Kant's first Critique
Kant's introduction to the Critique
- Kant (1724-1804), wrote the first critique (1781, 1787) in (some small) part as a response to Hume's skepticism.
- Recall that Hume divided all knowledge into two forms
- Matters of fact (empirical knowledge)
- Relations of ideas
- Hume's position appears to lead inevitably to a profound skepticism, since many of our beliefs are neither relations of ideas nor matters of fact. For example, our belief in induction.
- Kant starts by making some more distinctions in the kinds of knowledge we can have.
- He distinguishes first "cognitions" or experiences that are either dependent or independent of experience.
- A priori cognitions are logically or potentially independent of experience. That is, you can possibly know them before you have any experience of the relevant kind.
- Kant's most important example: Every change has its cause. Kant believes that this is an a priori fact.
- A posteriori cognitions are therefore those which are not a priori.
- Kant makes then a second kind of distinction: synthetic versus analytic.
- Consider any judgment about a subject and predicate. For example, any sentence of the form, "This A is a B," like, "This cat is brown," or "This bachelor is unmarried."
- Kant argues that sometimes the idea of the predicate is "contained" in the subject.
- In "Bachelors are unmarried males," the idea of bachelor seems to include the idea of being unmarried. This is an analytic claim.
- Kant claims that in this kind of case, the predicate is contained in the subject. Later philosophers revise this notion to describe it as being true in terms of meaning alone.
- When a claim is not analytic, it is synthetic.
- These distinctions cut knowledge differently than does Hume's distinction.
- Analytic judgments may be relations of ideas, and their denial is contradictory, but Kant claims some of math is not analytic, so his analytic is not the same as Hume's relations of ideas.
- Synthetic judgments are matters of fact, and the distinguishing feature seems to be that their denial is not a contradiction. But Kant will argue that not all synthetic knowledge requires experience.
- Note that any analytic judgment must be a priori, since it is given in the meaning of the sentence and cannot be dependent on experience.
- But, Kant argues, there are some things which we know which are not analytic but which are known a priori. There is no contradiction in denying that everything that happens has a cause. So, it is not analytic. However, Kant claims we know this independently of any experience.
- Kant identifies at least three kinds of knowledge instead of Hume's two. In a table of the kinds of facts we could know, we would have:
Analytic Synthetic a priori True in terms of meaning alone. E.g., "All bachelors are unmarried males." Facts upon which experience depends. E.g., "All events have a cause"; "All sense experience occurs in space"; "2 + 3 = 5". a posteriori [EMPTY: there are no a posteriori analytic truths] Standard historical or factual judgments. E.g., "Gore won the popular vote in 2000."
- For example, contrary to Hume, the first time I see some new event, I know it has a cause.
- What kinds of synthetic a priori judgments are there? Kant argues
- (Almost) all of mathematics. Example of 5+7=12.
- Much of natural sciences. Examples include conservation of mass, and equivalence of action and reaction.
- Much of metaphysics. Kant thinks that metaphysics, when we finally make it into a rigorous discipline, will be partly or mostly synthetic a priori judgments.
- The problem, then, Kant argues, is to explain: How are synthetic [a priori] judgments possible? This has as a consequence such questions as:
- How is mathematics possible?
- How is natural science possible?
- How is metaphysics possible?
- Kant will try to answer these questions with a critique of pure reason.
- This critique is an attempt to understand the nature and the absolute requirements of reason.
- This is a transcendental undertaking. That means that it is concerned with explaining how our cognitions are possible.
- Kant:
I call transcendental all cognition that deals not so much with objects as rather with our way of cognizing objects in general insofar as that way of cognizing is to be possible a priori.- Next steps: Kant is going to (attempt to) prove that space and time are synthetic a priori features of judgment that we bring to judgment.