Kant’s Philosophy: Metaphysics, Experience, and A Priori Knowledge
Science
Kant set out to discover if metaphysics was possible as a science. He had already discovered it as a science. Kant himself could not doubt that this was reliable knowledge, but he was trying to save it because he knew what it was. He intended to identify elements to compare scientific knowledge with metaphysics, in such a way that if it was fulfilled, it would be considered as such. According to Kant, the basic element that makes knowledge scientific is a priori: necessity and universality. Scientific laws are universal and express the existence of a necessary relationship in nature.
In Kant’s view, scientific knowledge is given under two conditions: some are empirical, and others are internal to the individual human mind, which are the ones that impose the exterior. The information that comes from outside comes first to the mind, and the second are those a priori elements. Kant’s goal is to find what a priori knowledge there is in mathematics and physics.
Metaphysics
Kant’s metaphysics underwent a critique to see if it was science or not. He criticizes metaphysics in two ways. In the first, he follows the path of science; Kant understands it as the theory of knowledge, his own: transcendental idealism. This first part is the path of science, because he studies and discovers what a priori human knowledge is in general. In the second part of metaphysics, knowledge about God, soul, and the world, he did not reach the safe path of science because he has no experience with it.
Experience
This notion plays a fundamental role in Kantian theory of knowledge. Kant admits that experience is the starting point in knowledge, in the sense that knowledge begins with it. However, it is not all of it. In addition, experience appears in Kant as what makes possible his way of knowledge. That is, it is not possible to know anything that is within possible experience. As knowledge is also about the world of appearance, the notion of experience is closely linked to the notion of the way of appearance.
Critical reason is the subject examining the conditions of the possibility of experience. Therefore, the consideration of a priori conditions determined by the possibility of experience can be formulated as universal and necessary judgments about the form of empirical reality. From them, judgments can be made.
A Priori Knowledge
For Kant, these a priori concepts and judgments are thought of with a character of absolute universality and necessity. Kant also takes the concept of a priori to the problem in relation to experience. A priori knowledge is independent of experience, unlike a posteriori knowledge, which has its origin in experience.
Independence from experience must be understood absolutely, not with respect to certain aspects or parts of experience. The modes of a priori knowledge are pure when there is no mixing of empirical elements in them. On the other hand, what is a priori in Kant refers to what makes knowledge possible. Therefore, Kantian a priori knowledge is neither metaphysical nor psychological, but epistemological. Thus, the problem that Kant is concerned with in the Critique of Pure Reason is not the origin of knowledge, but its validity.