A posteriori - knowledge we gain from experience.

A priori - knowledge independent of experience.

Synthetic judgement - when predicate contains information not contained within subject.
Analytic judgment - when predicate is merely an analysis of the subject.

Metaphysics, math and natural science - synthetic a priori propositions - necessarily but not
trivially true and can be known prior to experience.

How their synthetic truths are possible a priori?

Hoping to shed light on how metaphysics might be possible.

Intuitions of the faculty of sensibility - space and time aren’t things in themselves, but are
pure intuitions that structure our sensations.
Geometry - pure intuition of space
Mathematics - pure intuition of time (concept of numbers comes from the successive
moments in our concept of time)

Pure natural sciences are possible due to the pure concepts of our faculty of understanding
Concepts of understanding - every cause has an effect - causation.

Judgments of sensation - based on subjective sensations

Judgements of experience - try to draw objective, necessary truths, from experience

Reason oversteps its bounds and tries to make claims about things beyond its reach.
By applying concepts of the understanding to matters outside of its experience.
Often making claims about things in themselves, by confusing them with their appearances.

Metaphysics differs from math and natural science as its reach exceeds its grasp. It desires
to know what it cannot.

By finding its limits, reason uncovers the maximum degree of possible human knowledge.

As it cannot explain things in themselves, it can teach us about our own faculties.
Kant: metaphysics is a critique, by way of studying how knowledge is structured and
justified.

Rationalists: that which can be acquired through cognition alone. Sceptical of experience
derived knowledge as the senses aren’t reliable sources.
Knowledge from experience can’t explain the abstract reasoning of mathematics.
Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, etc.

Empiricists: experiential knowledge advocates. John Locke: the mind is a blank slate from
birth, all our knowledge comes from experience. Math is built from inferences relative to
experience.
Goal: systematize knowledge of experience’s, to demonstrate how the complex nature of
human knowledge is built up from our basic sensations.
Berkeley: nothing exists except in experience - “being is being perceived”
Hume: no rational justification for making inferences relative to the laws of experience.
Knowledge is more a matter of custom than necessity.

Hume’s question: “how can we make inferences about experience?”

This spurred Kant.
Hume began by suggesting there must be some ‘uniformity principle’ (Patterns of the past
predict the futures present - or we become accustomed to expectations)

Kant first answers Hume’s scepticism and reconciles rationalism and empiricism.

Preface
The question of whether metaphysics is even possible, implies that metaphysics’ validity can
in fact be doubted.

Hume woke Kant from a dogmatic slumber, by asking how we can know that one event
caused another, via reason alone.
We don’t have a priori knowledge of causation, according to Hume.
We confuse causation as a law, when it is in fact a product of expectation.

Hume’s conclusion is fatal to metaphysics.

Kant realised that metaphysics in its entirety, was founded on a priori reasoning, which
linked correlations between ideas and did so without references to experience.

Critique of Pure Reason - synthetical

Prolegomena - analytic

Kant’s project is aimed at turning metaphysics into a scientific practice.

A systematic body of knowledge, based on first principles.
Further principles are deduced from these ‘laws.’
This will assist in settling metaphysical debates objectively.

These works, along with the Prolegomena, are "critiques" because they do not simply try to
answer metaphysical questions, but ask instead how we know or how we claim to know the
answers to these questions.
Kant is primarily interested in knowing, for instance, how we can know that two events are
connected causally, rather than what the nature of that causal connection is. 

Metaphysics consists of knowledge apprehended by pure reason. By definition, metaphysics

studies what is beyond experience. ‘Behind physics.’

All analytic judgments are a priori, since they consist simply in the analysis of concepts and
do not appeal to experience. Synthetic judgments, on the other hand, can be either a
priori or a posteriori. Kant classifies synthetic judgments into three types: judgments from
experience, mathematical judgments, and metaphysical judgments.
Judgments from experience are synthetic a posteriori since they are pieced together
(synthetic) from the objects of experience (a posteriori).

Mathematics consists of synthetic a priori judgments.

The concept of "7 + 5,"
Kant argues,
We must make a leap of intuition in order to determine that twelve is indeed the number
that results from the union of seven and 5.
The fact of the matter is that mathematical cognitions require intuitive leaps that are
synthetic in nature.

Metaphysics also consists of synthetic a priori judgments; that are built upon these analytic
definitions, much like mathematics consists of synthetic judgments built upon analytic
axiomatic truths.

The need to ask whether metaphysics is even possible arises because there is little
agreement over the synthetic judgments that ought to constitute it as a body of knowledge.

The distinction between a priori and a posteriori shows the two possible sources of

knowledge: the intellect and experience.

"all bachelors are unmarried" is a definition of a bachelor rather than a statement based on
experience.

While the a priori/a posteriori distinction is epistemological, distinguishing between sources

of knowledge, the analytic/synthetic distinction deals with the logical structure of the
judgments themselves.

A good test for whether a statement is analytic is to ask whether people could understand
the subject concept if they did not know that the predicate were true of it.

Kant was the first person to draw the analytic/synthetic distinction explicitly. Until Kant, this
distinction had generally been lumped together with the a priori/a posteriori distinction.
Hume and others had considered the propositions of mathematics to be analytic.

In proposing that there are synthetic a priori judgments, Kant suggests, contrary to

conventional wisdom, that propositions like "7 + 5 = 12" are in fact synthetic. His argument
is essentially that the concept of "7 + 5" is the union of the concepts of "7," "5," and
addition. None of those three concepts in themselves contain the concept of "12"; it is a
new concept that arises from the synthesis of the three subject concepts.

There are further arguments in Kant's favor. If concept of "12" were part of the concept of
"7 + 5," then so would the concepts of "9 + 3" and "16 - 4," and an infinitude of other
concepts. How could the concept of "7 + 5" possibly contain all these other concepts? Also,
it seems ridiculous to suggest that the concept of "154,938" is a part of the concept of
"52,624 + 102,314": we could understand the concept of that sum without necessarily
knowing what the two numbers add to.

While analytic judgments consist simply of analyzing the subject of a proposition, synthetic
judgments add something new to it. They effectively connect two independent pieces of
knowledge to each other. Kant explores the nature of this connection. With synthetic a
posteriori knowledge, the connection is made through experience.

If I see a lot of white swans, I come to associate the concept of white with the concept of
swan through experience. With synthetic a priori knowledge, the answer is more
complicated. How do I learn to link the concept of "7 + 5" with the concept of "12"? In the
sections that follow, Kant sets about trying to answer that question. His hope is that if he
can explain how we can connect concepts in pure mathematics and pure natural science, he
will also be able to explain how we can connect concepts in metaphysics.

The analytic/synthetic distinction is one of Kant's most significant contributions to

philosophy.

At what point can I no longer properly be said to understand what a thing is

The idea that words have "concepts" attached to them goes all the way back to Aristotle's
essences.

First Part

The first of the four questions Kant sets himself in the preamble is "how is pure
mathematics possible?" If math consists of synthetic a priori cognitions, we must be able to
draw connections between different concepts by means of some form of pure intuition.
The word translated as "intuition" is the German word Anschauung, meaning literally a
point of view or way of seeing.

Pure intuition - math based concepts, or intrinsic understandings (synthetic a priori).

Empirical intuition - that which we learn from experience. Sense perception.

Since math consists of synthetic a priori cognitions, there must be some form of pure
intuition innate within us that allows us to connect different concepts without reference to
sense experience.
Kant's answer is that space and time are not things in themselves, to be found in the world,
but are what he calls the "form of sensibility": they are innate intuitions that shape the way
we perceive the world.

Neither space nor time, nor the objects we perceive in space and time, are things in
themselves: the objects we perceive are mere appearances of things in themselves, and
space and time are empty forms that determine how things appear to us. If space were
actual and not built into of our mental framework, two things with all the same properties
would be in every way identical.
However, Kant points out, our left and right hands have all the same properties, but they are
not identical: a left hand glove will not fit on a right hand. This suggests that space is not
independent of the mind that perceives it.

These conclusions lead Kant to three final remarks.

First, he points out that we can have a priori certainty of geometry, and thus of our
understanding of spatial relations, only because we have a pure intuition of space.
Our certainty comes because we are only examining our own mental framework, and not
things in the world. Second, he responds to the potential accusation that he is engaging in
idealism.
Idealism claims that there are no objects in the world, only minds, and that everything we
see is just a construction of the mind.
Though Kant has argued that we cannot perceive things in themselves, but only
appearances of things, he still maintains that things in themselves, independent of our
perception, exist, and that they are the source of what we do perceive.

Third, he points out that appearances cannot be deceptive. I can misinterpret what I see,
and be deceived in this way, but I cannot be mistaken about the appearances themselves.
If space and time were things in themselves, then we could misinterpret our perception of
them and be deceived regarding them.
However, since they are mere appearances, they are a priori certain.

In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims his system
has caused a "Copernican revolution in philosophy."
The revolution he refers to is a reversal of our concept of space and time.
Until Kant, it had been assumed that space and time were properties of the world, into
which the objects of sensory experience were placed.
Kant's radical reversal consists in claiming that space and time are not properties of the
world but are rather properties of the perceiving mind. Space and time are like mental
spreadsheets that organize how information is organized in our minds

1. Kant's argument for this position starts from the assumption that geometry and
mathematics consist of synthetic a priori cognitions.
2. To make synthetic judgments a priori, we must have some sort of pure intuition that
allows us to draw concepts together without making any reference to experience.
a. Geometry, for instance, gives us a priori knowledge about space, so our
knowledge of space must be built into our minds.
3. Therefore, Kant concludes, our concept of space is not something we learn from
experience, but it is something we have prior to experience.
a. Our concept of space is a feature of our minds and not a feature of reality.
Kant believes he can make a similar argument about our concept of time with reference to
our synthetic a priori knowledge of arithmetic.

If computers had existed in Kant's time, he would have had a useful metaphor for explaining
the relationship between things in themselves, appearances, and our perceiving mind. We
can compare things in themselves to data.
Data in itself is invisible, and yet the programs we run are nothing more than data being
interpreted.
We can "read" data only once it's been through a processor and then projected onto a
monitor.
What we see on the monitor is not the data itself, but the "appearance" of the data.
The processor and the monitor are like the pure intuitions of space and time: we cannot
understand the thing in itself (data) until it has been made comprehensible by these
intuitions.
We do not perceive things in themselves but appearances of things. Our minds do not have
the capacity to understand things in themselves just as we cannot understand data in itself
by staring at a microchip.

Both positions share the assumption that space is mind-independent.

Though Leibniz does not, like Newton, believe that space is absolute, he believes that space
only depends on the relations between objects and not on the minds that perceive space.
Kant's example of how two internally identical hands cannot fit the same glove is meant to
contradict Leibniz.

General relativity shows that the universe does not in fact conform to the laws of Euclidean
geometry and that space and time are far more complicated than we think.

Space and time, far from being pure intuitions that we can know a priori, are quite different
from what our intuition tells us they are.
Kantians reply to this objection by saying that Kant is not talking about time and space in
themselves but just about our cognition of time and space.
Though space-time may be a four-dimensional curved space, our mind perceives space as
flat, three-dimensional, and independent of time. Kant is not making a statement about how
the world is, but about how the mind perceives the world.
Though Kantian constructions are arguably possible, this new physics makes a lot more
sense if we assume that space-time exists independently of the mind.

Second Part - Sections 14-26

The second part of the Prolegomena concerns itself with the question, "how is pure natural
science possible?" "Natural science" is what nowadays we would simply call "science": it is
the systematic body of knowledge that deals with nature.

Kant: we are not talking about things in themselves, rather, we are talking about the objects
of experience as they appear to us.

For our study of nature to be a science, these experiences must conform to universal and
necessary laws. Kant observes that we do indeed study natural science and make use of
universal and necessary laws.
There is some kind of pattern or regularity in our experience, but how is this possible?
Kant draws a distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience.
Judgments of perception bring together several empirical intuitions and are only
subjectively valid.
For instance, I may see the sun shining brightly and feel that a rock under the sun's rays is
warm, and judge that the rock grows warm under the sun.
This judgment draws together the intuitions that the sun is shining and the rock is warm, but
it is still valid only for me and only at that particular time

Judgments of experience apply pure concepts of the understanding to judgments of

perception, turning them into objective, universally valid laws.
For instance, I can apply the concept of cause to my earlier judgment that the rock grows
warm under the sun and judge that the sun caused the rock to grow warm.
We do not find pure concepts of the understanding in experience. Rather, they are concepts
we use to structure our understanding of experience.
They are a priori concepts we use to draw together and make sense of our various
judgments of perception. Because these concepts are a priori, they are also universal and
necessary.
Thus, judgments of experience are the synthetic a priori laws that make natural science
possible.

Essentially, the distinction is that judgments of perception deal only with what we sense, or
intuit, while judgments of experience deal with what we infer from our perceptions. We
cannot dispute judgments of perception because they are wholly subjective: you cannot tell
me the car didn't seem red to me. We can dispute judgments of experience because they
are meant to be objective: you can tell me the car wasn't red.

"Kant's Tables of Categories."

The table of judgments divides judgments into their logical parts. Every judgment must have
one of the three kinds of quantity, quality, relation, and modality.

Commentary

Kant is complicated, but there is a very clear structure hiding underneath all this difficult
vocabulary. Essentially, Kant is building a complex system to explain how we make sense of
the world.

At a very basic level, Kant distinguishes between things in themselves, and our perceiving
mind. The first question is how we can perceive things in themselves
Kant answers that we cannot perceive things in themselves directly; all we can perceive are
sensations, the impression things in themselves make upon our senses.

Our mind perceives sensations, but must impose some sort of form on these sensations for
them to be intelligible.
This form is our intuition of space and time.
By subjecting the sensations we perceive to the intuitions of space and time, we get
empirical intuitions.
Empirical intuitions are what we might refer to as "sense-data": they are what I see, hear, or
feel at any given moment.

Kant infers that we must use concepts of pure understanding to turn judgments of
perception into judgments of experience because empirical intuitions in themselves cannot
be generalized. Judgments of perception are particular and subjective: only a priori concepts
can be universal and objective.

As Hume was right to observe, we cannot find universal concepts like "every event is
caused" in experience. Kant concludes that such concepts are a part of the understanding:
we do not find them in experience; we apply them to experience.

Kant infers that we must use concepts of pure understanding to turn judgments of
perception into judgments of experience because empirical intuitions in themselves cannot
be generalized. Judgments of perception are particular and subjective: only a priori concepts
can be universal and objective.