Philosophy of the Mind Essay

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Introduction The Critique is a treatise on metaphysics. Kant defines metaphysics as â€Å"a speculative cognition that is wholly isolated and rises entirely above being instructed by experience. It is a cognition through mere concepts (not, like mathematics, cognition through the application of concepts to intuition), so that here reason is to be its own pupil† (xiv). This remark alone indicates that the attempt to answer the question â€Å"How is metaphysics as science possible?†, places the question of the bearing of our empirical judgments on objects qua ontologically independent. Patently, that does not imply that the transcendental deductions will not have any ultimate bearing on such issues. It means nothing more or less than that the transcendental deductions are concerned with the question of the mere possibility of pure a priori judgments – i.e., how it is possible that we are cognitively capable of making synthetic a priori judgments at all – as an independent problem in its own right. The results of the investigation would provide the basis for a subsequent series of investigations into the bearing such judgments have or could have on ontologically independent objects independent of perception and judgment of them. But it is a simple matter of first things first – let us first see what transpires when we attempt to draw on our indigenous cognitive resources alone. The treatise is accordingly a â€Å"propadeutic† and a â€Å"preparation† and a â€Å"treatise on the method† for an ultimate system of pure reason (xxii). The first Critique is about finding the mind in nature hence nature’s dependence on that mind. The second Critique then shows us what efficacy that mind can have in actively shaping at least one aspect of nature — the phenomenal self. Although, this shaping of the self through reason has a wider impact in that through freedom, we gain a new perspective on the entire phenomenal world, the world of nature and value. That said, it is not a small matter to describe in such specificity and detail the particular faculties or powers of the mind. It seems plausible that by granting a mind-dependent nature, a different accounting for that nature could be constructed; the mind and its faculties could be sliced and diced in different ways than does Kant, although then we would be different creatures entirely — something Kant does not rule out. (For Kant, clearly, a creature with a different mental make-up could experience a different nature from the same things-in-themselves.) Given his particular recipe for the mind, Kant’s theory of freedom and morality reveals numerous things we can say about the faculty of reason. Kant begins by setting reason, which is not merely a receptive but an active faculty, apart from everything to do with physical or sensory matter, but he must ultimately find a way to unite it with matter, in the form of experience, in order for there to be freedom since, perhaps oddly, freedom as we think of it can only exist in the context of its lack — determinism. That we might see these realms as disparate only reflects a failure to take Kant’s mind-dependent construction of nature at its word. The answer to many of the apparent impossibilities many find in Kant’s theory of freedom is to see freedom not as an attempt to marry freedom and nature, but rather to marry reason (as author of freedom) and the understanding (as author of nature). Through reason’s law-imposing nature emerge moral entities — indeed, a phenomenal moral realm — and through the understanding (and sensation) emerge objects of nature — a realm of nature. If we take nature (as we experience it) as in any way a given, or even if mind-dependent, as somehow prior to freedom, the impossibilities are impossible to avoid. An Intelligible Faculty Understanding, reason and judgment are most often described, as faculties, that is, as faculties of the mind. Kant appears to distinguish between the passive (sensibility), the empirically conditioned but active (understanding) and the unconditionally active (reason). (575) From this we see that reason is unique among the faculties as being both wholly intelligible and active. Immediately we also see that, from one point of view, the problem of freedom is simply the problem of reason: how can an unconditionally active mental power that is outside space and time be efficacious with respect to that which is in time? How can the purely rational mind cause something? â€Å"Pure reason,† Kant writes, is â€Å"a purely intelligible faculty [that] is not subject to the form of time.† (579) As such, we can have no direct experience of it — other than the bare awareness found in the Fact of Reason. (Our psychological experience of ourselves is as appearances, not as things in themselves.) Pure practical reason is what comprises the intelligible will because it is the faculty that underlies all maxims (or actions) determining that will. Although it is law-giving (this is how it is active), it does not impose particular laws, that is, laws with empirical content, for to do so would remove its purely intelligible and a priori status. Rather, all it can offer is the form of a law. We see an example of this in the Categorical Imperative, with its admonition to test a maxim by universalizing it. It could perhaps be argued that reason simply is the intelligible will; or rather, that the intelligible will is reason. Yet the foundation of freedom, as Kant frequently points out, lies in the noumenal realm of which we can cognize nothing. Only pure practical reason can fit the bill with respect to freedom (Neiman, 1994, p.62-7). Logical Reasoning How does the reason we encounter in its logical guise lead to the reason that produces the problem of freedom, and the other troublesome ideas of the Dialectic? Reason’s logical role as the faculty of inference is perhaps its most celebrated aspect. Here, as elsewhere, its raw material is not the empirical object/sensory manifold but the unifying law or principle that, through inference, reveals some knowledge of an object to us, for example, in the simple syllogism.[1] Kant uses this kind of reasoning from which to extract reason’s guiding principle — its primary characteristic. He argues that â€Å"in inference, reason endeavors to reduce the varied and manifold knowledge obtained through the understanding to the smallest number of principles,† (361) revealing that reason is seeking â€Å"the highest possible unity,† but that this is â€Å"not the unity of a possible experience, but is essentially different from such unity, which is that of understanding.† (363) He ultimately reaches the following principle of reason: â€Å"to find for the conditioned knowledge obtained through the understanding the unconditioned whereby its unity is brought to completion.† Thus, Kant has traced the genesis of the â€Å"supreme principle of pure reason† that ultimately yields the transcendental ideas, and distinguishes reason’s role from that of the understanding (373). This also lies at the basis of Kant’s distinction between reason’s logical and transcendental, or â€Å"real,† use where reason is a the source of concepts and principles â€Å"which it does not borrow either from the sense or from the understanding.† (356) It is this principle of reason and what it yields that Kant then spends the major part of the Dialectic testing and examining, concluding that the principle itself appears sound, but warning of its seemingly unavoidable misuse. His way out, ultimately, is to fall back on the regulative-constitutive distinction: Thus pure reason, which at first seemed to promise nothing less than the extension of knowledge beyond all limits of experience, contains, if properly understood, nothing but regulative principles†¦But if†¦they be misunderstood, and treated as constitutive principles of the transcendent knowledge, they give rise, by a dazzling and deceptive illusion, to persuasion and a merely fictitious knowledge, and therewith to contradictions and eternal disputes. (730) As we have already seen, this seemingly intractable position is itself resolved in favor of freedom via another distinction that is tightly linked to (if not emerges out of) constitutivity-regulativity — that between theoretical and practical — which reintroduces the possibility of a valid use of constitutive reason. In the entire faculty of reason only the practical can provide us with the means for going beyond the sensible world and provide cognitions of a supersensible order and connection, which, however, just because of this can be extended only so far as is directly necessary for pure practical purposes. (706) Thus pure practical reason’s principle takes in us the form of the moral law as the ultimate principle that strives systematize and unify our rules of action (our maxims), just as it sought to unify the rules of nature. And, like the principle we found to be at the root of logical reasoning, this law lies a priori in pure practical reason. Pure or Absolute Spontaneity Kant frequently describes freedom as pure or absolute spontaneity. He also ties freedom to reason and reason to spontaneity. As Kant also points out here, the understanding, as reason’s close cousin, if not identical twin, is also a faculty of spontaneity, but it is one that is limited by the requirements of possible experience and so applies itself to appearances. For the understanding, that which is given (sense, sensation) drives the production of nature, and the understanding’s spontaneity is what allows us to think any object of cognition, regardless of its actuality.[2] Thus, the understanding, which gives us nature, does not and cannot suffice to give us freedom precisely because it is too shackled to sensation and experience. For reason, unrestricted in the practical realm by the â€Å"is,† allows us to create moral entities (through creating the morally situated self), that is, reason as law-giving, as pure spontaneity is also freedom. A Given Nature Among the things that Kant’s various descriptions of reason tell us, is that it has a certain nature (that is, characteristics or features) that endows it with inevitable tendencies or drives. We become aware of these faculties or powers through what we do, and what and how we think, and of course we act and think by virtue of the faculties. (574) This nature appears to be given and, as such, it seems (at least from what Kant says of it) that it cannot be further explained nor analyzed. Of course, this nature is essentially our nature as rational beings. Kant frequently appeals to the nature of reason in explaining why it is that we seem always and everywhere inevitably ask the questions we ask (and draw the often erroneous conclusions we tend to draw about the world): There has always existed in the world, and there will always continue to exist, some kind of metaphysics, and with it the dialectic that is natural to pure reason. (xxxi) They [transcendental ideas] are not arbitrarily invented; they are imposed by the very nature of reason itself, and therefore stand in necessary relation to the whole employment of understanding. (384) Guyer finds Kant’s appeal to nature with respect to reason problematic, arguing that that â€Å"idea that our freedom itself is actually a product of nature† is paradoxical because â€Å"what is merely natural is precisely what would seem to be unfree rather than free.† (2000, p.375) Conclusion Kant insists that freedom has a central role in his philosophy; that freedom and its metaphysics are wholly bound up with the metaphysics of nature; and that at the root of both is the mind. Kant’s Critical corpus is built on the fact of our having minds composed of certain faculties or powers, passive (receptive) and active (spontaneous or even causal), which Kant analyzes based on the manner and matter of the experiences they yield us. Clearly, even if everything about reason upon which my case for understanding Kantian freedom is based is true, what seem to be antecedent assumptions about the mind and its faculties arguably remain unproven, and perhaps improvable. Since so much of what Kant argues makes up the mind is labeled intelligible — the faculty of reason for one — it seems we are still left, at the end of the day, with an even more crippling Kantian unknowability than that met with earlier. This unknowability covers that which is the foundation of the theory, and Kant could be accused of being more dogmatic than the dogmatists in asserting such a starting point. Yet, on another view, there are no â€Å"antecedent assumptions† in Kant’s theory about the mind, since it is precisely the make-up of the mind that the critical system is intended to uncover. This is at least part of Kant’s point when he argues we must consider having objects conform to our faculties of cognition, rather than the other way around — his famous second Copernican revolution (xvi-xvii). On that view, nature is a reflection of the mind, and so an investigation of nature is for Kant simply an investigation of the mind. The Hume: Mitigated Skepticism and Skeptical Conclusions Introduction Hume’s biographer, Ernest Mossner, offers this pertinent insight on Hume’s religious skepticism: How can we recognize [Hume’s] personal convictions on religion? The answer is plainly that we cannot—certainly not without considerable effort on our part and even then not definitively. The conclusions of a sceptic—even a mitigated sceptic—cannot be summarized in a one-two-three pattern or creed if for no other reason than that a sceptic, unlike other types of philosophers, is not altogether stable in his thinking, is perpetually rethinking his principles. Scepticism, first and last, is a frame of mind, neither a collection nor a system of doctrines. (Mossner, 1976, p.5) This section will demonstrate just how restless and inquiring Hume’s skepticism was in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In the Enquiry’s first section, Hume compares those who attempt to indoctrinate their religious dogmas to thieves who are unable to win a fair fight (that is, honestly persuade men to believe their delusive message) and who will then hide behind superstitious â€Å"intangling brambles to cover and protect their weakness.† Chaced from the open country, these robbers fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices. (i, 11) Hume concludes the Enquiry’s first section by expressing the hope (indeed his intent) that his philosophical skepticism â€Å"can undermine the foundations of an abstruse philosophy, which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition, and a cover to absurdity and error.† (i, 16) Although Hume is always careful to state that he is fighting dogmatism and â€Å"religious superstition†, it is not difficult to see that in the early sections of the Enquiry this amounts to anyone who believes that they possess knowledge of God. The easiest way to see the Enquiry’s skeptical pattern of reasoning is to see that Hume wages war on religious dogmatism on two fronts. The first front is in the early sections of the Enquiry where Hume will mount a general assault on abstruse metaphysics and dogmatic theology with his account of â€Å"true metaphysics† (i, 12), which is an understanding and application of the general principles of human nature. The second front is in sections x and xi where Hume launches particular attacks on theistic bastions of revelation and natural theology. General Assault: True Metaphysics We must first determine whether God is a possible object for human understanding. The first test for the idea of God is â€Å"from what impression is that supposed idea derived?† (ii, 22) The answer must be â€Å"none†, for we can find no vivid and forceful impression corresponding to that abstract and complex idea, â€Å"God†. Thus, if God’s existence is an â€Å"object of human reason or enquiry† (iv, 25) then God’s existence must either be a relation of ideas or a matter of fact. Clearly, God’s existence is not a â€Å"Proposition†¦ discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe† (iv, 25). God is a being—indeed the Supreme Being—so if God exists. His existence must be a matter of fact. â€Å"All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect.† (iv, 26) Knowledge of God (the original cause) thus must arise from causal knowledge. For Hume there are only two types of causes: particular and general causes. So God, the original cause, must either be first particular cause or the highest general cause or principle. Particular causes are the constant conjunction of two species of objects found in phenomena. God’s uniqueness precludes the possibility that God can be a particular cause: It is only when two species of objects are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other and were an effect presented, which was entirely singular, and could not be comprehended under any known species [i.e.. Nature] I do not see, that we could form any conjecture or inference at all concerning its cause [i.e., God]. If experience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature; both the effect and cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and causes, which we know, and which we have found, I many instances, to be conjoined with each other. (xi, 148) In the Enquiry Hume also rejects as impossible a knowledge of God, the ultimate general cause or principle: It is confessed, that the utmost effort of human reason is to reduce the principles, productive of natural phenomena, to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes, by means of reasonings from analogy, experience, and observation†¦ Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature; and we may esteem ourselves sufficiently happy, if by accurate enquiry and reasoning, we can trace up the particular phenomena to, or near to, these general principles. (iv, 30) Hume limits the human understanding to knowledge of common life and experience (xii, 162). Clearly, however, God transcends human experience, so God cannot be an object of the understanding. Since the idea of God does not arise from the understanding, it must arise from some other faculty. Hume analyzes the idea of â€Å"God† (an infinitely powerful, wise and just entity) and shows that â€Å"God† is generated by the imagination through reflecting on human capacities and faculties and expanding them infinitely (ii, 19; and vii, 72). Hume’s general assault is directed against speculative metaphysics and dogmatic theology, which believes that God can be known by humans. And nothing can be more requisite than to enter upon the enterprize with thorough care and attention; that, if it lie within the compass of human understanding, it may at last be happily achieved; if not, it may, however, be rejected with some confidence and security. (i, 15) Particular Arguments for Theism From a religious viewpoint, Hume’s â€Å"true metaphysics† can be read as an assault on any dogmatic belief in God. In Enquiry sections x and xi Hume focuses his attack specifically on Theism (or one could be even more specific and say â€Å"Christianity†). In these two sections, Hume mounts an attack on the two pillars of Christianity: revelation and natural theology. Hume argues that neither revelation (reports of miracles) nor natural theology (the Design argument) can yield a belief in God that a reasonable man would assent to. By â€Å"reasonable man† here, Hume means the man who follows his â€Å"natural unprejudiced reason, without the delusive glosses of superstition and false religion† (x). As it can be seen from Hume’s argument in Enquiry x, he attempts to undermine the reasonableness of a belief in reported miracles1 using four lines of reasoning. First, â€Å"miracles† are violation of laws of nature. Any belief-system (secular or religious) must take as its foundation that there are inviolable laws of nature. Therefore, it is inconsistent to have a belief-system that is based on the testimony of miraculous events occurring. Miracles can thus never serve as the rational foundation for any belief system. Second, even if we knew miracles occurred, this would only establish a supematural entity who through â€Å"particular volitions† intervenes in nature and history. But miraculous events are useless in establishing what kind of supernatural power (or powers) it is that caused such events. This argument cannot establish whether the supernatural power is wise, foolish, or capricious. Or for that matter, this argument cannot establish that this supernatural power is God (the original cause and sustainer of the world). Third, admitting miracles based on testimony is self-defeating for theism. Other non-theistic and counter-theistic religions (the Gnostics, for example, who hold the creator is malevolent) also have miraculous testimonies that have as much claim to belief as reported Theistic miracles. Fourth, Theists who build their faith on miracles have it backwards: miracles can never justify religious faith. Rather, it is religious faith that justifies a belief in miracles. Section x arrives at a skeptical conclusion: we cannot know if a miraculous violation of law of nature occurred, and even if we could know they did occur such events could never be the foundation for a belief system such as Theism. In Section xi, Hume attacks the second pillar of theism, natural theology or reason’s attempt to understand God unaided by revelation. Hume’s argument against the Design argument of natural theology occurs in two levels: the first level is given by â€Å"the friend who loves skeptical paradoxes† (xi, 132) who draws out the consequences of accepting the Design argument. Let us grant (the â€Å"friend† argues) that there is a Divine Architect who designed nature. Humans can infer the nature or essence of this Architect only by carefully studying the design or order in the Architect’s creation, Nature. Has the Divine Architect designed this world in a way that a moral agent (one who is benevolent and just) would have designed it? The numerous gratuitous evils we discover in our world that appear unnecessary and unavoidable block us from inferring that the designer of our world is a benevolent and just moral agent. The second level of argument against natural theology is given by Hume himself, in his own voice. Whereas the first level granted the Design argument and drew out the anti-theistic consequences of the Design argument; in the second level Hume argues that there are compelling reasons against granting the Design argument. Because we discover a design in our world does not allow us to infer the existence of a designing intelligence. To put this point in another way: this argument states that because there is a causal order in our world, there must have been an original cause, God. But our knowledge of causation is only through experienced constant conjunction between two species of objects. We expect objects of type x to bring about changes in objects of type y because we have experienced this many times in the past. However, the original cause, God, is unique. Therefore we cannot make the required jump which is required by the Design argument that because there is causal order or design in our world there must be an original cause or designer (xi, 148). Faith in the Enquiry The outcome of both Hume’s general account of â€Å"true metaphysics† as well as his particular arguments against miracles and natural theology are skeptical. On the basis of reason we have no grounds to assent to God. Thus, if one assents to God, this assent is based not on reason but on faith: Divinity or Theology, as it proves the existence of a Deity, is composed partly of reasonings concerning particular, partly concerning general facts. It has a foundation in reason, so far as it is supported by experience. But its best and most solid foundation is faith, and divine revelation. (xii, 165). To draw the implication here, since Hume has shown in section xi that God has no foundation in reason or experience, a belief in God is therefore founded totally on faith. Hume’s appeals to faith in the Enquiry should be taken seriously and not regarded as sarcastic asides. We must understand that for Hume faith is a domain entirely outside of natural reason (i.e., understanding): And whoever is moved by faith to assent to it (the Christian Religion) is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. (x, 131) Hume’s argument is intended to show that a belief in God is, literally, unreasonable: it is outside the domain of reason. Hume is not endorsing faith, but pointing out the status of belief in God. One who accepts Hume’s position on God in the Enquiry recognizes that a belief in God, since it is unsupported by reason, must float in mid-air as if by a sorcerer’s trick. Some theists will face up to this consequence of theistic belief. But for most theists, upon realizing that their belief in God in unsupported by reason, their faith will come crashing down. Conclusion The Enquiry carefully lays out a program of Mitigated Skepticism: all knowledge must be limited to experience and common life. In his general account of â€Å"true metaphysics† Hume shows that given the weakness and limits of human nature, knowledge of God is impossible.   Then in his particular arguments of x and xi, Hume shows that neither reports of miracles (revelation) nor natural theology (reason) provide support for the theistic God. Hume’s aim in the Enquiry was skeptical or â€Å"agnostic†. A century before T.H. Huxley coined the term, in the Enquiry Hume wrote the first agnostic manifesto (Mossner). Comparison and Contrast Hume’s conception of reason and the role it plays are widely disputed, but enough can be agreed upon to at this stage make the points, in particular, that a feeling- or passion-based reason does not allow non-instrumental freedom. Korsgaard notes that Hume discusses several varieties of reason, but says that â€Å"Hume seems to say simply that all reasoning that has a motivational influence must start from a passion, that being the only possible source of motivation, and must proceed to the means to satisfy that passion, that being the only operation of reason that transmits motivational force.† (1996, p.314).   Onora O’Neill argues that for Kant, there can be no such thing as a merely instrumental reasoner: â€Å"Not only does he deny that reason is or ought to be the slave of the passions; he actually insists that there are and can be no merely instrumental reasoners.† (1989, p.52) Before looking at the differences, it is as well to point out what Kant and Hume have in common with respect to reason and cause. Both are trying to grapple with a similar tension — between reason as the fount of what can be known with certainty as set against the metaphysical tangles into which it so often leads us (manifest, for example, in antinomies for Kant and discussions of the infinite divisibility of space and time for Hume). In the end, Kant resolves this tension with his account of the roles of the faculties, particularly in the construction of knowledge, with an a priori reason and a distinction between reason as acting regulatively with respect to cognition and constitutively in the moral realm. In this, he sees reason as an unconditionally active faculty. Hume, on the contrary, while acknowledging the tension, holds that ultimately it cannot be resolved, and that while we continue to debate issues such as whether or not reason has efficacy or dominance over the passions, we will to all intents and purposes remain in nature’s leading rein. And, for Hume, reason is passive, inert. For both thinkers, reason has a nature or tendency that drives our thinking with a certain inevitability. Kant, as we have seen, frequently refers to reason’s â€Å"nature,† while Hume describes it in terms of instinct. In the end, though, their differences far outweigh what they share. For Hume, reason is subordinate to experience in a way that for Kant it is not, indeed cannot be. And this is where the contrast gains particular relevance with respect to freedom. Simon Blackburn describes it this way: Reason can inform us of the facts of the case. †¦ And it can inform us which actions are likely to cause which upshots. But beyond that, it is silent. The imprudent person, or the person of unbridled lust, malevolence, or sloth is bad, of course. We may even call them unreasonable, but in a sense that Hume considers improper. For, more accurately, it is not their reason that is at fault, but their passions. (1998, p.239) Hume considers several species of reason, for example demonstrative versus probable reasoning, and it is difficult to describe and choose one that can be considered the Humean or â€Å"empiricist† counterpart to Kantian reason.   In addition to his view of reason in general, Hume is quite specific in ruling out the possibility that such reason can in any way ground morality, and so it clearly cannot ground the kind of freedom we find in Kant. Consider Kant’s famous confession, that it was Hume’s critique of causality that woke him from his â€Å"dogmatic slumber†. Now, it seems to me that the significance of this remark is completely lost if it is thought to license a reading of the Critique as a ‘refutation of Hume’, that the Analogies are attempting to restore the epistemic foundation for Newtonian physics that Hume’s critique of causality had undermined, etc. As Kant explicitly states, what was for him significant about Hume’s critique of causality is that it was the thin end of a very large wedge, and a gateway into a vastly greater problem. Kant, in short, begins his investigation by agreeing with Hume’s conclusions regarding causality, but then goes further, formulating the problem in its most general form and then determining its corollaries with absolute rigor. Kant attests to the legitimacy of Hume’s critique of causality – for him Hume has incontrovertibly demonstrated that an a priori concept cannot be derived from a series of particulars. Accepting Hume’s conclusion, Kant then raises the next question: what, then, is the origin of such concepts? The skeptical conclusions Hume draws are, Kant contends, the result of his having considered â€Å"not the whole of his problem, but a part, which by itself can give us no information†. In sum, rather than presenting an alternative program, we see that by his own admission Kant sought to elaborate on, to extend and probe in greater depth the same process of rational self-scrutiny that Hume had begun. His objective was not to refute but to develop Hume’s insight by grasping the entire problem of which Hume considered only a particular instance. What, then, is Hume’s problem considered in its most general form? Kant’s remarks indicate that, for him, the generalized version of Hume’s problem is the problem of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments – i.e., Kant’s generalization of Hume’s problem is the question of the possibility of a scientific metaphysics. Since Hume had shown that a priori concepts do not originate in experience, for Kant the resolution of the problem requires demonstrating the way in which all such concepts â€Å"spring from the pure understanding† While Hume had discovered a mere instance of the way in which in â€Å"judgments of a certain kind we go beyond our concept of the object† (Kant, p.792), we are required to examine what is common to the entire range of   such judgments.   Hume did not grasp the general problem since â€Å"he did not systematically survey all the kinds of a priori synthesis of understanding† (795). It is such a systematic survey, and an attempt to identify what they all have in common in order to consider the general phenomenon of our employing concepts that exceed the empirical content provided a posteriori as a single problem. Kant tells us is nothing other than â€Å"the working out of Hume’s problem in its greatest possible expansion†. The following definitions are submitted accordingly: a) Hume’s insight: Judgments about causality employ a concept that claims universal validity. But a concept derived from a series of particular instances cannot be universally valid. b) Kant’s generalization of Hume’s insight: We employ a range of concepts that claim universal validity. Each concept moreover presupposes an idea of universality as such.   No such concepts can originate from the particular instances perceived by the senses. Therefore, none of our ideas claiming universal validity, nor the idea of universality as such, can be derived from the particular instances perceived by the senses. Thus, for Kant, the general problem instantiated by Hume’s critique of causality is the following: c) Hume’s Point: No conception of universality, qua conception of universality, can be derived from empirical input in general. Our synthetic a priori judgments thus employ concepts whose content cannot be derived from experience. But there is more to the problem than this for Kant, since his question concerns not only the concepts that such judgments employ, but the very possibility of our making such judgments. Kant’s formulation of his central question thus covers not only the concepts that are employed in the judgments, but also the judgment considered as an act, as a cognitive process and achievement. The question of the very possibility of synthetic a priori judgments thus encompasses not only the question of how it is possible that we could make a judgment that makes so much as a mere claim to universal validity (given Hume’s Point), but also the problem of our cognitive capability to execute the act that employs such concepts. The reader should expect, as Kant states in the Introduction, a â€Å"critique of our power of pure reason itself† (27). Kant’s transcendental deductions are employed in an attempt to derive the necessary conditions of possibility our cognitive constitution must independently fulfill in order to account for the mere capacity to employ universal concepts in judgments that we in fact possess. Since, by Hume’s Point, universal concepts by definition cannot be derived from empirical content, we must attempt to discern what is contributed to empirical experience and judgment by the pure principles of subjectivity, considered in utter isolation from empirical input as such. References Blackburn, Simon (1998). Ruling Passions A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Guyer, Paul. (2000). Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hume, David. (1976). Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by LA. Selby-Bigge, revised by P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. Korsgaard, Christine M. (1996). Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mossner, Ernest Campbell. (1980). The Life of David Hume (2nd edition). Oxford: Clarendon Press,. Neiman, Susan. (1994) The Unity of Reason, New York: Oxford University Press. O’Neill, Onora. (1989). Constructions of Reason Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [1]   â€Å"Reason, considered as the faculty of a certain logical form of knowledge, is the faculty of inferring, i.e., judging mediately (by subsumption of the condition of a possible judgment under the condition of a given judgment.)† (386); â€Å"Every syllogism is a mode of deducing knowledge from a principle.† (357) [2]   â€Å"If the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is in any wise affected, is to be entitled sensibility, then the mind’s power of producing representations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge, should be called the understanding.† (75)