Kant's Response to Hume

8/12/2019 Kant's Response to Hume

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Immanuel Kant

On Regulative Principles in ScienceResponse to Hume


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Immanuel KantResponse to Hume

He professed to be greatly

disturbed by Humes analysis of

causation.

Kants said that he was awakenedfrom my dogmatic slumber.


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He was unwilling to grant Humes

premise. Although all empirical knowledge arises from

sense impressions, it is not the case that all

such knowledge is given in these impressions.

Matter and Form of cognitive

experience:

sense impressions provide the raw

material of empirical knowledge

Intellect of the knowing subject (it isresponsible for the structural-relational

organization of this raw material)


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He believed that Hume oversimplified the

knowing process.

He formulated His own theory of

knowledge which was more complex

and specified three stagesfor it.

Sensations

perceptions

Judgement of experience


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Stages of in the cognitive organization of

knowledge

Sensations

perceptions

Judgement of experience

Forms of sensibility

Time

Space

Categories of understanding

Substance

Causality

Contingency

Regulative Principles of

Reason


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He believed that Hume was preoccupied

with inductive generalization.

He regarded the systematic organization

of experience as a goal to be sought by

the knowing subject.

In his theory of knowledge, the faculty of

reason prescribes to the understanding

certain rules for the ordering of empiricaljudgments.


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With respect to individual empirical laws,

he downplayed instance-confirmation, in

which deductive consequences of laws

are seen to be in agreement with

observations.

with respect to theories, He cited as

criteria of acceptability predictive power

and testability.


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Kants Judgements

A priori vs A posteriori judgmentThe first distinction separates a priorifrom a

posteriorijudgments by reference to the origin of

our knowledge of them.A priorijudgments are

based upon reason alone, independently of allsensory experience, and therefore apply with strict

universality.A posteriorijudgments, on the other

hand, must be grounded upon experience and are

consequently limited and uncertain in their

application to specific cases. Thus, this distinction

also marks the difference traditionally noted in logic

between necessary and contingenttruths.
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Kants Judgements

Analytic vs Synthetic JudgmentBut Kant also made a less familiar distinction between

analytic and syntheticjudgments, according to the

information conveyed as their content.

Analyticjudgments are those whose predicates are whollycontained in their subjects; since they add nothing to our

concept of the subject, such judgments are purely explicative

and can be deduced from the principle of non-contradiction.

'All bachelors are unmarried.''All sisters are female.'

'All triangles have three sides'.

'The internal angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.'
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Kants Judgements

Analytic vs Synthetic JudgmentBut Kant also made a less familiar distinction between

analytic and syntheticjudgments, according to theinformation conveyed as their content.

Syntheticjudgments, on the other hand, are those whosepredicates are wholly distinct from their subjects, to whichthey must be shown to relate because of some realconnection external to the concepts themselves. Hence,synthetic judgments are genuinely informative but require

justification by reference to some outside principle.

'The earth revolves around the sun.''Either it is raining or it is snowing.''All bachelors live in messy apartments.''Every human being will die someday.''If you throw a brick at a window, the window will break'.
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In fact, Kant held, the two distinctions are not entirelycoextensive; we need at least to consider all four oftheir logically possible combinations:

Analytic a posteriorijudgments cannot arise, sincethere is never any need to appeal to experience insupport of a purely explicative assertion.

Synthetic a posteriorijudgments are the relativelyuncontroversial matters of fact we come to know bymeans of our sensory experience (though Wolffhadtried to derive even these from the principle ofcontradiction).

Analytic a priori judgments, everyone agrees,include all merely logical truths and straightforwardmatters of definition; they are necessarily true.

Synthetic a priorijudgments are the crucial case,since only they could provide new information that isnecessarily true. But neither Leibniz nor Humeconsidered the possibility of any such case.
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Kant's Response to Hume