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KANT'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
by
H. A. PRICHARD
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford
Oxford At the Clarendon Press 1909
Henry Frowde, M.A. Publisher to the University of Oxford London, Edinburgh, New York Toronto and Melbourne
PREFACE
This book is an attempt to think out the nature and tenability of Kant's Transcendental Idealism, an attempt animated by the conviction that even the elucidation of Kant's meaning, apart from any criticism, is impossible without a discussion on their own merits of the main issues which he raises.
My obligations are many and great: to Caird's _Critical Philosophy of Kant_ and to the translations of Meiklejohn, Max Mueller, and Professor Mahaffy; to Mr. J. A. Smith, Fellow of Balliol College, and to Mr. H. W. B. Joseph, Fellow of New College, for what I have learned from them in discussion; to Mr. A. J. Jenkinson, Fellow of Brasenose College, for reading and commenting on the first half of the MS.; to Mr. H. H. Joachim, Fellow of Merton College, for making many important suggestions, especially with regard to matters of translation; to Mr. Joseph, for reading the whole of the proofs and for making many valuable corrections; and, above all, to my wife for constant and unfailing help throughout, and to Professor Cook Wilson, to have been whose pupil I count the greatest of philosophical good fortunes. Some years ago it was my privilege to be a member of a class with which Professor Cook Wilson read a portion of Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_, and subsequently I have had the advantage of discussing with him several of the more important passages. I am especially indebted to him in my discussion of the following topics: the distinction between the Sensibility and the Understanding (pp. 27-31, 146-9, 162-6), the term 'form of perception' (pp. 37, 40, 133 fin.-135), the _Metaphysical Exposition of Space_ (pp. 41-8), Inner Sense (Ch. V, and pp. 138-9), the _Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories_ (pp. 149-53), Kant's account of 'the reference of representations to an object' (pp. 178-86), an implication of perspective (p. 90), the impossibility of a 'theory' of knowledge (p. 245), and the points considered, pp. 200 med.-202 med., 214 med.-215 med., and 218. The views expressed in the pages referred to originated from Professor Cook Wilson, though it must not be assumed that he would accept them in the form in which they are there stated.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: Kant's Theory of Knowledge by Prichard
- 2: As they are presented by its own nature
- 3: Now the objects of metaphysics
- 4: Is simply a judgement which is not a posteriori
- 5: Kant distinguishes analytic and synthetic judgements thus
- 6: 'How are a priori synthetic judgements possible
- 7: In accordance with his conception
- 8: Involves certain postulates concerning God
- 9: Then we may state the presupposition by saying that objects
- 10: By bringing our ideas into conformity with them
- 11: And concerns all judgements alike
- 12: The case of universal judgements is similar
- 13: Which enter into the judgement
- 14: Appeared to Kant in a different light
- 15: Singular judgements in physics
- 16: Perception and conceptions constitute
- 17: 9 without ever questioning the supposition
- 18: But things known to be spatial
- 19: His view is that mathematical judgements
- 20: Because Kant confuses it with two other antitheses
- 21: Since Kant in this passage speaks of space as a perception
- 22: To perceive colours implies a capacity for seeing
- 23: And is therefore not a priori
- 24: These are in fact the tests which Kant uses
- 25: Come to apprehend individual spaces
- 26: And since a passage in the Prolegomena
- 27: From their a priori character
- 28: Hence its judgements are always intuitive
- 29: The account in the Prolegomena
- 30: No perception would take place a priori
- 31: Is that all objects should be spatial
- 32: The objects of empirical perception are spatial
- 33: Geometrical judgements are universally valid
- 34: But of a judgement about a law
- 35: As being a judgement about a necessity
- 36: If the spatial character of objects is removed
- 37: It is a paradox that geometricians should be convinced
- 38: His view that objects as spatial are phenomena
- 39: We learn the effect of refraction
- 40: Phenomena and appearances are spatial
- 41: That things are spatial only as perceived
- 42: Implies that our ordinary beliefs about reality are illusory
- 43: Or that the appearances which they produce are spatial
- 44: While the lines look convergent
- 45: In respect of their spatial relations
- 46: And colour apart from a percipient
- 47: The term 'grass' implies extension
- 48: So things may only look spatial
- 49: In respect of spatial relations
- 50: We must allow that reality is spatial
- 51: We may never see the raindrops thus
- 52: 34 That of which Kant is really thinking
- 53: Kant carefully distinguishes judgement from perception
- 54: The frame of mind in which Kant approached them
- 55: And perhaps even temporally inseparable
- 56: Kant is thinking of the same facts
- 57: For time cannot be any determination of external phenomena
- 58: For ex hypothesi things are spatially related
- 59: And the objection quoted concedes this
- 60: Any reality which is not itself a knower
- 61: If the reality is essentially relative to a knower
- 62: Presupposes a mind capable of feeling
- 63: In consequence of the initial supposition
- 64: The equivocation is to be avoided
- 65: Does not really follow from the plain man's realism
- 66: As much as a giver of it implies a recipient
- 67: Is not a fair parallel to knowledge or a knower
- 68: The perception or the knowledge
- 69: And 'most trying of games' its predicate
- 70: And characteristics of a reality perceived
- 71: Does Kant reach the second result
- 72: The vindication of the presuppositions of natural science
- 73: In the case of mathematical judgements
- 74: The predicate of the judgement
- 75: Judgement is a function producing unity
- 76: To the activity of judgement as such
- 77: The hypothetical judgement 'If it rains
- 78: Reality Negation Limitation
- 79: Unless they actually presuppose them
- 80: And ignores particular judgements altogether
- 81: The distinctions between the assertoric
- 82: Whether empirical or a priori
- 83: Have also to be combined and unified
- 84: Can only analyse the manifold given to it
- 85: If the synthesis does not involve a principle of synthesis
- 86: No empirical synthesis of reproduction could take place
- 87: Then this synthesis of imagination is based
- 88: Though Kant does not explicitly say so
- 89: But if it were the understanding which combined the manifold
- 90: An object involves their systematic unity
- 91: As a representation of something
- 92: But this unity would be impossible
- 93: Is henceforward prominent in the first edition
- 94: As being knowledge of an object
- 95: Which Kant borrows from Leibniz
- 96: Being that transcendental apperception is a unity
- 97: The vindication of the categories
- 98: When he comes to speak of transcendental apperception
- 99: Or original apperception also
- 100: Which is called the original synthetic unity of apperception
- 101: If his argument is to be defended
- 102: 1 4 Kant appears twice to state a reason
- 103: And therefore its self consciousness would need no synthesis
- 104: To discover this presupposition is to be self conscious
- 105: Though not sufficient for the synthesis
- 106: Even though the judgement itself is empirical
- 107: Its faculty of connecting the manifold in general
- 108: Several kinds of synthesis being allowed
- 109: Hence the individual syntheses
- 110: Does not conform to this presupposition
- 111: But because every phenomenon contains a manifold
- 112: Which is a priori founded upon rules
- 113: In combining the data into a sensuous image
- 114: We need not even make AB and BC contiguous
- 115: And as Kant himself sees at times
- 116: A representation or apprehension of something
- 117: We have to allow that the process of synthesis in which
- 118: For if the synthesis consists in literal construction
- 119: And that since this implies a process of synthesis
- 120: Kant never relaxed his hold upon the thing in itself
- 121: Out of the objects of isolated perceptions
- 122: Is a synthesis of simple conceptions
- 123: The account of judgement in Mr
- 124: The Deduction of the Categories therefore
- 125: And so makes the subsumption mediately possible
- 126: And he opposes schemata not to objects but to images
- 127: It is only the conception corresponding to this schema
- 128: The pure schema of quantity
- 129: Although the schema of quantity
- 130: The account of the schema of reality
- 131: These principles Kant divides into four classes
- 132: Be apprehended through a successive synthesis of the parts
- 133: Which corresponds to sensation
- 134: We do apprehend the nature of sensation a priori
- 135: And of interaction between agent and patient involves
- 136: Something enduring and permanent
- 137: Either as successive or as coexistent
- 138: Implies a permanent substratum
- 139: Treats the principle of causality very fully
- 140: The law of causality must be true
- 141: Drawn from the representations of apprehension
- 142: 28 But whatever Kant may have thought
- 143: The manifold of phenomena with the apprehensions of them
- 144: The objective sequence of phenomena 34
- 145: Because the mere sequence in my apprehension
- 146: The sequence of perceptions is irreversible
- 147: He has only one set of terms to be related as irreversible
- 148: The apprehended antecedent of B
- 149: From the beginning we apprehend a real sequence
- 150: By a process which presupposes the law of causality
- 151: It seems that the true vindication of causality
- 152: And thereby to represent the coexistence as objective
- 153: Coexistent with beta 2 beta 4
- 154: With an objective sequence of perceived states of bodies
- 155: Everything else which is spatial
- 156: But whether a triangle or a centaur is possible
- 157: 'Is the conception 'objectively real' or 'fictitious'
- 158: Even if this supposition be tenable in certain cases
- 159: An object corresponding to the conception
- 160: The second form is the problematic idealism of Descartes
- 161: Which I perceive external to me
- 162: The proof therefore requires that things external to me
