Kant's Critique of Pure Reason - Video 14: Metaphysical Exposition of Space

In the Metaphysical Exposition of Space, Kant argues that (our representation of) space is an a priori intuition. We will consider in detail his four arguments.

Required reading: Critique of Pure Reason, B37-B41; Sebastian Gardner, "Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason", Chapter 4.

[mburkhart]

I look forward to starting my day with a short reading of Kant and then watching Victor's lecture!

[tomrobingray]

Yes this is exactly what the text says: we cannot obtain the concept of X without already having the understanding of X, which as you say is applicable to any X. In fact the term "outer" has nothing necessarily to do with space and could be replaced with the term "other" resulting in absolutely equivalent meaning. If there is anything a-priori here, it is the process of bifurcation. This demolishes arguments 1/2. According to current physics There is no universal flat space. This demolishes arguments 2/3. As regards 4. there are may concepts that contain themselves so this is wrong.

[edwardwoods]

As always, the exposition is comprehensive without being overtly technical or pedantic. I truly appreciate the effort you put into this series on Kant’s Critique.

[zainr]

Really helpful! Helped me understand the book much better! Will watch and like all parts!

[nowheretobefound]

Excellent presentation, thanks. I'm in or I am in (to this) or I am, in (space).

[hewhoyawns]

I wonder if we can take part of the argumentation for the thesis that space is an intuition and also use it as an argument for the thesis that space is a priori. That space is given to us as an infinite magnitude, i.e. as a magnitude that can *always* be extended, suggests a priority since that sort of necessity/universality can never come from empirical grounds, as Kant has already argued. Thus space has to be a priori.

[Alkis]

I have heard a 4th explanation why he rushed the exposition. He wrote about it in his inaugural dissertation and he felt people were already familiar with his ideas about space, since he wrote it 10 years ago. So he just, as you say, sumarizes it.

[elel]

11:20 independent objects presupposes being in space … that’s how the human mind works

[stuarthicks]

Cool Nietzsche bust you got there in time and space.

[Sylviesaiko]

what about sample spaces and vector spaces(also non-euclidean geometry and a lot more mathematical spaces)? Are they spaces other than the space that kant described, or derivatives of the space we are in, or completely not related to Kant's space, or an application of space as a concept? I feel like the last one, i.e. these mathematical spaces are derived from our abstraction of various experiences together with the abstraction of the space we are living in, would be a proper explanation for these spaces. But that makes space both an intuition and a concept.

[michiel]

The presentation of space as de facto 3d euclidean seems rather restrictive, but hearing your compare infinitude with unboundedness it actually makes me wonder. Is Kant here allowing us room to interpret his argument as being about locally (3d) euclidean space? If it does then we have a much wider array of modern mathematical spaces which are compatible with Kants system and our knowledge of curved spacetime wouldnt be an argument against Kant and vice versa (at least it seems like a problem to me if we take space for Kant as globally 3d euclidean).

[god]

On the point of being permissible to keep on adding details to an object of an intuition and not a concept; couldn’t we say that a concept can be enriched with more meanings? For example there are many many parts that constitute a society but I don’t have to know them all in order to grasp it to some degree. Nevertheless I can keep on adding aspects of a society and thus widening my understanding of a concept.

[TarekFahmy]

Than you for an amazing job.. greetings from Egypt

[PhoneKhantZaw]

26:13 I disagree with Kant on his second argument. Our mind really cannot conceive a space without objects. If you try to conceive it, you are probably conceiving a black. Yes, just black and nothing there. But the thing is that colors cannot be conceived or perceived on their own whatsoever. You cannot think of a color separately from an object. Whatever color with whatever shape or form you think of, it is just an object that has that shape or form and has that color. So if you try to think of a space without any object, you end up thinking of an object. You cannot conceive space without objects just as objects without space are inconceivable. If there is no object to be perceived, there is no space to be perceived because space is just an essence of the objects and the relations between them. Space cannot be separated from the objects.

[Alkis]

I would point out that although we can't have intuitions without an a priori intuition of space, and that space is the pure form of appearances, can't leaves open the question of what space is as a thing in itself. It might just be that space as a thing on itself is just the spatial relations of objects as thing in themselves. Can't obviously didn't have the theory of evolution to work with, but we (and many other animals) couldn't evolve an intuition about space if it didn't exist as a thing on itself to shape the evolution of our pure intuitions of space.
At least, as an naturalist, the only way I can make sense of Kant's transcendental idealism is for all this a priori knowledge to come from evolution. Kant's argument doesn't really address the possibility of both existing: our intuition of space as a pure form of appearances and as a thing in itself. He never argues about it. He does asserts that there former is not the case, though. Which seems to be contradictory with the implication he makes that, aside from affecting the mind with matter of appearances, we don't have anything to say about things on themselves.

[lurb]

What is Kant's answer to the problem of dreams: why do they have the appearance of anschauug/ being represented in space, when they are not? How do we distinguish? In other words, how can we establish this form of intuition as enabling knowledge of the external world when there is the occasional illusion of it (dreams). Perhaps I missed something!

[theenlightenment]

Thanks for sharing this valuable knowledge. The summary part is not succinct and very disjointed; you keep an adding words and phrases and It is hard to follow the thoughts.

[brunokalil]

so I can't understand: are both space and time objects, representations, forms or pure intuitions?