Great Ideas of Philosophy

III. Kant argues that there is something fundamentally lacking in Hume’s account of “knowledge” and experience.Again, all knowledge may be said to arise out of experience but may not be grounded in experience.A. In his “Analytic of Concepts,” Kant seeks to provide the framework for all knowledge. He contends that inall instances, knowledge involves a judgment, formed within a universal categorical framework thatincludes entities that could not possibly be gained by experience.B. Kant presents four “Pure Categories of the Understanding” that could not be “given” in experience and thatadmit of no possible exceptions:1. There are categories of quantity: unity, plurality, and totality.2. There are categories of quality: reality, negation, and limitation.3. There are categories of modality: possibility, existence, and necessity.4. And there are categories of relation: inherence, causality, community, and correlation.C. Certain categories may be given by experience, but nothing in experience “gives” totality or necessity, forexample,1. We can know unity, and we can know plurality, but nothing in experience allows us to know totality.Nonetheless, we know, without counting, that there is an infinite number of integers.2. Likewise, nothing in the world of sensible matter can be known to be necessarily the case—anythingcould imaginably be different. Experience can only lead to inferences of greater or lesser probability.3. But even those inferences are intelligible only within the framework of necessity: That is, something is“probable” to the extent that it is not necessary.D. If, however, we were beings of a different sort, would the categories be different? Do they arise out of ournatures? No, they are the necessary conditions for knowledge of anything. As the pure intuitions are thenecessary forms of experience, the pure categories are the necessary forms of knowledge.IV. Kant claims that Hume is wrong to say that no “synthetic” propositions can be known to be true a priori, only“analytic” ones. What is meant by these terms?A. An analytic proposition is one in which subject-term and predicate-term are essentially synonymous: Allbachelors are unmarried men. The truth of analytic propositions is known a priori, which is to say, prior to,and independently of, experience, for what is involved here are mere truths about words.B. A synthetic proposition is a factual statement about items and events in the world: Bill is wearing shoes. InHume’s epistemology, no synthetic proposition can be known to be true except by way of experience, thatis, a posteriori.C. The Kantian rebuttal depends on the pure intuitions and pure categories.1. Every experience we shall ever have is within the intuited framework of space and time.2. All our knowledge claims will match with the categories of quantity, quality, and so on.3. Thus, every empirical statement we make will have certain properties that can be established a priori.4. Therefore, we can make synthetic statements whose truth is known a priori; for instance, “Everyexperience will take place in space and time.”V. Forms of knowledge, like forms of experience, are not themselves given in experience but determine theordering, organizing, and patterning of all possible knowledge.A. Thus, in a manner of speaking, for Hume to be right, Kant has to be right. The Kantian a priori frameworkis required for Hume’s account of causation and knowledge to work.B. When Kant grants that Hume was right to conclude that all knowledge comes from experience, he isrecording his own modest credentials as an empiricist. He is also stating his position to be in the provinceof the ideal theorist, as Reid used the term.C. The world known and the world knowable is the world as processed by the organs and principles ofperception.1. What we know of the external world factually takes the form of phenomena. The question is: Howaccurately does our mental representation of reality reflect actual reality?2. Kant makes a distinction between phenomena and the realm beyond experience, which he refers to asnoumena—the thing as it really is. The phenomenon is the experience it creates in a percipient.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 29