(intro music)

Hi, I'm Scott Edgar.

I'm an assistant professor of philosophy

at Saint Mary's University,

and today I'm going to

talk about an argument

that the German philosopher Immanuel Kant

made about the nature of space.

It's an argument that comes from his book

The Critique of Pure Reason,

which first came out in 1781,

although by that time he'd

been working on it for ten years.

And philosophers call the argument

"The Argument from Geometry."

It's an argument, as I said,

about the nature of space,

but as we'll see, it hints

at an incredibly striking

conclusion about the

nature of all knowledge,

in particular, the conclusion that

we never have any knowledge of how things

really are in themselves.

I'll come back to that point later.

Right now, let's start with the question

"What is the nature of space?"

Is it a real thing that exists

independently of our minds?

Or is it not a real thing that exists

independently of our minds?

Well, one view you might

think is really natural

is that space is real.

And what I mean by "real" in this context

is that space is a part of

the mind-independent world

that exists independently

of our knowledge of it.

So in this view, the

mind-independent things

that exist in the mind-independent world

are arranged spatially,

and space is just one more part

of the world that's mind-independent.

Now, the point of Kant's

argument from geometry

is to show that that picture is wrong,

and to argue for a

completely different picture

of the nature of space.

On the view of space that Kant argued for,

space is just something that our own minds

impose onto our

representations of the world.

More specifically, Kant thinks our minds

have a capacity to sense

things, and that capacity

to sense things is what

imposes spatial structure

onto our representations of the world.

This is the view that Kant calls

"the transcendental ideality of space,"

or "transcendental idealism" for short.

He loves jargon, so his

way of putting the view

is to say that space is merely a form

of our intuition, that

is, just a structure

our own minds impose

onto our representations,

and space is not a property

of things in themselves,

that is, it's not a property of things

as they exist independently of our minds

and of our knowledge of them.

So that's the conclusion of

Kant's argument from geometry:

that space is merely a form of intuition

and not a property of

things in themselves.

What's really interesting

about the argument

is its strategy.

Kant's strategy is to

argue for that conclusion

on the basis of certain

facts about geometry.

That is, he thinks certain facts about

the nature of geometry

and geometrical knowledge

turn out to mean that

space has nothing to do

with mind-independent objects,

and is really just something our own

minds impose onto our representations.

So the argument's first premise is about

the nature of geometry.

Here it is:

"Geometrical knowledge

is synthetic a priori."

Now, if you don't know what

synthetic a priori knowledge is,

you should go back and watch

the video that explains that

and then come back here,

because what I'm about

to say will make a lot

more sense if you do that.

So the question is "Why does Kant think

our knowledge of geometry

is synthetic a priori?"

Well, first, geometrical knowledge

is necessary and universal.

It's plausible to think

that a geometrical truth,

like, say, the theorem

that the interior angles

of a triangle sum to 180 degrees,

isn't just contingently true.

It can't possibly turn out to be wrong.

But also, it's not the kind of truth

that there are exceptions to.

It's not like the theorem

says that the interior angles

of some triangles sum to 180 degrees.

It doesn't even say "most triangles."

It applies to all triangles

without exceptions.

But Kant learned from the

Scottish philosopher David Hume

that we can't get knowledge

of anything necessary

or universal from experience.

So Kant thinks, since

geometrical knowledge

is necessary and universal,

it can't be empirical.

It has to be a priori.

But our knowledge of geometry is

also what Kant called "ampliative."

That is, it's not just a matter of empty

or trivial definitions

or conceptual truths,

but rather it genuinely

extends our knowledge.

Of course, geometry does have definitions,

like any other science.

So, for example, when we

say that a triangle is

a three-sided figure enclosed on a plane,

that's true by definition and

so it seems kind of trivial.

But when we're talking about theorems,

like the one that says "the interior angles

of a triangle sum to exactly 180 degrees,"

it seems like we're dealing

with a difference situation.

That theorem actually

teaches us something new

about triangles that

we didn't already know

just from the definition of a triangle.

In that sense, geometry

genuinely extends our knowledge

of things like triangles.

And Kant thinks that means geometrical

knowledge is synthetic.

So that's the first premise

of Kant's argument from geometry:

that our knowledge of geometry

is synthetic a priori.

Now let's look at Kant's second premise.

It's got to connect the idea that

geometry is synthetic a

priori to Kant's conclusion

that space is just something

our own minds impose

onto our representations of the world

and not a real part of the

mind-independent world itself.

The premise says that

synthetic a priori knowledge

is possible only if space is merely a form

of our intuition and not a

property of things in themselves.

In other words, the second

premise of Kant's argument

says that synthetic a

priori knowledge is possible

only if his view of the

nature of space is true.

So why should we think

that premise is true?

Here's Kant's argument.

The first point to make is that geometry

is the mathematics of space.

So when we're talking about

our knowledge of geometry,

we're really just talking

about our knowledge of space.

And so if our knowledge of

geometry is synthetic a priori,

our knowledge of space has

to be synthetic a priori too.

So far, so good.

But now Kant thinks we

have to ask ourselves,

"What would it take for

synthetic a priori knowledge

"of space to be possible?"

Well first, the knowledge is synthetic,

so it can't just be a matter

of definitional or conceptual truths,

because those would be analytic.

But second, the knowledge

is also a priori,

so it can't be based on our

experience of external objects,

because we can only ever

know about external objects

empirically, through the senses.

So Kant concludes that

our knowledge of geometry

has to be based on

nothing but our own minds.

His thinking seems to be that

there are external objects

that exist independently of our own minds,

and then there are our own minds.

Since our knowledge of space

can't be based on the first choice,

it has to be based on the second.

When we have knowledge of space,

like our knowledge in geometry,

all we really have knowledge of

is a structure our own minds are imposing

onto our representations.

That's why our knowledge

of space can be completely

independent of experience,

which is say that's

why it can be a priori.

But as we already know,

the idea that space is

nothing but a structure our own minds

impose onto our representations,

is just what Kant means when

he says in his second premise

that space is merely a

form of our intuition

and not a property of things themselves.

So that's the second

premise of Kant's argument.

When we put the two premises together,

we get Kant's conclusion:

space is merely a form of our intuition

and not a property of

things in themselves.

There's still a lot of questions

you might have about it

(whether it's a good

argument or a bad argument,

whether the premises are

true, whether they're false),

and we'll look at those next time.

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