Skip to main content

Random Quote from Kant

Image result for Kant

Critique of Pure Reason.

"In the applications of the pure conceptions of the understanding to possible experience, the use of their synthesis is either mathematical or dynamical; for it is directed partly merely to the intuition, and partly to the existence of a phenomenon in general. But the conditions a priori of the intuitions are, in respect to a possible experience, absolutely necessarily; those of the existence of the objects of a possible empirical intuition are only in themselves contingent. Hence the principles of mathematical use are ... absolutely necessary; that is, they strike apodictically; whilst those of dynamic use will also carry with them the character of a necessity a priori, but only under the condition of the empirical thinking in an experience...."

I'm not sure I grasp this fully. The premise behind it is the old distinction between contingent and necessary truths. It is a contingent truth that Smith owns a Hewlett-Packard laptop. It is a necessary truth that the owner of a Hewlett-Packard laptop owns at least one laptop.

But Kant is making another distinction within the "necessary" component of that distinction. There are mathematical necessities and dynamical necessities. I'm not clear why this distinction is important to him.

2+2 is four is a mathematical necessity.

The above example, though, the proposition that the "owner of a Hewlett-Packard laptop owns at least one laptop" may qualify as a dynamic necessity. There is a "condition of the empirical thinking" at work here, t hat is, that the world contains laptops of different brands, that H-P is one of them, etc, Our statement "carries with it" necessity, but only after such empirical facts are understood.

At least I think that's what he's saying. Readers should feel free to correct me.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...
9 comments
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...
17 comments
Read more

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...
4 comments
Read more