The Synthetic A Priori

SummaryThe paper is concerned with the connection between Kant's conception of transcendental schematism and his analysis of the conditions of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. After dealing with some of the standard objections to Kant's theory, I argue that transcendental schemata must be construed as pure intuitions. I then point out that the Principles of Pure Understanding are a set of synthetic a priori judgments which assert the function of the various schemata as necessary conditions of the possibility (...) of experience, and that each of these judgments involves the relation of a pure concept to pure intuition . Finally, I argue that the connection between a category and its schema must itself be both synthetic and a priori. It therefore requires a “deduction”, which Kant himself does not provide, but which I endeavor, in part, to provide for him. (shrink)

Subjectivists, taking the “collapse” of the observation-interpretation contrast much too seriously, are led to imagine that even perceptual knowledge is active. And therefore subject dependent. Turning the tables on this popular trend, I argue that even conceptual knowledge is passive. Kant’s epistemology is conceptual. But if also active, then incoherent. If synthetic a priori truths are to follow upon our mental activity, they were neither true nor, far less, a priori before that activity. “A priori” and “active” are contradictory attributes (...) of knowledge. As, indeed, are “a priori” and “subject-dependent” to begin with. Nothing a priori can be dependent on anything except itself, and least of all on the human subject. Kant does consider the active aspect of thought. The difference is that for him the more active it becomes, the less it is to be trusted. For we are no longer in the province of the Understanding, and its necessary truths, but in the realm of Pure Reason and its dialectical antinomies. Cognition activists who take a liking to Kant have simply mistaken Reason for the Understanding. And Reason is to Kant “the seat of all transcendental illusion”. (shrink)

The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" refer primarily to how or on what basis a proposition might be known. A proposition is knowable a priori if it is knowable independently of experience. A proposition is knowable a posteriori if it is knowable on the basis of experience. The a priori/a posteriori distinction is epistemological and should not be confused with the metaphysical distinction between the necessary and the contingent or the semantical or logical distinction between the analytic and the (...) synthetic. Two aspects of the a priori/a posteriori distinction require clarification: the conception of experience on which the distinction turns; and the sense in which a priori knowledge is independent of such experience. The latter gives rise to important questions regarding the positive basis of a priori knowledge. (shrink)

Kant famously thought that mathematics contains synthetic a priori truths. In his book, Wille defends a version of the Kantian thesis on not-so-Kantian grounds. Wille calls his account neo-Kantian, because it makes sense of Kantian tenets by using a methodology that takes the linguistic and pragmatic turns seriously.Wille's work forms part of a larger project in which the statuses of mathematics and proof theory are investigated. The official purpose of the present book is to answer the question: what is mathematics. (...) Wille sets himself the task of finding a definition that enables him to distinguish between mathematics and proof theory. His solution reads roughly as follows. Mathematics is about how to generate synthetic a priori knowledge by acting within some calculus. This definition does not seem to be a promising starting point, because in this way a very controversial claim becomes true by definition. However, Wille's strategy is to make sense of his definition during the course of his argument and to show that the definition is appropriate regarding research that is commonly taken to be mathematics.The second part of the book explains what ‘acting within some calculus’ amounts to. In Wille's view, mathematics should be characterized in …. (shrink)

The present article aims at tracing Moritz Schlick's theoretical route from 1915 to 1936 - the year he was assassinated. The authors describe this route as Schlick's attempt at successively evading what one could define as two flaws in modern philosophy - the Charybdis of Kantian epistemology and the Scylla of radical conventionalism. Such an original and daring guideline also deviates from all great epistemological philosophies dating from the beginning of the century with which the Vienna Circle's founder engaged in (...) fruitful dialogue - among which Neokantianism and phenomenology, as well as Hilbertian Axiomatic or Poincaré and Duhem's doctrines. (shrink)

This article sketches out the key features of the debate on the analytic-synthetic distinction between phenomenology and logical empiricism, which took place in the early part of the twentieth century. On the one side, the author reconstructs the debate itself from an historical angle; on the other, he gives a theoretical account of the different positions and arguments. In particular, he has three main aims: a) to clarify how, according to Husserl, the analyticsynthetic opposition is to be understood as the (...) form-matter opposition; b) to show how this position has been misunderstood by neo-empiricist philosophers, in particular by Schlick in his paper against the theory of the factual a priori; c) to point out that Husserlian theory anticipates some relevant features in the matter of analyticity which will be made fully explicit only by Carnap and Quine, philosophers of the following generation. (shrink)

Der Beitrag bestimmt den logischen Standort und die Funktion des ursprünglich und a priori vereinigten Willens in Kants Rechtslehre. Der ursprünglich und a priori vereinigte Wille wird von einer ursprünglichen Gemeinschaft aller Menschen am Erdboden hervorgebracht, die ihrerseits auf einem ursprünglichen Recht eines jeden auf einen Platz auf dieser Erde gründet. Das ursprüngliche Recht auf einen Platz selbst folgt aus dem ursprünglichen Freiheitsrecht. Der ursprünglich vereinigte Wille richtet sich auf die Aufteilung des Erdbodens. Dadurch wird der ursprüngliche Erwerb von Sachen, (...) insbesondere von Grundstücken, möglich. Kant formuliert diese Möglichkeit in dem Postulat des § 2 der Rechtslehre, das ein Erlaubnisgesetz der praktischen Vernunft enthält: "Es ist möglich, einen jeden äußeren Gegenstand meiner Willkür als das Meine zu haben." Das Postulat folgt nicht analytisch aus dem ursprünglichen Freiheitsrecht. Es wird durch eine reductio ad absurdum der Annahme des Gegenteils begründet und enthält infolgedessen einen synthetischen Rechtssatz a priori. Zu dem Gebot, den Erdboden aufzuteilen, kommt das Postulat des öffentlichen Rechts , das den Eintritt in den -Staat gebietet, um das Eigentum an den Sachen zu sichern. Auch dieses Postulat hat den Charakter eines synthetischen Rechtssatzes a priori. Die Gründung eines -Staats setzt den ursprünglichen Kontrakt voraus. Das Eigentum an Grund und Boden geht jeder Staatsgründung voran, weil eine Staatsgründung nur möglich ist, wenn das Volk, das einen Staat gründen will, über ein mögliches Staatsgebiet verfügt.This article examines the logical location and function of the originally and a priori united will in Kant's Doctrine of Right. The originally and a priori united will flows out of the original community of all human beings on the earth's surface, which in turn is based on each person's original right to a place on this earth. The original right to a place on the earth's surface follows analytically from the original right to freedom. The originally united will commands us to divide the surface of the earth. This will to divide the land makes original acquisition possible. Kant formulates this possibility in § 2 of the Doctrine of Right, which contains a permissive law of practical reason: "It is possible to have any external object of my choice as mine." This postulate does not follow analytically from the original right to freedom. Instead it is based on a reductio ad absurdum and thus contains a synthetic principle of law a priori. The postulate of public law is added to the will to divide the earth's surface and requires entering a juridical state in order to secure property rights to things. This postulate is also a synthetic principle of law a priori. Founding a juridical state presupposes the original contract. Ownership of land logically precedes the founding of any state, because a state can be founded only if the people intending to found it have a state territory. (shrink)

On défend ici l'hypothèse selon laquelle les relations d'idées humiennes ont pu servir de matrice à la constitution d'un a priori phénoménologique, en un sens particulier : conçues d'abord comme relations internes, elles ont dû être partiellement arrachées à un modèle représentationnel hérité de Brentano et insérées dans un dispositif ontologique, s'exprimant alors selon une modalité qui est celle du rapport d'essence. One suggests the possibility that Hume's relations of ideas must have constituted the basis of the phenomenological synthetic a (...) priori, in a specific sense : first considered as internal relations, they must have been partially snatched out of the representational context -a legacy of Franz Brentano -, beeing then expressed in terms of ontological structures, relations of essences. (shrink)

In chapter five I examine the work of Thomas Kuhn and discuss some points of agreement and disagreement between Kant's thought and Kuhn's methodological and historiographic discoveries, including some treatment of implications of Kant's thought, as explicated in the present study, for issues that Kuhn raises in the philosophy of science. This contrast with Kuhn points up the fundamentally philosophical character of Kant's notions of sensibility, understanding, and reason as the sources of our a priori knowledge. ;Chapter four explicates Kant's (...) claim that reason is our highest faculty "for elaborating the matter of intuition and bringing it under the highest unity of thought." To accomplish this requires distinguishing between the unity of understanding and the unity of reason . Fundamental to an understanding of the function of reason of Kant's view is his discussion of the conditions of thought; I undertake to provide this understanding through an examination of the logical apparatus that underlies the origination of the transcendental ideas of reason, as Kant explains and defends that apparatus in both the Logic and the Critique of Pure Reason. Chapter four concludes with a discussion of the transcendental ideas insofar as they guide our investigation of the three kinds of relations which, Kant argues, "are to be universally found in all our representations"--namely, relation to the subject, relation to objects as appearances, and relation to objects in general. ;Chapter three turns to the sources of a priori knowledge in mathematics and natural science. Robert Paul Wolff, in his study Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, provides a convenient foil for this discussion; his reading of Kant's regressive method in the Prolegomena leads Wolff to interpret the conditions of knowledge in a way that, I think, is mistaken and obscures Kant's solution to the problem of how synthetic judgments in mathematics and natural sciences are possible a priori. I also argue that Kant's treatment of the understanding as a source of knowledge is a reply of Hume's scepticism with respect to causality. ;In this dissertation I investigate what Kant identifies in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics as the sources of our a priori knowledge--namely, sensibility, understanding, and reason. After a brief introductory chapter, the purpose of chapter two, "Kant's Given," is to determine the character of the objects of sensibility. On this issue hinges the question of what Kant means when he calls himself a transcendental idealist. To provide a context for my explication of Kant's refutation of idealism, I introduce his account of ordinary idealism and take up his own special version of idealism. Kant's refutation of idealism depends on establishing a necessary interrelationship between our intuitions of space and time; this is done wholly in terms of the formal characteristics of space and time, without reference to Kant's discussion of our capacity for receiving representations. The final section of chapter two deals with Kant's discussion of receptivity and the spontaneity that must be combined with it in order for cognition to take place. (shrink)

(K1) All knowledge of necessary propositions is a priori. (K2) All propositions known a priori are necessary. (K3) All knowledge of analytic propositions is a priori; and (K4) Some propositions known a priori are synthetic.

There has been a significant shift in the discussion of a priori knowledge. The shift is due largely to the influence of Quine. The traditional debate focused on the epistemic status of mathematics and logic. Kant, for example, maintained that arithmetic and geometry provide clear examples of synthetic a priori knowledge and that principles of logic, such as the principle of contradiction, provide the basis for analytic a priori knowledge. Quine’s rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction and his holistic empiricist account (...) of mathematic and logical knowledge undercut the traditional defenses of the a priori in two ways. First, one could no longer defend the view that mathematical and logical knowledge is a priori solely by rejecting Mill’s inductive empiricism. Moreover, holistic empiricism proved to be a more challenging position to refute than inductive empiricism. Second, the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction blocked an alternative defense of the a priori status of mathematics and logic that appealed to their alleged analyticity. (shrink)

This paper considers the kantian statement that the natural science, the same as the mathematics, it contains synthetic a priori judgments as principles. However, a comparative study among the principles of both sciences, as well as of the foundations of their constitution, it throws the primary ..

Este artí­culo considera la afirmación kantiana de que la ciencia natural, al igual que las matemáticas, contiene juicios sintéticos a priori como principios. Sin embargo, un estudio comparativo entre los principios de ambas ciencias, así­ como de los fundamentos de su constitución, arroja el resultado primario de que sólo es posible hablar de principios propiamente a priori en las matemáticas, manteniendo para los de la ciencia natural un estatus diferente. La elucidación de la naturaleza y modo de construcciún de estos (...) últimos mostrará que Immanuel Kant estaba caracterizando un proceder común en la ciencia del siglo XVIII y que aún hoy puede leerse en la práctica cientí­fica estándar.This paper considers the kantian statement that the natural science, the same as the mathematics, it contains synthetic a priori judgments as principles. However, a comparative study among the principles of both sciences, as well as of the foundations of their constitution, it throws the primary result that it is only possible to speak properly of a priori principles in the mathematics, maintaining for those of the natural science a different status. The explanation of the nature and way of construction of these last ones will show that Kant was characterizing a procedure common in the science of the XVIII century, and that today it can still be read in the standard scientific practice. (shrink)

Subjectivists, taking the “collapse” of the observation-interpretation contrast much too seriously, are led to imagine that even perceptual knowledge is active. And therefore subject dependent. Turning the tables on this popular trend, I argue that even conceptual knowledge is passive. Kant’s epistemology is conceptual. But if also active, then incoherent. If synthetic a priori truths are to follow upon our mental activity, they were neither true nor, far less, a priori before that activity. “A priori” and “active” are contradictory attributes (...) of knowledge. As, indeed, are “a priori” and “subject-dependent” to begin with. Nothing a priori can be dependent on anything except itself, and least of all on the human subject. Kant does consider the active aspect of thought. The difference is that for him the more active it becomes, the less it is to be trusted. For we are no longer in the province of the Understanding, and its necessary truths, but in the realm of Pure Reason and its dialectical antinomies. Cognition activists who take a liking to Kant have simply mistaken Reason for the Understanding. And Reason is to Kant “the seat of all transcendental illusion”. (shrink)

Roderick Chisholm appears to agree with Kant on the question of the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge. But Chisholm’s conception of the a priori is a traditional Aristotelian conception and differs markedly from Kant’s. Closer scrutiny reveals that their agreement on the question of the synthetic a priori is merely verbal: what Kant meant to affirm, Chisholm denies. Curiously, it looks as if Chisholm agreed on all substantive issues with the empiricist rejection of Kant’s synthetic a priori. In the (...) end, it turns out that Chisholm disagrees with both, empiricism and Kant, over a fundamental question: whether mere understanding of the contents of our thoughts must always remain within the circle of our own ideas or can provide us with genuine knowledge of matters of fact. (shrink)

Abstract: This article contends that the relation of early logical empiricism to Kant was more complex than is often assumed. It argues that Reichenbach's early work on Kant and Einstein, entitled The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (1920) aimed to transform rather than to oppose Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. One the one hand, I argue that Reichenbach's conception of coordinating principles, derived from Kant's conception of synthetic a priori principles, offers a valuable way of accounting for the (...) historicity of scientific paradigms. On the other hand, I show that even Reichenbach, in line with Neo-Kantianism, associated Kant's view of synthetic a priori principles too closely with Newtonian physics and, consequently, overestimated the difference between Kant's philosophy and his own. This is even more so, I point out, in the retrospective account logical empiricism presented of its own history. Whereas contemporary reconstructions of this history, including Michael Friedman's, tend to endorse this account, I offer an interpretation of Kant's conception of a priori principles that contrasts with the one put forward by both Neo-Kantianism and logical empiricism. On this basis, I re-examine the early Reichenbach's effort to accommodate these principles to the paradigm forged by Einstein. (shrink)

El problema fundamental para que la Teoría de la relatividad pueda ser acorde con la filosofía de Kant es el de la utilización de una geometría no euclídea. Que sus principios sean interpretados como juicios sintéticos a priori es, a nuestro entender, un problema secundario. Si queremos que los principios de una ciencia de la naturaleza sean universales y necesarios sin recurrir a dogmatismos, no queda otra posibilidad que entenderlos trascendentalmente. Como se observa en el principio de relatividad, Einstein también (...) pensaba que las leyes físicas son universales y necesarias. Sin embargo, su perspectiva fue más racionalista que crítica. Sea como fuere, si los principios de la Teoría de la relatividad son a priori y enlazan sintéticamente la experiencia posible, esta teoría nos servirá para entender que las geometrías no euclídeas no son ajenas a los planteamientos de Kant, si bien requieren dar un rodeo epistemológico. La doctrina que nos permite fundamentar las geometrías no euclidianas desde la filosofía de Kant la llamamos “Álgebra de la experiencia”.The main problem for the Theory of the relativity to be in agreement with the Kant´s philosophy is the use of a non-Euclidean geometry. The fact that their principles could be interpreted a priori as synthetic trials is, in our opinion, a secondary problem. If we want that the principles of a science of the nature would be universal and necessary ones without appealing to dogmatisms, then, he have to understand them transcendentally. As in the principle of relativity it is observed, Einstein also thought that the physical laws are universal and necessary ones. However, their perspective was more rationalistic than critic. In any case, if the Theory of Relativity principles are a priori and they synthetically connect the possible experience, then, this theory will allow us to understand that the non-Euclidean geometries are not far away from the Kant´s positions, although they require to made a epistemological turn around. The principle that allows us to base the geometries non Euclidian from the Kant´s philosophy is called “Algebra of the experience”. (shrink)

A la teoría de la relatividad se la ha considerado una teoría empírica. Sobre esta interpretación se ha preconizado el triunfo del empirismo sobre cualquier otra concepción filosófica. Moritz Schlick vaticinó que no se podrían encontrar los principios sintéticos a priori de esta ciencia porque tal cosa no existía. Este artículo demuestra no ya sólo que se pueden encontrar, sino que ya estaban en posesión de Kant. La introducción de algunas pocas precisiones nos bastará para adaptar a la teoría de (...) la relatividad tan preciados principios. (shrink)

Popper uses the "Humean challenge" as a justification for his falsificationism. It is claimed that in his basic argument he confuses two different doubts: (a) the Humean doubt (Popper's problem of induction), and (b) the "Popperean" doubt whether - presupposing that there are laws of nature - the laws we accept are in fact valid. Popper's alleged solution of the problem of induction does not solve the problem in a straightforward way (as Levison and Salmon have remarked before). But if (...) Popper's solution of the Humean challenge is re-interpreted as being close to Kant's it makes sense. Even though Popper explicitly rejects Kant's synthetic judgements a priori, it is claimed here that this is so because he misinterprets Kant's argument. If he had understood Kant correctly he should have been a modern "Kantianer"! (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach is well known for his limiting frequency view of probability, with his most thorough account given in The Theory of Probability in 1935/1949. Perhaps less known are Reichenbach's early views on probability and its epistemology. In his doctoral thesis from 1915, Reichenbach espouses a Kantian view of probability, where the convergence limit of an empirical frequency distribution is guaranteed to exist thanks to the synthetic a priori principle of lawful distribution. Reichenbach claims to have given a purely objective (...) account of probability, while integrating the concept into a more general philosophical and epistemological framework. A brief synopsis of Reichenbach's thesis and a critical analysis of the problematic steps of his argument will show that the roots of many of his most influential insights on probability and causality can be found in this early work. (shrink)

Kant's original version of transcendental philosophy took both Euclidean geometry and the Newtonian laws of motion to be synthetic a priori constitutive principles—which, from Kant's point of view, function as necessary presuppositions for applying our fundamental concepts of space, time, matter, and motion to our sensible experience of the natural world. Although Kant had very good reasons to view the principles in question as having such a constitutively a priori role, we now know, in the wake of Einstein's work, that (...) they are not in fact a priori in the stronger sense of being fixed necessary conditions for all human experience in general, eternally valid once and for all. And it is for precisely this reason that Kant's original version of transcendental philosophy must now be either rejected entirely or radically reconceived. Most philosophy of science since Einstein has taken the former route: the dominant view in logical empiricism, for example, was that the Kantian synthetic a priori had to be rejected once and for all in the light of the general theory of relativity. (shrink)

The logical positivists adopted Poincare's doctrine of the conventionality of geometry and made it a key part of their philosophical interpretation of relativity theory. I argue, however, that the positivists deeply misunderstood Poincare's doctrine. For Poincare's own conception was based on the group-theoretical picture of geometry expressed in the Helmholtz-Lie solution of the space problem, and also on a hierarchical picture of the sciences according to which geometry must be presupposed be any properly physical theory. But both of this pictures (...) are entirely incompatible with the radically new conception of space and geometry articulated in the general theory of relativity. The logical positivists's attempt to combine Poincare's conventionalism with Einstein's new theory was therefore, in the end, simply incoherent. Underlying this problem, moreover, was a fundamental philosophical difference between Poincare's and the positivists concerning the status of synthetic a priori truths. (shrink)

Abstract: This article explains and motivates an account of one way in which we might have substantive a priori knowledge in one important class of domains: domains in which the central concepts are response-dependent. The central example will be our knowledge of the connection between something's being harmful and the fact that it is irrational for us to fail to be averse to that thing. The idea is that although the relevant responses (basic aversion in the case of harm, and (...) a kind of interpretive failure in the case of irrationality) are produced by independent psychological mechanisms, they have distal causes that turn out to be related in ways that—once language enters the picture—yield epistemically accessible necessary connections between the referents of their corresponding terms. (shrink)

Agustín Rayo’s The Construction of Logical Space offers an exciting and ambitious defense of a broadly Carnapian approach to metaphysics. This essay will focus on one of the main differences between Rayo’s and Carnap’s approaches. Carnap distinguished between analytic, a priori “meaning postulates”, and empirical claims, which were both synthetic and knowable only a posteriori. Like meaning postulates, they determine the boundaries of logical space. But Rayo is skeptical that the a priori/a posteriori or analytic/synthetic distinctions can do the work (...) Carnap wanted them to, so unlike meaning postulates, ‘just is’-statements aren’t assumed to be analytic or knowable a priori. This essay will concern the epistemology of ‘just is’-statements in Rayo’s picture. If not by a priori reflection, how can we determine which ones to accept? I’ll distinguish two competing strands in Rayo’s work. The less radical, Lewisian strand holds that the question of whether to accept a ‘just is’-statement can be addressed in a neutral, non-question-begging way, by a kind of cost-benefit analysis. The more radical, Kuhnian strand holds that there can be no ‘just is’-statement-independent, rational choice of which ‘just is’-statements to accept. I argue that Rayo faces strong internal pressure to adopt the Kuhnian picture. While it is possible for Rayo to resist these Kuhnian pressures, natural strategies for doing so leave his view more similar to Carnap’s than the above gloss suggested. (shrink)