Kant Turning Points

Kant heavily emphasizes his ideas of morality and how they are simply represented by a term he dubbed a priori. A priori is the thought that all moral ideas are already determined at birth. Any new ideas are simply practical, not moral. He is quoted as saying “[...] solely a priori in the concepts of pure reason; and that every other precept based on principles of mere experiences [...] can indeed be called a practical rule, but never a moral one,” (5). He remarks that mere experience is important as it helps to gain a

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 was a famous philosopher whose philosophical influences impacted almost every new philosophical idea, theory, concept etc. In a sense, he was considered the central face of contemporary philosophy. Kant spent his whole life in Russia. Starting out as a tutor, to then a professor, he lectured about everything; from geography to obviously philosophy. In his early life, he was raised to emphasize faith and religious feelings over reason and theological principles. As he got older though, that position changed. It then became that knowledge is necessarily confided and within the bounds of reason. Now with this in mind, Kant claims many different things that derive from this. There are many different parts and aspects to it which is why it relates to almost every philosophical idea out there. Kant referred his epistemology as “critical philosophy” since all he wanted to do was critique reason and sort our legitimate claims of reasons from illegitimate ones. His epistemology says that we can have an objective, universal, and necessary knowledge of the world, and that science cannot tell us about reality. He claims science cannot tell us anything because it only tells us about the world as it is perceived, whether it’s based on measures, manipulations, experiments and so on. Kant says that we all have knowledge; that the mind and experience work together and that we construct and gain this knowledge by both reason and experience.

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.

The geocentric model created by Ptolemy, and the heliocentric model created by Copernicus, had greatly differed in which force of being (the sun or the earth,) was the center of the universe. Ptolemy’s Geocentric

Kant’s moral philosophy lies somewhere between that of an empiricist and a rationalist. An empiricist believes that we gain knowledge about the world only through experience while a rationalist believes that we gain knowledge only through self-reflection because we are born with ideas that we simply need to pull out of our conscious minds (Drogalis, Lecture, March 10). Kant states that when we are attempting to understand morality and ethics we must use logic consisting of a priori truths that are realized through self-reflection (Kant, Groundwork, 387-388). While there are two types of a priori truths, Kant focuses on synthetic a priori truths that add additional information about a concept as opposed to analytic a priori truths that simply define a concept (Kant, Groundwork, 389). The reason that synthetic a priori truths are

Hume believes it is human nature to trust the causal laws, but fears that if his critique of induction is correct there could be a day when there is a cause without an expected effect, disproving causal laws. Kant combats this fear with Transcendental Idealism, which argues that the world as we know it exists in the mind. Phenomena embodies this argument by representing how our mind has glasses that cause itself to see the world based on how it wants to. This new idea caused a Copernican revolution bringing forth a new idea that the object around us conforms to the mind. Kant uses this theory to give Hume absolute certainty that there will never be a cause without an effect because if he wants to see the effect, the objects will conform to that desire, no matter if it happens in the real world or

While metaphysics questions the notion of reality, Kant questions the possibility of metaphysics. Is it reasonable to assume human mind as a capable tool of knowing the world, if its capacities of knowledge are limited? The idea of metaphysics relies on the premise that knowledge can be derived purely from reason, but Kant does not agree with it. He claims that the human mind cannot know pure reality because of the unavoidable subjectivity of any knowledge, and thus, vanquishes the concept of metaphysics. I personally agree with Kant in his distinction of phenomenal and noumenal realities and the gap between them. The human mind is only one tool for describing and understanding the world, and its capabilities are limited by its definition. In any case, we cannot transcend the physical restrictions of our senses, and that alone already draws a distinction between the world we perceive and the world that exists.

To explain his argument, it is necessary to distinguish between objective succession and subjective succession. Objective succession is a succession in appearances. Appearances, as Kant introduces in A20/B34, is a kind of representations that are empirically real and transcendentally ideal. Appearances are objects of empirical knowledge that contain both intuitive matter that correspond to the sensation, and conceptual form. On

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.

Kant believed that there are different concepts and intuitions in which intuitions are put under concepts. Kant refers these intuitions into what he calls the three-fold synthesis. Kant describes the three fold synthesis as “the capacities in the understanding to compare, connect, and unify the fragmentary manifold items in intuition” (A97). To put it in different terms, the three fold synthesis describes the necessary components for intuition of what is happening in the outside world. It allows us to Kant believed that the three fold synthesis is divided into three different types of synthesis. According to Kant, it is required that all of the synthesis work in unison in order for experience to happen. Experience is what makes possible the synthesis of apprehension, in return makes the possibility of the synthesis of reproduction, which creates the possibility of the synthesis of recondition. Therefore, Kant argues, the synthesis of recondition is contingent on experience. Kant also stated that for each of the three fold synthesis, there are both empirical and pure levels. In other words, each of the three fold synthesis have two ways of being interpreted in the mind, one based on our intellects because it is gathered through experience, and another based upon the fact that the manifold works in unison with the others and are dependent on each other for experience to happen.

The Catholic Church played an important role at the time when all the works in which the movement of the earth was admitted, Catholics were forbidden to teach, and even read, the Copernican theories. The “Copernican Theory” modeled some problems of enormous importance for Christian’s obviously theological nature. Leaders like Martin Luther and John Calvin told us that Scripture brandished against Nicolaus Copernicus and provoked repression against its followers, but generally abandon the fight Protestantism once the “Theories of Copernicus” were confirmed with indisputable evidence. In this paper, I will first evaluate the history about how “Copernican Theory” and its model of the earth came into existence. I will also analyze the “Copernican Theory” in light of Churches idea of the earth being flat. I will ultimately argue that Nicolaus Copernicus played an important role in the history of Philosophy of Science.

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.

Kant is not looking to take any part of what the historical philosophers posited for granted, instead, he wants to clear the slate and be able to create a new era of epistemological thought. He wants to delve into what knowledge is and be able to prove the possibilities and limitations of knowledge. Kant realizes that his project has never been attempted before and Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Hume, Descartes, and others believed that knowledge about the world was possible, but Kant was now going to question this notion (Kant, 6.) It must be asked if anything like metaphysics can be a real body of knowledge? Can the human mind really pronounce supersensible creatures before we analyze the mind that is doing the pronouncing? Kant would say that we have entered into a region of subjectivity that has not been seriously contemplated in the past and that all reason is limited, therefore we cannot know certain metaphysical concepts (Kant, 27.) He believes that the mind is finite and therefore cannot proclaim anything that is beyond what is experienced, all we can know is what is in the realm of our experience. Classical metaphysics, according to Kant, is a pretense to wisdom but is not wisdom itself because Kant’s wisdom is to understand the human mind and its limitations, which classical metaphysics does

This essay will discuss the status or worth of metaphysics in light of the theories of Willard Orval Quine and Rudolf Carnap. Both 20th century philosophers rejected metaphysics as a legitimate branch of philosophy or science for their own reasons. Despite their agreement on this issue they disagreed on many related topics. To clearly understand either philosophers’ views on the worth of metaphysics one needs to look into the long lasting dispute between these thinkers regarding these topics.