Tutorial � Allais, history VII - Kant,synthetic a priori

Greg Detre

1/3/01

 

divorce SAP (synthetic a priori) from TI (transcendental idealism)

is he closer to Berkeley than this???

systematising with Categories + vague ontological claim about nuomena

 

SAP = pure reason

not derived immediately from experience

 

attached intuition when 2+2 = 4

= necessary, but not part of 2+2=4

 

time is not knowable on the basis of experience � YES IT IS

Humean �Custom� = SAP

SAP = processed experience

couldn't have them without experience (hence not a priori) rather than the other way round

 

SAP = only humanly objective

 

can conceive the world as not being shaped by our particular Categories

 

TI = Kant�s explanation about SAP

but is SAP a pressing question, divorced from TI???

 

that we exist = SAP knowledge

 

conditions of experience � e.g. we must exist + there must be objects

 

transcendental arguments

things we must assume as known in order to have experience

����� to combat Hume

couldn�t have knowledge of time unless there was necessary causation

 

does every event have a cause? Y

analytic? a priori?

analytic an �event� � NO???

logically possible uncaused event

without events, causation is even harder than Hume thought

 

induction as probability

causation = a condition of knowledge (Kant)

induction too???

 

ina sense, couldn't have maths without experience

but we don't require experience, once we�ve acquired the concepts, to apply them

 

a priori = independent of experience for justification

(rather than origin)

all knowledge begins with experience, but not necessarily out of experience

the mind is more active (interpretative machinery) than empiricists say

 

if without TI

certain concepts in order for what is given to �/span> knowledge that we bring to bear

comparison/�/abstraction alone are not enough

 

Kant denies that self-consciousness of a sense-datum of reality without Categories

Kant is not refuting the Cartesian sceptic

Kant denies that we can have knowledge of objects without causation

 

if reject SAP, then Kant�s project is grounded

 

Custom SAP because not reason

time = a priori, but not synthetic because not a proposition

analytic = demonstrative, in one definition, or reducible to

a priori reason???

Quine objection to analytic/synthetic = problem with demonstrative

 

moral truths = SAP

�killing the innocent is wrong� analytic (true by virtue of the meanings of the words, but not reducible to demonstrative logic with synonyms)

 

SAP = a question for empiricism

knowledge of the world not direct from experience, = giving reason more than empiricists want to allow

 

Kant doesn't think that the Categories = all too human

they apply to the spatio-temporal world of empirical objects

Categories as spectacles behind the eyes

 

what about bats???

see space differently

but still need necessary connection

what about the Weather Watchers?

wouldn't have knowledge of objective world and self in relation to it

 

analytic/synthetic � meaning of propositions

rec/cont � truths, true of all possible worlds

thoughts that they all lined up

Quine attacks analytic/synthetic distinction � Two Dogmas of Empiricism

Kripke � N&N challenges that they line up (also criticises anomalous monism)

 

Kant + Causation, ed Robert Stein, by Stein

Transcendental Arguments � Problems and prospects � 2nd analogy

 

can't justify SAP

all SAP is problematic

 

Michael Ayer � Rationalism and Empiricism

 

empiricism RTP/idealism too

what help for a realist???

 

Michael Lockwood � Mind, Brain and the Quantum

Inscrutability of matter chapter, first 10 pagfes on Berkeley, sympathetic

 

Galen Strawson � real materialism

 

Questions

can you really have a priori knowledge??? could our insensible man know anything, even a priori???

wouldn't a priori then have to be innate???

if we agree that an insensible man couldn't know very much at all a priori, somehow I don't feel it should follow that our senses are source of all our knowledge � I mean, is analogy synthetic a priori, for example??? is this what Kant means???

TI appearances/reality

do I accept SAP???

most people think that a priori = analytic

language = SAP???

how can a realist take SAP on board???

why is it a problem in particular for a realist???

Hume RTP???

causation over regularity

Cogito = transcendental argument???

is it an argument, or a non-inferential expression of a datum?

Kant means different things with experience in including knowledge(???)

must SAP derive from contingent experience???

we�d still have mathematical concepts

they�re just meta

but analytic truths also similarly originate in experience