Kant and the critique of metaphysics - Essay Example

Order No: 188497 Topic: Philosophy - Kant and the Critique of Metaphysics Prepared by Dr. Zulfiquar Ahmed ID: 10131 Date: 28/10/2007 Order No: 188497 Topic: Philosophy - Kant and the Critique of Metaphysics 1./ What does Kant mean by a "critique of pure reason" The Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1781, and the two major works such as, the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1787) are the foundation of ethics. The speculative or pure reason sometimes ruled out the role and importance of reason in this guise. Kant's purpose in the Critique of Pure Reason is to establish the scope and power of reason (Kant, 1929). The reason is treated in terms of the 'conditions of possible experience' or the 'conditions of the possible cognition of objects.' The key issue for Kant in the first Critique is the nature and capacity of reason itself. Before we can consider God, however, Kant argues that we must discover the proper scope of reason, as only then can we discover our capacity to deal with the notion of God or anything else. The pure reason is therefore central not only to his view of knowledge, but also to his view of God (Gogan). Moreover, all judgments are either analytic or synthetic, and either a priori or a posteriori in the view of Kant. Analytic judgments are those in which the predicate inheres in the subject or is presupposed by it (Kant, 1929).1 The order of nature in reason was located by Kant. The reason does for the understanding what understanding does for the manifold of intuition - "the understanding is an object for reason, just as sensibility is for the understanding."(Kant, KRV, A664/B692). Reason's regulative capacity renders the unconditioned totality of objects systematic. There are three ideas of reason: self, world and God. God is the Ideal of Reason, whose concept aims . . . at complete determination in accordance with a priori rules. Accordingly it thinks for itself an object which it regards as being completely determinable in accordance with principles (Kant, KRV, A571/B599), that is, in accordance with universal a priori cognition. This ideal of the ens realissimum, of the universal concept of a reality in general, is then thought of as containing the being of all beings. But as an idea of reason, the ens realissimum is never met with in appearances. The Ideal of Reason does not satisfy the transcendental conditions and so cannot be considered objectively real. As such, Kant holds that the existence of God cannot be proved by speculative reason. Kant argues that there are three, and only three, possible ways in which speculative reason can argue for the existence of God, characterized as the Ideal of Reason. But all fail to prove God's existence (Kant, KRV, A571/B599). Reason, according to Kant's analysis, can attempt to prove God's existence by either an empirical or a transcendental path, both of which involve going beyond the scope of reason to the transcendental concept (Kant, KRV, A590/B618). In the Critique, however, Kant has refined his notion of possibility. He distinguishes between the form of possibility and the matter of possibility. Kant distinguishes this from the 'Ideal of Reason', which supplies the notion of an 'archetype' or individual ground for systematization (Kant, KRV, A699IB727). This too must be seen as only regulative, as it has no content, that is, 'God' does not correspond to the concept of God. It is the regulative ideal of nature that makes possible the unity of nature itself. The Ideal of nature, as regulative, has a purely methodological status. The Critique of Pure Reason, then, moves God out of the realm of ontology and into that of epistemology. The concept of God is involved in cognition, but is merely an analogical image. From the standpoint of speculative reason, God has no objective reality. Yet Kant posits two types of reality, the cognitive and the moral. These two points of view are tied together by reason. The concept of sensation is not simply a negative boundary to stop us from bringing up: something that lies behind sensation. Kant wants us to leave this something completely unspecified in the realm of cognition. God is indeterminable in the sphere of understanding, determinable in the sphere of reason, and determinate in the sphere of moral experience. 2./ What is his account of the relationship between knowledge and experience There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience (Kant, 1929). 'In the order of time, therefore, we have no knowledge antecedent to experience, and with experience all our knowledge begins. But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience (Kant, 1929). In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant embark to set up a theory of human understanding. His approach was to synthesise the contrasting outlooks of empiricism and rationalism. He took the empirical principle that 'all our knowledge begins with experience' (Strawson, 1966), as a foundation of his philosophy, following Locke and Hume. Such knowledge is entitled a priori, and distinguished from the empirical, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience (Kant, 1929). Thus, for instance, the proposition, 'every alteration has its cause', while an a priori proposition, is not a pure proposition, because alteration is a concept which can be derived only from experience. Such knowledge is entitled a priori, and distinguished from the empirical, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience. As Kant writes in the first sentences of the introduction of The Critique of Pure Reason, knowledge begins with our experience of the world, and without this limitation of experience, there would be no brake to our imaginative production of concepts. In exploration the relationship between what was inherited and what was learned from experience, philosophers Hume and Kant were repeated by the behaviorist, Freud, when they spoke of nature's contribution as a force to be reckoned with, educated or subdued. Kant tried to diverge from this restrictive view and proposed that the mind was an active accomplice in knowledge gaining, building certain features of an experience. To recognize how the mind might "construct" an experience, the following experiment should be helpful. Get three dishes each holding about a gallon of liquid. The first bowl is full of hot water; the second, lukewarm; and the third, very cold water. Simultaneously, put your left hand in the hot water and you right in the cold. Wait one minute and dunk both hands in the lukewarm water. What has each hand told you about the temperature 3/ Why does he describe his account of out knowledge of objects as a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy Do you find Kant's account of knowledge convincing Give reasons. Kant's philosophy is regarded as a revolution in the history of philosophy and a complete reversal of the previous way of understanding our knowledge of the world. The "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy that as defined the Enlightenment not only via his essay, which literally did so, but also through his transformation of the entire methodology of philosophy. This revolution bears a name, and it is a name that Kant himself gave to it: the Copernican revolution (Copernicus).2 Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all our attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. We should then be proceeding on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis(BXVI). By criticizing both rationalism and the empiricism, Kant given a new and highly original account of the conditions and limits of human knowledge. With reference to his "copernican revolution" he advocates a radical shift in philosophy's point of view: rather than seeking to "mirror" the world as it is in itself. His contention that mind prescribes laws to nature, and not vice versa and perhaps not the least difficult, task consisted in understanding the nature of Kant's 'Copernican revolution' in philosophy. The examples of a priori knowledge that Kant gives are mathematics and physics. A triangle must have three sides without having to test this empirically. Everything in nature has a cause without having to test the hypothesis experimentally. The criterion for the difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is necessity. For this reason we should not confuse what is a priori with merely what is universal, for the latter rests only on observation and there is no absolute certain that an event could be otherwise or a different theory could be used to explain its significance, whereas without the category of causality one could not make sense of the notion of 'event' at all; the world would be meaningless for us (Kant's Copernican). And on the other hand, the popularization of the descriptive approach to science is due to the Harvard history professor Thomas Kuhn. His original work was on the "Copernican revolution," in which the old geocentric theory of the motions of heavenly bodies was replaced by a heliocentric theory (Mattey, 2005). References Gogan, Aisling. "God in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason", http://www.mun.ca/phil/codgito/vol3/v3doc1.html Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason (KRV), trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Hampshire, Macmillan Education Ltd., 1929) A681/B709. Kant's Copernican Turn, http://www.arasite.org/wlkant2.html Mattey, G. J. Contemporary Epistemology IV: How We Know", Version 2, November 30, 2005. http://www-philosophy.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi102/contemp4.html Norman Kemp Smith. Hampshire: MacMillan Education Ltd., 1929. Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. London: Methuen and Co.. I.td., 1966. Strawson, P.F. (1966). The Bounds of Sense (Routledge) Read More