Kant And Skepticism
Is skepticism self-refuting?
Immanuel Kant argued that although human knowledge comes from experience, nonetheless knowledge must be grounded in some necessary truths. It is hard to see how the existence of logically and metaphysically necessary truths is enough to ground human knowledge. Following Kant’s reasoning, there are certain types of knowledge we have no access to. I will argue that Presuppositionalism is more plausible than Kant’s skepticism about certain types of knowledge, and that from the Presuppositionalist perspective skepticism is self-refuting. If we don’t assume that God exists, we find that we can’t reach certain conclusions and are left wanting.
Kant was pivotal in transforming philosophers thought about human knowledge, …show more content…
That is, an analytic sentence expresses a linguistic truth that does not require observation. For example, the sentence “all bachelors are unmarried” is often claimed to be an analytic truth, since meaning of the term “bachelor” contains the concept of being an unmarried male. In analytic judgements, nothing is added through the predicate to the concept of the subject making it elucidatory, however, synthetic judgement suggests that a predicate not thought of at all initially, and that could not be extracted by analysis can have expansive judgements. An example that Kant suggested was if one were to say that “all bodies are extended”, this would be an analytical judgement because we don’t have to go beyond the concept which one connects with the body. If one suggests, “all bodies are heavy”, now we have to go beyond the concept of strictly the body in order to evaluate the predicate, which is synthetic. This attempts to explain that empirical judgements, as such, are synthetic. An analytic judgement cannot by definition step outside its concept or parameters defined by the …show more content…
Metaphysics itself takes on characteristics of dogma, while its dogmatic use without critique lands us in groundless assertions, to which other assertions, equally plausible, can always be opposed, and hence is skepticism. By virtue of the above statements grounded in their procedure, and by the examples noted, defined, and categorized according to Kant himself skepticism becomes self-refuting. However, this is only the case, according to Kant’s definitions if metaphysics is looked upon as dogmatic. The bigger problem is that metaphysics as a science cannot deal with objects of reason, but of reason itself imposed upon it by its own
Immanuel Kant argued that although human knowledge comes from experience, nonetheless knowledge must be grounded in some necessary truths. It is hard to see how the existence of logically and metaphysically necessary truths is enough to ground human knowledge. Following Kant’s reasoning, there are certain types of knowledge we have no access to. I will argue that Presuppositionalism is more plausible than Kant’s skepticism about certain types of knowledge, and that from the Presuppositionalist perspective skepticism is self-refuting. If we don’t assume that God exists, we find that we can’t reach certain conclusions and are left wanting.
Kant was pivotal in transforming philosophers thought about human knowledge, …show more content…
That is, an analytic sentence expresses a linguistic truth that does not require observation. For example, the sentence “all bachelors are unmarried” is often claimed to be an analytic truth, since meaning of the term “bachelor” contains the concept of being an unmarried male. In analytic judgements, nothing is added through the predicate to the concept of the subject making it elucidatory, however, synthetic judgement suggests that a predicate not thought of at all initially, and that could not be extracted by analysis can have expansive judgements. An example that Kant suggested was if one were to say that “all bodies are extended”, this would be an analytical judgement because we don’t have to go beyond the concept which one connects with the body. If one suggests, “all bodies are heavy”, now we have to go beyond the concept of strictly the body in order to evaluate the predicate, which is synthetic. This attempts to explain that empirical judgements, as such, are synthetic. An analytic judgement cannot by definition step outside its concept or parameters defined by the …show more content…
Metaphysics itself takes on characteristics of dogma, while its dogmatic use without critique lands us in groundless assertions, to which other assertions, equally plausible, can always be opposed, and hence is skepticism. By virtue of the above statements grounded in their procedure, and by the examples noted, defined, and categorized according to Kant himself skepticism becomes self-refuting. However, this is only the case, according to Kant’s definitions if metaphysics is looked upon as dogmatic. The bigger problem is that metaphysics as a science cannot deal with objects of reason, but of reason itself imposed upon it by its own