Chapter Three

SYNTHETIC A PRIORI JUDGMENTS

From a philosophical point of view, the concept of synthetic a priori

judgment may be considered, according to Kant, as the most important
of all kinds of propositions. He considered himself the first philosopher
to introduce this concept.103
Kant says in the Introduction that the whole problem which the
Critique of Pure Reason is devoted to solving can be epitomized in the
question: How are a priori synthetic judgments possible. 104 He further
states: "We shall understand by a priori knowledge, not knowledge
which is independent of this or that experience, but knowledge
absolutely independent of all experience." 105 Judgments which are

Kant acknowledges that some of his predecessors, the most significant

of these being Locke, Leibniz and Crusius came close to discovering the
distinction between synthetic a priori and analytic judgments. However, he
consistently maintained his articulation of this distinction as quite original.
He claimed that prior to the Critique "this manner of considering judgment
has never been properly conceived." The Kant-Eberhard Controversy, ed.
and trans., Henry E. Allison, Baltimore and London, John Hopkins
University Press, 1973, p. 154.
104
There is an ongoing debate on the originality and significance of
Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgment. See especially
John Pollock, Knowledge and Justification (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1974), chapter 10; R. G. Swinburne, "Analyticity, Necessary and A
Priority," Mind 84 (1975) : 2-43; Edward Eerwin, "Are the Notions A Priori
Truth and Necessary Truth Extensionally Equivalent?" Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 3 (1974) : Philip Kitcher, "A priori Knowledge," The
Philosophical Review 84 (1980) : 3-23; Saul Kripke, "Identity and
Necessity," in Identity and Individualism, ed. Milton K. Munitz (New York,
1971)), pp. 135-64. For a comprehensive discussion of the analytic/synthetic
distinction, see Analyticity: Selected Readings, ed. with an introduction by
James F. Harris, Jr., and Richard H. Severens (Chicago: Quadrangle Books),
1970.

'Critique of Pure Reason, A B 2-3, p. 43.

42 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

absolutely a priori are marked by an absolute necessity and strict

universality,106 and since these two features are inseparable, either alone
will serve to identify such a judgment. Necessity and strict universality
are thus sure criteria of a priori knowledge, and are inseparable from
one another.107
According to Kant, our ideas a priori are made by ourselves. The
mental act by which they are made is an example of what Kant calls
synthesis. Thus we are introduced into the Kantian theoretical
philosophy by the statement that both mathematics and physics rest on
synthetic judgments a priori. A priori is a predicate which Kant applies
to all kinds of ideas and mental acts, like intuitions, concepts and
judgments. He defines a cognition to be a priori if it takes place
independently of all experience.108
There are two connected criteria for a cognition (or knowledge) a
priori: Experience teaches us facts but not necessities. A judgment
which is thought in strict universality is a judgment a priori}09 For
Kant, a priori ideas are not innate, they are made. However, our ability
to make them is innate. Ideas a priori are not earlier in time than ideas
a posteriori, but they are earlier in validity. Philosophical reflection
shows them to be preconditions for the truth of judgments a posteriori.
It is only because objects of experience must conform to the constitution
of our minds that we can have the sort of a priori knowledge of the

One persistent criterion of knowledge which is affirmed throughout the

Critique of Pure Reason is 'universality.' The only assertions, or propositions
which qualify as knowledge, according to Kant, are always the case, or true
without qualification. As such, they have a necessity which Kant accounts for
in the Critique. Kant insists that absolute universality is a condition for science
and a feature of a priori sources of knowledge. The premise with which Kant
begins his analysis of experience is that experiences are subject to conditions a
priori to which their synthesis must always conform. In other words, there is
one mind, and since its structure is a priori, there is one structure which is
common to every instance of knowledge.
xm
Critique ofPure Reason, B 4, p. 44.
108
Ibid., B 3 p. 43.
109
Ibid. B 3-4, pp. 43-44. Strict universality means no exception to the
rule is allowed.
 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 43

nature of experience which is demonstrated in outline in the Critique

itself.

Experience tells us, indeed, what is, but not that it must necessarily be
so, and not otherwise. It therefore gives us no true universality. . . .
First, then, if we have a proposition which is being thought as
necessary, it is an a priori judgment, and if, besides, it is not derived
from any proposition except one which also has the validity of a
necessary judgment, it is an absolutely a priori judgment.110

This passage makes two related points. First, the necessity of

genuine a priori judgments is never merely relative to other judgments
not themselves necessary; rather, it must be absolute or intrinsic. For
example, the necessity of judgments like 7 + 5 = 12 is in no way
dependent on contingent judgments, but can and must be known in
complete independence of all experience. In other words, a judgment is
absolutely necessary if it can and must be known with absolutely no
recourse to particular experience. One corollary of this is that necessary
truths can never be empirically disconfirmed. Therefore, necessity and
strict universality, says Kant, are the sure criteria of a priori knowledge.
The context clearly implies that necessity and universality are entailed
by a priority as well as entailing it.
Kant also distinguishes between logical necessity and the necessity
which is a criterion for a priority-factual or material necessity. The
former, Kant calls subjective necessity, and the latter, objective
necessity. Objective necessity is that which is concerned with the
determination or knowledge of objects, whereas subjective necessity is
that which is felt or thought or realized by the subject. Therefore, the
necessity felt by us in admitting the truth of a conclusion once we admit
the truth of the premises is a subjective necessity. For instance, if we
are to remain rational, we must regard ourselves as subject to the
principle of contradiction.

'Ibid., A 2/B 2, pp. 42-43.

44 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

Admitting the premises and rejecting the conclusion violate this

principle. The example given above (7 + 5 = 12)111 is demonstration of
material necessity. Material necessity is the opposite of contingency,
and Kant contrasts a priori judgments of mathematics and physics with
contingent judgments of perception, and the above mathematical
example is not contingent. Had it been a contingent proposition, its
falsehood would be possible.
Kant held that the question of the possibility of synthetic a priori
judgment emerges as the central problem of metaphysics as soon as the
distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments is properly drawn.
He thus points to the failure of past philosophers to recognize this
problem as evidence of their failure to make the distinction. No such
claim, however, is made for the distinction between a priori and a
posteriori knowledge. The key issue between the a priori and a
posteriori judgments is the role of experience in their legitimization. A
priori judgments are grounded independently of experience, while a
posteriori judgments are grounded by means of an appeal to experience.
Following Leibniz,112 Kant regards necessity and universality as the
criteria for the a priori. His fundamental assumption is that the truth

11
'For an interesting discussion of Kant's claim that arithmetical
propositions are synthetic, see Hector Neri Castaneda's article "7 + 5 = 12 as a
Synthetic Proposition," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 21
(September 1960-June 1961): 141-58.
112
However, Kant differs from Leibniz in his main assumptions. For
Leibniz and many other Cartesians, the model for knowing is seeing. "The
criterion of truth is nothing other than vision" (Leibniz, Philosophical Schriften
Hildershein [Olms, 1960], 4:328). Leibniz holds that our mind possesses
dispositions to produce ideas which can be the genuine essence of things. This
correspondence is guaranteed by the principle of "Pre-established Harmony."
Leibniz' detailed theory of conceptual analysis is developed from Descartes'
doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, and is found in the Nouveau Essais and in
Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas. Leibniz says that: "When a
concept is very complex, we certainly cannot think simultaneously of all the
concepts which compose it. But when this is possible, or at least insofar as it is
possible, I call the knowledge intuitive. There is no other knowledge than
intuitive of distinct primitive concept, while for the most part we have only
symbolic knowledge of composites. This already shows that we do not perceive
the ideas of those things which we know distinctly except insofar as we use
intuitive thought" (Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, Vol. 1, trans, and
ed. Leroy E. Loemaker [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956], p. 450).
 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 45

value of judgments which lay claim to universality and necessity cannot

be grounded empirically but transcendentally, that is, it must be
explicated by a logic of the activity of reason.
In another example of the analytic/synthetic distinction, Kant draws
a contrast between the judgment, all bodies are extended, and the
judgment, all bodies have weight. Describing the first as analytic, and
the second as synthetic, he says of the first:

That a body is extended is a proposition that holds a priori and is

not empirical. For, before appealing to experience, I have already
in the concept of body all the conditions required for my judgment.
I have only to extract from it, in accordance with the principle of
contradiction, the required predicate, and in so doing can at the
same time become conscious of the necessity of the judgment.113

The truth value of analytic judgments is determined by means of an

analysis of the constituent marks of a given concept. This is true even
when the concept is empirical. The real question is whether it is
likewise possible for synthetic judgments to have non-empirical
grounds. Since they are synthetic, they cannot have a purely conceptual
or logical grounding; since they are known a priori, they cannot be
grounded in experience. The problem of the synthetic a priori is, there-
fore, that of explaining how it is possible to extend one's knowledge

Kant admits conceptual analysis, yet he is opposed to Leibniz in fundamental

respects. Kant rejects the doctrines of pre-established harmony and innate
ideas. Kant also rejects intellectual intuition and puts in its place the notion of
judging. He realized that the rejection of intellectual intuition and the knowing
as seeing model constituted a major decision for his philosophy. In his late
essay, On a Newly Elevated Elegant Style in Philosophy, he named Plato as the
source of all philosophy which rests on direct insight and intellectual intuition.
Against this sort of philosophy, he allies himself with Aristotle on the side of
real intellectual work, not delusive shortcuts. In Kant's thinking, the only way
in which one could make sense of insight into things in themselves would be to
claim a mystical access to God as the creator of all things.
xn
Critique ofPure Reason, B 11-12, p. 49.
46 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

beyond a given concept independently of any experience of the object

thought through that concept.1 H
Whether synthetic judgments can be made or become analytic has
long been a controversial issue, and there have been many discussions
of the distinction upon which it turns. One of the best treatments of the
problem of analytic judgment, as it relates to Kant, is Beck's "Can
Kant's Synthetic Judgment be Made Analytic?"" 5 Beck distinguishes
between a logical and a phenomenological criterion of analytic
judgment. The logical one is that the judgment follows from the
principle of contradiction, whereas "the phenomenological criterion is
the issue of an inspection of what is found introspectively to be really
thought in the concept of the subject though we have seen that what is
'really thought' is said to be a definition."116

In Kant's theory, processes of pure intuition are supposed to yield a

priori mathematical knowledge. For example, we are supposed to gain a priori
mathematical knowledge of the elementarily of triangle by using our grasp of
the concept of triangle. It should be noted that Hume called attention to the fact
that a relation of ideas differs in principle from a relation of matters of fact.
Since for Hume knowledge must be based upon necessary connections, the only
field in which the mind can possibly attain certainty is in the field of the relation
of ideas. Since relations of matters of fact lack this character of necessity, our
knowledge pertaining to this field of experience, is deprived of all grounds for a
claim to certainty.
The problem which Hume raises here is simply that concerning the
objective validity of the conceptual order of the mind. If one desires to defend a
claim to certainty in knowledge pertaining to matters of fact, it is incumbent
upon him or her to show how the mind can impose its concepts upon matters of
fact or the 'given of experience' in such a manner as to guarantee that conceptual
necessity will govern the given. He must show how the relation between the
ideas of the mind and matters of fact can be so interpreted as to furnish a solid
ground on the basis of which the necessity which admittedly holds for relation
of ideas can be guaranteed to hold in the mind's conceptual dealings with
matters of fact. This is essentially the problem of the a priori. Kant attempted
to solve Hume's problem by trying to show how, at least, in the realm of mathe-
matics and the exact sciences, synthetic propositions a priori are
possible.

U5
Lewis White Beck, "Can Kant's Synthetic Judgments Be Made
Analytic?" in Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Paul Wolff
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1967), pp. 3-22.

'Ibid., pp. 8-9.

 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 47

Beck's central aim is to project the view that Kant's

analytic/synthetic distinction among judgments is neither arbitrary nor
variable. In particular, he wants to answer the charge that synthetic
judgments can evolve into analytic judgments through changes in their
subject concepts. Such an answer will do much, he feels, to undermine
the conventionalist thesis that how we divide judgments into analytic
and synthetic is a matter of arbitrary decision.
Kant regards his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgment
as constituting the first step forward in metaphysics since the time of
Leibniz and Wolff. Its importance lay in the fact that it permitted him to
ask, for the first time, how there can be synthetic a priori judgments. As
indicated already, mathematics provided Kant with the most obvious
case of synthetic a priori knowledge,117 and it seems reasonable,
therefore, that any account of analytic judgments which claims
faithfulness to Kant should preserve his finding that mathematical
judgments are synthetic.
The apriority of mathematics is also demonstrated by its constructive
method.

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from

concept; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason
from the construction of concepts. To construct a concept means to
exhibit a priori the intuition which corresponds to the concept. For
the construction of a concept we therefore need a non-empirical
intuition. The latter must, as intuition, be a single object, and yet non
the less, as the construction of a concept (a universal representation),
it must in its representation express universal validity for all possible
intuitions which fall under the same concept. Thus I construct a
triangle by representing the object which corresponds to this concept
either by imagination alone, in pure intuition, or in accordance
therewith also on paper, in empirical intuition - - in both cases
completely a priori, without having borrowed the pattern from
experience.118

nl
Critique ofPure Reason, B 14-17.
48 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

Constructive method is a means of determining whether an object

corresponds to a concept: for example, the concept of a two-sided
enclosed figure and what facts may be true about such concepts.
The important element that the constructive method introduces into
mathematics is a concept that arises as a function of the self-motivated
thinking activity of the mathematician which he brings to space and time
for the construction of an object so that he can determine whether it has
a reference, and, if so, what its properties are. Thus Kant holds that in
properly mathematical activity men play an active role as self-motivated
formulators of the concepts and propositions to be constructed. This
theory of the self-formulated a priori concept and proposition in
geometry provides an element over which men have complete control
and the content of which they therefore can be certain.
Kant claims119 that the proposition that all bodies are impenetrable is
analytic, whereas the proposition that all bodies have weight is
synthetic. However, many philosophers have found it difficult to
distinguish between the two propositions, while others have claimed that
the reason for the difficulty is that, in the final analysis, there is really no
difference to be grasped.
Thus, as early as in the late nineteenth century, Edward Caird said
that "all judgments are synthetic in the making and analytic when
made."120 Both Jaakko Hintikka121 and Erick Stenius122 agree that some
mathematical truths and numerical truths are synthetic in some sense,
and both defend Kant's intuitions on this point. However, they also
agree that there is also a sense in which these truths are analytic.
Norman Kemp Smith argues that:

. . .there is little difficulty in detecting the synthetic character of the

proposition, all bodies are heavy. Yet the reader has been first

uy
Ibid., B 12.
120
Edward Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, (Glasgow, 1889), p.
269.
121
Jaakko Hintikka, "Are Logical Truths Analytic?" Philosophical Review
74(1965): 178-203.
I22
Erick Stenius, "Are True Numerical Statements Analytic or Synthetic?"
Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 357-72.
 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 49

required to admit the analytic character of the proposition: all bodies

are extended. The two propositions are really identical in character.
Neither can be recognized as true save in terms of a comprehensive
theory of physical existence.123

If the Critique was written, as Kant claimed, to explain the possibility of

synthetic and a priori judgments, then it is possible to see why, for
many people today, this provides an insurmountable barrier to their
introduction to the Critique, since in their opinion there are no synthetic
and a priori judgments. However, some of the difficulties can be
alleviated if, instead of asking how are synthetic a priori propositions
possible, one would ask what are the necessary conditions of a possible
experience. In an attempt to answer this question, we must now turn to
two of the most important concepts in Kant's critical philosophy.

SPACE AND TIME

Kant's major positive achievement in metaphysics can be seen as

being his attempt to articulate the general structure of any experience
which we could make truly intelligible to ourselves. Thus, the Critique
of Pure Reason is meant to be account of what reason can and cannot
attempt in the way of a priori metaphysical speculation. To do this,
Kant must first develop his own positive account of knowledge. He
must establish, for example, that we can only make knowledge-claims
about spatio-temporal objects which obey causal laws, and to do this, he
must discuss specific problems about space and causality.
Thus, one of the most important doctrines of the Transcendental
Aesthetic is that our notion of space and time is not derived from
experience but is logically prior to it. Objects of experience are
necessarily spatial and temporal. We would not perceive objects at all
unless they had spatial and temporal positions.
"Space and Time, taken together, are the pure forms of all sensible
intuition124 which give an essential basic structure to our experience.

123
Norman Kemp Smith, Contemporary to Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1930), pp. 38-39.
1M
Critique of Pure Reason, A 39/B 56, p. 80.
50 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

For by putting it this way, Kant avoids making the explicit claim that
objects in themselves are ideal, for, if he were to make this claim, his
theory would be in serious difficulty. For were objects in themselves
our ideas only, how could empirical objects be their appearance and be
real. However, space is a necessary a priori representation which
"concerns only the pure form of intuition"125; in other words, our
perception of the object, around us must be spatial and temporal. Kant
said:

What we have meant to say is that all our intuition is nothing but the
representation of appearance; that the things we intuit are not in
themselves what we intuit them as being, nor their relations so
constituted in themselves as they appear to us, and that if the subject,
or even only the subjective constitutions of the senses in general, be
removed, the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in
space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish.126

Kant is stating explicitly here that the subject relates to the objective
world through space and time. But the significant point is that space
and time are properties of man and not of the objective world. Man is
limited to his space/time horizon. So Kant claims that it is "solely from
the human stand-point that we can speak of space, of extended things
etc."127 We do not know what objects may be in themselves, apart from
all this receptivity of our sensibility. We know them only as they
conform to our own mode of perceiving, a mode which is shared by all
human beings.
It is there that Kant affirms the transcendental ideality of space as
well as the compatibility of this ideality with its empirical reality.
Hence the Transcendental ideality of space and time is affirmed by Kant
on the grounds that they function as a priori conditions of human
sensibility, that is as subjective conditions in terms of which alone the
human mind is capable of receiving the data for thought or experience.
He terms these conditions forms of sensibility. Thus, in space and time

'Ibid.,A31/B46,p.74.

'Ibid., A 42/B 59, p. 82.

'Ibid., A 26/B 42, p. 71.

 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 51

empirical objects are ideal in the same sense because they cannot be
experienced or described independently of these sensible conditions.
In the transcendental sense, then, being external to the mind means
being independent of sensibility and its conditions. A transcendentally
real object is thus, by definition, a non-sensible object or noumenon.
This would be a noumenon "in the negative sense" by which Kant
means simply the concept of a thing in so far as it is not an object of our
sensible intuition.128
Space and time are the same for all of us while feelings and taste
vary from person to person. That "there can be no more than one space
and there can be no more than one time" 129 are integral parts of Kant's
position. They are necessary conditions for describing space and time
as forms of the sensible world. By this is meant that space and time will

128
Ibid., B 307, p. 268. For Kant, any attempt to argue towards the
material conditions of experience in isolation from the formal conditions of
intuition is doomed to failure from the very start. If we abstract from intuition
we have literally nothing left over. The possibility of a noumenon of some type
of independent object is canceled out by abstraction from sensible conditions.
Kant makes it quite clear at the end of the analytic that the noumenon conceived
of as the object of a non sensible intuition is something of which we have
neither intuition nor concepts, but is a problem unavoidably bound up with the
limitation of our sensibility. A 287/B 344, p. 293.

129
Recently it has been argued that there are conceivable situations in
which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to two
different entirely disconnected spaces or times. From this, it follows, that there
is no necessity in the claim that all our experiences must be conceived as
belonging together in one space or time. Anthony Quinton in a paper entitled
("Space and Time" Philosophy 37 1962, p. 130-74) first put forward this
argument. Quinton tried to give an example of a set of possible experiences
which could not plausibly be taken to occur within a unified space. However,
he argued that a similar case could not be made for discrete times. Attempts
were later made by R. G. Swineburne (Times Analysis Vol 25, 1964, pp.
185-91, and ("Conditions for Bitemporality" Analysis 26, 1965, pp. 47-50) and
Martin Hollis ("Times and Spaces" Mind (1967), pp. 524-36) to prove the case
for time as well, Hollis arguing that the very postulation of discrete spaces
entailed that of discrete times. However, L. Falkenstein argues most
convincingly that Kant's idea of space and time can withstand the criticisms of
Quinton and Swinburne. F. Felkenstein, "Space and Time : A Kantian
Response," Idealistic Studies Vol. xvi, No. 1, Jan 1986, pp. 1-11.
52 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

provide a necessary system of relations in which it is possible that every

particular should be located and, through this location, obtain a relation
to every other particular.130
Any particular spatial location is a part of space and all parts of
space are spatially related to one another. Any particular time is part of
time, and all parts of time are temporally related one to another. Kant
held that we have no choice but so to think, for, he argued, it can be
established a priori that space and time are unities.
It would appear that the ideas of space and time have a peculiar
status for Kant. He argues that space and time are intuitions and not
concepts. They are also a priori and hence pure rather than empirical.
They belong to the pure forms of intuitions rather than its matter, and it
is this that explains how they can be known a priori. The detailed
content of intuition is something given which can only come to light in
experience.
Once Kant draws his distinction between concepts and intuitions, it
was easy for him to see what his predecessors appear to have missed,
that knowledge of objects can only consist in the establishment of some
connection between concepts and intuitions. It could never consist
merely in the possession of some clear and distinct conception, nor
could it consist merely in the obtaining of empirical intuitions. And this
insight, it has been argued, allowed Kant to anticipate some important
anti-Cartesian propositions. It allowed him to see, for example, that
there is nothing epistemologically privileged about the mental. For if
something which we experience is something to be known only insofar
as we think it, or apply some concept to it, then, mental state is itself

130
P. F. Strawson in his book Individuals (London : Methuen, 1959)
identifies the space time structure as the framework for actual thought about
particulars. He makes the following claims for the spatio-temporal system in
our actual thought about particulars: (1) The System is unique and unified.
There are only one space and one time and every element in space and time is
being related to every other both spatially and temporally, p. 31. (2) It is not a
contingent matter, relatively to our actual conceptual system, that empirical
reality forms such a structure, rather, it is a condition of the reality of any
supposed empirical thing or event that can be located in the structure (p.29). (3)
The structure is of use to us in the identification of particulars which enables us
to relate all particulars which belong to it, ourselves; for we ourselves not only
have a place in the scheme, but know this place (p. 30).
 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 53

never known simply by virtue of being a mental state which we have

experienced.131
As Kant explains his concept of intuition, it would seem that a
representation must satisfy two conditions in order to be an intuition: it
must be singular and it must relate immediately to its object. Charles
Parson has referred to these as singularity conditions and the immediacy
conditions and he doubts that within Kant's philosophy they are one and
the same thing.132 Jaakko Hintikka, on the contrary, maintains that, for
Kant, the immediacy condition is only the singularity condition stated in
another way, so that "Kant's notion of intuition is not very far from what
could be called a singular term."133 Both Parsons and Hintikka focus
their attention primarily on Kant's philosophy of mathematics and
Parsons holds that Hintikka's theory really stands or falls on the
interpretation of the role of intuition in mathematics.134

,3i
Richard Rorty, "Strawson's Objectivity Argument," The Review of
Metaphysics, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Dec. 1970, p. 239.
132
Charles Parsons, "Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic," Philosophy,
Science and Methods, eds. S. Morgenbesser, P. Suppes, M. White (New York:
St. Martins Press, 1969), pp. 568-94.
133
Jaakko Hintikka, "On Kant's Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)," The
First Critique: Reflection on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, ed. T. Penelhum,
T. Macintosh (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1969), pp. 38-53.
134
C. Parsons, "Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic," Philosophy Science and
Methods, p. 571. Bertrand Russell in his 1901 essay, "Mathematics and the
Metaphysicians," says, "The proof that all pure mathematics, including
geometry is nothing but formal logic, is a fatal blow to the Kantian philosophy.
Kant rightly perceiving that Euclid's propositions could not be deduced from
Euclid's axioms without the help of the figures, invented a theory of knowledge
to account for this fact and it accounted so successfully that when the fact is
shown to be a mere defect in Euclid, and not in the result of the nature of
geometrical reasoning Kant's theory also has to be abandoned. The whole
doctrine of a priori intuitions, by which Kant explained the possibility of pure
mathematics, is wholly inapplicable to mathematics, in the present form." B.
Russell, "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians" in Mysticism and Logic and
Other Essays, 3rd ed. (London, 1970), p. 74. Russell believes that Kant's theory
of experience is a theory devised to justify Euclid's geometry and that it fails to
accomplish this. Russell thinks that the concept of Kant's a priori intuitions is
only possible on the assumption that Euclid's geometry is valid, so that the
54 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

For Kant, Space and Time are forms of our sensibility and, as such,
are known to us in intuition independently of all objects of experience.
The objects, however, must conform to them, for otherwise we cannot
know them. Since space, for example, is three dimensional, all objects
conforming to the condition of space must also be three dimensional.
This we know a priori, that is, prior to any encounter with objects. The
same is true with respect to the specific configuration of space - - such
as triangles, squares, circles, etc. The theorems pertaining to them must
be valid also for all empirical objects we know, or even come to know
under the form of space.
But the form of intuition may be ready in the mind and thus be such
that we can know it independently of experience. Kant claims that we
have knowledge of the essential properties of space and time, and
argues on this basis that they belong to the form of intuition, and
therefore to the subjective constitution of our mind. For:

Space does not represent any property of things in themselves, nor

does it represent them in their relation to one another. Space is
nothing but the form of all appearances of outer sense. It is the
subjective condition of all sensibility, under which alone outer
intuition is possible for us.135

An immediate difficulty about this whole question is whether Kant is

discussing space and time, or the idea of space and time. For Kant, the
idea that all objects exist in space is not a proposition whose truth is
ascertained by observation. It is not a case that one has arrived at the
proposition by generalization from observed cases, i.e., ascertained that
all objects observed so far are in space and then inferred that apparently
all objects are. But as is already emphasized, it is something which one
knows independently of experience. To use Kant's terminology, it is not
a proposition a posteriori but a proposition a priori. It is not an object
of experience, as are the objects which exist in space; on the contrary,

untenabiiity of the latter indirectly proves the impossibility of justifying the

former. In another essay, Russell contends that, although we cannot refute the
Kantian theory of an a priori intuition, we can remove its grounds one by one
through an analysis of the problem. B. Russell, "On Scientific Method in
Philosophy," in Metaphysics and Logic and Other Essays, p. 90.

Ibid., A 26/B 42, p. 71.

 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 55

space and time are necessary conditions of all experience. The

objective reality of a concept for the purpose of knowledge does not
mean that the object designated by the concept must actually be given,
that is, must be real, but rather, that the objects designated by it must be
possible in accordance with conditions of all experience.
What is true of space is also true of time. That changes and events
take place are not things one learns through observation. We do not
merely observe that a process occurs in time, but time must be
presupposed for the observation of a process. Time therefore, just as
space, is an a priori form of intuition. It is a manifestation of
subject-unity which enables the organizing subject of experience to
differentiate between himself and the world around him.
Kant draws an important conclusion based upon the thesis that we
are capable of intuitions a priori with respect to space and time. The
conclusion which is part of his transcendental idealism is that space and
time are nothing but forms of appearances. He argues that space "does
not represent any property of things in themselves, but is merely a
"subjective condition of sensibility."
A casual reading of Kant's arguments would suggest that space and
time necessarily pertain to appearance or to the way things appear to us.
But they do not pertain to things considered in abstraction from the way
they appear to us. Nothing which is intuited in space is a thing in itself
and space is not a form which belongs as a property to things, but
objects are quite unknown to us in themselves and what we call outward
objects are nothing else but mere representations of sensibility, whose
form is space, but whose real correlated thing in themselves are not
known by means of these representations. The things which we intuit
are not in themselves the same as our representation of them in intuition,
nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us.
However, to read Kant this way (that is to view the same things as both
appearances and non-appearances - - things which are "appearances" are
here viewed as not appearances) would be a misconception. The critical
distinction between appearance and things considered in themselves is
necessary if reason is to avoid self-contradiction.136
For Kant, even an instance of self-contradiction is intolerable
because it robs reason of its fundamental principle, self consistency; that
is why the concept of a thing in itself is not the concept of a designated

'Critique of Pure Reason, A 462, A 465/ B 490-493; A 424/B 452.

56 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

class of things, but a concept of reflection. It is just the concept of

things, as we would represent them, if we could know them perfectly,
that is, if our concept of them were sufficient to answer all the questions
reason can pose. Kant's claim, therefore, is not that there is a certain
class of things of which we can have no knowledge; but rather, that
whatever there may be, we cannot have complete knowledge of them.
When Kant claims that he is an empirical realist and denies that he is
an empirical idealist, he is really affirming that our experience is not
limited to the private domain of our own representations, but includes
an encounter with empirically spatio-temporal objects.
The claim that space is merely a subjective condition of sensibility is
a result of two fundamental Kantian premises. (1) We can think things
through reason alone, but we can know them only if, and only insofar
as, they can appear in sensible intuition. We can know things, therefore,
only as spatial (and temporal) objects.137 (2) But space "does not
represent any property of things in themselves."
The difference between phenomena and things in themselves is but a
difference in the perspective of viewing objects of sensible intuition.

Jill Vance Buroker, Space and Incongruence, Dordrecht: D. Reidel

Publishing Co., 1981, has produced a comprehensive and illuminating study of
the development of Kant's understanding of space. The argument begins with
Kant's repudiation of Leibnizian epistemology. In particular at issue is Leibniz'
"relational theory" of space, and with it, the Leibnizian view that the building
blocks of all knowledge are concepts of general ideas not sense impressions. In
1747, Kant himself stood firmly committed to the "relation theory of Space."
Even in his essay New System ofMotion and Rest, 1758 he still argued that "the
conceptions of motion and rest signify relations among objects rather than the
relations of an object to space." Ten years later, however, he explicitly broke
with Leibnizian view in "Concerning the Ultimate Foundation for the
Differentiations of Regions in Space". What brought about this change was the
problem of "incongruence counterparts." Kant dealt with the problem again in
the Dissertation of 1770 in the Prolegomena of 1783, and in the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science of 1786. Kant finally concluded that space has
nothing to do with things as they exist independently of perception, but is trans-
cendentally ideal and Newton's conception of absolute space is, on empirical
grounds, an absurdity. See also "Kant's Evaluation of His Relationship to
Leibniz" by Charles M. Sherover in The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, ed.
Richard Kennington, (Washington, D. C. : The Catholic University of America
Press, 1985), pp. 201-227.
 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 57

Kant is very clear on this point. This is why, although Kant claims
that he is a transcendental idealist, he also regards himself as an
empirical realist139 for whom the things themselves are available for
scientific investigation.140
Mere intuition of space and time does not constitute a knowledge of
space and time. The principle that space and time are "empirically
real" in our experiences, but "transcendentally ideal" as forming the
structural horizon of any possible experience, encapsules the
fundamental principle upon which all else builds.
Kant seems to give epistemological preference to time over space,
because time is the more comprehensive form of intuition between the
two. Everything conceived in space must be conceived through the
medium of time, but not everything conceived as present in time must
be conceived through the medium of space. Since time is the form of
inner sense, every perception passes through time, and what is more
significant, every perceived content is placed in time. Time is a medium
for what is given in space. Time is not the prima facie form of what is
given in space, but the medium through which what is given in space
reaches consciousness.

™ Critique ofPure Reason B xxvii, A 370; A 38/B 55.

139
Ibid.,A491/B519.
140
One of the first reviews (Grave-Feder, 1782) of the Critique of Pure
Reason described Kant's system as a form of idealism of a piece with that of
Berkeley. Kant (Letter to Grave August 7, 1783 in Kant, Philosophical
Correspondence 1759-1799 ed. and trans. Arnolf Zweig, [University of
Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 98ff]) was not pleased with this comparison. In the
Prolegomena he explained that his system, far from agreeing with Berkeley,
was the proper antidote to Berkeley's objectionable form of idealism. In an
explicit response to the offending review, Prolegomena (Appendix), Kant
claimed that when Berkeley made space a mere empirical representation, he
reduced all experience to sheer illusion. Kant continued to stress Berkeley's
failure to do justice to the special role of space, a source of a priori constraints
on experience, when he distinguished his view from Berkeley's in the second
edition of the Critique (B 69-72, B 274, Note on B xl of Preface). Indeed, there
is a sense in which it can be said that Kant wrote his Prolegomena to Any
Future Metaphysics partly in answer to the Grave-Feder review (see the
Appendix to that work).
58 Synthetic A Priori Judgments

Kant argues later on that there must be a middle term on the basis of
which the manifold received through human sensibility can be actively
combined in accordance with the categories. This middle term must
have the following properties: "This mediating representation must be
pure, that is, void of all empirical content, and yet at the same time,
while it must in one respect be intellectual, it must in another be
sensible. Such a representation is the transcendental schema."141 The
mediating term must be related to both sensibility and the
understanding. It must be connected to both, in order to be the basis of
their union. The middle term, that Kant refers to, is time, the universal
condition of human sensibility.
Time can perform this function because:

Now a transcendental determination of time is so far homogeneous

with the category, which constitutes its unity, in that it is universal
and rests upon an a priori rule. But, on the other hand, it is so far
homogeneous with appearance, in that time is contained in every
empirical representation of the manifold. Thus an application of the
category to appearance becomes possible by means of the
transcendental determination of time... .142

Unlike other concepts, categories are specially in need of schemata,

because their application involves no intuitable third thing such as an
image. A transcendental schema is a transcendental time-determination
which is an a priori rule and thus, similar to a category. Yet, it is also
similar to appearance.
Thus, in response to the problem, as to how the pure categories,
which are supposed to have been produced by the forms of judgment,
can apply to sensory appearance, Kant states that time somehow
mediates between the intellectual and the sensible and produces the
schematized categories of substance, causation, etc. These are the

Critique of Pure Reason, A 138 / B 177, p. 181.

Ibid.,A139/B179,p. 189.
 Synthetic A Priori Judgments 59

categories which we actually use and these, because they essentially

involve time, will apply to the objects of sensory experience.