Understanding Kant
Trying to Understand Kant - Could there be such a thing as “Synthetic A priori”?
In Kant’s book “Critique of Pure Reason”, he tried to outline the extent of possible human knowledge claims. One very interesting part of his work, though, distinguishes between A priori knowledge and A posteriori knowledge.
So what does he mean by A priori knowledge?
My understanderstanding of Kant’s definition of “A priori” knowledge, is knowledge gained without the use of senses. It doesn’t need to be “Prior”to the senses, just that it would be feasible to know it without any refence to an external world. Whereas conversely, A posteriori knowledge is knowledge that was gained through the senses, e.g.:
| O | A Priori | A Posteriori |
|---|---|---|
| Analytic | True by definition, e.g. 1+1 = 2 | X(can’t exist) |
| Synthetic | ? -> Maybe things like ‘time’ exist | Evidence, e.g. scientific conclusions based off observations |
Some questions remain though - is awareness of our own self-consciousness A priori, or A posteriori? Arguably it would be A priori, because self-awareness is arguably not a “sense”. So if we have this ability for self-awareness and we agree it’s a priori knowledge, then it seems that along with this sense of self-awareness I would also have this sense of ‘time’, which would bring new information. Hence it seems that I would be able to have synthetic, a priori knowledge.
That said, even if true, it still seems that most of the richnessd of the idea of ‘time’ comnes from interaction and observation, which is to say, most of its relevance comes from a posteriori knowledge. In fact from a first person perspective, it doesn’t feel like consciousness has gone(??) at all and the change I see is perhaps physical or in terms of my surroundings rather than myself as subject. So it seems that we wiuld not really understand the concept of ‘time’ very well without this reference to the external world, even if it is possible to have a concept of time without the external world.
In fact there are many instances where I do not appear to experience “time”. For example, if I am present conducting an activity, I don’t experience time itself. I am mainly experiencing the concept of time when I am looking to the future (The future is itself a time-based concept) and not there yet, or I am caught unprepared for something that needs to be done immediately or very soon - i.e. I feel I do not have enough time.
It appears also if we were going to bring in Kant’s distinction between “intuitions” and “concepts” then ‘time’ seems more like a concept than an intuition. As mentioned, there appears to be partly a priori. And it is not merely ‘analytic’ or merely only true by self-definition. Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that there is such a thing as “synthetic a priori knowledge”, contrary to what most (physicalists) believe. At least in relation to time, though, as mentioned the a priori concept of time seems pretty week, for example it doesn’t seem that it could direct itself to any external objectsunless we bring in a posteriori experiences, knowledge or information. For instance the concept of “causation”rarely becomes interesting unless it encompasses actions and reactions in the world. Causation seems also to be something that can be assumed a priori, because, as per Hume, we never see the moment when thing A becomes thing B. We see the constant conjunction between events, but then in our mind we make the link of the necessary connection between the two.