to us as knowing subjects (phenomenal).
Thus, Kant’s categories express the different ways that
knowing subjects organize and classify the world of their
sensory experience.
A Kantian category is a broadest division of phenomenal
world, the sensory world as it is experienced by us.
Thus, a study of the categories does not tell us about real
divisions in the world as it is in itself. Rather, it gives us
insight about how we as sensing and knowing subjects must
divide the world of sensory experience to make it knowable
to us.
Self and the Unity of Experience:
What makes it possible for Ann to have a unified grasp of the
world is that her mind transforms the raw data given to her
senses into a coherent and related set of elements. To have
a knowledge of experience then there must be a unity
between several operations of the mind. To have such
knowledge involves, in various sequences, sensation,
imagination, memory, as well as the powers of intuitive
synthesis. Thus, Ann, the same self, at once senses an
object remembers its characteristics, imposes upon it the
forms of space and time and the category of cause and effect.
All these activities must occur in her or there could be no
knowledge, for if Ann only had sensations, no memory, etc.,
the sensible manifold could never be unified.
Self and the Unity of Experience:
Where and what is this single subject that
accomplishes this unifying activity is what
Kant defines as “The Transcendental unity of
apperception” is the self, that is, is "the pure,
original, unchangeable consciousness which
is the necessary condition of experience as
such and the ultimate foundation of the
synthetic unity of experience.”
Self and the Unity of Experience:
The transcendental indicates that Ann does not experience the self directly
even though such a unity, or self, is implied by her actual experience.
Thus, the idea of this self is a priori as a necessary condition for the
experience Ann does have of having knowledge of a unified world of
nature. In the act of unifying all the elements of experience, Ann is
conscious of her own unity, so that her consciousness of a unified world of
experience and her own self-consciousness occur simultaneously.
To be sure, her self-consciousness is affected by the same faculties that
affect her perception of external objects. She brings to the knowledge of
her self the same apparatus, and therefore, imposes upon herself as an
object of knowledge the same lenses through which she sees everything.
Just as she does not know things as they are apart from the perceptive
from which she sees them, so also she does not know the nature of this
transcendental unity of apperception” except as she is aware of the
knowledge she has of the unity of the field of experience. What she is
sure of is that a unified self is implied by any knowledge of experience.
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS OF PURE REASON AS
REGULATIVE CONCEPTS: SELF, COSMOS, & GOD
Produced by pure reason alone (not intuition) and prompted by experience-in the
sense that we think those ideas in our attempts to achieve a coherent synthesis
of all our experience, there are three regulative ideas we tend to think about,
ideas that lead us beyond sense experience: Ideas of self, of cosmos, and of
God.
st
1 Idea:
SELF IS THINKING NATURE STRIVING FOR TOTALITY:
“the first [regulative] idea is the ‘I’ itself, viewed
simply as thinking nature or soul…
endeavoring to represent all determinations as
existing in a single subject, all powers, so far as
possible, as derived from a single fundamental
power, all change as belonging to the states of
one and the same permanent being, and all
appearances in space as completely different
from the actions of thought.” TOTALITY: In
sum, our pure reason tries to synthesize
various psychological activities we are aware of
into a unity, & it does this by formulating the
concept of the self.
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS OF PURE REASON AS
REGULATIVE CONCEPTS: SELF, COSMOS, & GOD
2nd Idea Concept of the world:
Pure reason tries to create a synthesis of the many events in our
experience by forming the concept of the world so that…
“the second regulative idea of merely
speculative reason is the concept of the world
in general…. The absolute totality of the series
of conditions… an idea which can never be
completely realized in the empirical employment
of reason, but which yet serves as a rule that
prescribes how we ought to proceed in dealing
with such series…. The cosmological ideas are
nothing but simply regulative principles, and
are very far from positing… an actual totality of
such series.”
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS OF PURE REASON AS
REGULATIVE CONCEPTS: SELF, COSMOS, & GOD
3rd Concept of God:
The third idea of pure reason, which contains a
merely relative supposition of a being that is the
sole and sufficient cause of all cosmological
series, is the idea of God. We have not the
slightest ground to assume in an absolute
manner the object of this idea…. It becomes
evident that the idea of such a being, like all
speculative ideas, seems only to formulate the
command of reason, that all connection in the
world be viewed in accordance with the
principles of a systematic unity-as if all such
connection had its source in one single allembracing being as the supreme and sufficient
cause.”
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS OF PURE REASON AS
REGULATIVE CONCEPTS: SELF, COSMOS, & GOD
He criticizes earlier rationalists for making the error of treating transcendental ideas as though
they were ideas about transcendent or actual beings. “There is a great difference between
something given to my reason as an object absolutely, or merely as an object in the idea.”
1. Kant’s use of these regulative ideas
exemplifies his way of mediating between
dogmatic rationalism and skeptical
empiricism.
2. The idea of the self, cosmos, and God cannot
give us any theoretical knowledge of realities
corresponding to these ideas.
3. The function of these ideas is simply and
solely regulative.
4. As regulative ideas, they give us a
reasonable way of dealing with the
constantly recurring questions raised by
metaphysics.
The Four Antinomies:
TDCC
The 4 Antinomies:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Time
Divisibility
Causation
Contingency
“The point of constructing
the antinomies is to
exhibit the mismatch
between the scope of
empirical inquiry and the
pretensions of pure
reason.”
~ Anthony Kenny, Rise of
Modern Philosophy,
3:106
4 Antimonies show us that when we discuss the nature of
the world beyond experience we can argue with equal force
on opposite sides:
(1) The world is limited in time and space, or it is unlimited
(2) Every composite substance in the world is made up of
simple parts, or that no composite thing in the world is
made up simple parts since there nowhere exists in the
world anything simple.
(3) Besides causality in accordance with the laws of
nature there is also another causality, that of freedom, or
that there is no freedom since everything in the world
takes place solely in accordance with the laws of nature;
(4) There exists an absolute necessary being as a part of
the world or as its cause, or an absolutely necessary being
exists.
Consider Kenny’s Discussion of Kant’s
Fourth Antinomy:
Anthony Kenny writes:
“In his fourth antinomy Kant proposes arguments
for and against the existence of a necessary
being, and then in a later section of the Critique
he goes on to consider the concept of God’s
existence into three fundamental types, and
shows how arguments of every type must fail. If
God is to have a place in our thought and life, he
believed, it is not as an entity whose existence is
established by rational proof [Ibid., 106].”
The Antinomies and the Limits of Reason:
Antinomies: the inability of the mind to discuss to self, cosmos,
or God-the nature of the world beyond experience:
There is a difference for Kant between a priori or
theoretical scientific knowledge and speculative
metaphysics. The difference is that we can have
scientific knowledge of phenomena but cannot have
scientific knowledge of the noumenal realm. Our
attempts to achieve a science of metaphysics is doomed
to failure. Whenever we try to discuss the self, the
cosmos, or God as though they were objects of
experience, the inability of the mind ever to do so
successfully is indicated by what Kant calls the
antinomies into which we fall.
The Antinomies and the Limits of Reason:
Since regulative ideas do not refer to any objective reality about which we
can have knowledge, we must consider these ideas as the products of pure
reason. As such we can’t bring to these ideas the a priori forms of time and
space or the category of cause and effect since these are imposed by us
only upon the sensible manifold.
Science is possible because all people, having the same structure of mind
will always and everywhere order the events of sense experience in the
same way; that is, we all bring to the given of sense experience the same
organizing faculties of understanding. But there can be no science of
metaphysics because there is not the same kind of given when we consider
the ideas of self, cosmos and God as when we consider “the shortest
distance between two points.”
What is given in metaphysics is the felt need to achieve a synthesis of the
wide variety of events in experience at ever-higher levels and of discovering
an ever-wider explanation of the realm of phenomena.
4 Antimonies show us that when we discuss the nature of
the world beyond experience we can argue with equal force
on opposite sides:
1. They reflect disagreements generated by dogmatic metaphysics,
disagreements based on non-sense for they are attempting to
describe a reality about which they can have no sense experience;
2. These antinomies justify saying that the world of space and time is
phenomenal only and that in such a world freedom is a coherent
idea. This follows because if the world were a thing-in-itself, it would
have to be either finite or infinite in extent and divisibility. But these
antinomies show that there can be no demonstrative proof that either
alternative is true. Insofar, then, as the world is phenomenal only, we
are justified in affirming moral freedom and human responsibility
3. As regulative principles they help us to synthesize our experience.
Another Look at Antinomies: Thesis is the error of
dogmatism and antithesis is the error of empiricism
1.
In order to dismantle a priori cosmology, Kant sets up 4 antinomies which lead
to contradictory conclusions (a thesis & antithesis).
2.
In each antinomy the thesis states that a certain series comes to a full stop and
the antithesis states that it continues forever.
3.
In each case Kant presents the series as a series of entities that are
conditioned by something else-an effect, for instance, is in his terms
‘conditioned’ by its cause.
4.
In each antinomy, the thesis of the argument concludes to an unconditional
absolute.
5.
Kant believes that both sides of each antinomy are in error: the thesis is the
error of dogmatism and the antithesis is the error of empiricism.
6.
The point of constructing the antinomies is to exhibit the mismatch between the
scope of empirical inquiry and the pretensions of pure reason.
7.
The thesis represents the world as smaller than thought (we can think beyond
it); it antithesis represents it as larger than thought (we cannot think to the end
of it). “We must match thought and world by trimming our cosmic ideas to fit
empirical inquiry.” ~ Anthony Kenny, The Rise of Modern Philosophy, 3:106.
Kant does not want us to conclude both contradictions
are true: the moral lesson is that reason has not right
to talk at all about the world as a whole.
Thesis: The Error of
Dogmatism:
Thesis states that a
certain series comes
to fall stop.
Thesis concludes to
an unconditioned
absolute.
Thesis is an error of
dogmatism.
Thesis represents
the world as smaller
than thought for we
can think beyond it.
Antithesis: The
Error of Empiricism:
.Antithesis states that
it continues forever.
Antithesis is an error
of empiricism.
Antithesis
represents the world
as larger than
thought (we cannot
think to the end of it).
Thesis: The world has a
beginning in time and is
limited in space.
Antithesis: The world has
no beginning in time and
no limits in space.
How Can the Antinomies be Resolved?
The seemingly irreconcilable claims of the
Antinomies can only be resolved by seeing
them as the product of the conflict of the
faculties and by recognizing the proper
sphere of our knowledge in each case. In
each of them, the idea of "absolute totality,
which holds only as a condition of things in
themselves, has been applied to
appearances" (A 506/B534).
Results of Kant’s Analysis of the Antinomies:
We can reject both claims of the first two and
accept both claims of the last two, if we
understand their proper domains.
– In the first Antinomy, the world as it appears to us is
neither finite since we can always inquire about its
beginning or end, nor is it infinite because finite
beings like ourselves cannot cognize an infinite
whole. As an empirical object, Kant argues, it is
indefinitely constructible for our minds. As it is in itself,
independent of the conditions of our thought, should
not be identified as finite or infinite since both are
categorical conditions of our thought.
Results of Kant’s Analysis of the Antinomies:
We can reject both claims of the first two and accept both claims of
the last two, if we understand their proper domains.
– Kant's resolution of the third Antinomy (A 445/B 473) clarifies his
position on freedom. He considers the two competing hypotheses of
speculative metaphysics that there are different types of causality in the
world: 1) there are natural causes which are themselves governed by
the laws of nature as well as uncaused causes like ourselves that can
act freely, or 2) the causal laws of nature entirely govern the world
including our actions. The conflict between these contrary claims can be
resolved, Kant argues, by taking his critical turn and recognizing that it
is impossible for any cause to be thought of as uncaused itself in the
realm of space and time. But reason, in trying to understand the ground
of all things, strives to unify its knowledge beyond the empirical realm.
The empirical world, considered by itself, cannot provide us with
ultimate reasons. So if we do not assume a first or free cause we cannot
completely explain causal series in the world. So for the Third Antinomy,
as for all of the Antinomies, the domain of the Thesis is the intellectual,
rational, noumenal world. The domain of the Antithesis is the
spatiotemporal world.
Consider the following comment from the
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4:316.
“Kant is enormously impressed by the discovery of these contradictions,
and it is regrettable only that he does not sufficiently discuss their formal
character…The only way to avoid these antinomies, in Kant’s opinion, is
to adopt his own (critical) point of view and recognize that the world, that
is, the object of our knowledge is a world of appearances, existing only
insofar as it is it constructed; this solution enables us to dismiss both
parties to the dispute in the case of the first two antinomies, and to
accept the contentions of both parties in the vase of the other two. If the
world exists only insofar as it is constructed, it is neither finite nor infinite
but indefinitely extensible and so neither has nor lacks a limit in space
and time. Equally, if the world is phenomenal we have at least the idea
of a world that is not phenomenal; and natural causality can apply
without restriction to the first without precluding the application of a
different type of causality to the second. This is admittedly only an
empty hypothesis so far as theoretical reason is concerned, but Kant
argues that it can be converted into something more satisfactory if we
take account of the activities of practical (moral) reason.”
What about God?
In preface to Critique of Pure Reason, one
reason why he is limiting knowledge is to make
room for faith. He argues that the proper
grounds for belief in God and in afterlife are not
to be derived from proofs of metaphysics, but
faith. Thus, belief in God and salvation depend
on one’s hopes for Divine justice.
~ Patricia Kitcher, “Immanuel Kant” in Blackwell
Companion to Modern Philosophy, 240.
Proofs of God’s Existence:
Kant rejects traditional proofs of God’s existence
for we cannot employ the a priori categories of
the mind in trying to describe realities beyond
sense experience.
But just as we cannot demonstrate God’s
existence, neither can we demonstrate that God
does not exist. By pure reason alone we can
neither prove nor disprove God’s existence.
Argument against Ontological Argument:
Argument against ontological proof is that it is all a verbal
exercise, for the essence of this proof is the assertion that
since we have the idea of a most perfect being, it would be
contradictory to say that such a being does not exist.
– Kant argues that this line of reasoning is “taken from judgments, not
from things and their existence,” that the idea of God is made to have
the predicate of existence by simply fashioning the concept in such a
way that existence is made to be included in the idea of a perfect being.
– This argument nowhere indicates why it is necessary to have the
subject, God.
Kant states, “All the trouble and labour bestowed on the famous
ontological or cartesian proof of the existence of a supreme Being from
concepts alone is trouble and labour wasted. A man might as well
expect to become richer in knowledge by the aid of mere ideas as a
merchant to increase his wealth by adding some noughts to his cash
account.”
Kant’s Argument against Ontological Argument:
Argument against ontological proof is that it is all a verbal
exercise, for the essence of this proof is the assertion that
since we have the idea of a most perfect being, it would be
contradictory to say that such a being does not exist.
– Kant argues that this line of reasoning is “taken from judgments, not
from things and their existence,” that the idea of God is made to have
the predicate of existence by simply fashioning the concept in such a
way that existence is made to be included in the idea of a perfect being.
– This argument nowhere indicates why it is necessary to have the
subject, God.
Kant states, “All the trouble and labour bestowed on the famous
ontological or cartesian proof of the existence of a supreme Being from
concepts alone is trouble and labour wasted. A man might as well
expect to become richer in knowledge by the aid of mere ideas as a
merchant to increase his wealth by adding some noughts to his cash
account.”
Kant’s Argument against Cosmological Proof:
The cosmological proof “takes its stand on experience”:
–
“I exist, therefore, absolutely necessary being exists” on the assumption that if
anything exists an absolutely necessary being must also exists.
Kant’s problem with this argument is that while it begins with experience, it
moves beyond experience.
Though it is legitimate to infer a cause for each event within the realm of
experience, “the principle of causality has no meaning and no criterion for
its application save only in the sensible world.”
In essence, Kant states that we cannot employ the a priori categories of
the mind in trying describe realities beyond sense experience.
Therefore, the cosmological argument cannot secularly lead us to a first
cause of all things. The most we can infer from our experience of things is
a regulative idea of God. Whether there actually is such a being, a ground
of all contingent things, raises the same question posted by the
ontological argument, namely, whether we can successfully bridge the
gap between our idea of a perfect being and demonstrative proof of its
existence.
Kant’s Argument against Teleological Proof:
The Teleological Proof:
–
“In the world we everywhere find clear signs of an order in accordance with a
determinate purpose…. The diverse things could not themselves have
cooperated, by so great a combination of diverse means, to the fulfillment of
determinate final purposes, had they not been chosen and designed for these
purposes of an ordering rational principles in conformity with underlying ideas.”
–
Kant replies by saying that it may very well be that of our experience of order
that the material stuff of the world could not exist without an orderer.
–
The most this argument from design can prove, says Kant, “is an architect of
this world who is always very hampered by the adaptability of the material in
which he works, not a creator of the world to whose idea everything is subject.”
–
To prove the existence of a creator leads us back to the cosmological
argument with its causality, but since we cannot use the category of causality
beyond the things in experience, we are left simply with an idea of a first cause
or creator, and this takes us back to the ontological argument, with its
deficiencies.
Kant’s Argument against Teleological Proof:
Kant’s conclusion against these traditional arguments for
God’s existence is that we cannot use transcendental ideas
or theoretical principles, which have no application beyond
the field of sense experience, to demonstrate the existence of
God.
It also follows that just as we cannot demonstrate God’s
existence, Kant argues that neither can we demonstrate that
God does not exist.
Pure reason alone can neither prove nor disprove God’s
existence.
If therefore, the existence of God cannot be effectively dealt
with by the theoretical reason, which Kant has gone to such
lengths to show has relevance only in the realm of sense
experience, some other aspect of revelation must be
considered as the source of the idea of God.
I.
Summary of Kant’s Project:
~ W. T. Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre, pg. 98-9.
1.
Make a new analysis of the nature of knowledge that
would (a) show its proper limitations (as Empiricists
did) but also (b) validate knowledge within its own
proper field (as empiricists failed to do).
2.
Central feature is the Galileo factor: observe and
demonstrate-which none of Kant’s predecessors had
known how to combine effectively.
3.
Main reason for success was his grasp of the role of
experiment, namely, that the answers one gets
depends on the questions one asks. The result of
Kant’s recognition of the mind’s role as a
“questioner” of nature was a wholly new conception
of the nature of the self and its objects.
I.
Summary of Kant’s Project:
~ W. T. Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre, pg. 98-9.
Central points:
1.
Self and not-self are not metaphysically distinct “ultimates”
but “constructs” within the field of experience.
2.
Experience is a spatiotemporal manifold in which
distinctions are made, including the distinction between
self and not-self.
3.
Natural sciences are limited to describing and generalizing
about this spatiotemporal manifold and the various
‘objects’ distinguished within it, including the self (science
of psychology) and not-self (physics, chemistry, and so
on).
I.
Summary of Kant’s Project:
~ W. T. Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre, pg. 98-9.
4.
Experience-the spatiotemporal manifold-is dependent on
“transcendental conditions. Because they are
“transcendental,” these conditions are not in experience
(in the sense that red and blue, hot and cold, sweet and
sour, are in experience). Despite Hume’s failure to find
them, there is no evidence for denying their existence.
Hume was simply looking for the wrong things in the
wrong place.
5.
Those these transcendental conditions are not in
experience, and hence cannot be objects of scientific
cognition, we know that they exist, for they are the
necessary conditions of experience. We can argue what
is known in experience to what must be true for there to
be this knowledge in experience.
I.
Summary of Kant’s Project:
~ W. T. Jones, History of Western Philosophy, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre, pg. 98-9.
6.
These transcendental questions, which are nothing but the
basic types of questions the mind asks of nature, validate the
sciences in their own field and at the same time limit them to
this field.
7.
Since ‘God, freedom and immortality’ fall outside this field, the
sciences can say nothing one way or the other about them.
8.
It follows that God and the free immortal self are neither
substantival nor causally efficacious, for substance and
causality are concepts relevant only within the experiential
field.
9.
Nevertheless, God and the free immortal self are real, for
their reality is guaranteed by the facts of moral experience.
Situating Kant In
History:
“Kant’s Philosophical Development” from
Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 2:41-9
Kant observes that the first step in philosophy is “always
dogmatic.” Hoffding observes that nowhere does Kant
appear to be a thorough-going dogmatist (pg. 40).
1755-69, his first period of scholarship, is a dissatisfaction
with previous philosophical systems and a demand that
analysis must precede construction of a philosophy.
1769-81, his second period of scholarship, is primarily an
inquiry into the possibility of a transition from analysis to
construction.
Kant’s Philosophical Development from
Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 2:41-9:
First Period in Kant’s Development: 1755-69:
1755-69:
– First period of scholarship reflects his dissatisfaction with existing
philosophical systems and his attempt to find means to erect a new
and more thorough but less imposing structure.
– “Metaphysic for Kant became a doctrine of the limits of knowledge
and began to speak of a critique of reason itself (pg. 41).
Kant extends Newton’s demand that demonstrable causes ve
assigned to all phenemena.
– The wildest hypothesis is preferable to an appeal to the supernatural (pg.
42).
Kant’s Philosophical Development from
Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, 2:41-9
1755-69: First Period in Kant’s Development
– One central reason why previous philosophies were dissatisfactory and
imperfect to Kant:
– They operated with incomplete concepts by assuming that we must
construct philosophy just like we do in mathematics. Thus, they too
quickly moved from analysis to construction (pg. 43). Hume’s skepticism
awaked Kant from his uncritical acceptance of Leibnizian metaphysics.
For example, Kant refers to the concept of “spirit” by Descartes and Leibniz
in their “spiritualistic psychology”.
Another example is the “problem of causality.” How can the causal concept
be valid if itself is incomprehensible (Hume sees the problem insoluble… yet
we claim it as a fact).
In sum, Kant is concerned with “transference of the problem from the
objective or metaphysical form to the subjective or epistemological
form. This transference followed naturally from Kant’s increasing
conviction that analysis must precede construction” (pg. 45).
Consider this account by Hoffding:
“ Since the analysis of a concept so important for exact science as
the causal concept presented a problem which Kant found himself
unable to solve, it is no wonder that this general tone of mind
towards the end of the fruitful years 1762-63, which produced no
less than five important treatises, was distinctly sceptical. He
appeals ironically to the rational philosophers whose numbers
increase daily, and begs them to solve for him the simple question
which had brought him to a halt. From this frame of mind, sprang a
few years later, the ‘To no other period of Kant’s life does the
expression ‘awakening from dogmatic slumbers’ apply so well as to
this. He himself afterwards defined dogmatism as ‘the presumption
that we may follow the time-honoured method of constructing a
system of pure metaphysic out of principles that rest upon mere
conceptions, without first asking in what way has reason come into
possession of them, and by what right it employs them’ (“Critique of
Pure reason,” 2nd edition, pg. 35) [Ibid., 45].
2nd Period in Kant’s development (1769-81):
An inquiry into the possibility of a transition from
analysis to construction. The turning point was
in 1769 and it consisted of the following:
“I found that many of the axioms which we
have regarded as object are, as a matter of
fact, subjective: that is, they express the
conditions under which alone we are able to
apprehend or understand the object” [Ibid.,
45].
2nd Period in Kant’s
development (1769-81):
Hoffding writes:
He has himself compared the discovery here made with that of
Copernicus. As it is due to our position on the earth that the heavenly
bodies appear to move round us, so it is owing to the nature of our
senses that we perceive things in space and time. What Newton called
absolute space and absolute time are only schemata or forms which we
construct when we take account of how we perceive things. The laws of
space and time are the laws of our sensibility. Hence everything which
experience shows us must be subject to these laws (for otherwise they
could not be perceived by the senses), and we now understand how it is
that applied mathematics can law down a priori laws of phenomena. But
since we perceive everything according to the forms of our perceptive
faculty, the senses can only show us phenomena, not things in
themselves (noumena) [Ibid., 46].
2nd Period in Kant’s
development (1769-81):
He became aware of some great difficulties that
resulted from his conclusions (Ibid., 46-7):
– How can concepts of the understanding, which we form by
means of the activity of our thought, be valid of things which
are entirely independent of us?
– Since these concepts (e.g., cause, substance, possibility,
reality, and necessity) are framed by us, they cannot be
mere products of things.
– If they are only the results of experience, they cannot serve
to establish axioms which claim to be valid apart from any
foundation in experience.
2nd Period of Kant’s Philosophical Development:
He came to the conclusion that we operate with concepts which
express our efforts to bind together phenomena in different ways
under different forms; he came to the concept of synthesis. The
concept of synthesis is found in both perception and understanding.
Hoffding writes:
…when, and only when, phenomena admit of being united in the ways
specified in our categories which express the forms of our
understanding, are we able to understand. Synthetic unity is the
condition of all understanding as well as of all sensuous perception.
Hence we are able by means of the categories to anticipate experience.
The Copernican principle has now been applied in all spheres; the
impossibility of knowing noumena, things-in-themselves, is, however,
the unavoidable conclusion….Kant’s idea of synthesis as the
fundamental form of activity of consciousness [Ibid., 47-8].
Situating Kant:
Galileo’s dictum: “The book of nature is written in the
language of mathematics.”
The Scientific Revolution pressed certain philosophical
questions:
– For example, “Why should physical quantities, force, mass, and acceleration
be related to each other according to a precise mathematical formula?”
– How do mathematical equations precisely capture real relations among
physical quantities?
– Epistemologically, how could we ever know that all bodies obey Newton’s
three laws of motion?
Situating Kant:
Galileo’s dictum: “The book of nature is written in the
language of mathematics.”
– Where do the “eternal truths”, i.e., First principles of logic” come from and
why are they valid?
Descartes argues that God made them true and they were implanted in
each human mind.
Leibniz claimed they were self-evidently true.
In contrast, Hume claimed that there is no reason to accept such claims
(e.g., cause and effect); they were popular opinions accepted simply
because they were widely held. In fact, at the end of Inquiry Concerning
Human Knowledge, Hume states that any book of metaphysics, indeed
any book at all that was neither mathematics, nor based firmly on
experiment and evidences-should be burned!
Situating Kant:
Galileo’s dictum: “The book of nature is written in the
language of mathematics.”
Given this background, Kant addressed three central questions (Critique of Pure
Reason, B [1787] 15-18):
1.
2.
3.
How is mathematics possible?
How is natural science possible?
How is metaphysics possible (as a science?):
Kant tried to show that we are justified in accepting the claims of math, science,
and metaphysics. But from Hume he recognized that universal and necessary
claims in math, science, or metaphysics could not be justified by appeal to
empirical evidence for sensory experience could only tell us what had been the
case.
But Kant also rejected the claim that claims could be justified by appealing to
definitions. Since sensory evidence is not adequate to justify universal and
necessary claims and rationalists assumed a “lazy hypothesis”, namely, key
concepts and logical principles were innate, having been divinely implanted in the
human mind to harmonize perfectly with the laws chosen by God to govern the
universe, Kant describes his project this way:
Situating Kant:
Galileo’s dictum: “The book of nature is written in the
language of mathematics.”
Kant writes:
There is no doubt that all our cognition begins with experience… But
even though all our cognition commences with experience, nevertheless,
it does not for that reason all originate from experience. For it might well
be that our empirical cognition itself is a composition of what we receive
through impressions and of what our own cognitive faculties give up out
of themselves (merely induced by sensory impressions)… (B 1).
Like Copernicus was able to make sense of celestial phenomena only be
changing perspective, by considering whether our knowledge conformed
to objects, we should explore the possibility that the objects of our
knowledge conform to our cognition (B. xvii).
An Embarrassing Situation by mid 18th Century:
Descartes aim had been to put new physics on a firm
philosophical foundation by providing ph into physical
inquiry that could be carried out undisturbed by
theological scruples and at the same time excluding
mechanism from the realm of values (which Hobbes had
fialed to do). Descartes believed that he accomplished
this by dividing reality into two metaphysically distinct
substances: matter and mind.
Problem: It led to paradoxical solutions (you are nothing
but a mind) demolishing the intellectual basis for physical
theory.
An Embarrassing Situation by mid 18th
Century:
Continental Rationalists pressed Descartes’ rationalistic bias to its
logical conclusion. They aimed at certainty because they had the
idea that mathematical knowledge is certain. In fact, to them
mathematics is the ideal of all knowledge.
Problem:
Hume pointed out that they failed to see that indubitable
knowledge so obtained consisted of implicatory relations
holding among propositions. To obtain a knowledge of matters
of fact they needed perception, but they had written off
perception as mere confused thinking, that is, no more than
degenerate conception. Hence their theories remained only
speculation, incapable of being verified or refuted [W.T. Jones,
History of Philosophy, Kant, 16].
Kant’s View of Scientific Method:
Kant believed that the Cartesian compromise
had failed because Descartes had
misunderstood the nature of scientific method-it
involves both an empirical factor and a rational
factor. Descartes’ followers had alternatively
emphasized each of these factors, with the
disastrous results we have seen. None
understood how the two factors combine in
cognition; none succeeded in giving an
intelligible account of knowledge.
Why not Kant asks, do what a scientists does
when one of hypotheses breaks down? Why
not try another hypothesis?
Kant’s Hypothesis: Like Copernicus who put
the sun at the center of the system, let’s look at
things differently:
Instead of the mind agreeing with the
object, the mind’s object must agree with
the mind.
David Hume: Wedge between Reason and Nature:
David Hume also asserted that there is no necessary
connection among matters of fact. In fact, Hume
regarded reason was merely an instrument for detecting
relations among ideas; reason can tell us nothing about
the world. He believed that we do experience nature-the
real world-as ordered. But there is no evidence that the
order we find there is necessary: there is no rationale in
nature to which the rational mind conforms. Hume drove
a wedge between reason and nature. In doing so, he
opened the way for a shift in beliefs and values that
opened up the door for others to say (perhaps to his
horror if he was alive) that “if you can’t explain anything
by reasoning, the it is useless to reason.”
Situating Kant:
Kant’s philosophy represents both the
intellectual climax and transformation of the
European Enlightenment:
– Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own
understanding! This slogan of the age is taken up
by Kant and applied universally!
– Enlightenment was a (a) process of eliminating
errors and prejudices by the decision to think
independently of errors and prejudices prompted by
the decision to think independently, (b) the gradual
transcendence of particular interests, and (c)
progressive liberation of “universal human reason.”
Situating Kant:
For Kant the Enlightenment led him to the critique of all
dogmatic philosophy and to the discovery of the ultimate
foundation of reason: The principle of reason lies in autonomy:
freedom as self-legislation. At the same time, Kant rejected
untainted optimism which had already been shaken by
Rousseau’s First Discourse and the earthquake in Lisbon
(1755). Thus, proceeding from specifically philosophical
problems, Kant advances not only to the origins but also the
limits of pure reason, theoretical as well as practical.
Key concepts of Kantian philosophy: critique, reason, and
freedom, are decisive catchwords of the ‘age of the French
Revolution (roughly 1770-1814).
Situating Kant:
Kant’s idea of a priori synthesis led him beyond [ASP]:
– atomistic psychology which underlay empiricism;
– spiritualistic psychology from which most idealistic systems had started.
– psychology of the Enlightenment (which restricted itself to that which is
clearly conscious an comprehensible by the understanding). For Kant,
consciousness may work blindly and instinctively, as a hidden art of our
innermost nature.
Kant’s idea of a priori synthesis also placed him in opposition to
Empiricism:
– Why? Empiricists attempt to explain the unity of the mind as nothing more
than the result of a “manifold of impressions.” For Kant, life cannot be
explained by external influences only;
Kant’s idea also led him to claim that there is a limit to science
[knowledge]:
– Also led him to claim that there is a limit to science; our knowledge cannot
lead us farther back than the fundamental form and fundamental law of
intellectual life as it is appears in experience.
Situating Kant:
The first critique should be names more exactly as the “Critique
of Pure Speculative Reason.”
– Since “metaphysics” by definition is beyond all experience, metaphysics
as a discipline has become the battlefield of intrinsic endless
controversies.
– Rationalistic metaphysics (Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, and
Leibniz; Wolff) predominated his time. Wolff is who Kant specifically had
in mind.
Wolff believed experience as a genuine source of knowledge but believes
that we can discern something about reality by pure reason (thought). Kant
considered rationalists like to be dogmatic and despotic because they force
certain fundamental assumptions (e.g., soul is of a simple nature and
immortal or that the world has a beginning and God exists without a
preliminary critique of reason).
Situating Kant:
On the other hand, we also have skeptics who in
“technical… ignorance” undermine “the foundations of all
knowledge” and make “short work with all metaphysics.
Kant sees in John Locke and attempt to end all
controversies by means of “physiology” (literally: science of
nature) “of the human understanding”.
Locke rejects Descartes’ doctrine of innate ideas and
principles, stands for empiricism, which ultimately traces all
knowledge to internal or external experience.
We also have empiricism which denies that knowledge has
foundations completely free from experience (Hume).
Situating Kant:
So, in view of dogmatists, skeptics, and
empiricists, Kant seeks to liberate
metaphysics from its muddled situation: The
Critique of Pure Reason.
The Critique of Pure Reason is the selfexamination and self-justification of reason
independent of experience.
Situating Kant:
Otfried Hoffe writes:
Locke derived the concepts of cause and effect from experience and still
ventured forth with knowledge above and beyond experience. Kant
views this as ‘enthusiasm: fundamental presuppositions of experience
such as the principle of causality (“All changes occur according to the
principle of cause and effect”) are neither due to experience nor make
knowledge above and beyond experience possible. The basic
presuppositions do not stem, though, as Hume believes, from
(psychological) habit… They are universally valid, so that Kant ultimately
in contrast to skepticism deems objective knowledge possible. With the
demonstration of conditions of experience themselves free of experience
and hence universally valid, Kant shows that metaphysics is possiblebut in contrast to rationalism only as a theory of experience, not as a
science transcending the sphere of experience, and in distinction to
empiricism not as an empirical but rather as a transcendental thoery of
experience [Ibid., 34-5].
Situating Kant:
Kant not only wants to guide metaphysics
into a “secure path of science, but progress
is possible only if one proceeds in accord
with plans and goals and if representatives of
the field are agreed regarding their
procedures. Unfortunately, a universally
recognized method is lacking; despite the
work of 2,000 years, metaphysics hence still
cannot expect progress. So, Kant wants to
provide the missing method [Ibid., 35-6].
Situating Kant:
Otfried Hoffe writes:
In the course of its self-examination, reason
dismisses rationalism because reality cannot be
known by mere thought. But reason also rejects
empiricism. Kant admits that all knowledge begins
with experience, but it does not follow, as
empiricisms assumes, that knowledge originates
solely in experience. On the contrary, even
empirical knowledge proves impossible without
sources independent of experience [Immanuel
Kant, 34].
Consequences of Kant’s Ideas:
1. Kant’s limitation of knowledge rules out virtually all traditional metaphysics,
which contains two parts:
a.
General metaphysics or ontology (which is concerned with the
universal properties of things (Aristotle’s science of being qua being),
and
b.
Special metaphysics, which encompasses the disciplines of rational
psychology (the soul), rational cosmology (the world), and rational
theology (God).
2. Although the limitation of knowledge to objects of possible experience
suffices to rule out both branches of metaphysics, Kant devotes a large
portion of the Critique, to exposing the ‘transcendental illusion’ which
supposedly underlies the latter. Since this illusion is rooted in the very
nature of human reason, it cannot be eliminated; through Kant contends that
it is possible to avoid being deceived by it. In fact, the therapeutic function of
the Critique is to provide the tool (transcendental idealism) for avoiding such
deception.
Kant and Locke:
1. Kant agrees with Locke that we have no innate
knowledge, that is, no knowledge of any
particular propositions implanted in us by God or
nature prior to the commencement of our
individual experience. But experience is the
product of external objects affecting our
sensibility and of the operations of our cognitive
faculties in response to this affect, and Kant’s
claim is that we can have “pure” a priori
cognition of the contributions themselves, rather
than of the effect of external objects on us in
experience.
Kant and Leibniz:
Leibniz held the view that space and time to be systems
of relations, conceptual constructs based on nonrelational properties inhering in the things we think of as
spatiotemporally related.
Kant responds by saying that space and time are not
inherent in things as they are in themselves, but are
rather only forms of our sensibility, hence conditions
under which objects of experience can be given at all
and the fundamental principle of their representation and
individuation. Only in this way can we adequately
account for the necessary manifestation of space and
time throughout all expeirence as single but infinite
magnitdues.
Criticisms and Reactions:,
From W. T. Jones, History of Western Philosophy, 101-8.
Romanticism: Romanticism, a very complex phenomenon, was, in part, a reaction
against the Enlightenment, in particular, against its conception of knowledge. To the
romantic mind, the distinction that reason makes are artificial, imposed, and manmade; they divide, and in dividing destroy, the living whole of reality-”We murder to
dissect.” How, then are we to get in touch with the real? By divesting ourselves,
insofar as we can, of the whole apparatus of learning and scholarship and by
becoming like children or simply, uneducated men; by attending to nature rather than
the works of man; by becoming passive and letting nature work on us; by
contemplation and communion, rather than by ratiocination and scientific method
(e.g., Wordsworth and Keats. They were impressed by the largeness of reality, an
immensity that baffled the methods of science and that made the whole human
enterprise, on which the preceding age had set such store, petty, and tribal.
Two cardinal theses: They rejected the idea that man is unique from all the rest of
nature because he alone possesses reason. Because the romantics downgraded
reason, they were disposed to think of man as part of nature, as dependent on
nature not only for bodily sustenance but also for his highest thoughts and noblest
aspiration.
Romantics disliked sharp distinctions of any kind: They rejected the Enlightenment
view of the universe as made up of large number of separate entities (selves, things)
and viewed the universe as one continuous living and dynamic being (e.g., Goeth’s
Faust).
Criticisms and Reactions:
From Anthony Kenny’s, The Rise of Modern
Philosophy, 3:163.
– Fichte argued that there was a radical inconsistency
in the Critique of Pure Reason. How could it
simultaneously be truth that our experience was
caused by things in themselves and that the
concept of cause could only be applied within the
sphere of phenomena? The way to avoid this
contradiction, Fichte claimed, was to abandon the
idea of an unknown, mind-independent cause of
phenomena, and to accept wholeheartedly the
idealist position that the world of experience is the
creation of a thinking subject.