Kant - The Analytics of Principles and The Ideal of Pure Reason
The Analytics of Principles
The book's material comes from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In my
assigned section, Kant now analyzes the principles (categories) he
deduced in the "Metaphysical Deduction".
Categories + temporal experience = synthetic a priori principles
(Synthetic A Priori = true or false by virtue of how the world is -
predicate not contained in the subject)
Schematism - categories can be applied to temporal experience
Schematism - categories must
be given temporal interpretation (be applied to spacetime)
Categories are a priori, derived from forms of judgment.
Ex. "Every event must have a cause" = synthetic a priori
Schematism seeks to argue against empiricist criticism that synthetic a
priori truth is impossible and that the categories have no application
to experience.
Empirical concpepts are similar to appearances - sensory element. (Tree
is a tree because it sensually resembles a tree).
Categories have no sensory component. (Objection
- mental pictures could be viewed as sensory components; Kant argues
that categories are judgments which allow pictures to be formed, but we
could reject that they simply allow pictures to be formed and could
argue that they have a sensual component)
Empiricist therefore argues they have no application to experience.
Kant - time mediates between categories/appearences.
Time = a priori form of sensibility = a priori and sensible.
Categories apply to experience only insofar as they determine necessary
structure of our consciousness of time, therefore they have legitimate
empirical application in relation to time.
Comments:
1. Do some concepts not have a sensory component? (Entrophy and a
Republic) Perhaps then some empirical concepts need no schematization.
2. Kant accepts Empiricism on all other issues except the categories.
Rejects that a concept must apply to a sensual aspect of experience if
it is to have meaning.
3. Kant rejects the idea that concepts are images. He says they are
instead rules that enable us to produce an image.
First Analogy
Category of substance represents the absolutely permanent - doesn't
decrease/increase. Change = transformation of substance.
Concludes that the concept of a permanent substance is a necessary
condition of experience, and then that the world conforms to this truth.
Argument
1. Experience requires subjective/objective distinction, required by
the unity of consciousness. Therefore, subjective time sequence of
events and objective sequence of time are separate. (This could be
challenged; Eastern views make no dualistic distinction; the subjective
can be reduced to the objective)
2. Objective judgments about changes can't be made in relation to an
absolute time; therefore, Newton's absolute time is not an object of
possible experience.
3. Therefore, there must be some permanent aspect of experience in
relation to which judgments about the objective time of events make
sense, since absolute time will not suffice. Therefore, this category
is a necessary condition of experience.
Kant's argument:
1. Experience requires that we are able to distinguish between
subjective/objective time sequences. (Why
can't the subjective time sequence be objectively stated as someone's
perception of time? Same criticism of subject/object duality)
2. This distinction cannot be made in relation to absolute time. This
distinction can only be made in relation to the notion of substance as
permanent.
3. Therefore, the concept of a permanent substance is a necessary
condition of experience.
(Transcendental Idealism affirms all events in the phenomenal world
must conform to the categories, or they wouldn't be objects of possible
experience.)
4. All events in the phenomenal world (our known world, as opposed to
the noumenon) must conform to the necessary conditions of experience.
5. Therefore, all events conform to the Principle of Permanency of
Substance.
(Good argument?)
Kant - The creation of new substances would make the unity of time (an
event occurring at any time having a determinate temporary relation to
any other possible event) impossible - there would be two unrelated
time sequences. [This seems to me
not to void the possibility of two unrelated time sequences; they could
be unrelated for an amount of time (therefore related in not yet
interacting) or could be totally different and unable to interact.]
If experience is to be subject to the Transcendental Unity of
Apperception(experience presupposes discrete moments belonging to same
consciousness), there can be only one time sequence; a unity of time.
This one time sequence is represented by the absolutely permanent. No
change can mean destruction/creation of substance, because then the
unity of time would be destroyed - the universe is a closed system.
Substance
Substance can only be thought of as a subject and never as a predicate
of something else. (Why?)
Substance isn't created or destroyed; the number of substances cannot
be decreased or increased either.
Causation
Causal axiom, for Kant, is not analytically true but true synthetically
a priori - the notion of causation is a necessary condition of
experience.
The Second Analogy
The distinction between the subjective sequence of perceptions and the
objective sequence of events is a necessary condition of any experience.
This distinction can only be made in relation to the necessary order of
perceptions.
If the order of our perceptions of a change is necessary, then the
change itself, then the change itself is causally determined.
Therefore, causation is a necessary condition of any experience.
(Given this conclusion and transcendental idealism, all events are
therefore caused, because any event without a cause could not be
experienced)
The Second Analogy (part Two)
What conditions are necessary in order for a change in our perceptions
to be the perception of an objective change? Changes in objects must be
regular, or subject to causal laws. If they weren't, we couldn't
reidentify objects following changes in them and could not identify
objective alterations.
The Third Analogy
Objects must interact causally in order to coexist in space, because
space/time would have a disunity if some part of space/time did not
have a determinate spatial or temporal to every other part of space or
time. The unity of space and time must be known through the unity of
their contents - the causal interaction of objects. Objects not related
to other objects cannot be assigned a definite date and aren't in the
same temporal sequence.
Questions
I thought of:
Western Philosophy makes an objective/subjective distinction which
Eastern philosophy often does not. How would doing away with this
duality affect Kant's thought? How would it affect the argumentation
set forth?
How does John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart's "Unreality of Time" relate to
Kant's philosophy and argumentation?
A-Series past, present, future
B-Series earlier or later
by Paul Hakel
Also, check out my philosophical blog, if you're bored.
The Fourth Antinomy: God: The Ideal of
Pure Reason
God = idea of reason, not part of possible experience.
Can't prove He exists or doesn't exist; could be a noumenon
Kant attacks that God's existence is knowledge to "pave the way for
faith"
(According to Kant the only) Proofs
for God's Existence:
1. Ontological -
2. Cosmological -
3. Physico-Teoleological -
1. Existence is not a predicate or property; existence is merely the
copula of a judgment. In "God is" The word is adds nothing to the
concept of God, as it is contained within the concept of God. Existence
then is not a perfection, undermining the ontological argument.
Kant - The proposition that God is a necessary being really means the
conditional statement: If God exists, a necessary being exists. We can
deny that a necessary being exists though. All existential propositions
are synthetic (true by nature of how the world is).
2. If anything contingent exists, then something necessary must exist.
But this necessary thing does not have to be God, but only a necessary
thing. There are implicit assumptions: anything which is a necessary
being is God and if anything is God, then it is a necessary being
(involves the ontological argument).
3. Order in nature does not = need for a creator. Argument from design
assumes order (cosmological argument) and reasons to the existence of a
necessary being to give order (God). Since the previous arguments were
rejected, and since this argument rests on those, Kant rejects it. There's a
difference between designing and creating.
The idea of God is unconditioned (non-spatio-temporal) and thus cannot
be known, but can be apprehended through reason.
Comment:
"If existence is rejected, we reject the thing itself with all its
predicates; and no question of contradiction can then arise. To posit a
triangle and yet reject its three angles, is self-contradictory; but
there is no contradiction in rejecting the triangle together with its
three angles. We cannot reasonably reject things if we fall into
contradiction; but we can reasonably reject things where there is no
contradiction."
-Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Questions:
If God's existence is not a possible object of knowledge, what is it? I
think that it points to a challenge of belief - A Christian
interpretation could be that God created us in a state of freedom so
that we may have a freedom of belief; an atheist/Buddhist/etc. might
suggest that our universe contains the peculiar quality of unbounded
religious possibility, or that such things may be unknown because they
do not exist.
