Critique of Practical Reason - Session 1
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Back by popolar demand, KANTIAN ETHICS!
Please get ethical with us by reading the opening of the Critique of Practical Reason and coming to the meeting to discuss.
Pages 139 thru 149 in Cambridge Practical Philosophy
§§ 5:3 thru 5:16
COMING UP
Critique of Practical Reason, Session 2, 2/25/24, 1st half of Chapter I
Practical Reason, Session 3**,** 3/10/24, 2nd half of Chapter I
Practical Reason, Sessiin 4, 3/24, Chapter I
I'm using Cambridge's Kant's Practical Philosophy which contains the Second Critique and other writings. You can probably find some low cost public domain versions of this Critique online, but here's an Amazon link to my version.
KANT AND BERKELEY
Way back when we read the Prolegomena, Kant was arguing in 4:375 that he was not a Berkleyan idealist. I didn't fully understand his argument, but I think I understand it better now and I am reproducing the argument, in my own words, below:
Kant states that space and time "inhere in us prior to all perception or experience," but because Berkley believes space and time are just more phenomena among a sea of all other ungrounded sensations, there is no a priori anchor for experience. Without such a ground, everything really IS just appearance. It is the inherent nature of transcendental intuition and the pure concepts of understanding that allows us to distinguish between truth and semblance in the first place (4:375).
METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE
PHENOMENOLOGY
Proposition 1. Relative motion is possible. Absolute motion is not.
"And so ends the metaphysical doctrine of body with the empty, and therefore the inconceivable, wherein it shares the same fate as all other attempts of reason, when it strives after the first grounds of things in a retreat to principles–-where, since its very nature entails that it can never conceive anything, except insofar as it is determined under given conditions, and since it can therefore neither come to a halt at the conditioned, nor make the unconditioned comprehensible, nothing is left to it, when thirst for knowledge invites it to comprehend the absolute totality of all conditions, but to turn away from the objects to itself, so as to explore and determine, not the ultimate limits of things, but rather the ultimate limits of its own unaided powers."
Square Circles: comparisons were made between square circles and an object that sometimes acts like a particle and sometimes acts like a wave. How are either of these things conceivable? And what sense are they conceivable? Well, we can't really imagine either, all we can do is say that they exists or potentially exists an object that sometimes has the property of a square or a particle and other times has the property of a circle or a wave. We can never visually imagine this object nor experiencing, nor can we experience both conditions of Schrodinger's cat at the same time nor perceive to electrons existing in two different places at the same time, but we can think of all these things.
CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON
Pop Quiz. Why did Kant feel the need for this practical critique? Why wasn't the Groundwork of Moral Metaphysics enough?
Quote of the day. "Such a precaution - namely, not to anticipate one's judgments by definitions ventured before complete analysis of the concept, which is often achieved very late - is to be highly recommended throughout philosophy, and yet is often neglected."
Discussion Questions
1 - Why is this second critique necessary. Why wasn't the Groundwork a sufficient critique of our practical, as opposed to speculative, cognition?
3 - What does Kant achieve in the Groundwork with respect to practical reason that he does not in the first critique?
4 - What do the dates of Kant's publications tell us about the development of his thought? First edition of Critique of Pure Reason, 1781, Prolegomena, 1783, Groundwork, 1785, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786, second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, 1787, and Critique of Practical Reason, 1788.
5 - Did the Groundwork explain the unity between practical and speculative reason? Indeed, what is the distinction between these two types of reasoning?
Critique of Practical Reason - Session 1