Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Essay Questions

What are the three faculties of the human mind, and what role do they each play in creating knowledge?

The three faculties are sensory intuition, the understanding, and Reason. Sensory intuition provides us with sensory information about the world; it also provides us with the pure intuitions of space and time, from which mathematics is derived. The understanding regulates and combines sensory impressions to form objective judgments, using pure concepts. Reason regulates the two and attempts to add knowledge of a purely speculative kind.

Explain how mathematics and the natural sciences are possible according to Kant.

Mathematics is derived from the pure intuitions of the senses, space and time. These are the forms that the mind imposes on our sensory impressions to order them. If you take away every sensory detail you can imagine, you will still have space and time. Geometry is a pure representation of space, and arithmetic is a pure representation of changes to quantity over time. The natural sciences, in their turn, derive from the pure concepts of the understanding. The pure concepts of the understanding are ways of arranging sensory impressions so as to turn them into objectively valid judgments. The concept of causality, without which natural science would not be possible, originates in the mind. Both mathematics and natural sciences are therefore derived from the empirical world, as well as the structures of the mind.

What is Kant’s “Copernican turn,” and how, in his view, does it distinguish him from philosophers before him?

The Copernican turn is Kant’s way of describing his focus on the structures and abilities of the mind, instead of on the world itself—just as Copernicus centered things on the sun, rather than the earth. Kant believes that philosophical questions about the real and true nature of things has led philosophy into one blind alley after another. The way out of these alleys is to realize that things as we experience them are formed by the mind; we can then know things about the mind itself. This holds true for space and time, which are forms of perception; causality, which cannot be proven to exist in the world, but is rather a concept of the understanding; and for various speculations about the existence of God and the immortal soul, all of which are revealed as unsolvable once we embrace the fact that we can only know objects that are given in experience.

How does metaphysics differ from mathematics and the natural sciences?

The crucial difference between metaphysics and mathematics and the natural sciences is that the latter are derived from experience. Their concepts are taken from experience—quantities, shapes—and they can be verified by experience. Mathematics and the natural sciences have limits, in that there are realms of the world they cannot describe, but within them, there are no questions that cannot be answered. Metaphysics, on the other hand, takes all of its concepts from reason, so they cannot be verified by experience. Consequently, metaphysics is constantly led into error. Furthermore, metaphysics is bounded, in that there are questions it would like to answer, but cannot. The proper use of metaphysics, therefore, is to critique itself; unlike mathematics and physics, it is the science of what we cannot know.

What is “critique,” and in what way does it describe the methodology and the structure of the Prolegomena?

Critique is the use of Reason to examine Reason itself. Because the Ideas of Reason are not derived from experience, and so cannot be verified, Reason is constantly asking questions that cannot be answered: like whether God exists, whether the world is infinite or finite, whether we have immortal souls, and so on. The proper use of Reason is then to examine itself, to check these concepts for internal contradictions, as Kant does in the “antinomies” of the Third Part, where he explains why an equally valid argument can be presented for and against each Idea. A full critique consists of examining concepts and Ideas and their relation to each of the individual faculties. The three-part structure of the Prolegomena is therefore a critique of metaphysics.