| Term Paper Title | Immanuel Kant |
| # of Words | 596 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 2.38 |
Immanuel Kant
LTWR 300A
Wednesday 4pm
Immanuel Kant said that, besides the usual forms of knowledge - analytical knowledge and empirical knowledge - we also have a priori knowledge that is 'synthetic' in the sense that it tells us something about the world. He applied this general theory to art by saying that in art we see beauty that we recognise through our a priori knowledge of beauty.
The possibility of such knowledge is easily disproved, following David Hume's argument, which Kant knew of. Suppose you had a belief, and you were considering whether it was synthetic a priori knowledge. To establish that it was knowledge, you would have to justify it. You could not prove it analytically, as it is synthetic; nor could you justify it from your observations of the world, as it is a priori. Nor could you justify it from any propositions that had been derived from analytic or empirical knowledge. What else is there? Only, perhaps, other synthetic a priori assertions. Well, if there are any other assertions that you take to be synthetic a priori knowledge, then trace them back to their antecedent premises. Those premises cannot be analytic (because they are synthetic), nor can they be empirical (because they are a priori), nor can they be derived from other synthetic a priori knowledge (because, by hypothesis, they are the basic premises). We have therefore exhausted all the possible sources of justification.
This argument obviates further consideration of Kant. For corroboration, however, note that what Kant claimed as synthetic a priori knowledge in physics has been found fallacious by scientific research. He said we knew a priori that space is Euclidean, but we now know it is not; and that all events must be caused, but we now know that some quantum mechanical events are not. Furthermore, his claim of objective moral...Read entire document
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