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Read: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics –the “Introduction” (MP 532-537); “Preamble on the Peculiarities of all Metaphysical Knowledge” (537-545); “Second Part of the Main Transcendental Problem” (553-569); “Third Part of the Main Transcendental Problem” (571-584); and “Conclusion” (584-596). If you do not have MP you can find the Prolegomena online at http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfbits/kp.html. It is approximately 85 pages in total, unless you can find a way to just print out the sections we need (then it is about 40 pages). We won’t lie to you here; Kant is not an easy read. You should, if possible, read the whole of the Prolegomena and the selections from the Critique of Pure Reason contained in MP. However, reading the selections above should be sufficient. Notes: We have seen a kind of basic development taking place through the work of Descartes and Hume (there are other thinkers involved here, but these are the two we have read). This development involves one fundamental and complex question: is science possible? In other words, what is human knowledge, what are the limits of human knowledge, how can we be certain of human knowledge of the world, etc. It should be clear that Kant’s main concern in the present text is to respond to Hume’s challenge to the arrogance of human reason –the idea that reason can construct scientific systems of knowledge of the world, that reason can “give birth of itself” to fundamental concepts that are true of the world, and hence come to know that world “as it really is.” In other words, Hume claims, with some solid justification, that we know nothing of the world per se; we believe things about the world, but the warrants for those beliefs are ultimately less than is required for knowledge. Kant basically takes up Hume’s challenge with a little more rigor –he engages in what he calls a “critique” (a self-critique) of the faculties of human knowledge, specifically of the faculty of pure reason. We will have to watch and see precisely what he means by this, and how this critique works, here I will just summarize some of his basic results. First, Kant discovers that Hume is right. All knowledge must originate from experience, and claims to know things beyond experience are false (strictly speaking), though they still have some practical uses. Second, however, he discovers that even though all knowledge must originate from experience, it is not based in or warranted by experience. Instead, he discovers that there are “transcendental conditions for the possibility of any experience whatsoever” operative already in the structure of human consciousness (or mind) –these are what he refers to as the pure categories of reason. In other words, pure reason is operative in experience as a kind of structuring principle that makes experience possible. Again, the details will have to await explication after you have read the material. One important note, however, this is not a “psychologism” –that is, Kant is not saying that our brains are “wired” to experience things in such and such a way. For Kant, this kind of claim is ultimately unwarranted. This is a claim about human minds, not human brains. Finally, with these two basic ideas in hand, Kant believes it is possible to lay out exactly what we mean when we say that we “know” something to be true about the world –that is, how we can save the universal and necessary claims of the sciences from being reduced to mere probability. Exactly how all of this works, and the degree to which it is successful will have to await our discussion and your reading. Questions: These questions should help you identify key points in the text, I hope.
Author: Thomas Bowen |