Transcendental Logic: Dialectic, Reason, and the Nature of Reality
Transcendental Logic: Transcendental Dialectic
The Uses of Reason
Finite human reason has several different uses:
- Theoretical Use: This is the scientific use, the use of reason to know “what is,” to know things as they are. With this scientific use, we answer the first question: “What can I know?” We know everything that is bound by rules that impose *a priori* space, time, and categories, that is, phenomena or objects of experience. In other words, theoretical knowledge organizes experience. This organization of experience is carried out at two levels:
- At the level of *sensibility*, impressions are bound under the conditions of space and time.
- At the level of *understanding*, objects will be organized, subsumed under concepts.
- Practical Use: The practical use of reason is the moral use. It does not deal with what is known scientifically as reality but guides humans, teaching them what to do with their freedom to decide—not how things are, but how they should be.
The Ideas of Reason
Sensibility synthesizes impressions, forming an object. Understanding synthesizes objects under a concept, allowing us to make judgments. However, it is the nature of reason to seek an absolute ground for experience, that is, for the unconditioned. Therefore, reason is not content with this kind of synthesis and strives for the most general synthesis possible. It establishes relationships between judgments, seeking ever more general judgments. Herein lies reasoning, whose simplest form is the syllogism. This process could continue until the whole of experience is grouped, that is, until we find that the most general opinion is the absolute foundation of all experience. But this process is endless. From judgments based on experience, we will never finish the series of conditions. For any given trial, we can always find a basis, a previous trial on which it depends. Then, as it is essential to Reason to unify all experience, it leaps and brings 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*.
Constitutive and Regulative Use of Ideas
These concepts (Soul, World, and God), Kant called “Ideas of Reason,” or “pure concepts of reason.” They do not correspond to any object of experience; therefore, they do not provide proper knowledge. However, they do play a role in the theoretical use of reason, making it possible to combine all experience into a rational system. The Ideas of Reason “cannot be applied to any possible experience as constitutions, but can be applied to regulate the experience, framed within a complete system.” Kant calls this the “regulative use” of Ideas. But we think if it is to apply the categories of understanding to what we think. And here comes the problem, because reason applies the categories of understanding to the Ideas, as if they were objects of experience. That is, reason is not limited to using Ideas to regulate experience but uses them constitutively. This is intended to build upon the experience of these objects.
The error stems from not having done an analysis of the capabilities and limits of reason. Having done this analysis, we can see that reason contradicts itself when it tries to answer, from its “theoretical use,” any of its interests, which affect only the “practical use.” This will resolve all contradictions. “Soul,” “God,” and “World” are not objects of experience but find their particular kind of reality within the world of morality, that is, praxis.
Kant calls contradictory or unverifiable judgments issued by reason “paralogisms” when referring to the soul and “antinomies” when referring to the world. Regarding God, Reason makes a second type of error in claiming that its existence can be demonstrated.
The Ideal of Pure Reason
The Idea of God arises from the attempt to rally all possible experience. God is, therefore, thought of as that which unites all of reality. For this reason, Kant calls it the “ideal of pure reason.”
Kant reduces all the tests that attempt to prove the existence of God to two: 1) ontological proof and 2) cosmological proof.
- Ontological Proof: This proof is based on the notion of God and concludes that God exists. This is the old “ontological argument” of St. Anselm of Canterbury. According to Kant, this test is invalid because the categories of modality do not imply fact but simply the way that reality relates to our ability to know.
- Cosmological Proof: This proof is based on the experience that there are things in general and concludes that there must be a necessary being. This test assumes that the world’s beings are contingent. Kant believes that this test is invalid for two reasons:
- The notion that the world is contingent comes in opposition to the idea of a necessary being. So, for this test to be meaningful, there must be the option of a necessary being. But the idea of a necessary being is the idea of a being whose essence involves existence, and that is the core of the ontological argument. Therefore, this test is reduced to the previous one.
- It is argued that there must be a necessary cause of the world, but this also applies the notion of cause beyond the field of experience.