KANT ON METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

Kant is one of the German philosopher who really wanted to know what kind of knowledge is
philosophical knowledge and especially what kind of knowledge is metaphysical knowledge. “The
Critique of Pure Reason” was his first major book which mainly answering the question about the
metaphysical knowledge. Kant argues that knowledge in metaphysics has to be identified as
“synthetic a priori knowledge”. The idea of synthetic a priori knowledge is a central to Kant’s
entire philosophy and one of the most important discovery of him.

According to Kant, philosophical or metaphysical knowledge had to be synthetic a priori

knowledge. The idea of synthetic a priori knowledge is based on two different distinctions. Firstly,
the distinction between a priori knowledge or rationalism and empirical knowledge. Secondly, the
distinction between analytic judgments and synthetic judgments.

Empirical knowledge is any knowledge that we attained or comes from or is justified by appeal
to the senses. All kinds of daily knowledge are example of empirical knowledge which we attained
by our sense experience such as touch, taste, smell, sound and sight. For an example, sugar is sweet
or we know what the weather is like when we look out the window and observe or feel by our
senses. Therefore, all the empirical knowledge are depends on the sense.

The opposite of empirical knowledge is a priori knowledge. A priori or rationalism knowledge

is not justified by appeal to the senses. For an example, truth of all roses are roses. Its a truth which
we know a priori without to rely on our senses at all, because its just true by its definition. Based
on Kant, mathematics is an a priori knowledge because we don’t have to do any experiments to
prove one plus one equals to two. Kant viewed we ultimately justify that truth without appealing
to our senses. Moreover, there is a two important characteristics of a priori knowledge according
to Kant which are ‘its necessary’ and ‘its universal’.

Therefore Kant concluded that if a knowledge is a universal and necessary, then its an a priori
knowledge or if a knowledge is not universal and necessary, then it’s a empirical knowledge.

Then, he moved to the second distinction which is between analytical judgments and synthetic
judgments. Kant says that an analytical judgment is one where the concept of judgment’s predicate
is contained in the concept of the judgment’s subject. Simply, where he roughly verified that
analytic truths are true by definition. An example of the judgment ‘ a bachelor is unmarried’. Its
analytic because the concept ‘unmarried’ is implicitly contained in the concept ‘bachelor’, because
the concept ‘bachelor’ as just being made up of the concepts ‘unmarried’ and ‘man’. Therefore the
definition of the concept bachelor is just ‘unmarried man’. In the case of analytical judgment, is
taking one of the concepts that’s already implicitly contained in the concept of subject and make
it explicit.

In contrast, synthetic judgments take the concept of the subject and they connect a new concept
which is not already implicitly contained in it. In other words, synthetic truths are not true by
definition. For an example ‘ a bachelor is happy–go–lucky’. The concept ‘happy-go-lucky’ does
not contained in the concept ‘bachelor’. Its not part of the definition of bachelor. Therefore, it is a
synthetic judgment. Kant calls synthetic judgments “ampliative”. In related, unlike analytic
judgment, synthetic connect with a new concept which is not contained in the dinition and its
extend our knowledge beyond the definition of subject.

After, Kant clarified the distinction between a priori knowledge and empirical knowledge, the
analytic judgment and synthetic judgment, he had explained how they relate to each other. Based
on all the distinction, Kant concluded that all analytic judgments are a priori, because they are true
by definition or they are true just in virtue of how the judgment’s subject concepts and the predicate
concepts relate to each other. But if the judgments are just conceptual or definitional truths, their
truth doesn’t depend on experiences or the senses. Therefore, it’s a priori.

On the other hand, it also turns out that all empirical knowledge is synthetic. The reason is if it is
empirical the knowledge does depend on experience and the senses. But then the knowledge
depends one more than just the definitions of the concept involves. Therefore empirical knowledge
couldn’t be analytic and it has to be synthetic.

As a whole, Kant’s two distinction overlap each other perfectly, where analytic judgments make
up all the a priori knowledge and empirical knowledge make up all the synthetic judgments.
Therefore Kant concluded a claim that ‘ a priori synthetic knowledge’.
Agreed to the claim of Kant, a priori synthetic knowledge. The reason is all the knowledge that we
attained is not a priori or empirical but it has overlap each other perfectly by the analytic judgment
and synthetic judgment. The opinion which bring the means that the a priori and empirical couldn’t
justify by separately but both are attachable. For an example, if we see a snake what would be our
next action? We would be run out immediately because we believe that the same will chase us but
in reality there is no such thing or concept included in the definition of the snake. The definition
just stated that the snake is a long limbless reptile. So we have gone beyond its definition.
Therefore it’s a priori synthetic knowledge. ( not very sure with this example )

Another example is related to mathematical knowledge that the interior angles of a triangle sum to
180 degrees. Since mathematic is a priori knowledge, we cant justify geometrical truths like this
one by doing experiments or on our senses in any other way. Truths like this seem necessary and
universal. The interior angle of a triangle sum to 180 degrees without any exceptions. But the
concept of the interior angle of triangle doesn’t seem to implicitly contain the concept of exactly
180 degrees. The concept of triangle contains the concept of three sided. Therefore the interior
angle of the triangle gone beyond the definition which is a priori synthetic truth. ( Kant example )

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https://www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/