Just Hume Kant be Modified?
1968
Where as David Hume took the position that A Priori Knowledge is not concerned with anything in the world, Kant argues that A Priori Knowledge is very necessary to our understanding of the world and to empirical knowledge itself. Kant divides our knowledge into two categories, which he calls synthetic and analytic. Analytic judgment is that in which the predicate can readily be deduced from the subject. Kant’s example is that all bodies are extended, a fact he claims is known because being extended is bound up with the concept of body. A synthetic judgment is one in which the predicate is an additive to the subject which can only be asserted through observation and experience, and his example of this is all bodies have weight. In other words, empirical knowledge is synthetic and A Priori Knowledge is analytic. Of course, we can argue that in his example the concept of extension is as elusive to pure reason as the concept of weight. Would not one have to see that bodies do extend into space to know that they extend into space? A blind man in a free-gravity area would have no more conception of his extension then he would of his weight.
This would be a small and mote point, except it argues against Kant’s very basic claim, and if so, weakens his whole. However, let us consider that his analytic and synthetic knowledge is completely acceptable. How is A Priori valuable to our world? Kant tells us it is valuable because it is the basic beginning for the synthetic. That is, if we strip away each layer of our synthetic knowledge, we always come back to another question that leads to another on to another and eventually we come to one that we accept some knowledge not from experience, but from A Priori.
Kant finds A Priori to be both necessary and outside our experience. He uses as an example the equation 5 + 7 = 12. We cannot experience this equation in itself, but yet we accept it, and we know it is set and unchangeable. We could examine five by building to five on our fingers, and seven by laying down sticks, and from this we could begin seeing the twelve, but in itself it stands alone. Yet, is this as it seems? That is, first, is 5 + 7 = 12 really seen intuitively or through A Priori, or is it accepted as final proof of already gathered experience? Five fingers and seven sticks equals twelve has been experienced so often that the acceptance of 5 + 7 = 12 is automatic, but posteriori. Consider the equation 2 + 3 = 5. By Kant’s argument this would be A Priori, for we deduce the predicate from the subject, but where have we deduced the actual proposition 5? The Hottentots can only count to three. After three is many. Do we have A Priori that 2 + 3 = many? No, for we would not be certain that five is many. Can the Hottentots look at 2 + 3 = 5 and know it A Priori? No, not unless he can learn the concept of five, which is still agreeable to the definition of A Priori. But to learn the concept of five, he would have to experience it. Two fingers, three, four, five; ah, five! Two fingers, he understands, and three also, and now five! If he holds up these two, it is two, and now these other three, and it is five! He just experienced 2 + 3 = 5. But if he held up two and just put them down, and then held up three and put them down, he may never see five, although he might understand the concept. He must experience it.
For information on David Hume, click on the title of this post.
