COMMENTARIES ON KANT: THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON (3/N)

 

3. Philosophy stands in need of a Science which shall Determine the Possibility, Principles, and Extent of Human Knowledge “à priori”

This will be extremely short one. Let me set the whole premise of the book which Kant also wants to set through this chapter. 

"The critique of Pure reason" is a treatise which attempts to critique the structure to all our empirical knowledge, which Kant calls Pure reasons. Basically, this whole idea of Premise setting, Kants wants some determinism as to what can be taken as premise to build a theory if there is no direct experience involved in those premises. 

By the phrase "Philosophy stands in need of a Science which shall Determine the Possibility, Principles, and Extent of Human Knowledge “à priori”", He means that Philosophy and especially one of its branches, Metaphysics, becomes dogmatic because it confidently assumes that "That which cannot be an experience of the senses, can be known through reason. Throughout history, From Plato, to Islamic Philosophy and for those even Indian Spiritual traditions, attempts to claim that. Kant wishes to critique the basic assumption of all that tradition, that is, "Pure Reason". This assumption, that there are somethings that are beyond our sensory experiences, but they can still be known through reason is what Kant is suspicious about. He does not refute this claim. But He surely wants to limit it through first principles, wants to know to what extent we can get hold of "What we cannot experience but can only reason about". 

Some of these problems of pure reason are, according to Kant, "God, Free will and immortality". 

And the so-called science is "Metaphysics". But, Metaphysics has no as such science, it is based on reason which in turn is based on some dogmatic assumptions like one above. 

At one place, Kant argues, merely saying, that a particular a priori knowledge is natural enough actually means that it is consistent with a just and reasonable way of thinking, and not literally found in the nature. 

Kant says, this happens very often in Mathematics. A priori knowledge can lead to many conclusions which has no direct experience-based intuition. This peculiar nature of reason is what makes Kant worrisome. 

Even the intuition can be given a priori. I also have an example to that. In Quantum Mechanics, although it came long after Kant, but the interpretation of Probability as a wave varying in a space with time, is what is a notion of pure reason is. It has consistency of reason, it also follows the completeness theorem of total probability being one, But to imagine a mathematical quantity probability as a real physical existing particle's existence is not intuitional. This is what Kant means. A whole edifice of reason is constructed in Quantum mechanics, which are very remotely experimentally verified. As to verify exactly this claim that the particle is actually a space time varying probability wave, is not possible by any experience and hence forms a part of a priori knowledge, or pure reason. 

Another very good way in which Kant explains this, is that he mentions Plato. He says people like Plato are like a Dove bird, that flies in the sky and in its flight, since it faces resistance of air, thinks that it will be able to fly freely in an air-less medium, totally missing the point that It is air that is making the bird lift in the sky in the first place. Without air, there will be no Bernoulli's theorem and hence no flight. 

Similarly, Kant says, People of pure reason forego this that Experience or Priori knowledge is actually the most verified knowledge and reason, however sound and beautiful it seems, it always tries to fly in an air-less medium which makes it in itself dogmatic. 

I recall Einstein here. Einstein used to say, "This equation is beautiful, it must be correct!" after deriving an equation like E=mc^2. This is what people of pure reason, be it mathematicians, logicians etc. think. But there should be a limit, some determinism as to till what extent is deductions based on this kind of reasoning, permissible in Philosophy. 

One Quotable of Kant, I found in this section, " It is, indeed, the common fate of human reason in speculation, to finish the imposing edifice of thought as rapidly as possible, and then for the first time to begin to examine whether the foundation is a solid one or no." 

So, Kant wishes to limit the scope of reason to finish the edifice of thought, or of theory and then to return and check if the foundations of its theory, is right or not. And what should be the basis of that?

To quote Feynman, "Experiment is the true test of Science!", "Experience is the true test of any reasoning!". 

From next section, Kant will differentiate between two types of knowledge, one which constantly comes back to experiences to verify its existence and the other, which lives dogmatically under the shadow of reason.