Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics

Immanuel Kant (1724 1804) was born in Kaliningrad in East Prussia. Kant spent his working life there and also produced work on various subject matters including ethics metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics etc. He published his three famous critiques and wrote on religion, eternal peace and politics.

Through his discussion of morals in the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant explores the question of whether a human being is capable of acting solely out of pure duty and if our actions hold true moral value. In passage 407, page 19, Kant proposes that if one were to look at past experiences, one cannot be certain that his or her rationalization for performing an action that conforms with duty could rest solely on moral grounds. In order to fully explain the core principle of moral theory, Kant distinguishes between key notions such as a priori and a posteriori, and hypothetical imperative vs. categorical imperative, in order to argue whether the actions of rational beings are actually moral or if they are only moral

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher born on April 22, 1724. He was considered to be one of the most influential thinkers of modern times. Immanuel went to the Collegium Fredericianum and the University of Königsberg where

Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals serves the purpose of founding moral theory from moral judgment and examining whether there is such thing as a ‘moral law’ that is absolute and universal. In chapter three of his work, he discusses the relationship between free will and the moral law and claims “A free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.” He stands firm in his belief that moral law is what guides a will that is free from empirical desires. To be guided by moral laws it would require men to be ideal rational agents.

In this paper I discuss both Hume’s and Anscombe’s view on causation. I begin with Hume and his regularity theory; then I move onto Anscombe where I provide a rebuttal of Hume’s regularity theory, and later I explain how Hume would respond to Anscombe’s objection to Hume’s regularity theory.

In the critique of pure reason, Kant states, “All alternations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.”1 This statement is interpreted in two different ways: weak readings and strong readings. The weak readings basically suggest that Kant's statement only refer to “All events have a cause”; however, the strong readings suggest that “the Second Analogy is committed not just to causes, but to causal laws as well.”2 To understand the difference between the readings, it is helpful to notice Kant's distinction between empirical laws of nature and universal transcendental principles. Empirical laws have an empirical element that universal transcendental principles cannot imply. On the other hand, empirical experiences require necessity to become a law, accordingly, “the transcendental laws “ground” the empirical laws by supplying them with their necessity.”3In this paper, according to this distinction, I first, argue that the second analogy supports the weak reading, second, show how in Prolegomena he uses the concept of causation in a way that is compatible to the strong reading, and third, investigate whether this incongruity is solvable.

Hume’s ultimate goal in his philosophic endeavors was to undermine abstruse Philosophy. By focusing on the aspect of reason, Hume shows there are limitations to philosophy. Since he did not know the limits, he proposed to use reason to the best of his ability, but when he came to a boundary, that was the limit. He conjectured that we must study reason to find out what is beyond the capability of reason.

The truth behind metaphysics is a consistent stream of changing ideas which involves thoughts on what existence really is. Kant, unlike many metaphysicians tries to not include an outside aspect that is intrinsically linked to existence, leading to patterns of this form of thinking that continues even to contemporary philosophers. As a transcendental idealist, he molds two schools of thought into one, expanding the capability of what metaphysics is able to ponder, while also eliminating nonscientific approaches to these questions, because those explanations are always lacking empirical substance. On the surface of Kantian metaphysics, it seems as though all hope is lost in respect to the evaluation of the impact metaphysics has on objective thought. However, this is not the case, by using synthetic a priori knowledge one will be able to jettison oneself from the spectacles

Immanuel Kant is commonly considered a key figure in modern philosophy. He is most prominently known for considering that the rationality of the human mind is the main source and structure to everyday experiences. Kant believed that our mind and our various sensibilities allow us to be reasonable and make moral judgements. This particular concept Kant presupposed revealed that traditional sensibilities had it wrong thinking that our minds are mirroring the things around us, rather our reality must coincide to the minds active concepts in order for humans to experience anything at all. Thus making reason and the human mind the most important facet of any experience.

Kant begins by considering how metaphysics could be determined. This would involve figuring its object, sources of cognition, and /or type of cognition. Firstly, metaphysics must be non-empirical, and its principles and basic ideas must not be derived from experience. Thus, metaphysics must be a-priori cognition “coming from pure understanding and pure reason”. It is distinguished

Kant believes that evertythnging is the nouminal world, and the we are perscieveing theis nouminal wourld though our lens which we call reason (Or concepts). We then use our senses to interpret what we are percieveing. He came to this conclusion when he was trying ot find a synthesis between hume and Descares. Descartes was wrong in his thinking, or at least is is evident that there is something missing from his rationalist thinking. Kant used to believe this but after reading the empirist remarks of Hume he began to see the need for use of our sensory perceptions within reality as well. So the synthesis is that all knowledge comes from the combination of conepts and intuitions (reason and sensory perceptions), without reason we would have no lens to perceive what the nominal wourld is telling us, and without senses we would have no way of understanding what our reason is telling us. But even with this we need to remember that the best that we can do is perceive what is, but that does not determine what something is, the nominal would exists beyond our perception and is still a mystery. This leaves open room for metaphysics, because God, and our souls can still exist beyond our plain of sensory, or reason.

Kant tackled Hume's skeptical view of causality. In Kants mind, causality is a central example of a category or pure concept of the understanding. Moreover, because Hume's famous discussion of causality and induction is equally central to his philosophy, understanding the relationship between the two philosophers on this issue is crucial for a proper understanding of modern philosophy more generally. Yet ever since Kant offered his response to Hume the topic has been subject to intense controversy. There is no consensus, of course, over whether Kant's response succeeds, but there is no more consensus about what this response is supposed to be.

Immanuel Kant was a philosopher who took ideas from the empiricists and rationalists to create is own view of how humans come to knowledge. Essentially updating and blending science and logic based knowledge. Kant was a rationalist, yet had empirical views much like John Locke and David Hume. Kant agreed with Hume and Locke on experience. Yet, Kant developed a priori idea of how humans learn to learn that was very different from Locke and Hume.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is much concerned about the operations of the mind. Though he believed in the existence of the mind, he held a different view from the empiricists when it comes to the nature and function of the mind. He set out to prove that Hume was wrong by claiming that some truths were certain and were not based on subjective experience alone. Kant argued that the very ingredients which are necessary for even thinking in terms of a causal relationship could not be derived from experience and therefore must exist a priori, or independent of experience. Though he did not deny the importance of sensory data, he thought that the mind must add something to that data before knowledge could be attained; that something was provided by a priori (innate) categories of thought (unity, totality, time, space, cause and effect, reality, quantity, quality, negation, possibility-impossibility, and existence-nonexistence). Kant claimed that the subjective experiences of human has been modified by the pure concepts of the mind and is therefore more meaningful than it would otherwise have been.

David Hume is a British empiricist which means that he thought that all knowledge is ultimately rooted in sense experience and that all of our ideas derive from preceding impressions of sense or reflection, this theory had a huge effect on Humes account of causation. In this essay I will look at Humes account of causation and examine if any version of the Regularity View of causation can be defended.