Question : Explain Kant’s division of categories.
(2015)
Answer : Kant discussed categories of Understanding in Transcendental Analytic. The purpose to discuss these categories is two-fold: one, to show how reason plays significant role in knowledge and second, to prove how categories fulfill the conditions to explain the world.
These categories should not be construed as a classification, but these are preconditions for objects. Kant holds that only cognition of percepts in spatio-temporal framework would not yield any knowledge. Knowledge is only possible in the union ....
Question : How are the synthetic a priori judgements justifiable according to Kant? Explain.
(2014)
Answer : Kant defines a priori knowledge as that kind of knowledge which is held independently of all experience, whereas empirical knowledge is possible only through experience.
He further qualifies a priori with the adjective pure when the proposition in question contains no empirical elements, citing “every alteration has its cause” as a proposition which is a priori but not pure on the grounds that “alteration” is an empirical concept. Only a priori concepts can have properties like ....
Question : State Kant’s view of causality. How far is Kant able to answer Hume’s objection that causal relation lacks logical necessity?
(2013)
Answer : From a historical point of view, Kant’s account of causality was a response to Hume’s scepticism about causation. Let us first see what Hume said about this issue. Hume points out that we only observe correlated events in nature, and that there are some regular correlations and some irregular ones. For instance, we always observe that lightning precedes thunder. On the basis of such regular correlations, we infer that the events in question are also ....
Question : What is an antinomy? Describe the major antinomies discussed by Kant.
(2013)
Answer : Immanuel Kant, the father of critical philosophy, in order to show the inadequacy of pure reason in the field of metaphysics, employed the word antinomies in elaborating his doctrine that pure reason generates contradictions in seeking to grasp the unconditioned. He offered alleged proofs of the two propositions that the universe had a beginning and is of finite extent (the thesis) and also of a contrary proposition (the antithesis). Similarly, he offered proofs both for ....
Question : Why is Kant’s philosophy known as a Copernican revolution in metaphysics? What was revolutionary about Kantian philosophy? Give reasons for your answer.
(2012)
Answer : Kant philosophy is known as Copernican revolution in metaphysics. Just like before Copernicus, to know about the universe, man was the standard and earth was considered as the centre of the solar system, but Copernicus proved that sun was the centre of the solar system and thus bought a revolution in the scientific field.
In the similar manner, in the field of metaphysics, Kant refuted all prior established traditions and defined the principle of metaphysics in ....
Question : “Hume aroused me from my dogmatic slumber”. In what context Kant has made this statement? Explain.
(2011)
Answer : To understand Kant, it is necessary to begin with Hume who, Kant wrote, “aroused me form my dogmatic slumbers.” Just what were these slumbers? Two things in Hume’s philosophy awakened Kant.
Hume’s critique of rationalism convinced him that the rationalists based their philosphies on unwarranted assumptions, because it had no bases in experience, it lead only to empty conclusions. However, Hume’s empiricist epistemology led to total skepticism, which is equally unacceptable. Somewhere in between these ....
Question : Why does Kant say that existence is not a predicate?
(2010)
Answer : First, Kant never says that existence is not a predicate, which is an absurd claim, but that existence is not a REAL predicate. A predicate is that part of a statement that states information to the subject term; predicates inform us of the properties a thing has. Thus to say that existence is not a real predicate is to say that the statement’s subject term is not really informed by the presence of the predicate ....
Question : Kant’s objections against the ontological argument for the existence of God.
(2009)
Answer : An ontological argument for the existence of God attempts the method of a priori proof, which uses intuition and reason alone. The ontological argument has been a controversial topic in philosophy. Many philosophers, including Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, have openly criticized it. The argument examines the concept of God, and states that if we can conceive of the greatest possible being, then it must exist. The ....
Question : Nature of Synthetic a-priori judgment.
(2007)
Answer : In the Introduction to the Critique, Kant discusses the generally accepted classes of knowledge using the terms a priori, empirical (which is his preferred term for a posteriori), analytic, and synthetic. Prior to the Critique it was generally accepted that a priori was coincident with analytic and a posteriori (Kant’s empirical”) was coincident with synthetic. By careful definition and discussion of the terms, Kant argues that we should abandon this notion of coextension, and recognise ....
Question : How is synthetic a-priori judgement possible.
(2007)
Answer : Kant’s answer to the problems generated by the two traditions mentioned above changed the face of philosophy. First, Kant argued that that old division between a priori truths and a posteriori truths employed by both camps was insufficient to describe the sort of metaphysical claims that were under dispute. An analysis of knowledge also requires a distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. In an analytic claim, the predicate is contained within the subject. In the ....
Question : Explain Kant’s criticism of the proofs for the existence of God.
(2006)
Answer : Kant locates the order of nature in reason. Reason does for the understanding what understanding does for the manifold of intuition - “the understanding is an object for reason, just as sensibility is for the understanding.” Reason’s regulative capacity renders the unconditioned totality of objects systematic. There are three ideas of reason: self, world and God. God is the Ideal of Reason, whose concept aims at complete determination in accordance with a priori rules. Accordingly ....
Question : The significance of Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena.
(2004)
Answer : According to Kant, it is vital always to distinguish between the distinct realms of real and empirical. Phenomena are the appearances, which constitute our experience; noumena are the (presumed) things themselves, which constitute reality. All of our synthetic a priori judgments apply only to the phenomenal realm, not the noumenal. (It is only at this level, with respect to what we can experience, that we are justified in imposing the structure of our concepts onto ....
Question : How is synthetic a-priori judgement possible.
(2003)
Answer : Kant’s answer to the problems generated by the two traditions mentioned above changed the face of philosophy. First, Kant argued that that old division between a priori truths and a posteriori truths employed by both camps was insufficient to describe the sort of metaphysical claims that were under dispute. An analysis of knowledge also requires a distinction between synthetic and analytic truths. In an analytic claim, the predicate is contained within the subject. In the ....
Question : Kant’s “critical philosophy” of is a reconciliation between Rationalism and Empiricism. Elucidate the remark fully and bring out the consequence of such reconciliation for the possibility of traditional metaphysics.
(2002)
Answer : The philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a watershed figure who forever altered the course of philosophical thinking in the Western tradition. Long after his thorough indoctrination into the quasi-scholastic German appreciation of the metaphysical systems Kant said, it was a careful reading of David Hume that “interrupted my dogmatic slumbers and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction.” Having appreciated the full force of such arguments, Kant supposed that the ....
Question : Kant’s conception of time and space.
(2001)
Answer : Trying to reconcile the metaphysics of Newton and Leibniz, Kant proposed that space and time exist at one level of reality but not at another. Kant proposes that space and time do not really exist outside of us but are “forms of intuition,” i.e. conditions of perception, imposed by our own minds. This enables him to reconcile Newton and Leibniz: agreeing with Newton that space is absolute and real for objects we perceive, i.e. for ....
Question : State and examine Kant’s criticism of the proofs for the existence of God.
(2000)
Answer : According to Kant reason does for the understanding what understanding does for the manifold of intuition - “the understanding is an object for reason, just as sensibility is for the understanding.” Reason’s regulative capacity renders the unconditioned totality of objects systematic. There are three ideas of reason: self, world and God. God is the Ideal of Reason, whose concept aims at complete determination in accordance with a priori rules. Accordingly it thinks for itself an ....
Question : Kant’s ideas of reason.
(1999)
Answer : The faculty of reason has two employments. Theoretical reason, Kant says, makes it possible to cognize what is. But reason ought its practical employment in determining what to be as well. This distinction roughly corresponds to the two philosophical enterprises of metaphysics and ethics. Reason’s practical use is manifest in the regulative function of certain concepts that we must think with regard to the world, even though we can have no knowledge of them. Kant ....
Question : Kant reconciles rationalism with empiricism by superseding them.
(1997)
Answer : In order to understand Kant’s position, we must understand the philosophical background that he was reacting to. There are two major historical movements in the early modern period of philosophy that had a significant impact on Kant: Empiricism and Rationalism. Kant argues that both the method and the content of these philosophers’ arguments contain serious flaws. A central epistemological problem for philosophers in both movements was determining how we can escape from within the confines ....
Question : What do you understand by Kant’s claim that space and time are forms of pure intuition? Explain the arguments he gives in support of his position in this regard.
(1996)
Answer : Kant offered another theory of Transcendental Aesthetic where there were two pure intuitions of space and time, necessary for any experience even to begin, because all possible experiences occur in space and in certain sequences (time). There were also empirical intuitions, “but all our intuition (of the kind) is nothing but the representation of appearance; the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations so ....
Question : Kart’s doctrine of Transcendental Deduction.
(1995)
Answer : Transcendental deduction is a doctrine founded by Kant in the eighteenth century. The doctrine maintains that human experience of things consists of how they appear to us implying fundamental subject based component, rather than being an activity that directly comprehends the things as they are in and of themselves. Despite influencing the course of sub segment German philosophy dramatically, exactly how to interpret this concept was a. subject of some debate among of 20th century ....
