Sárospataki Füzetek 2. (1998)
1998 / 1. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: Is there a place for God int he inn of Philosophy?
contribute something? Are their innate ideas (Plato)? When Kant talks about pure reason, he means the possibilities and limits of reason apart from experience. Obviously metaphysics is not an empirical science, in the way physics is. Can ’pure reason’ then say anything about metaphysics? That was Kant’s question. Kant said that all our knowledge begins with experience, but that does not mean that all our knowledge comes from experience, since our mind goes on to think and compose ideas. For example, we may say that everything has a cause. Empirically we can point to causes. But we cannot point to all causes, yet we use our reason to draw the conclusion ’everything has a cause’. Kant asked the question: "How are a priori synthetic judgments possible?" To understand this, we must know that he distinguishes between analytical and synthetic statements. He calls a statement analytical when the predicate is already given in the subject: for example, "A rainy day is a wet day". This is always true. A synthetic judgment would be: Tuesday was a wet day. This may be true or false. An a priori judgment for Kant means the kind of reasonable knowledge we have without any experience to prove it. Pure reason thus means reason without experience. When reason goes beyond experience (of the material world), it ends in antinomies. There are arguments that make it sound reasonable that God exists, and there are arguments that make it sound reasonable that God does not exist. We can logically argue that we are free; but also that we are determined. So pure reason can say nothing about metaphysics. When we come to the ’Copernican revolution’ in epistemology (the science of knowing), Kant says that we had always thought our understanding conforms to the object. But since Kant we know that objects also conform to our categories of understanding. This does not mean that objects are reduced to the human mind. Rather, the mind is not just a passive receptor; the mind composes our understanding of things. .From our senses we receive data (empirical impressions). Our mind ’synthesises’ or composes an understanding of this data. But our mind goes beyond the data and composes ’transcendental ideas’ as well. Transcendental ideas are based on principles of unity: so we conclude the unity of the soul, the unity of the world as a totality, and the unity of everything in God. Such ideas, Kant says, help regulate things, but are not therefore necessarily valid (true) theoretical knowledge. Dr. 'JranJt Sawyer 28
