Immanuel Kant: Knowledge Is Both Rational and Empirical

Immanuel Kant was renowned German philosopher who sought to reconcile the Continental rational philosophies with those of the British empirical philosophers. The rationalist philosophers, such as Descartes, believed that the fundamental source of all knowledge was not simply observation, but that it was a priori, which is independent of experience. It’s different from a posteriori, which is known as experiential knowledge. The British claimed that was the source of all knowledge. Kant wanted to merge both viewpoints.

A posteriori knowledge is strictly dependent, and the truth of statements depends on particular conditions at a set time. A priori knowledge is always considered to be true. A priori judgments are called analytic, while a posteriori judgments are considered to be synthetic. According to Kant, a third type of judgment, synthetic a priori. These judgments are necessary and also have an empirical element. Kant believes in saying: “Everything has a cause.” As a result of these differences, Kant created a debate that still continues to this very day.

There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience. Though knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and what our own faculty of knowledge supplies from itself. Such knowledge is entitled a priori, and distinguished from the empirical, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.

The expression “a priori” does not, however, require with necessary means to the question. A priori knowledge is independent of all experience. It’s opposite to empirical knowledge. It’s also important to know how to distinguish the difference between pure and empirical knowledge. A question that has the soundness of a necessary judgment is called an a priori judgment. A judgment is a thought of a strict idea. Empirical universality is only the extension of a valid statement. Human knowledge is necessary and in the strictest sense universal, and are therefore a priori judgments.

An a priori origin is manifest in certain concepts. If we remove our empirical concept of a body, every feature would be empirical. If you remove empirical concept of any object, you can still not take away the property with the object. In all judgments, in which, the relation of a subject is a thought. The judgment is analytic. The predicate is something quite different. Judgments of experience are all imitated. For it would be illogical to find an analytic judgment on experience. A priori knowledge must rest; analytical judgments are very important. They will eventually lead to a new branch to your previous knowledge.

All mathematical judgments, without exception, are synthetic. Those who are involved with human reason are opposed to speculations. All mathematical interferences proceed into the principle of contradiction. Natural science contains a priori synthetic judgments as principles. All changes of the material world the quantity of matter remains unchanged; and that in all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal. Both propositions in their origins are a priori and they are also synthetic. The study of Metaphysics, also contains a priori synthetic knowledge which is very beneficial to those who study.

The universal, condition of all our judgments in general, whatever be the content of our knowledge, and however it may relate to the object is that they be not self-contradictory; for if self-contradictory, these judgments are in themselves, even without reference to the object, null and void. The principal of contradiction must be recognized as being the universal and completely sufficient principle