Kant on Metaphysics

this is philosophy bytes with me david edmonds and me Nigel Warburton philosophy bytes is available at WWF Alavi bytes calm as the citizens of königsberg in the late 18th century watched the professor of logic and metaphysics go phase regular daily walk at precisely the same time each day they must have wondered what he was thinking about well one of them annual Kent's preoccupations was whether we could work out things about the world without experience without as it were leaving the armchair and substantial truths not just what Kant called analytic truths in other words not just truths of definition like all bachelors are unmarried men this apparently arcane issue is at the heart of Kent's investigation of the limits of human knowledge in his critique of Pure Reason professor Adrian Moore dispenses a wealth of knowledge from his armchair in San Hugh's College Oxford Adrian Moore welcome to philosophy bytes thank you very much Nigel we're going to try and explain Kent's metaphysics today so what if we could just start by addressing the question what is metaphysics metaphysics can be usefully characterized as the most general attempt to try and make sense of things to try and understand what reality is like what the basic structure of reality is like so it's at the heart of philosophy this seems to be one of the main drives in philosophy to understand our relationship to our experience in the world absolutely I mean it's in a way the core part of philosophy other branches of philosophy all depend on metaphysics in various ways you could say that it's the part of philosophy that holds the rest of the discipline together now Emmanuel Holmes is most famous for his critique of Pure Reason the massive work we're going to focus on today is incredibly complex difficult book but it has a central theme running throughout and what if you could try and summarize that it is an extraordinarily complicated book as you say and it's difficult to summarize but we can say that kand is fundamentally concerned with metaphysics in two sense is first of all he's trying to do metaphysics in this book he's trying to tell us something about the broad structure of reality trying to make sense of things at the highest level of generality but also he's very interested in stepping up a level and raising questions about the nature of metaphysics itself the scope and limits of metaphysics because one of the things that he was struck by when he looked at the work of his predecessors stretching back over centuries was that there hadn't been much in the way of consensus not only about metaphysical issues themselves but about how much was even possible within metaphysics and his immediate predecessors had notably disagreed about what was possible within metaphysics and thinking in terms of what we tend to refer to in a bit of a cartoon sketch as the rationalists and the empiricists the thumbnail view is that according to the rationalists it was possible by pure exercise of Reason to arrive at substantive conclusions about the nature of reality whereas the empiricists were altogether more skeptical about that and thought that reason was much more limited than the rationalists took it to be and that the only way that we could arrive at substantive conclusions about the nature of reality was to do the sort of thing that we have to do in the Natural Sciences which is to appeal to experience so Ken was very interested in this fundamental disagreement between the rationalists and the empiricists and in a way as opposed tried to act as referee and one of the things he did in his role as referee was to come up with the notion of the synthetic a priori which is fundamental to understanding the critique of pure reason absolutely let's think of this perhaps in terms of the dispute that we were just talking about between the rationalists and the empiricists Kant was inclined to agree with the rush lists that it was possible to use pure reason to arrive at substantive conclusions about the nature of reality he was inclined to agree with the empiricists that it was impossible to arrive substantive conclusions about what was completely independent of us without using experience and part of this notion of the synthetic a priori was his attempt to reconcile these so the first part of the synthetic a priori is the word synthetic and that's contrasted with analytic yes can draws a distinction between what he calls synthetic knowledge and analytic knowledge analytic knowledge is knowledge that's available to us just by pure exercise of our concepts just reflecting on the nature of our concepts we can arrive at certain basic trivial truths about what things are like we know for example that all sisters are female not because we have to go out and investigate this just to find out whether they fit the bill or not but simply because it's part of our concept of a sister that a sister should be female so the truth which it is that all sisters are female would count as an analytic truth and and that would contrast with something like the truth that some sisters are younger than their own siblings children for example which again is a truth but depends on the way things actually are is not in any sense written into the concepts involved and to ascertain that that's true you need to go out and investigate so analytic truths are true by definition and synthetic truths are the kind which you have to go out and do some kind of research to find out whether or not they actually are true that's right yes now the other distinction the difference between the a priori and what we haven't mentioned yet at post era all right how does that differ that distinction from the synthetic analytic distinction on the face of it they look like two very similar distinctions standard way of characterizing a priori knowledge is as knowledge which is available without appeal to experience and a posteriori knowledge or empirical knowledge as it's also sometimes called its knowledge which is grounded in experience and it can easily look as if these are just two ways of drawing the same distinction I mean they're very two examples that we considered earlier of analytic knowledge and synthetic knowledge would also serve as examples of a priori knowledge and empirical knowledge it's out priori that all sisters are female you can tell that all sisters are female without appeal to experience by contrast although it's true that some sisters are younger than their own siblings children it's not something that can be ascertained without consulting experience we actually have to investigate people sisters in particular to find out whether anybody fits the bill and it turns out that there are some sisters that are younger than their own siblings children nevertheless although on the face of it it looks as if we've got two ways of drawing one in the same distinction Kant is adamant that these two contrasts come apart from each other and in particular he believes that there is some knowledge which on the one hand is a priori and yet on the other hand is synthetic so because you give an example of a synthetic a priori truth many of Kent's own examples are mathematical probably the most famous of all is that 7 plus 5 is equal to 12 now this certainly for Kant counters a priori it is something that we can tell just by an exercise of reason you can do mathematics in your armchair you don't need to go out and get your hands dirty and investigate what the world is like so in those terms it's certainly an example of a priori knowledge rather than empirical knowledge Bert can says mathematical methodology doesn't consist in simply reflecting on the nature of your concepts either no matter how carefully you analyze your concepts that's never going to be enough to give you the inside that plus five equals twelve you have to appeal to something else the average medical example is not necessarily the most convincing as far as that's concerned but he did also often cite geometrical examples where it perhaps seems a little bit more plausible so one of his favorite examples was that between two points you can only have one straight line and again he would have insisted that this was a Priora but not analytic however closely you investigate your concept of straightness and your concept of a point and the various other concepts involved that is never going to give you insight into this truth can says you have to consider the nature of space itself so we've got this puzzle there are things which I can know sitting in my armchair without observing anything I can think about things and discover truths about the nature of reality not just about things which are true by definition so if kans right he's got a real puzzle on his hands how does he solve that puzzle he solves it in the following way he says what we're really uncomfortable with is the idea that they should be knowledge about what's out there independently of us which we can nevertheless arrive at by pure reflection and Kant agrees that such a thing is impossible so his solution to the puzzle is to say the synthetic a priori knowledge that he's talking about isn't knowledge of what is out there independent of us that's the key to the solution if you like although this knowledge doesn't consist in pure reflection on our own concepts it does nevertheless consist in pure reflection on our own intellectual apparatus if you like and the metaphor that's often used in this connection which i think is a very helpful metaphor is the metaphor of a pair of spectacles it's as if we have innate spectacles through which we look at reality and what we're doing when we arrive at synthetic a priori knowledge of things is we're reflecting on the nature of our own spectacles it's synthetic because those spectacles themselves involve more than just concept we're not reflecting on the nature of our own concept but we are reflecting on the nature of our own spectacles and in particular as the geometrical example might have led us to expect Kant believes that these spectacles include space and time themselves even space and time a part of how we view reality rather than part of reality itself so what you're saying is that for Kant reality is not really accessible to us what is accessible is the perceptual apparatus that we are endowed with which is like a pair of spectacles and if the spectacles have a rose tint everything we perceive necessarily has a rose tint space and time alike the colors that we take to be out there because of our perception operators rather than something independent of us exactly I think you've just expressed it very well Nigel so we can no can believed that between any two points there's only one straight line because that's part of the intellectual apparatus that we carry around with us and that we impose onto reality when we're trying to make sense of reality when we're trying to come to know what reality is like and this is something that we can not only know but can know a priori we don't need to go out and investigate because it's part of our own intellectual equipment so does that mean that we can't really know how the world is all we can know is how we perceive it that's exactly what it means yes and here at last we come back to the issue that we began with which is the issue of where can stands in relation to metaphysics and what he does in the critique of pure reason is he follows through to in a way separate project a positive project and a negative project the positive part of the project is the part where he does as much within metaphysics as he feels Madonn spelling out how things must appear to us through a spectacles and he believes that there are a whole range of interesting and substantive conclusions that can be drawn about that at about how things must appear to us through our spectacles but as you just emphasized in the question that you put to me appear is the operative phrase the whole point is that there's this fundamental distinction that he's drawing between how things appear to us and how they are in themselves the fact that we carry these native spectacles around with us means that there must be such a distinction we can never take the spectacles off we only have access to how things appear to us how things are in themselves is something that we can't know and that is the thing that Kant is wanting to emphasize in the negative project which also occupies a substantial part of the critique and it does mean unfortunately that a lot of the traditional questions of metaphysics we have to put to one side as just unanswerable so that includes questions about for example the deity whether there's a God or not and if there is what the nature of God is and also questions about our own freedom whether we have free will or not because can things that insofar as such a question arises it's a question about how we are in ourselves rather than about how we appear to ourselves so in a sense what kans doing is setting the limits of what we can know in the process of telling us what we can know that's exactly right and he's concerned with both he's concerned with what lies within the limits and he's concerned with what lies beyond the limits and he's concerned with making sure that we draw the limits in the right plays now it might seem to follow from that that because we can't know about any discussion of reality including whether there's a god or freewill is completely meaningless is that how can Caesar that's an excellent question Nigel and it's very important to emphasize that that's not how can sees it that is how other meta positions have seen it and arguably that's how his great predecessor Hume saw thing that's not Ken's way of regarding the matter canned is adamant that these questions are perfectly meaningful there is a reality out there the fact that we have the spectacles through which we view things doesn't detract from the fact that there are things being viewed there is a reality out there there is a way it is irrespective of whether we can know what is like or not the point is simply that we can't know what that reality is like in itself but we're at liberty to speculate and as far as the great religious questions are concerned we're at liberty to have faith if we want that things are a certain way so it is an article of faith that some people have that there is a God and Kant is far from wanting to deny people that article of faith he thinks that what they believe when they believe that there's a God makes perfectly good sense they may be right they may be wrong but certainly it makes perfectly good sense all he's doing is telling them that they can't have knowledge of whether what they believe is true or not now the first critique is a massive tome incredibly complex in its arguments and we've done a brilliant job of pulling out the main threads of the book but it's such a complex work that must have been an intense labor what do you think was motivating Kant in writing that book I think the answer to that question relates directly to the thing that we were most recently talking about there's one very very revealing sentence in the preface that he wrote to the second edition of the critique of Pure Reason where he said I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith and it seems to me that one of the things that was really motivating and probably the principal motivating factor was this desire to safeguard articles of faith but perhaps of even more fundamental concern to him was something that I touched on very briefly earlier which is the idea that our own freedom is also matter of how things are in themselves rather than now they appear to us through the spectacles because one thing that can was really concerned to do was to safeguard our belief in our own freedom and all that goes hand-in-hand with that in particular our belief in the importance of morality traditional Christian morality in Ken's case which doesn't make sense unless we're free agents Kant was keen to safeguard all of that against the threatening pretensions of the natural science which at the time that he was writing really were threatening science had made astonishing progress in the preceding century and in particular Newton's work and seemed to show that almost everything if not everything could be accounted for in purely scientific terms it looked as if the world was a place where everything was governed by inexorable mechanical laws and that in turn looked as if it posed a very serious threat to our belief in our own freedom and everything that goes hand-in-hand with that and what Kant was able to do with this elaborate system that he had constructed was to show that we could both accept science in all its glory and cling fast to our belief in our own freedom by going back to this distinction that he drew between how things appear to us through the spectacles and how they are in themselves science is concerned with how things appear to us through spectacles science is concerned with the world of space and time the world of nature and we can accept that through the spectacles everything is subject to inexorable causal laws while at the same time accepting that we as we are in ourselves are free agents subject to the demands of morality so for Kant the unknowable is genuinely unknowable but it's still protected he's protecting things like free will the possibility of God's existence even though we can't be absolutely sure about either of those things that's absolutely right Nigel yes the way you've summarized and discussed counts work is clear you've got a great appreciation of him as a philosopher how would you rank him amongst other philosophers my own view is that he's probably the greatest of all a dream all thank you very much thank you very much glad you and you can hear more philosophy bites at WWF Oh Lucifer bites calm you

Channel: Gottfried Leibniz

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Keywords: Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Immanuel, Kant, David, Hume, Categories, of, the, Mind, Synthetic, Analytic, a priori, a posteriori, Judgment, Pure, Reason, Adrian Moore

Id: wVGyjnnb0aQ

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2011