A Priori & A Posteriori Knowledge: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
A Priori & A Posteriori Knowledge
Key Concepts in Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
A priori: Knowledge independent of experience.
A posteriori: Knowledge derived from experience.
Pure: Without empirical content; operating a priori.
Transcendental: Conditions of possibility of knowledge.
Copernican Revolution: Kant’s shift in focus from the object of knowledge to the knowing subject and its transcendental conditions.
Sensitivity: The passive capacity to receive impressions from objects.
“The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations to be affected by objects, is called sensitivity. The objects we are therefore given by the sensitivity, and she is the only one that provides us with insights.” (Critique of Pure Reason, A 19, B 33)
Understanding: The active capacity to think and relate sensory data to concepts.
“The ability to think the object of intuition is the understanding… Without sensitivity we would be no object, and without understanding none would be expected. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” (Critique of Pure Reason, A 51, B 75-76)
Categories: Pure concepts of understanding, not derived from experience, that structure our thinking.
Phenomenon: Reality as it appears to us, subject to our modes of knowing.
Noumenon: Reality in itself, unknowable to us.
Metaphysics: Discourse that attempts to know reality objectively.
Intuition: Direct relationship with the object of knowledge (only possible through the senses).
Reason: The capacity to connect judgments and draw conclusions; seeks the unconditioned.
Antinomy: A paradox arising from reason’s attempts to exceed its limits.
Fallacy: False reasoning that occurs when reason operates without sensory intuition.
Ideal of Pure Reason: A concept (like God) that can be thought but not known.
Transcendental Ideas: Ideas of God, Soul, and World, produced by pure reason.
Postulate: A conjecture (e.g., freedom, immortality, God) assumed as a condition for morality.
Pure Reason: Reason operating independently of experience.
Practical Reason: Reason guiding moral action.