Kant – Science vs. Religion in Modern Philosophical Thought (Metaphysics & Epistemology)

Vocabulary flashcards summarizing key terms and concepts from the lecture on Kant’s critique of metaphysics, synthetic a priori knowledge, categories, and the limits of reason.

Metaphysics

Branch of philosophy that investigates the fundamental nature of reality; for Kant, it seeks a priori knowledge beyond possible experience.

A priori

Knowledge or judgment that is independent of experience.

A posteriori

Knowledge or judgment that depends on, and is derived from, experience.

Analytic Judgment

Judgment whose predicate is contained within the subject-concept; always a priori (e.g., “all bachelors are unmarried men”).

Synthetic Judgment

Judgment whose predicate adds new information to the subject-concept (e.g., “all swans are white”); can be a priori or a posteriori.

Synthetic a priori Judgment

Judgment that adds new information yet is necessary and independent of experience; exemplified in mathematics and (for Kant) genuine metaphysics.

David Hume’s Problem

Challenge showing that necessary connections cannot be known a posteriori, which awakened Kant from his “dogmatic slumber.”

Pure Intuition

Non-empirical, a priori form of sensibility that structures all experience (space and time).

Empirical Intuition

Sense perception that presents particular objects in space and time.

Phenomena

Objects as they appear to us within space and time; the only realm we can experience.

Noumena (Thing-in-itself)

Reality as it is independently of our sensibility; fundamentally unknowable to us.

Space

Pure form of external intuition that structures all outer experience; foundation of geometry.

Time

Pure form of internal intuition that structures all inner experience; foundation of arithmetic.

Pure Mathematics

Science of synthetic a priori judgments grounded in pure intuitions of space and time.

Pure Natural Science

Science that formulates a priori laws (categories) making experience of nature possible.

Judgment of Perception

Subjectively valid connection of sensations without reference to universal necessity.

Judgment of Experience

Objectively valid judgment that subsumes perceptions under pure concepts of understanding (categories).

Table of Judgments

Logical classification of possible judgments by quantity, quality, relation, and modality.

Categories (Pure Concepts of Understanding)

A priori concepts that correspond to logical forms of judgment and ground objective experience.

Unity

Category (Quantity) indicating oneness or measure in judgment.

Plurality

Category (Quantity) indicating multiplicity or amount.

Totality

Category (Quantity) expressing completeness or the whole.

Reality

Category (Quality) signifying affirmation or positive determination.

Negation

Category (Quality) signifying denial or absence.

Limitation

Category (Quality) combining reality and negation to mark boundaries.

Substance

Category (Relation) grounding the permanence of things underlying change.

Cause

Category (Relation) expressing necessary connection of events according to laws.

Community (Reciprocity)

Category (Relation) indicating mutual interaction among substances.

Possibility

Category (Modality) marking logical or metaphysical potentiality.

Existence (Actuality)

Category (Modality) indicating something is real within experience.

Necessity

Category (Modality) marking something that cannot be otherwise.

Axioms of Intuition

Principles that all intuitions are extensive magnitudes (spatial/temporal); first class of pure natural science principles.

Anticipations of Perception

Principles that all appearances have intensive magnitudes (degrees of sensation).

Analogies of Experience

Principles establishing temporal relations: permanence (substance), succession (cause), and simultaneity (community).

Postulates of Empirical Thinking

Principles concerning possibility, actuality, and necessity of appearances.

Transcendental System

System of a priori conditions (forms of intuition + categories) that make synthetic a priori knowledge and experience possible.

Pure Reason

Faculty that seeks unconditioned totality beyond experience, producing ideas (psychological, cosmological, theological).

Psychological Idea

Idea of a permanent soul or thinking substance; regulative, not constitutive of knowledge.

Cosmological Idea

Idea concerning the totality of the world in space, time, causality, and contingency; gives rise to antinomies.

Antinomy

Pair of contradictory but equally rational arguments arising when reason oversteps experience (e.g., world limited vs. infinite).

Theological Idea

Idea of a most perfect, necessary being (God) inferred by reason to ground possibility and actuality.

Freedom (in Kant)

Concept of causality through will independent of natural necessity; attributed to noumenal self.

Natural Necessity

Causal determinism governing the world of appearances.

Faculty of Sensibility

Capacity to receive intuitions (space and time) producing empirical content.

Faculty of Understanding

Capacity to apply categories to intuitions, creating coherent experience and natural laws.

Faculty of Reason

Capacity to unify judgments of understanding into systematic totalities via ideas, yet prone to illusion.

Metaphysical Illusion

Error of mistaking subjective functions of reason (ideas) for objective features of things.

Critique (in Kant)

Examination of the faculty’s limits and conditions to prevent dogmatic error and secure legitimate knowledge.