Topics Philosophers

Question If I'm not mistaken, Kant claims that our experiences are ordered by "forms"--like space, time, and cause and effect--that foreclose the possibility of our knowing the pure Reality behind these forms. But how does he (attempt to) prove that these mental features are necessary aspects of our experience, and not contingent and thus changeable? I'm especially interested in how he shows that the law of cause and effect exists and must continue to exist forever.

Accepted:
October 15, 2005

Comments

One way to understand the structure of Kant's arguments for the existence of pure forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of the understanding (such as causality), is to see them as starting from the premise that we have knowledge of a certain sort (for example, knowledge of geometry or arithmetic, or knowledge that things change), and showing that in order for us to have this knowledge, the cognitive faculties must be structured in a certain way. With respect to causality, Kant's claim is that the principle of cause and effect underlies our experience of things as causally related and therefore cannot be derived from that experience, but instead makes it possible. Kant presents the argument for this claim--which is considerably more complicated than I've represented it--in the Second Analogy of experience in the first Critique.