Kant and Causality: An Introduction to the Transcendental Deduction

The long-awaited final video (or is it!?) of my series on causality in 18th-century philosophy, featuring Kant's wacky Copernican revolution, his solution to the problems posed by Hume which we saw in our last video.

Think his solution is too wacky? Let's see you come up with a better one!

[terrancewatts]

This is the most underrated video in existance.

[mattstephens]

Without a doubt a fantastic video. Kant is hard enough to understand, videos certainly mkae his works intelligible.

[epiphenomenon]

Step 1: Try to read Kant yourself to prove yourself as someone who can read Kant.
Step 1b: Make no progress.
Step 2: Watch a 10 minute video on yt.
Step 3: Re-read Kant.
Step 3b: Kant makes sense.

[chanchomovil]

I have enjoyed this video a thousand times, each time I have learned something new to me. It is amazing how many concepts can be condensed in so little time!

[justasimplemathematicallye]

This really IS the most underrated video in existence

[wiltshire]

Ed - we need more videos from you. Please try to find the time to create more. These are amazing

[fallenangel]

The most underrated channel in history

[bobs]

But please lets lets pronounce his name correctly.

[ZoiusGM]

Comprehensive? Great simple animation? Yes to both; thus helpful: 10/10 video quality. Oh.. quality... It is a built-in form, can't help it 😀.

[keith.anthony.infinity.h]

Yes causality is supported by the las of physics but the next question is: Is causality absolute as in observers will always agree on when events happen with respect to each other? Because special relativity shows us that causality is a principle but observers do not have to agree on when events happen with respect to each other depending on if their reference frame is inertial or accelerating.

[alecburger]

never written a comment before on YouTube but this demands an exception; absolutely brilliant explanation that finally put all these complex ideas together in a coherent way. Thank you. Keep it up.

[ForTheAges]

Seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to arrive at the observation that consciousness is simultaneously the "mechanism" of knowing, the "container" within which all is known, and the "substance" of which all that is known is made of. This is the ancient knowledge of several hindu schools of thought, namley advaita vedanta. It's also easily verifiable in each person's lived experience, and can be deduced with some simple logical questioning.

[se]

Awesome video, awesome explanation, awesome visuals and music. Now do Hegel.

[erik]

Thank you. This video and Humes video helped me out so much. I was having trouble understanding how Kant came up with his Categorical Imperative. To understand how, I had to understand his metaphysics. To understand his metaphysics I had to learn about Hume and his understanding of causation and necessity. Your videos helped immensely. Thanks again.

[kallianpublico]

The "necessary conditions of human understanding" were, for Kant, the a priori unconscious categories. This is like saying that the brain is the source of consciousness.
That "whatever" is out there in Nature: the "thing in itself", cannot be known in entirety: completely. That our brain proscribes us from such knowledge. Kant doesn't mean that there is no Natural world outside the brain; only that the understanding, given by the brain, filters Nature according to the subconscious categories. The understanding proscribes consciousness from complete knowledge. Science is incomplete.
This is a complete inversion of Hume's view. For Hume observation confirms science. For Kant the subconscious categories informs science and is confirmed by consciousness: science (the understanding) prescribes the incompleteness of consciousness.
Complete consciousness is prevented from being revealed by the understanding. What is revealed by the sensibilities is prescribed by the conscious judgements.
Kant's view is that the linguistic mind is prior to consciousness: that consciousness is dependent on the linguistic mind or that there is no consciousness without the linguistic mind.
According to this view a baby's brain 🧠 would have to posess language. Is that what is found? No. Baby's have no language, language must be taught. The categories and judgements must be learned. But babies have consciousness.
Kant's view is a premonition of neuroscience. Which, to this day, has not solved the hard problem of consciousness.
The "self" of the understanding eludes science.

[grantbartley]

I wouldn't equate the subconscious with the TE. The nonconscious workings of the brain are mechanical rather than lead by logic. But modern people might say that these mechanisms set up the categories for experience.

[idegteke]

Our intelligence, using consciousness, learns from the very nature that contains and forms it. I’ll make this eternal circular word salad to be the first philosophical sentence that was modelled with an actual C++ code. Run your idea, basically:) We will see where this idea leaks, at the very least.

[jacobslagle]

How is this not just an argument saying that cause and effect are purely cognitive phenomenon

[DavidLydonTV]

I'm reading the transcendental deduction and secondary material for a class. This helps a lot, thanks.

[kallianpublico]

Hume's argument was that through empirical investigation there was no such thing as causation. Causation he reasoned must show a "necessary conection" between on thing and another thing in an event. There was no such "connection" to be found using the senses. The only thing to be found was a "constant conjunction". A consistency in the behavior of objects in Nature without the observation of a "force", or some other agent, controlling or connecting these objects.
Kant is asserting that this fact that Hume uses to banish causation, cannot be "understood" by means of the sensibility but only by means of the subconscious categories of the mind. By the category of relation in its psychological "insistence" of causation.
Kant agrees with Hume that causation is not to be found by means of the senses: empiricism; but Kant disagrees with Hume that causation is therefore not scientific. Kant "believes" that he has discovered the true source of science. It is not to be found in empiricism; it is to be found in the conscious and subconscious categories and judgements of the understanding.
Experience and empiricism merely confirm what is already there in the human mind. Time and space are not to be found in clocks and rulers, or the outside world, but in the human psyche.