0 - Kant - Summary and Analysis

Generally credited with effecting a synthesis between the empiricist philosophy of GB and rationalist philosophy of Europe. Although trained within rationalist tradition, he was greatly influenced by Hume which shows in his empirical aspects of thought.

Two Important Distinctions
- between a priori and a posteriori knowledge and
- between analytic and synthetic judgements.

In an analytic judgement, the concept in the predicate is contained in the subject; 'a bachelor is an unmarried man'.

Typically we associate a posteriori knowledge with synthetic judgements and a priori knowledge with analytic judgements.

Kant argues that the same is true of scientific principles such as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, because it is universally applicable, it must be a priori knowledge.

The mind, according to Kant, does not passively receive information provided by the sense but it actively shapes and makes sense of that information.
Such as in virtue of happening in time.

There is the idea that Kant's argument is similar to the idea of wearing rose-tinted glasses; the mind wears unremovable time and causation tinted glasses thus all our experience necessarily takes place in time and obeys the laws of causation. This is in virtue of it actively taking experience and shaping it and making sense of it.

Sensory experience only makes sense because our faculty of sensibility processes it, organising it according to our intuitions of time and space.

Events that take place in space and time would still be a meaningless jumble if it were not for our faculty of understanding which organises experiences according to the concepts, such as causation, which form the principles of nature.

Our senses react to stimuli that come from outside the mind, but we only have knowledge of how they appear to us once they have been processed by our faculties of sensibility and understanding (active).

Kant has a focus upon metaphysics. This relies on the faculty of reason, which does not shape our experience in the way that our faculties of sensibility and understanding do, but rather it helps us reason independent of experience.

Kant redefines the role of metaphysics as a critique of pure reason; that the role of reason is to understand itself, to explore the powers and limits of reason.

In CPR, Kant achieves a synthesis between the competing traditions of rationalism and empiricism.

From empiricism, he draws the idea that knowledge is essentially knowledge from experience but rejects the idea that we can infer no necessary and universal truths from experience. Thus he avoids the metaphysical speculations of the rationalists.

Kant tells us that reality is a joint creation of external reality and the human mind and that it is only regarding the latter that we can acquire any certain knowledge.

The mind does not simply receive information, it also gives said information shape. Knowledge then is not something that exists in the outside world and then poured into the mind like water into a jug.

The lynchpin of Kant's critical philosophy is his category of the synthetic a priori. Although similar distinctions to Kant's a priori- a posteriori and synthetic-analytic have been made, he is the first generate this third category for knowledge.

Kant differs from his rational predecessors by claiming that pure reason can discern the form, but not the content of reality. He turns previous assumptions on their head by suggesting...

Kant's conception of things in themselves comes under a lot of attack as many people, mainly Idealists, believe that there are more mysterious entities out there;Kant claims these are the sources of our sensations whilst also claiming that we can have no direct knowledge of them.

Analytic philosophy (leading school of C20th phil) also attacks Kant. Frege criticises Kant for basing the analytic-synthetic distinction on the subject-predicate form of grammar, which is not a necessary feature of the logical structure of language/reality.

Pure geometry is a priori but it is also analytic since it is justified according to logical principles alone.