My Final Essay on Kant’s Critique
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(B46)
Space is not a posteriori in our cognition, because we need it already in place to have any empirical cognition (which happens in space and never otherwise) at all. Time is also a necessary precondition for any perception of change: first state A then state B. When we judge first-then, already we are using the foundation (time) which allows us to do so. Space and time are not analytic concepts, because we do not deduce them from any other concept, but simply accept axiomatically as a necessary ground for all empirical cognition.
5. Explain Kant's contention that space and time are (l) intuitions, rather than concepts, (2) a priori, rather than a posteriori. (In what sense, exactly, are they supposed to be "prior" to objects of experience?)
I believe there is already an answer to this in the above disclosure, but to add: We intuit inner and outer space in our inner and outer experiences, in imagination and contemplation of mental and physical objects. We think (about things) and percept them invariably in space, and their transformations and interactions consequentially (in time). They are prior to objects in the sense that we already need them to perceive objects, which always possess their characteristics and do not take those intuitions away with them when we dismiss objects.
6. What does Kant mean by the "transcendental ideality" of space and time? What motivates his claim? What are his arguments in support of the claim? What problems does he think this theory solves, that other alternatives do not?
Transcendental ideality of S & T means that those are not objects, not their appearances, but rather conditions (deduced by pure reason) of all appearances (objects of cognition). They are necessary for our understanding of our experiences of objects at all.
S & T transcend all possible experience being a necessary precondition for those and not the objects of senses themselves. When there are no objects we can think space and time as needed for possible objective experience. “It is nothing as soon as we leave aside the condition of the possibility of all experiences, and take them as something that grounds the things in themselves” (A28).
In 3, Transcendental exposition of the concept of space, Kant says: “I understand by a transcendental exposition the explanation of a concept as a principle from which insight into the possibility of other synthetic a priori cognitions can be gained. For this aim it is required 1) that such cognitions actually flow from a given concept, and 2) that these cognitions are only possible under the presupposition of a given way of explaining this concept.” (B40) He thinks that other concepts of space do not satisfy these conditions, and his does. Using the example of Geometry (a science that determines the properties of space synthetically and yet a priori) he argues that it must originally be intuition; for from a mere concept no propositions can be drawn that go beyond the concept, which however happens in geometry. Geometrical propositions are all apodictic. Hence, space must be not an empirical intuition… it has its seat merely in the subject, as its formal constitution for being affected by objects and thereby acquiring immediate representation, i.e., intuition, of them, thus only as the form of outer sense in general. Kant thinks that his “explanation alone makes the possibility of geometry as a synthetic a priori cognition comprehensible…” (B41) So, his theory solves the problem of how geometry is possible, while others (he believes) dont.
7. Which of Kant's arguments aims to show that space and/or time is knowable a priori?
# (1) On space and time.
Which one argues that space and/or time is not a concept? # (3)on space and (4) on time
Which one that they are not the "matter" but the "forms" of perceptions?
# (2) Space and time, p.5&6 in the above text.
8. How does Kant deal with the objection that, for all we know, "things in themselves" might be spatio-temporal?
Kant thinks that the above objection is wrong. In A47 he argues that, if we suppose that space and time are in themselves objective and conditions of the possibility of things in themselves, then there would be a priori apodictic and synthetic propositions about both, but especially about space. Geometrical propositions are cognized synthetically a priori and with apodictic certainty. We may take such necessary and universal truths only through concepts or through intuitions, a priori or posteriori. The latter cannot yield any synthetic proposition, but only empirical, thus it can never contain necessity and universality that is nevertheless characteristic of geometrical propositions. So those are not posteriori. Considering the first means for attaining such cognitions, however, namely through mere concepts or a priori intuitions, it is clear that from mere concepts only analytical ones can be attained. Now we are forced to take refuge in intuition, as geometry always does. And this is a pure a priory intuition. If space (and time as well) were not a mere form of intuition that contains a priori conditions, then we could not make absolutely nothing synthetic and a priori about outer objects. “It is therefore indubitably certain and not merely possible or even probable that space and time, as the necessary conditions of all (outer and inner) experience, are merely subjective conditions of all our intuition, in relation to which therefore all objects are mere appearances and not things given in themselves in this way; about these appearances, further much may be said a priori that concerns their form but nothing about the things in themselves that may ground them” (A49). I think this is a fair and sufficient response to the above objection.
9. Speaking of causality, Kant writes: "the very concept of a cause so manifestly contains the concept of a necessity of connection with an effect and of the strict universality of the rule, that the concept would be altogether lost if we attempted to derive it, as Hume has done, from a repeated association of that which happens with that which precedes, and from a custom of connecting representations, a custom originating in this repeated association, and constituting therefore a merely subjective necessity."
[a] Explain what Kant is saying in this passage and exactly what Kant thinks is wrong with Hume's analysis of causality.
A, we say, is the cause of B, if A is necessarily connected with B universally. A physical body B is attracted to a physical body A , because when ever anyone observes B in the proximity of A, B is affected by A in a strict accordance with universal gravitation law. It could be described, predicted and precisely calculated anywhere in the known universe. If we like to think about the proximity of A and B arbitrary it does not affect the objective reality of physical law of gravitation (at least in the case of ordinary human beings, which Hume and Kant might have in mind both would not consider miracles being a part of physical reality). No matter what one thinks stepping out of the window, his body will fall with certain acceleration, attracted by earth. This necessity of physical laws hardly could be explained on the ground of Humes Law of association. So Kant thinks that causality is not merely psychological.
Homosexuals could think that their love relationships are objective necessity and perfectly like those between heterosexuals (we can even grant them their rights to think so and to do what they want to do among themselves) but objectively that kind of relationships, in a strict accordance with biological laws, will not produce the offspring and is useless in terms of procreation and a sense of biological family; that kind of thinking constitutes merely an illusion. The same kind of illusion developed one step further turns into sexual relations between humans and animals, humans and mechanical devices. All of those are causally impotent to procreate - which proves the illusive nature of those arbitrary judgments about reality of sex, its purpose and psychological mechanism installed by nature, in order to insure that purpose. But the laws of physics and biology are not an illusion. So the category of causality must be something more than merely a psychological category.
[b] Explain Kant's argument in the Second Analogy, and how that argument can be construed as an answer to Hume.
Everything that happens presupposes something which it follows in accordance with a rule.
Or
All alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.