It is common knowledge that people all make judgments. Judgments about people we meet, what we should or others should appear to be, or even judgments about world affairs and nature. Yet what knowledge do we've instilled in us or how is knowledge presented to us that allow us to make the judgments we make. With that in mind, the followed text is comparing analytic and synthetic judgments while holding emphasis on synthetic a priori knowledge as reflected in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I will then take these ideas a step further by comparing Kant's ideas and arguments against Hume's as it was he who "interrupted his dogmatic slumbers and gave his investigations in neuro-scientific speculative philosophy a quite new direction. " (Critique of Pure Reason)
To begin, Kant had a few issues with the way previous philosophers used the word analytic and synthetic judgment. Based on their use of the terms, he can to the final outcome that they failed to differentiate between the judgments in a way that justifies their use. As defined by Wikipedia, "An analytic judgment is a proposition whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept. " While a synthetic judgment, "is a proposition whose predicate concept is not within its subject concept. " While both of these definitions of the judgments have been used in philosophy in many different ways to justify many philosophical arguments or ideas, Kant believed the two judgments were not coextensive so he gave four other logical combinations that he felt should be examined while defining analytic and synthetic judgments.
"Analytic a posteriori judgments cannot arise, since there may be never any need to appeal to experience in support of a purely explicative assertion.
Synthetic a posteriori judgments are the relatively uncontroversial matters of fact that people come to know through our sensory experience (though Wolff had tried to derive even these from the principle of contradiction).
Analytic a priori judgments, everyone agrees, include all merely logical truths and straightforward matters of definition; they can be necessarily true.
Synthetic a priori judgments are the crucial case, since only they could provide new information that is necessarily true. But neither Leibniz nor Hume considered the likelihood of such case" (Kemerling 2).
With the definitions and formulations of the judgments aside, Kant believed that it was possible to synthetic a priori judgments because these kind of judgments are what almost all of human knowledge is situated from. With Hume at heart, Kant generally believed that Hume's take on arithmetic and geometry could be used as the inspiration for natural science. Once the foundations for natural science have been laid, after that you can use that information to make clear certain events or predict what the future holds according to natural science. Hume derived this line of thinking from two different explanations. He believed that ideas result from impressions and relations of ideas which is often shown through mathematics. These impressions and relations of ideas then lay the ground work or foundation for the natural sciences.
With the foundation of natural sciences being formed through impressions and relation of ideas, Hume also believed cause and effect played a role, but that experience can never be a way to obtain any of the ideas for natural science. The reason behind this is the fact that experience is the clear exemplory case of the constant conjunction between cause and effect which is most importantly clear that people cannot have knowledge without cause and effect. Thus, cause and effect gives us our impressions and relations of ideas which help form knowledge. The negative portion of Hume's analysis-his demonstration that matters of fact rest after an unjustifiable belief that there is a necessary connection between the causes and their effects-was totally correct. " (Kemerling 2) Hume's rationality of cause and effect forces his conclusion that induction does not have any logical force. That triggers have explanations behind them that may be traced back again to natural reasons and are above all dependant on nature.
"Kant's Critique of Pure Reason shows how reason determines the conditions under which experience and knowledge are based. " (Kemerling 1) Which means that if I want to buy a car, I have to have money and knowledge of what you will be charged to buy a car. Without money, I cannot buy a fresh car or without the knowledge of where you can buy a car, I'd not know of an automobile to buy. This is where we take our experience and knowledge and incorporate them to give us cause and effect as above. Whenever we have concepts of understanding, those ideas provides us with the ability to connect knowledge together to create a synthetic a priori judgment.
Kant believes that all of our own knowledge stems from experience, but our knowledge doesn't have to stem out of the experience. Quite simply a priori knowledge is independent of our encounters and senses. With that said, Kant believed that philosophy must stand in the need of your science that will determine the extent of most than it. "Mathematics is an example of what lengths, independently of experience, we can progress in a priori knowledge. " (Kemerling 3) So to conclude, natural science contains a priori synthetic judgments and metaphysics contains a priori synthetic knowledge.
Kant believes that pure reason is, "That which provides the principles whereby we realize anything absolutely a priori. " (Critique of Pure Reason) It's like adding and subtracting which results in a priori answers, after we do that our judgments and concepts stem from an a priori origin.
"For the analysis, that is, mere dissection of concepts, contained in this or that,
is not the purpose of, but only a preparation for metaphysics proper, which includes its
object the extension, by means of synthesis of prior knowledge. For Hume's
analysis by Kant he mentioned that all things eventually exist in space, a priori,
before we can sense. The priori of an object is their idea of it. It is more
than showing these concepts, but containing an understanding with their concepts
and how it could be arrived as a synthesis, of an priori knowledge. " (Jones 2)
Overall, both Hume and Kant came to concur that all theoretical sciences of reason have synthetic a priori judgments and are followed in these principles;
All knowledge commences with an event.
A priori knowledge is independent of experiences.
If we understand and adjust to these principles of synthetic a priori judgment, we may begin to understand everything within an improved light especially cause and effect.
In respect to both Hume and Kant, I have to say I trust their definitive selections for use of the judgments. While pushing aside analytic judgments, both Kant and Hume make strong arguments for why synthetic a priori judgments are not only the building blocks for natural science, but also for the definitive way to obtain almost all human knowledge. I agree with Kant in saying that people can have an idea or impression of something knowledge can be stemmed from, but I genuinely don't believe we can know something with no experience of it. You could have a concept of something, but not knowledge of something and the ones two ideals are drastically different in my mind.
Overall, Kant does a congrats at conforming and revamping Hume's ideas on synthetic a priori judgment and without synthetic a priori knowledge, we'd defiantly be lacking much knowledge in the human culture.
