Questions on Kant: Synthetic A Priori Judgments

1. How does Kant's Copernican revolution in metaphysics allow for the possibility of a priori knowledge of objects?

2. What does Kant mean by saying that the intuition of an object (i.e., an object as "given to me") can be called knowledge only if it conforms to our concepts? What is the relation of intuitions and concepts?

3. What are the two parts of (or ways of thinking about) metaphysics? And how does distinguishing them show that the empirical knowledge of things in themselves (i.e., as "unconditioned") is a contradiction?

4. What is the difference between objects as appearances and as things in themselves? And why does Kant later say that, even though we cannot know objects as things in themselves, we must be able to think them as things in themselves?

5. How does Kant's Critique reveal the negative character of his second way of thinking about metaphysics (in terms of speculative reason) but open up the possibility of a positive use of reason in a practical (moral) sense?

6. How does Kant use the distinction between things as appearances and as they are in themselves to address the issue of the freedom of the soul? And why is being able to think or assume freedom essential for morality?

7. What does Kant mean by saying that speculative reason must be deprived of its dogmatic pretensions to transcendent insight? and how does this denial of knowledge make room for faith?

8. Why does Kant claim that all knowledge begins with experience but does not arise out of experience?

9. How is "all bodies are extended" an analytic judgment, and "all bodies are heavy" a synthetic judgment? Is "all events have causes" an analytic or synthetic judgment; why?

10. Why are propositions in arithmetic ("7+5=12"), geometry ("the shortest distance between two points is a straight line"), and physics ("the total quantity of matter remains constant") synthetic? What does it mean to refer to these judgments as apodeictic?

11. Why does the success or failure of metaphysics depend on explaining how synthetic a priori propositions are possible? And how is this enterprise linked to explaining how pure mathematics and pure science are possible?

12. What is the difference between metaphysics as natural disposition and metaphysics as science?