Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Abstract
This essay is to find distinctive aspects of a priori synthetic statements, whose judgment depends upon categories of understanding, in comparison to Hume’s discussion of abstraction and meaning. Through logical analysis of statements containing Kant’s Categories, we will demonstrate that the categories of Quality and Quantity, excluding the category of Universality, contain no mental concept unlikely to be experienced; they are therefore merely expressive of logical structures – a fact also acknowledged by empiricists – not as essential conditions for judgment. The categories of Modality, if meaningful, are perceivable only by mind not through experience. As for the conditional judgments, the Category of Causality will be discussed more precisely in this paper. It will be shown that the empiricist approach is incompatible with Kant’s theory in respect to the essence of causal relation, but compatible with it concerning the very existence of such relation. Here, we are not to deal with the Category of Substance or the Category of Reciprocity, since they are simply irrelevant to our discussions.
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