3. KANT'S PRIMARY ASSUMPTIONS
In order to tackle the above-mentioned problem, Kant sets out his first Critique on a twofold logical basis. In fact it is only one basis considered from two different aspects. First of all, Kant transforms the hylomorphic structure of individual things held by Aristotelian metaphysicians into the hylomorphic structure of knowledge; that is, he distinguishes matter and form in knowledge. The external objects constituting the matter are to be conformed to the mental forms of the knower. Secondly, another aspect of the same assumption can also be traced in the logical characteristics of judgments which are synthetic and a priori. The synthetic element is the matter whereas the a priori elements are mental forms. The first aspect is derived from the Copernican Revolution and the second from the theory of judgment.
3.1 Conpernican Revolution
In order to determine the truth or falsity of any metaphysical claim, Kant deliberately sets out to bring about a revolution in our way of thinking about the relationship between mind and thing. It has been assumed in the traditional realistic thesis that truth simply consists in the conformity of mind to thing. Hence the thing is taken as the standard, and the mind is denominated "true", when it submits to this standard and really does describe the independent nature of the thing. Such a thesis is, of course, a plausible one but, Kant contends, it cannot escape the force of Hume's skepticism.
For Hume, if the mind in order to know must conform itself to objects, then it cannot discover any necessary connection between the objects. It thus becomes impossible to explain how we can make any necessary and universal judgments. However it is not merely that we find, for instance, that experienced events have causes, we also know in advance (a priori) that every event must have a cause. An event may happen with an unknown cause but it is surely not causeless. If everything is reduced to the merely empirically given, we cannot discover that there exists a causal relation. Hence, it is impossible to explain the knowledge of causality on the hypothesis that knowledge consists in the mind's conforming to objects. If the mind stands to the objects as the measured to the measure, it is impossible to determine the a priori conditions that govern the objectivity of knowledge. The a priori portion of the cognition cannot be derived from mere sense-experience.
Hume, then, denies the a priori elements in knowledge but explains the discovery of the causal connection in terms of the subjective association of ideas due to some sort of habit. Experience shows A to have been frequently followed by B and never to have occurred without B. The idea of B is therefore associated with A in a way in which no other idea is. It is by a customary association reinforced evermore by repetition that one has the "feeling" of the necessary connection between A and B. This is the origin of the idea of causality.
Kant is not satisfied with this and critizes Hume's emprical premise insofar as the latter does not distinguish well enough the two distinct functions of human cognitive faculties, namely, sensibility and understanding. Kant's distinction is a sort of combination of rationalism and empiricism. He locates the difference between the two faculties not merely in their operative stages but also in the origin of their presentations. Granted that the sensibility is the faculty of receiving impressions, sensation consists In the mind's being-affected-through-senses and the diversity of the sensations is due to the "stuff" given In experience. Kant, then, finds no other way of saving the distinct a prior element In knowledge than by attributing its origin to the faculty of understanding itself. In Kant's terminology, the sense-manifold of intuition is a posteriori, contingent and derived from experience whereas the subsumption of the intuitional data under the a priori categories provided by understanding renders our knowledge a priori, necessary and underived from experience. However It is noteworthy that Kant also assigns the a priori elements not only to the understanding but also to sensibility; hence the a priori forms of space and time also constitute pure sense intuitions which are not contingent.
This compels Kant to reverse the relation between mind and thing so that scientific truth may depend, somehow, upon the conformity of the thing with the mind. In other words, reliable knowledge is restricted to things as they appear, in conformity with our mental forms. Kant, therefore makes the Copernican Revolution:
"Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior to their being given. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus ' primary hypothesis (mit den erten Gedanken des Kopernikus)" (Bxvi).
3.2 The Theory of Judgment
This Is the other aspect of Kant's assumption. In the philosophy of Leibniz, the principle of sufficient reason is considered the grandest axiom of the entire rationalistic system. The principle, in its most general logical form, states that "the content of the subject must always include that of the predicate in such a way that if one understands perfectly the concept of the subject, he will know that the predicate appertains to it also''.(7)
Kant, in his pre-critical period, is puzzled with this analytical requirement for all true propositions or judgments, especially when they state something about fact and existence. This leads Kant eventually to revise the theory of judgment.
He follows rationalism in making a distinction between a posteriori and a priori judgments, and empricism in making one between synthetic and analytic judgments. The distinction of the first pair is in view of their derivation from experiences. The a posteriori judgments are derived from experience, whereas the a priori are not. The distinction of the second pair is in view of the subject-predicate relation: a judgment is synthetic when the concept of the predicate is not contained in the concept of subject, and is called analytic when the predicate is so contained,. On finding that some recognized general scientific propositions are necessary and universal, Kant concludes that we do possess a pure, a priori element of knowledge.
Concerning the a priori characteristic of knowledge, Kant radically diverges from the traditional realistic thesis which states that "universality" and "necessity" are found to be real traits in the essential structure of nature and that our intellect cooperating with senses can penetrate into the essence of things. However Kant's new conformity-theory of knowledge compels him to deny such penetration. He attributes all the epistemologically warranted, formal and determinate elements in knowledge to the cognitive faculty of the knower.
Within the framework of a priori knowledge, Kant finds difficulty, not with the analytic a priori judgments, but with the synthetic a priori ones. The latter are used to extend our scientific knowledge. Now metaphysics, if it be science at all and can yield true knowledge, ought to contain synthetic a priori knowledge.
"For its business is not merely to analyze concepts which we make for ourselves a priori of things, and thereby to clarify them analytically, but to extend our a priori knowledge" (Bl8).
Thus metaphysics consists, at least in intention, entirely in the task of searching for synthetic a priori judgments. Since Kant holds that the direct object of our knowledge consists in the mind's being-affected-through-senses, the chasm between things-in-themselves and mental contents becomes insurmountable. On this premise, Kant has already undermined the possibility of metaphysics.
3.3 The Bearings of the Assumptions
Just as Copernicus attributes observed movements, not to the heavenly bodies, but to the condition of the observer, so Kant attributes certain ways in which objects appear to the knower to his subjective a priori conditions or mental forms (cf. Bxxii and the note). This is similar to a man who sees the world as red because he is wearing a pair of red-tinted spectacles. The world which presents itself to him in the sense-experience is a red world but whether the world outside of his experience is red ot not is another question. The man knows the red-colour only insofar as he encounters something in the experience of vision.
Space and time, for example, are not pertinent to the thing-in-itself but are a priori forms of sensibility. Whenever the external objects appear to us, they must have been temporalized and spatialized. They constitute the framework, as it were, in which the manifold of sensation is ordered and arranged. This is an example concerning the level of sensibility.
Another example concerns the understanding. Kant holds that we certainly do know a priori that every event must have a cause. Why? Objects must be subjected to the a priori concepts of categories of the human understanding of which causality is one.
However the Copernican Revolution does not imply that the entire reality is reduced to a mental construction or our thinking of them. Kant is not an idealist (at least not in this sense). It means rather that the mind imposes, as it were, on the material or the "stuff" of experience its own focus of cognition, determined by the structure of human sensibility and understanding and that objects cannot be known except through the medium of these forms.
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