A COLLECTION OF CHARTS ON KANT

1

• A COLLECTION OF CHARTS ON KANTS THEORY OF
  KNOWLEDGE
• The mind makes the world rather than the world
  makes the mind.
• Kant declared metaphysics is impossible.
• Transcendental Idealism-
• Saving Science An Alternative to Skepticism and
  Dogmatism.

What can I know? What should I do? For what may I
hope?
2
In summary What is the Structure of Rational
Thought

• 1. The Categories of Thought and Forms of
  Intuition
• 2. The Self and the Unity of Experience
• 3. Phenomenal and Noumenal Reality
• 4. Transcendental Ideas of Pure Reason as
  Regulative Concepts
• 5. The Antinomies and the Limits of Reason
• 6. Proof of Gods Existence

3
Principle Arguments/Divisions of the Critique of
Pure Reason

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

4
Structure of Kants Critique of Pure Reason
Preface
General Logic
Applied Logic
Introduction
Doctrine of Method Part 2 Reflections on the
methodological implications of that theory
whereby he contrasts mathematical philosophical
proof, between theoretical practical reasoning,
between his own method dogmatic, empirical,
skeptical methods of philosophy. Four sections
are
Doctrine of Elements Part I An Exposition of
his theory of a priori cognition its limits
Transcendental Aesthetic Considers the a priori
contributions of the fund. forms of our
sensibility (namely, space time), to our
knowledge.
Transcendental Logic Considers the a priori
contributions of the intellect, both genuine
spurious, to our knowledge.
1 In Discipline of Pure Reason Kant provides
an ext. contrast between nature of mathematical
proof philosophical argument, offering
important commentary on his transcendental
method.
Transcendental Dialectic Spurious attempt of
reason working independently of sensibility to
provide metaphysical insight into things as they
are in themselves.
Transcendent-al Analytic The conditions of the
possibility of experience knowledge
Analytic of Concepts Argues for universal
necessary validity of pure concepts of the
understanding, or the categories (e.g., concepts
of substance causation).
2 In Canon of Pure Reason, Kant prepares the
way for his subsequent moral philosophy by
contrasting method of theoretical philosophy to
that of practical philosophy, giving the 1st
outline that runs through all 3 critiques
practical reason can justify metaphysical beliefs
about God, freedom and immortality of soul
although theoretical reason can never yield
knowledge of such things.
Analytic of Principles Argues for the
validity of fund. principles of empirical
judgment employing those categories (e.g.,
principles of conversation of substance
universality of causation).
3-4 In the architectonic of Pure Reason the
History of Pure Reason, Kant recapitulates the
contrasts between Kants own philosophical method
those of the dogmatists, empiricists,
skeptics which he began, treating these contrasts
in both systematic historical terms. Here he
outlines history of modern philosophy as
transcendence of empiricism rationalism by his
own critical philosophy.
(1) Concept of Pure Reason (2) On the
Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason Kant
explains how pure reason generates ideas of
metaphysical entities such as the soul, the world
as a whole, God then attempts to prove the
reality of those idea by extending patterns of
inference which are valid within the limits of
human sensibility beyond those limits.
Inferences divided into 3 sections The
Paralogisms of Pure Reason, The Antinomy of
Pure Reason, The Ideal of Pure Reason
Exposes metaphysically fallacious arguments
about soul, world, God.
5
Central Divisions of Thought

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

6

• Transcendental Aesthetic
• Space and time are subjective forms of human
  sensibility, through which the manifold of sense
  is given to the mind.
• This is contrast, for example, to self-subsisting
  realities (Newton) or relations between
  subsisting things (Leibniz). The only the
  conception of space is capable of accounting for
  the possibility of geometry, which he equated
  with Euclidean geometry.

Transcendental Analytic Understanding is
equipped with a set of a priori concepts or
categories (for example, causality and substance)
which are required for the knowledge of an object
or an objective realm. From this Kant concludes
that all objects of possible experience must
conform to these categories.
Transcendental Idealism His overarching
metaphysical doctrine. The world as known to
creatures like ourselves, who rely on perceptual
experience conceptual understanding, is not the
world of things-in-themselves-of things as they
are indep. of cognition, but of appearance.
We have knowledge only of phenomena (things in
the sensible realm), not the noumena-which are
knowable only by God, capable of non-sensory
intellectual intuition. For ex., we experience
world as spacio-temporal, even though space
time are forms of (our) sensibility, not
features of reality-in-itself. Kant favorably
contrasts his transcendental idealism w/
transcendental realism empirical idealism,
which hold that our knowledge extends to
things-in-themselves, that objects of
experience arent grounded in extra-mental
reality.
Transcendental Deduction A name for the
reasoning which simultaneously justifies both the
applicability of the pure concepts of
understanding (categories) to objects of
experience the objectivity of experience
itself. Starting from the fact that all my
representations are grasped together in one
consciousness (the unity of apperception), the
argument asserts that such unity is possible only
because synthesized according to the rules
contained in the pure concepts.
7

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

8
What is Kants Contribution?

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

9
Though Rationalists Empiricists followed
different paths, they both reached the same
skeptical dead end
Empiricists, who argued that we have access to
the actual world in sense perception, held that
what we perceive are ideas caused in us by things
outside of us (e.g., impressions lead to ideas).
Thus, we only know our own ideas.
Since the rationalists had written off perception
as mere confused thinking, their theories
remained only speculation, incapable of being
verified or refuted.
Meanwhile, the working scientists, unperturbed
by philosophical doubts about the nature of their
subject, had been making advance after advance,
and the Hobbesian vision of the world that was
thoroughly mechanistic seemed about to be
fulfilled in detail. Hence Hobbes challenge to
the traditional religious and teleological view
of the cosmos was more formidable than ever. It
had begun to occur to scientists that they might
get on very nicely without the hypothesis of a
God as regards morality, it seemed clear that in
a completely deterministic universe obligation
cold be only a vain and chimerical delusion. It
was therefore no longer necessary to protect the
infant science of physics from the theologians.
Indeed, the show was now on the other foot. It
looked as if traditional values were becoming
subjective illusions in a world of neutral fact
W.T. Jones, History of Philosophy, Kant, 16.
10
Kants Epistemological Project is to forge a
third way between dogmatism skepticism
Dogmatism Rationalism
Skepticism Empiricism
Synthetic A Priori

• A priori present forms are given by the faculties
  of the human experience (what is given in
  experience).
• It is the human mind that constitutes the way the
  world is (tinge of Berkeley) within space time
  and time.
• 3. His project is twofold It is both secure
  limit knowledge. It is secure because the human
  mind brings a priori intuition and concepts to
  experience in contrast to Hume who states that
  our impressions form ideas, thus leading one to
  skepticism). On the other, there is a limit for
  anything that is outside of space time is
  beyond our personal experience.

11
His Strategy

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

12
Basic Vocabulary

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

13
While the forms may be discovered by a
consideration of the constant and universal
element in our knowledge (e.g., space and time),
matter is that which may change and vary.
Built-in Structure, basic rules of the human mind
(not innate knowledge)
That which is produced by external influences is
called matter.

• 3 A Priori Present Forms
• Intuition space time are pure forms of
  intuition (modes of ordering)
• Space is a way in which mind orders things it
  is a datum of outer sense
• Time is temporal order (coming before, after or
  simultaneous with other experiences we have time
  is a form of inner sense, that, is our awareness
  of ourselves and of our inner state).
• Of understanding concepts (e.g., Logic, that
  is, the art of thinking)
• (c) reason the task of reason
• to form absolute totalities.

Without concepts of the understanding our
intuitions would be blind but without
sensations, our concepts would be empty.
Experience is always the application of the
understanding to sensations, and the world as we
know it is the result.
That which is given by faculty itself is called
form

• 1. The way we experience the world is
  conditioned or structured by the way we can know
  (spacial -temporal conditions) the principles
  of sensibility.
• Anything beyond space time is beyond the domain
  of the construction of our mind.

14
The Self and the Unity of Experience What
makes it possible for us to have a unified grasp
of the world about us?
2. This leads Kant to say that the unity of our
experience must imply a unity of the self.
1. Mind transforms the data given to ourselves
into a coherent and related set of elements.
4. To have such knowledge involves, in various
sequences, sensation, imagination, memory, and
powers of intuitive synthesis.
3. The unity of our experience must imply a unity
of itself, for unless there was a unity between
several operations of the mind, there could be
knowledge of experience.

5. Our self-consciousness is affected by the same
faculties that affect our perception of external
objects. Thus, I bring to the knowledge of
myself the same apparatus, thus, impose upon
myself as an object of knowledge the same lenses
through which I see everything. Just as I do not
know things as they are apart from the
perspective from which I see them, so also I do
not know the nature of this transcendental unity
of apperception except as Im aware of the
knowledge I have of the unity of the field of
experience. What I am sure of is that a unified
self is implied by any knowledge of experience.
15
Three Key Faculties which are indispensable for
human knowledge

• Sensibility Pure forms of intuition, space,
  time
• The object is given by means of an affection upon
  the mind.
• The capacity of the mind to be affected is called
  sensibility (receptivity). The effect of the
  object, the material of sensibility, is called
  sensation.
• The pure forms of intuition are space and time.
• 4. The relation to an object by means of
  sensation is called empirical (a posteriori).

• Understanding Pure concepts of understanding,
  the categories
• The object, an indeterminate manifold of
  intuition, is thought. i.e., determined.
• The capacity to determine an object, i.e., to
  create representations of ones own accord
  (spontaneously), is called understanding, the
  faculty of concepts (rules).
• The pure concepts of the understanding are the
  categories.
• 4. The relation to an object by means of the
  categories of the understanding is called pure (a
  priori).

Judgment The Transcendental schemata
principles of pure understanding Judgment is the
faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e. of
discerning whether or note something falls under
a given rule. The conditions of the possibility
of applying pure concepts of the understanding to
appearances are transcendental specifications of
time they are both conceptual sensible the
transcendental schemata, a transcendental product
of imagination.
16
AN ILLUSTRATION OF KANTS SYSTEM SAUSAGE MACHINE
Percept is the raw material of human knowledge,
that is, the sense information that enters the
mind through the forms of sensibility Concepts
without percepts are empty percepts without
concepts are blind.
Forms of Sensibility
Space
Time
Percepts
Percepts
CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING Entering the box
of Kants sausage machine brings to what called
categories of understanding. There are 12
categories by means of which the human mind
shapes, influences, and affects the raw material
of human knowledge that comes from sense
experience. What enters the mind through the
forms of sensibility, what Kant calls percepts,
is never an object of knowledge at that time.
Human consciousness of the objects of knowledge
only begins once the categories of the human
understanding have added form or structure to the
sensible content. If you take away the
categories, then all you have is a collection of
colors, sounds, etc. that add up to nothing.
Thus, human knowledge, has two necessary
conditions (1) the form supplied by the mind
(otherwise known as the categories) and the
content supplied by the senses. Neither
condition is sufficient by itself to produce
knowledge.
Concepts
1. Nozzle is device by which cuts of meat enter
into machine (the Forms of Sensibility Space
Time). Kant denied that space and time exist
independently of the human and are somehow
perceived outside the mind. Rather, Kant argued
that space and time are added to our perceptions
by the mind. Thus, everything we perceive (sense
experience) appears to us as though it were in
space and time.
17
AN ILLUSTRATION OF KANTS SYSTEM COIN COUNTING
MACHINE
Unsorted Coins represents the percepts, the raw
material of knowledge.
Forms of Sensibility
Space Times Forms of Sensibility
Just as the machine sorted out the different
coins, so the mind functions as a manifold that
places our percepts into appropriate categories
and produces the class concepts that advance the
knowing process.
The gears inside of machine represent the
categories of the understanding.
18
Kants Critiques

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

19
Noumena (are objects we have no sensible
intuition and hence no knowledge at all these
are things-in-themselves (e.g., God, soul,
freedom of the will they are undecidable by
human reason)
While we cannot help thinking that there is
something that exists beyond space and time. In
fact, reason demands ultimate intelligibility but
we are limited. It keeps trying but we are
unable to probe beyond space and time because we
are bound to spacial and temporal conditions of
the mind, that, is, our subjective constituting
apparati. Thus, Kant denies that noumena as
objects of pure reason are objects of knowledge
because reason gives knowledge ONLY of objects of
sensible intuition (phenomena). What reality is
like in itself, apart from our human perception
and cognition is completely unknown and
unknowable.
NO CAPABILITY TO TRANSCEND OUR OWN LIMITATIONS!
Phenomenal The world of ordinary sense
perception of science It is spatial
temporal. Space time are molds into which
our experience is cast. Everything we perceive
think is filtered through our mind senses.
20
Kants Notion of Cognition

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

21
KANT VS. PLATO
Noumena The world as it actually is. It is
what reality is apart from human cognition
perception are completely unknown unknowable.
Noumena are Platonic Ideas and Forms
Space and time are the molds into which we our
experiences are cast.
Phenomena are things displaying themselves to the
senses.

• For Plato there is the possibility for one to
  become familiar with the eternal forms whereas
  for Kant, there is no possibility. Why? They
  could not be decided in the progress of science
  nor can be revealed as necessary for cognition
  (B, pg. 827).
• For Plato we should strive to intimately know the
  Forms whereas for Kant it is useless to pursue
  what we cannot ever know. It is undecidable by
  human reason.
• Both agree that we cant take reality as given in
  the senses to be ultimately reality.
• 4. Platos theory drives us to mysticism whereas
  Kant drives us to agnosticism for we cant know
  or deny noumena it is just impossible for us to
  know we just cant affirm or deny that ultimate
  reality is given to the senses because the
  structure of our mind is spacially and temporally
  conditioned.

22
Hoffdings comment on Plato and Kant is
interesting

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

23
Platos Cave
24
The world as we perceive it with ourselves and
understand it, is adapted to our mode of
perception and cognition. Therefore, the real
world is filtered through both our human mind
and human senses and it is only as thus
filtered that we can be aware of it.
25
The world as we know it must conform to our
faculties our subjective constituting apparati.
In other words, what we see and think depends on
the nature of our mind. Or said differently, it
is the nature of our mind that determines the
nature and scope of our knowledge rather than the
nature of reality itself. It is the human mind
that constitutes the way the world is.
26
Since our mind and senses are always with us
(unlike sunglasses with which we can remove and
see reality as it is), all we can have is
knowledge of the phenomenal world, that is
filtered through the sense organs and minds we
possess. Why? The way we experience the world
is conditioned by space and time.
27
Kants System of Forms Involves 3 Groups

• 3. Ideas of Reason
• Three Ideas Soul, God, and World.
• Consider the following by Hoffding

28
Soul, World, and God Involuntary craving of
consciousness to reach a conclusion, an immovable
hook

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

29
WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF SPACE AND TIME?

• Hoffe points out that the essence of space and
  time is very controversial. Consider
• Are they something object and real or merely
  something subjective and ideal (Berkeley)?
• And if they are real, they constitute substances
  (Descartes)?
• Or are they properties of divine substance
  (Spinoza) or
• Are they a relation between finite substances?
  (Leibniz?).
• What is Kants solution to these difficulties?
• Space and time are something quite different
  from all other familiar entities they are a
  priori forms of our (human) outer intuition and
  inner sensing.

30
WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF SPACE AND TIME?

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

31
Kants Example of an Analytic Judgment vs.
Synthetic Judgment

• The statement, all bodies are extended is an
  example of an analytic judgment whereas all
  bodies are heavy is an example of a synthetic
  judgment.
• Why? Extension is a part of the concept body
  whereas weight is not.
• Critique For some
• Kants distinction between analytic and
  synthetic proposition is no wholly satisfactory.
  It is clearly intended to be universally
  applicable to propositions of all kinds, yet not
  all propositions are structured in the simple
  subject-predicate form he uses in his definition.
  The notion of containing is metaphorical and
  although the distinction is clearly to be a
  logical one, Kant sometimes speaks of if as if it
  were a matter of psychology. Some later
  philosophers tried to tighten up the
  distinction, and others tried to break it down
  but it retained a permanent place in subsequent
  philosophical discussion Anthony Kenny, The
  Rise of Modern Philosophy, 3157.

32
What is Transcendental Logic?

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

33
What is Transcendental Logic?

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

34
2 Elements in Judgment (to think is to judge)

• According to Kant, there are 2 different
  components that are always involved in judging
  a direct, sensuous component and a conceptual,
  structural component. The difference between the
  components is like the difference between a
  guidebook on Leavenworth and a direct experience
  of it.

Leavenworth, Washington
35
2 Elements in Judgment (to think is to judge)

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

Leavenworth, Washington
36
When an experience is brought under a concept can
it be identified or known for what it is.

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

37
When an experience is brought under a concept
can it be identified or known for what it is.

• W.T. Jones writes
• Hence, then, is another reason why Kants
  theories can be regarded as a watershed in the
  history of philosophy. On the whole, 19th-20th
  century philosophers have accepted Kants
  distinction between percepts and conceptions,
  with the limitations that this entails regarding
  the direct, immediate knowledge of the self and
  its world. Those philosophers who did not
  nevertheless had to deal with the distinction
  Kant had drawn, philosophy could not return to
  its pre-Kantian course.

38
How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?

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

39
The General Problem of Pure Reason

How are synthetical a priori judgments possible?
4 Logical Classes
A Posteriori
A Priori

1. analytical a posteriori This is null class since
   all analytical judgments are universal
   necessary.

2. analytical a priori Warranted by law of
non-contradiction
Analytical
3. synthetical posteriori Warranted by
experience.

• synthetical a priori
• Warranted by an organizing principle of the mind.

Synthetical

• We have two pair of judgments a
  priori-posteriori and analytical-synthetical.
• 2. These pairs yield four logically possible
  classes.
• Synthetical a priori While all our knowledge
  begins with experience (as
• Locke and other empiricists insists), it does
  not necessarily follow that it all
• arises out of experience. All knowledge
  contains elements that are not
• drawn from experience but supplied by the mind
  itself.

40
Example Collies are Dogs

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

41
Kant writes

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

42
Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments
Synthetic Judgment Synthetic Judgment is a
proposition the predicate concept of which
actually contains more information than is
contained or thought in the subject
concept. Therefore, the predicate concept in a
synthetic judgment actaully amplifies, or adds
to, what is contained in the subject concept. So,
in cases that are synthetic we appeal to
something beside our understanding of X (e.g.,
empirical experience).
Analytic Judgment The predicate concept merely
explicates what is in part or in whole contained
with the subject concept.
Remember Hume claims that matters of fact or
existence are knowable, if at all, only a a
posteriori. While Kant agrees with Hume that all
a posteriori (or empirical) judgment are
synthetic, Kant denies that all synthetic
judgments must be a posteriori. Upshot, if we
accept Humes assumption that no synthetic
judgment may be known a priori, it would follow
that causal knowledge is impossible.
43
The Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic
Judgments

• Both rationalists and empiricists divide all
  judgments into two kinds
• 1. a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge without
  experience
• 2. a posteriori knowledge, that is, knowledge
  only by reference to experience.
• Kant accepts this distinction but add his own
  distinction!

What is apodeictic knowledge? Descartes, Hume,
Kant believed that any judgment the truth of
which is knowable a priori expresses a
necessarily or universally valid truth. Kant
calls such truths apodeictic. Apodeictic means
they can be known to be necessarily true, without
absolute certainty, independently of any sense
experience. How is apodeictic knowledge to be
understood?
44
What are Synthetic Judgments?

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

45
What is an analytic judgment?

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

46
What is an analytic judgment?

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

47
What is an analytic judgment?

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

48
The justification for an a priori judgment is the
same for relations between ideas

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

49
Kants Transcendental Idealism

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

50
Synthetic A Priori Judgments

• Kant agreed with Hume that genuinely metaphysical
  claims are never merely analytic. Consequently,
  they must be synthetic.
• Kant also accepted Humes claim that empirical,
  or a posteriori, knowledge of necessary truths
  are impossible.
• Kant insisted that the truth of a metaphysical
  claim can only be known a priori.
• But heres the problem

51
Synthetic A Priori Judgments

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

52
How is Synthetic A Priori Knowledge Possible?

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

53
Critical Distinctions
Analytic Judgments Their predicates are wholly
contained in their subjects. For example All
bachelors are unmarried.
Synthetic Judgments Their predicates are
distinct from their subjects. Add new information
about the subject. For example All bodies are
heavy.
54
Critical Distinctions
Analytic A Priori warranted by law of
non-contradiction. Synthetic A Priori Not only
are possible but in fact serve as foundation for
mathematics natural science. Applied this
synthesis to aesthetics, political philosophy,
ethics.
Analytic Posteriori is not a real possibility
Synthetic
Posteriori Warranted by experience.
55
Critical Distinctions

• A Posteriori Judgments
• Based on experience
• Are contingent, forever tied to the circumstances
  of experience.
• For example,
• This door is red.
• The dog is wet.

• A Priori Judgments (independent of experience)
• Based on Reason
• Are Necessarily True.
• For example,
• 1 1 2.

56
How is Synthetic A Priori Knowledge Possible?

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

57
Synthetic Status of Mathematical JudgmentsTheir
truth does not follow from logic their truth is
not ascertained by analysis of the concepts
involved. Two examples
5 7 12 (judgment). The concept of the sum of
seven and five contains nothing besides the
idea of their union in a single number-the
particular number itself is not part of or
contained in the thought. You will not develop
12 in the concept.
Concept of a Triangle The concept of a triangle
amounts to something like a figure enclosed by
three sides and possessing three angles. But
surely it is a universally valid geometric truth,
knowable a priori, that the sum of the interior
angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two
right angles (1800).
58
Kant writes

• All mathematical judgments, without exception,
  are synthetic. This fact though incontestably
  certain and in its consequence very important,
  has hitherto escaped the notice of those who are
  engaged in the analysis of human reason.

59
Kants Justification for believing that math is a
priori?

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

60
Kants Justification for believing that math is a
priori?SPACE IS A FORM OF THE MINDS
APPREHENSION OF THE WORLD

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

61
Regarding the Triangle Kant writes

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

62
Space and Time as the A Priori Forms of
Intuition

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

Intuition is a basic cognitive faculty whereby
our mind casts all of our external intuitions in
the form of space, and all of our internal
intuitions (memory, thought) in the form of time.
63
Space and Time as the A Priori Forms of
Intuition
Space is not an empirical concept that has to
be derived from outer experience Critique of
Pure Reason, 38.
Time is not an empirical concept that can be
derived from outer experience Critique of Pure
Reason, 46.
64
How can make this claim that space and time are a
priori principles of sensibility?

• Lets consider two possibilities.
• 1. Our sensations come in a particular temporal
  order, the order of the sensation is not another
  sensation. For example, I see lightening and
  hear thunder-the order of the sensations is not
  another sensation.
• Problem Our representation of relative spatial
  position (above, below, to the left of, between)
  depend on the positions of objects in the world.
  Our sense organs are well designed to register
  such relations.
• 2. Lorne Falkenstein understands space and time
  as orders of sensations. On this view, it
  would be the organization of the retina, for
  example, that accounted for our representing the
  moon as above the horizon. The orders would not
  be arbitrary, but grounded in the constitution of
  our sense organs. The benefit is that it honors
  Kants insistence that some features of sensory
  perception go beyond anything that is directly
  sensed, yet it avoids the charge that these
  additional features, created by the mind are
  simply arbitrary.
• The orders of our sensations are grounded in the
  constitution of our sense organs.

65
The Case of the Red Apple

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

66
The Case of the Red Apple

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

67
Kant Combines Rationalism and Empiricism
according to Patricia Kitchers Immanuel Kant
in pg. 237.

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

68
Kants Answers to Locke

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

69
But if we constitute our world, could we not do
as we please?

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

70
Metaphysical Deduction of Categories

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

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

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

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