Immanuel Kant Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Critique of metaphysics=== The second of the two Divisions of "The Transcendental Logic", "The Transcendental Dialectic", contains the "negative" portion of Kant's ''Critique'', which builds upon the "positive" arguments of the preceding "Transcendental Analytic" to expose the limits of metaphysical speculation. In particular, it is concerned to demonstrate as spurious the efforts of reason to arrive at knowledge independent of sensibility. This endeavor, Kant argues, is doomed to failure, which he claims to demonstrate by showing that reason, unbounded by sense, is always capable of generating opposing or otherwise incompatible conclusions. Like "the light dove, in free flight cutting through the air, the resistance of which it feels", reason "could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space".<ref>Kant, ''CPuR'' A5/B8</ref> Against this, Kant claims that, absent epistemic friction, there can be no knowledge. Nevertheless, Kant's critique is not entirely destructive. He presents the speculative excesses of traditional metaphysics as inherent in our very capacity of reason. Moreover, he argues that its products are not without some (carefully qualified) ''regulative'' value. ====On the concepts of pure reason==== Kant calls the basic concepts of metaphysics "ideas". They are different from the concepts of understanding in that they are not limited by the critical stricture limiting knowledge to the conditions of possible experience and its objects. "Transcendental illusion" is Kant's term for the tendency of reason to produce such ideas.{{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(g)}} Although reason has a "logical use" of simply drawing inferences from principles, in "The Transcendental Dialectic", Kant is concerned with its purportedly "real use" to arrive at conclusions by way of unchecked regressive syllogistic ratiocination.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=15}} The three categories of ''relation'', pursued without regard to the limits of possible experience, yield the three central ideas of traditional metaphysics: # ''The soul'': the concept of substance as the ultimate subject; # ''The world in its entirety'': the concept of causation as a completed series; and # ''God'': the concept of community as the common ground of all possibilities.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=15}} Although Kant denies that these ideas can be objects of genuine cognition, he argues that they are the result of reason's inherent drive to unify cognition into a systematic whole.{{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(g)}} Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysics was divided into four parts: ontology, psychology, cosmology, and theology. Kant replaces the first with the positive results of the first part of the ''Critique''. He proposes to replace the following three with his later doctrines of anthropology, the metaphysical foundations of natural science, and the critical postulation of human freedom and morality.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=14}} ====The dialectical inferences of pure reason==== In the second of the two Books of "The Transcendental Dialectic", Kant undertakes to demonstrate the contradictory nature of unbounded reason. He does this by developing contradictions in each of the three metaphysical disciplines that he contends are, in fact, pseudo-sciences. This section of the ''Critique'' is long and Kant's arguments are extremely detailed. In this context, it not possible to do much more than enumerate the topics of discussion. The first chapter addresses what Kant terms the ''paralogisms''{{mdash}}i.e., false inferences{{mdash}}that pure reason makes in the metaphysical discipline of rational psychology. He argues that one cannot take the mere thought of "I" in the proposition "I think" as the proper cognition of "I" as an object. In this way, he claims to debunk various metaphysical theses about the substantiality, unity, and self-identity of the soul.{{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(g.i)}} The second chapter, which is the longest, takes up the topic Kant calls the ''[[Antinomy|antinomies]]'' of pure reason{{mdash}}that is, the contradictions of reason with itself{{mdash}}in the metaphysical discipline of rational cosmology. (Originally, Kant had thought that all transcendental illusion could be analyzed in antinomic terms.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=16}}) He presents four cases in which he claims reason is able to prove opposing theses with equal plausibility: # That "reason seems to be able to prove that the universe is both finite and infinite in space and time"; # that "reason seems to be able to prove that matter both is and is not infinitely divisible into ever smaller parts"; # that "reason seems to be able to prove that free will cannot be a causally efficacious part of the world (because all of nature is deterministic) and yet that it must be such a cause"; and, # that "reason seems to be able to prove that there is and there is not a necessary being (which some would identify with God)".{{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(g.ii)}}{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|pp=16–17}} Kant further argues in each case that his doctrine of transcendental idealism is able to resolve the antinomy.{{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(g.ii)}} The third chapter examines fallacious arguments about God in rational theology under the heading of the "Ideal of Pure Reason". (Whereas an ''idea'' is a pure concept generated by reason, an ''ideal'' is the concept of an idea as an ''individual thing''.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=17}}) Here Kant addresses and claims to refute three traditional arguments for the existence of God: the [[ontological argument]], the [[cosmological argument]], and the [[argument from design|physio-theological argument]] (i.e., the argument from design).{{sfn|Jankowiak|2023|loc= §2(g.iii)}} The results of the transcendental dialectic so far appear to be entirely negative. In an Appendix to this section, however, Kant rejects such a conclusion. The ideas of pure reason, he argues, have an important ''regulatory'' function in directing and organizing our theoretical and practical inquiry. Kant's later works elaborate upon this function at length and in detail.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=18}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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