Kant And Kant 's Metaphysical Theorizing

The project of the whole transcendental dialectic is well-known. Kant’s primary aim here is that of warning us against the danger involved in the misunderstanding and subsequent hypostatization of the concepts of reason.4 However, this section of the Critique of Pure Reason does not play a purely negative role; instead, it furthers a positive enquiry of what Reason is and what his contents are. Furthermore, it also provides an explanation of the epistemic role played by these elements, the ideas of pure reason or transcendental ideas5, defined as being those concepts which contain the ‘unconditioned’.6 In other words, these concepts are related to the transcendental premises of any possible experience, that is, to infinite and unconditioned ‘transcendent objects’ unattainable through

Before uncovering Immanuel Kant's work in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals , let it be known that he claims to be a rationalist who purely seeks the truth and only the truth. Kant's beliefs are consistent of the idea of true knowledge which exists separate from ones sensation. True knowledge exists a priori within a separate body of sensation. Kant exclaims how sensation can tamper with true knowledge due to the fact

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of pure reason aims to question and evaluate what is ultimately real, and to discover the restrictions and scope of pure reason. The main doctrine within the critique being the idea of transcendental idealism, concerning epistemology. Kant’s doctrine aims to show that humans can only construct knowledge from their senses. This opposed the previous views of Rene Descartes idealism and George Berkley’s complete denial of the existence of matter. Universal concepts which Kant regards as categories then filter the sense impressions we receive. Kant’s idea of the noumenal plays a key role when understanding the notions within the Critique and is ultimately a very helpful way of helping us understand why we think the way

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

Al though Kant gives him credit for his writings on Cause and Effect, he does explain away Hume’s version of cause. “In plain language there is not, and cannot be, any such thing as metaphysics at all” (819). This is because Hume “regarded the negative use” that was miss understood by man (819). Kant does attribute this miss understanding as a hindrance to the advancement of metaphysics to the sciences. Kant does agree that Cause and Effect is part of metaphysics and gives a correcting of Hume’s version of Cause and Effect by saying it is thought out and not felt (822). “First, as concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition, its very concept implies that they cannot be empirical” (822). Metaphysics involves that of knowledge grasped by pure reason and is like mathematics in being a priori body of knowledge (822). He then explains the difference concerning analytic and synthetic judgments. In analytical judgment there is nothing new added to what we already know, as “we already have all the conditions of the judgment in the concept, from which we have but to elicit the predicate according to the law of contradiction” (823). Synthetic judgment is that

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.

Immanuel Kant offered a reorientation on how the established questions of metaphysics can be resolved. He claimed that man’s mind constructs human experience and that reality must agree with the mind’s notions, in contradiction of the view that the mind is a reflection of reality. His interpretation was that the mind is capable of actively creating experiences instead of passively being shaped by reality. Kant further believed that man possesses an objective knowledge of the universe. A priori laws were the basis of this knowledge; but, questioned its possibility. His assertions specified that the subject provides the laws that create the experiences of objects and that these laws were a priori laws that man holds about all objects prior to man’s experiences about them. To understand these laws, Kant investigated man’s experiences, specifying those which are given by the mind apart from those which were provided by instincts. He further argued that morality is derived from reason and this reason is the origin of man’s morality, which he referred to as the Categorical Imperative. According to Kant, if this categorical imperative is defied, man becomes irrational and immoral. His logic consisted of inducing from people’s daily sensible knowledge of morality, which he referred to as practical reason, into metaphysical understanding. As Kant attempted to reorient an

Kant’s new foundation of modern science forever changed the philosophical world. He recognized defects in both the rationalists’ and the empiricists’ traditions. These two terms, rationalist and empiricist, are the two ideas that make up Epistemology. Epistemology in itself is the idea of what knowledge can be and it deals with what knowledge is and how we deal with it. Rationalism is the concept of ideas that we naturally have and deduction, this is A Priori. Empiricism is the concept in induction, sense perception and no innate ideas, which is A Posteriori. These two ideas were so different they were thought to be polar opposites. Both sides had many influential philosophers

Kant changed the Western tradition of philosophical thinking and altered it forever. Once he read through David Hume very carefully he proclaimed it awoke him dogmatic slumbers and forced him to have skeptical arguments. He described that natural science really got going once human beings began to use a structure within their scientific investigation. “Kant’s proposed plan of attack is to question the prevailing assumption about the passivity of the mind and see if assuming that the mind plays an active role in the knowing process gets us any further” (Stewart, Blocker, Petrik, p. 204, 2013). With this new view Kant dives into the difficult question of investigating the knowing process.

In order to understand Kant’s position, we must first understand the philosophical environment that influenced his thinking. There are two major historical movements in the early modern period of philosophy that had a very large impact on Kant: Empiricism and Rationalism (Kemerling). Kant argues that both the method and the content of philosophers’ arguments contain important flaws. A central epistemological problem for philosophers in both movements was determining how we can escape from within the confines of the human mind and the immediately knowable content of our own thoughts to acquire knowledge of the world outside of us. The Empiricists sought to accomplish this through the senses and a posteriori reasoning (McCormick) . A posteriori reasoning depends upon experience or contingent events in the world to provide us with information. For example “Obama was president of the United States in 2010,” is something that I can know only through experience. A priori

Famous for being thought of as one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western philosophy Immanuel Kant’s works are extremely thought provoking. The most influential pieces he ever wrote came during his “critical,” which included, amongst others, Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals. In his piece, Kant explains morality in through a metaphysical

Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism present arguments for the contrasting moral theories espoused by the two philosophers. In this paper, I will argue that Kant’s moral theory provides for a stronger rational approach to the problem presented in Example A than utilitarian moral theory as it provides a conclusive moral rationale based on the categorical imperative and universalization of maxims for its espousal against lying, whereas utilitarianism relies on inconclusive consequentialism for a solution that would endorse lying to the pursuer.

On the other hand, Kant, who is a Newtonian, sincerely desires to make Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics as real knowledge (106). To fulfill his desire, Kant concludes that the science could be real knowledge if synthetic a priori is possible (255). Kant claims that the mind of a human being is the source of synthetic a priori to get true knowledge (257), and the mind is not passive but active to get knowledge. This active mind is imposing various meaning unto the world where a man is experiencing (256). According to Kant, the knowledge made by the active mind is a priori and synthetic. Then, Kant calls it epistemological change ‘Copernican revolution’.

For Immanuel Kant, truth is accessible to the mind only because it derives from rational categories already in the mind. Although knowledge begins in the senses, Kant claims, “besides what is given to the sensuous intuition, special concepts must yet be superadded—concepts which have their origin wholly a priori in the pure understanding, and under which every perception must be first of all subsumed and then by their means changed into experience.”6 The sources of such synthetic a priori concepts are categories inherent in reason, and Kant supplies a table of such categories, including in it: Unity (measure), Plurality (magnitude), Totality (whole), Reality, Negation, Limitation, Substance, Cause, Community, Possibility, Existence, and Necessity.7 Thus, the understanding of any perceived thing as a whole entity, or as having an independent material existence, or as being caused by anything, or as itself the cause of anything has its origin in rational categories in the mind and is not traceable to any essential quality or state of being that can be attributed to the thing in itself, according to Kant.

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.