Ok, so, someone want to explain this to me? No? Because it's impossible? Oh, ok, thanks for letting me know... I only have to read 70 pages of this by Monday. No worries.
Kant gives what he calls a 'transcendental exposition' of both space and time. 'By a transcendental exposition I understand the explanation of a conception as a principle from which the possibility of other synthetic a priori cognitions can be discerned. For this purpose it is required, first that such cognitions do really flow from the given conception, and secondly that these cognitions are possible only on the presupposition of a given way of explaining this conception. In his transcendental exposition of time Kant does not tell us very much beyond the facts, first that the concept of change, and with it the concept of motion (considered as change of place), is possible only in and through the representation of time, and secondly that we cannot explain the synthetic a priori cognition exhibited in the general doctrine of motion except on the presupposition that time is an a priori intuition. When treating of space, however, he speaks at some length of mathematics, in particular of geometry. And his general thesis is that the possibility of mathematical knowledge, which is synthetic a priori in character, can be explained only on the theory that space and time are pure a priori intuitions.
Space and time are instinctive, not learned.
ReplyDeleteJason