Kant in 90 Minutes by Paul Strathern

Author:Paul Strathern
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461709824
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee

A Dialogue on Kant and Metaphysics

QUESTION: What is Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason about?

ANSWER: Metaphysics.

Q: What exactly is metaphysics?

A: This word began as a mistake and has ended up by being regarded as a mistake. In between times it was the main topic of philosophy.

Q: This still doesn’t answer the question. What precisely does metaphysics mean?

A: Nothing at all, according to most modern philosophers.

Q: Well, what did it originally mean?

A: This word was first used to refer to certain philosophical works of Aristotle—the ones in his collected works that came after his great work on physics. They became known as the “beyond Physics” works, which in Greek was meta-physics.

Q: But this still doesn’t tell me what it means.

A: In these works “beyond Physics,” Aristotle dealt with “the science of things transcending what is physical or natural.”

Q: And what does that mean?

A: It is the science that deals with the first theoretical principles over and above the physical world. These are the principles that govern our knowledge of that same physical world. In other words, metaphysics deals with whatever transcends the physical world we experience.

Q: But how do we know there is anything beyond the physical world we experience?

A: We don’t. Which is why most modern philosophers dismiss such metaphysics as a mistake.

Q: But Kant didn’t?

A: Kant was determined to create a new metaphysics. Before him, Hume had arrived at much the same conclusion as those modern philosophers. Hume thought he had destroyed the possibility of metaphysics.

Q: How?

A: By doubting everything that he couldn’t confirm from his own experience. This extreme skepticism ruled out all kinds of things that humanity had believed in through the centuries but had never actually experienced.

Q: Such as?

A: God, for instance.

Q: But what Hume said didn’t seem to make much difference. People still went on believing in God.

A: Yes, but it was not increasingly understood that they did this through a leap of faith, rather than as a result of direct experience or rational argument.

Q: So Hume’s “disproof” of metaphysics didn’t make any difference at all?

A: In fact, it made a huge difference. Especially to scientists and philosophers.

Q: How?

A: In ruling out everything except what we can verify through experience, Hume ruled out a lot more than God. More important for the scientists and philosophers, he ruled out causality.

Q: How?

A: According to Hume, all we know from experience is that one thing follows another. We can never know that one thing causes another. We cannot go beyond our experience and say that. We never actually experience one thing causing another, only one thing following another.

Q: So?

A: This strikes at the heart of all our scientific knowledge. According to Hume, science based on causality is metaphysical, not empirical. It can never be verified. And verification is the very basis of our knowledge. Likewise philosophy. According to Hume, we can never prove the statements of philosophy, unless they are a result of direct experience.

Q: Such as?

A: Such as the statement, “This apple is green.”

Q: But that means philosophy can say practically nothing.

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