Understanding Kant’s Synthetic Judgments and Metaphysics
Structure of the solutions given to the problems raised: Kant does not deny that there are things themselves; we know the object of knowledge. Thing itself: It is the object as independent of my knowledge.
How are synthetic judgments possible a priori in the mathematics? Our knowledge of the contribution depends on sensitivity and understanding: they participate in a way that can be understood. Therefore, Transcendental Aesthetic deals with sensitive knowledge, but knowledge-sensitive conditions and can be empirical (they are private conditions that allow sensitivity to receive representations) or pure / a priori (which are not particular but universal and necessarily enable sensible intuitions, i.e., space and time made possible a priori synthetic judgments in the realm of knowledge). The realm, as it is composed of lawsuits and arguments we make with understanding, occupies space (geometry) and time (arithmetic, based on the temporal sequence). However, in dealing with space and time, which are a priori, the realm is also before experience; it is a priori knowledge and necessary conditions of all experience, which can be applied universally to the experience.
The Analytic Transcendental Solution to the Problem of Synthetic Judgments a Priori in Physics: Knowledge is not just receiving representations scattered in order in space and time. To know is to think, understand, or unify what is received. This function of thinking, or merging the data received, is a function of understanding. Only then can we talk about knowledge. The way in which this unification occurs is by referring these intuitions dispersed to a concept. The sensible intuitions we understand relate concepts through litigation. What we say, for example, is “a song by Bach,” a “hard surface,” or a “swordfish.” If we do not refer to a concept that we receive, we do not believe we have knowledge of what we receive. That is, given what we understand by referring to concepts in the judgments we make. Understanding is the faculty of concepts and judgments, and Kant takes this up in the Transcendental Analytic. Kant’s view distinguishes between, on one hand, concepts that are subsequent to experience, empirical concepts, and secondly, pure or a priori concepts. Pure concepts are concepts that occur spontaneously without understanding derived from experience. The other is derived from empirical experience. Concepts such as “concert of Bach” or “swordfish” are this type. The categories are pure concepts. Kant argues that as the essence of understanding is to unify the concepts received through litigation, there will be many categories, many ways to unify, as forms or types of trial exist. According to traditional logic, twelve possible trial models exist, and Kant infers that the categories are exactly twelve. Twelve are, therefore, the ways in which we can unify the concept received. Categories are our way of consolidating what has been received in sensitivity. We have no other way to do it. It is through the categories that we know, as we experience.
We are making important statements: * We say they are our way to unify; that means that the categories are conditions that we impose and not conditions that come from experience. In addition, we have to implement if we think the experience. * Application is experience. That means that the categories can only be legitimately applied to the given sensitivity. The categories, Kant says, are empty concepts that have been filled with sensitivity. In normal cases, we realize that experience is the limit of what we say in our judgments. For example, if we say ‘the ghosts drag chains,’ where we apply the categories of unity, reality, substance, and existence, their use does not hold because they are not applied to experience. Other cases are more controversial, in that simple common sense tells us not to use illegitimate categories that do not apply to experience. This is the case with statements of traditional metaphysics. Concepts such as substance, cause, existence, or necessity, all categories in Kant’s view, have served all rationalist philosophies throughout history to build knowledge from these concepts regardless of experience. These same concepts have been the target of criticism from empiricist philosophies, especially hard in the case of Hume, who, noting that none of them can come from experience, arrived at skepticism about the possibility of obtaining scientific knowledge of reality. Both types of analysis are discarded by Kant: * that of the rationalist philosophies, because the categories are our way of knowing the experience. That is, it is legitimate to apply these concepts to something other than the experience as intended by rationalist philosophers. * The rationalist philosophers of the empiricist philosophy argue that while these concepts come from experience, they are produced naturally by our prior understanding of all experience. Their use is not only legitimate but is the only way we can think of experience: we have no other. Phenomena, sparsely received in sensitivity, cannot be unified in thought if we do not agree with these categories. In line with Kant, we point out how important principles such as causality, discarded by Hume, do not come from experience and are misused by rationalist philosophers. They are valid in that they apply to experience, to physics, but only in that case.
Transcendental Dialectic and the Problem of Metaphysics: No science is a juxtaposition of trials, but these appear substantiated by each other in reasoning. Reasoning assumes that the foundation of truth to the assertion in the conclusion is found in the truth of the premises. Well, Reason seeks to base our judgments (the conclusion) in other more general judgments (the premises). In turn, the premises can support the conclusion because they themselves are based, that is, are the conclusions in other arguments, which must have their own premises founded, which will become more general and much explanatory phenomena. This process, says Kant, Reason tends ultimately to the unconditioned, to push the limits of the given in experience and talk about things in themselves. In order to substantiate the phenomena, which are the subject of theoretical knowledge as they are given in sense experience, we want knowledge of the noumena, the things themselves, which are not of theoretical knowledge as they are not given in experience. In this process, it is reasonable to ask questions about the world, the soul, and God. All physical phenomena are intended to inform from the metaphysical theories about the world; all psychological phenomena are intended to inform from the metaphysical theories about the soul; and all phenomena, in short, are intended to inform from the metaphysical theories about God. God, soul, and world are, according to Kant, ideas of Reason. The idea of God is also the ideal of Reason, because in our attempt to base all phenomena, the idea of God, though unattainable through knowledge of Pure Reason, appears as the limit, as an ideal for such a foundation.
1. Are there any a priori synthetic judgments in metaphysics? and, consequently, can there be a science of metaphysics? Kant’s answer is negative. Categories can only be applied to experience of phenomena. If applied in making judgments about what we do not have experience (the world as a whole, the self as a substance, or God), their use is illegitimate. We cannot have theoretical knowledge about them. This, however, does not mean that they have no significance or meaning. While we cannot have theoretical knowledge of them, there are metaphysical propositions, such as the existence of God, which are requirements of morality of our actions, which are postulates of Practical Reason.
2. Kant also asks about the metaphysical tendency to make judgments. The answer to this question could be summarized by saying that if we can only know what is given in sensibility, and that only experience can legitimately apply the categories, Reason, in its foundational activity through reasoning, tends to seek the unconditioned by experience in order precisely to substantiate this experience.