Kant and the Apriority of Space

Abstract

ed from it. For if an empirical is formed by abstracting it from experience, then it can be shown to be legitimate by appealing to the very experiences from which it is abstracted. This can be seen in Kant's characterization of a proposal that we justify the of cause in the same way one would an empirical concept, a proposal which would amount to saying that experience continually presents examples of such regularity among appearances and so affords abundant opportunity for abstracting the of cause, and at the same time of verifying the of such a concept (A91/B123, my emphasis). This proposal for justifying the of cause, which is presented in the introduction to the Transcendental Deduction (?13), is rejected by Kant because an a priori like that of cause could not be derived by abstraction from experience (on account of the way it involves necessity and a rule that is absolutely universal). But if the under consideration were one that was abstracted from experience, there would be no objection at all.44 If one finds that a has such an origin in experience, then its objective validity is guaranteed.45 In such a case the answer to a question about 44 am abstracting, as Kant also seems to do in ?13, from worries about the applicability of empirical concepts that derive from skepticism about the external world. Kant here seems more focused on the problems which remain for justifying our use of concepts, and with respect to these further problems he sees a marked difference between concepts that are pure and those that are empirical. I am also abstracting (again, as Kant seems to do in ?13) from certain kinds of considerations which concern the source of the legitimacy of empirical concepts: considerations which bear on a role for the categories and for the idea of systematicity in accounting for the legitimacy of such concepts. 45There are significant controversies about the proper interpretation of Kant's notion of objective validity. For present purposes, I will treat the question of a concept's as identical to the question of its justification, that is, its legitimate employment, as that question was characterized earlier (note 43).

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