Kant: Reason’s Limits, Dialectic, and Judgment Types
Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic
After impressions from sensitivity have been synthesized to form an object, and objects have also been synthesized under a concept by the understanding, allowing the formation of judgments, reason takes a further step. It is in the nature of reason, says Kant, to seek an absolute foundation for experience; that is, to seek the unconditioned.
Reason’s Search for the Unconditioned
The unconditioned is beyond experience; it is what Kant called the noumenon or the thing-in-itself. The unconditioned is sought through increasingly general synthesis. We find the expression of this tendency in the syllogism. Through this approach, reason looks for an increasingly general basis for any judgment. Put another way, reason seeks the unity of all experience.
The Ideas of Reason: Soul, World, God
This search leads to an illegitimate step: bringing together all internal experience under the notion of the Soul, all external experience under the notion of the World, and all possible experience under the notion of God. These three concepts make up what Kant called the Ideas of Reason.
Regulative Use vs. Metaphysical Error
But these ideas do not correspond to any object of experience; therefore, they do not provide us with actual knowledge. However, they do have a function within the theoretical use of reason: the possibility of grouping all experience into a rational system, organizing it completely. Kant called this the regulative use of ideas. Here lies the error of traditional metaphysics: attempting to treat these ideas as objects of experience (constitutive use).
Paralogisms, Antinomies, and the Ideal
When reason attempts this, it generates unprovable or contradictory judgments about the Ideas. Reason then contradicts itself when it pretends to answer, from its theoretical use, questions that pertain to its practical use. Kant calls the contradictory and unverifiable judgments issued by reason paralogisms when referring to the Soul, and antinomies when referring to the World. He also addresses God and the proofs of His existence using the expression Ideal of Pure Reason.
Why Metaphysics Cannot Be a Science
At the end of the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant concludes that metaphysics is not possible as a science because the basic categories of the understanding and the a priori forms of sensibility (space and time) can only be lawfully applied to experience (phenomena), whereas the objects of metaphysics (the Ideas of Reason) lie beyond experience.
Kant’s Theory of Judgments
The Nature and Role of Judgments
Before undertaking the analysis of the themes developed in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant defined a set of key concepts. Judgments are the basic elements that constitute all knowledge. A judgment is a relationship between a subject (S) and a predicate (P) in the form ‘S is P’.
Classification: Analytic, Synthetic, A Priori, A Posteriori
Depending on the relationship expressed between the subject and predicate, and according to whether they relate to experience, judgments are classified as follows:
- Analytical Judgments: In these, the predicate is contained within the concept expressed by the subject. They are purely formal judgments because they do not add any new knowledge. They are derived from the analysis of the subject’s concept without recourse to experience. They express what Hume called ‘relations of ideas’. These judgments are necessarily true, governed by the principle of non-contradiction.
- Synthetic Judgments: In these, the predicate is not contained within the subject; therefore, they are not necessarily true independently of experience. They are called synthetic because they link or synthesize different concepts, adding new knowledge. They express what Hume called ‘matters of fact’.
- A Priori Judgments: These judgments are obtained independently of experience; thus, no experience can invalidate them, meaning they are always valid. They are universal and necessary. (Both analytic judgments and, crucially for Kant, *synthetic a priori* judgments fall into this category).
- A Posteriori Judgments: These are judgments obtained subsequent to experience and, therefore, are neither universal nor necessary. They are always synthetic.