Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, a slow reading, a careful study (Session 5)

This page gives info about the most current session. For overall details about the group, please see the first event page here —

https://www.meetup.com/The-Toronto-Philosophy-Meetup/events/277446352/

—and then come back to this page to RSVP!!!

SESSION 5 READING - If you were unable to attend the last session, you missed out on learning about the spirituality of eating Mt. Everest and the Theory of the Transcendental Lunch. But don’t worry, join us for Session 5 and learn why Aristotle is so important to understanding Kant and maybe Philip will share with us his recipe for barbecuing the Number 7. . . . oh, and we’ll probably also say a few things about time.

READING FOR SESSION 5 - We will finish the intro to Transcendental Aesthetics A, specifically the concluding section on Time, pp 162-171, paras A30-A49.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR UPCOMING MEETING

NEW QUESTIONS as of 7/16/21

30. Kant’s critics say on 165/A37, “. . . alterations are possible only in time, therefore time is something real,” to which Kant replies, “Time is certainly something real, namely the real form of intuition.” What do you make of Kant’s implicit definition of reality?
31. Also A37, “[Time] has subjective reality . . . in regard to inner experience. . . It’s empirical reality therefore remains as a condition of all our experiences.” Does Kant equate empirical with subjective?
32. In A39, Kant divides his critics into the subsistents and the inherents. What are the arguments of these two groups for the objective reality of time and how does Kant counter them?

PREVIOUS QUESTIONS

19. same para: “Time is. . . merely a subjective condition of our (human) intuition. . . “. How does Kant define subjectivity?
20. A36: “. . . we dispute all claims of time to absolute reality. . .” Is Kant saying there would be no time without people? It’s a human creation?
21. A35, Kant refers to “the . . .condition under which time belongs to the representation of objects.” How is it that time belongs to representations
22. Kant says in the following paragraph that any objects given to us experience must be conditioned by time “since our intuition is always sensible.” Is that true that our intuition is always sensible?
23. Also A36: “. . . we dispute all claim. . . where [time] would attach to things absolutely as a condition or property. . . Such properties, which pertain to things in themselves, can never be given to us through the senses.” Is Kant distinguishing time as a unique property? Or is he referring to all properties?
24. A36 fn: “Sensibility is not confusion of representations, but the subjective condition of consciousness.” Without senses, there is no such thing as consciousness?
25. Regarding 165/A37, translators’ fn, what do we think of the objections of Lambert, “if alterations are real then time is also real, and Mendelssohn, “succession is a necessary condition of the finite spirits.”
26. In the section “Elucidation,” Kant answers the objections of Lambert and Mendelssohn against his idea of time and space. Does Kant make a convincing counter argument?
27. 167/A41: “. . . that the transcendental aesthetic cannot contain more than space and time . . . is clear. . . as all other concepts, . . . even . . . motion, . . . presuppose something empirical.” Is this true? That we can conceive of space and time without things in them? Or do the objects and their categories presuppose each other?
28. 166/A38: “They [Kant’s critics] did not did not expect to be able to demonstrate the absolute reality of space apodictically. . .” What does it mean to demonstrate something “apodictally”? Do a priori concepts require demonstration? Or even allow for them?
29. A39: “Those . . . who assert the absolute reality of space and time. . . must themselves come into conflict with the principles of existence.” What principles, accepting his own, are Kant’s critics coming into conflict with?