a posteriori
a judgment from experience, literally “after [experience]”.
a priori
a judgment from the intellect alone, literally, “before [experience].”
aesthetic
having to do with the senses.
analytic
a kind of judgment in which the subject and the predicate are identical (e.g., all bachelors are unmarried.)
appearance
something we perceive through experience, synonymous with perception and intuition.
apodictic
beyond dispute.
architectonic
the interior structure of reason and thought, which Kant uses to organize his philosophical system.
categories
general concepts that are applied to sensory impressions to turn them into objective judgments. The four main categories are quantity, quality, relation, and modality.
conscience
consciousness [Note: in the Prolegomena, conscience is used interchangeably with consciousness; in Kant’s moral philosophy, conscience is the faculty of the mind that enforces the moral law]
critical
the use of Reason to examine the structures of the mind and the way that the mind produces knowledge.
disposition
the attitude that a person has towards an object, i.e., to find it pleasing, to find it hot, etc.
empirical
information that comes exclusively from the senses.
experience
the combination of sensation and thought into objective, communicable judgments
faculty
a fundamental power of the human mind to perform a rational function
form
a precondition for something having the appearance or structure that it does.
formal
the aspect of something that is based on the use of the intellect.
hypothetical
a combination of analytic and a posteriori knowledge. “If X is Y, then A is B.”
Ideas
special concepts produced by the mind that point beyond experience to a transcendent realm, and that cannot be either confirmed or disproved by rational thought.
imagination
the faculty that forms all of the sensory information we experience into coherent concept—for example, combining hardness, brownness, and having four legs into the concept “table.”
intuition
something given through the senses; also the name of the faculty of sensory perception itself.
judgment
the use of the mind to make knowledge by attaching a predicate to a subject, e.g. this rose is red.
knowledge
statements that are valid and true.
maxim
a principle used to guide a person’s actions.
metaphysics
a form of philosophy that tries to gain knowledge of things that cannot be proven or disproven by experience.
noumenon
a transcendent object, something that cannot be experienced—a.k.a. "The thing in itself."
object
a general word for a ‘thing’ that is capable of being known, as distinguished from the thing in itself.
objective
a judgment that is made with the use of the understanding, and is therefore valid for all rational subjects.
phenomenon
an object of knowledge that is given in the senses and that therefore can be known, unlike the noumenon.
pure
uninfluenced by sensory experience, as in a pure concept or idea
rational
grounded in the faculty of reason, rather than in the senses.
Reason
the faculty of the mind that seeks to go beyond sensibility, and that regulates both itself and the other faculties.
regulative
providing guidelines for legitimate use.
representation
objects as they exist in the mind, either as intuitions, concepts, or Ideas of reason.
sensibility
the faculty that perceives objects passively, through the senses. Also called intuition. Divided into outer sense (of the world) and inner sense (of psychological self-observation).
speculative
the attempt to make statements about something beyond experience.
subject
the mind, or a rational person capable of having knowledge.
intelligible
knowable by the mind without sensory information.
