"The concepts which thus contain /a priori/ the pure thought involved
in every experience, we find in the categories. If we can prove that
by their means alone an object can be thought this will be a
sufficient deduction of them, and will justify thier objective
validity."


Bob,

All forms of cognition contain pure /a priori/ conditions. So I think
your statement below is overly simplified.

>we are talking about a dualism of two realities, one based on
>cognitive information and one based on a priori information.



> Kant is very specific about what we can know and what we do not
>know by means of our cognitve faculty. In his Prolegomena to any
>Future Metaphysics he sums up what he proposed in his Critique of
>Pure Reason. 'Knowledge 'of God is 'knowledge' of the metaphysical,
>and "metaphysical knowledge must consist of nothing but a priori
> judgments." Knowledge of the infinite as determined as attributes
>or substance of God is strictly metaphysical 'knowledge' and
>consequently is assigned to that which we do not know by
>experience. It is as simple as that.

"Now among the manifold concepts which form the highly complicated
web of human knowledge, there are some which are marked out for
pure /a priori/ employment, in complete independence of all
experience; and their right to be so employed always demands a
deduction"

"We are already in possession of concepts which are of two quite
different kinds, and which yet agree in that they relate to objects
in a completely /a priori/ manner, namely, the conceps of space and
time as forms of sensibility, and the concepts of the understanding."

"The objects, so far as their form is concerned, are given, through
the very knowledge of them, /a priori/ in intuition. In the case of
the pure concepts of understanding, it is quite otherwise...they
speak of objects through *predicates* not of intuition and
sensibility but of pure /a priori/ thought, they relate to objects
universally, that is apart from all conditions of sensibility."

...a difficulty such as we did not meet with in the field of
sensibility is...namely, how subjective conditions of thought can
have objective validity, that is, can furnish conditions of the
possibility of all knowledge of objects.

Now there are two conditions under which alone the knowledge of an
object is first possible, first, intuition, through which it is
given, though only as appearance; secondly, concept, through which an
object is *thought* corresponding to this intuition.

All appearances necessarily agree with with this formal condition of
sensibility, since only through it can they appear, that is be
empircally intuited and given.

The question now arises whether /a priori/ concepts do not also serve
as *antecedent* conditions under which alone anything can be, if not
intuited, yet thought as object in general. In that case all
empirical knowledge of objects would necessarily ocnform to such
concepts, because only as thus presupposing them is anthing
possibleas object of experience.

Concepts of objects in general thus underlie all empirical knowledge
as its /a priori/ conditions.

"The objective valitdity of the categories as /a priori/ concepts
rest, therefore, on the fact that, so far as the form of thought is
concerned, through them alone does experience become possible."
*******

O.K Bob all of that was to demonstrate that Kant thought that /a
priori/ knowledge is a necessary condition of all experience, and
thus /a priori/ knowledge is a necessry condition of all objects of
experience. But what about this business about the ontological proof
of the existence of God.

*********

>In his Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics he sums up what he
>proposed in his Critique of Pure Reason.'Knowledge 'of God
>is 'knowledge' of the metaphysical, and "metaphysical knowledge must
>consist of nothing but a priori
>judgments." Knowledge of the infinite as determined as attributes
>or substance of God is strictly metaphysical 'knowledge' and
>consequently is assigned to that which we do not know by
>experience. It is as simple as that.

*******
In the Critique of Pure Reason, section 2, The A PRIORI grounds of
the possibility of Experience, Kant indirectly gives us in his own
special terms for the rejection of the Ontological proof of the
existence of God.
********
"That a concept, although itself neither contained in the concept of
possible experience should be produced completely /a priori/ and
should relate to an object, is altogher contradictory and impossible.
For it would then have no content, since no intuition corresponds to
it; and intuitions in general, through which objects can be given to
us, constitute the field, the whole object of possible experience.
An /a priori/ concept which did not relate to experience would be
only the logical form of a concept, not the concept itself through
which something is thought."***See my concluding paragraph***

"Pure /a priori/ concepts, if such exist, cannot indeed contain
anything empirical; yet, none the less, they can serve solely as /a
priori/ conditions of a possible experience [*Any experience,
including empirical objects]. Upon this grond alone can thier
objective reality rest."

"If, therefore, we seek to discover how pure concepts of
understanding are possible, we must enquire what are the /a priori/
conditions upon which the possibility of experience rests, and which
remain as its underlying grounds when everything empirical is
abstracted from appearances. "

"A concept which universally and adequately expresses such a formal
and objective condition of experience would be entitled a pure
concept of understanding. "

*Certainly, once I am in possession of pure concepts of
understanding, I can think objects which may be impossible, or which,
though perhaps in themselves possible, cannot be given in any
experience.*

...Or, it may be, pure concepts are extended further than experience
can follow (as with the concept of God). But the elements of all
modes of /a priori/ knowledge, even of capricious and incongrous
fictions, though they cannot, indeed, be derived from experience,
since in that case they would not be knowledge /a priori/, must none
the less always contain the pure /a priori/ conditions of a possible
experience and of an empirical object. Otherwise nothing would be
thought through them, and they themselves, being without data, could
never arsise even in thought."
******
So to sum up the above, I don't think that Kant is saying that we
absolutely cannot concieve of an infinite being, but he is saying
that we can't confirm its actuality so back to Kant's caveat:

"things can be possible without being actual, and that consequently
no conclusion can be drawn as to actuality from mere possibility."
*********

>Kant divides the two into two realities, knowledge of the
>metaphysical and knowlege by experience. The hundred bucks is
>obviously in the realm of the finite and the realm
> of experience, and in that second reality sense, it is something

that we do

> indeed 'know.' The infinite is in the realm of the metaphysical

since we do not

> have any experience of it, nor can we use any of the inductive

methodolgy to

> determine it.

********
The two realities you mention above are actually the two different
faculties of: the conditioned activity of the understanding, and the
unconditioned ascent of Reason. Hegel will try to complete Kant by
extending the powers of Reason that Kant already draws up.

********8
[Kant]
"Our understanding has then this peculiarity as concerns the
judgment, that in cognition by it, the particular is not determined
by the universal and cannot therefore be derived from it; but at the
same time this particular in the manifold of nature must accord with
the universal by means of concepts and laws, that it may be capable
of being subsumed under it. This accordance under such circumstances
must be very contingent and without definite principle as concerns
the judgment."
**********
With Hegel, Kant is held to be wrong in saying that we must
absolutely not go beyond finite cognition, but the onus is indeed on
Hegelians to show a legitimate pathway out the self-limitations that
the reflection has created. Otherwise any transition from being to
concept or concept to being will be considered an unjustifiable leap.

Hegel's going beyond finite cognition is tied to showing that Kant's
own account of our finitude (our restricted understanding and wholly
passive intuition) can be shown itself to involve the "infinite"
elements of an "intuitive intellect".

Thus, to overcome Kant, we must first challenge Kant's use of a
wholly independent (and passive) intuitive faculty, and then develop
the infinite dimensions that are latent in Kant's own position
(spontaneous apperception) and then advance speculatively.

1. The ascent of Reason

(A) Kant demarcates the faculty of Reason from the faculty of the
Understanding.

(1) The Faculty of the Understanding

On the one hand, Kant characterizes the understanding as the faculty
of rules, which comprehends appearances as objects by unifying the
sensible representations given in intuition under concepts through an
act of judgment [Or said differently, the "conditioned" activity of
the understanding (the faculty that is "conditioned" by the sensible
manifold), conceptualizes the sensible manifold according to
subjective but logically required categories]

(a) Although the understanding here exercises spontaneity in bringing
the manifold content of intuition under rules and thereby uniting
them in one consciousness as objects of knowledge, its judgment
refers a concept to sensible particulars given independently of it.

(2) Reason
On the other hand, the faculty of the understanding is contrasted
with the "unconditioned" ascent of Reason. Kant defines reason as
the faculty of principles, which thinks by syllogism, concluding
something particular from a general premise. Instead of
understanding perceptions through judgment, where concepts are
applied to given particulars, reason conceives ideas by determining
the particular out of the universal in terms of concepts alone.

(a) However, despite Kant's introduction of syllogizing reason and
autonomy, the determination of the particular is still ultimately
given to the universal in each, such that reason remains bound to the
understanding.
(b) Although reason for Kant generically seeks the unconditioned
universal that determines the particular, the particular in question
is actually provided independently by the understanding in the form
of a given rule of experience that supplies the minor premise of the
syllogism.

1. All men are mortal (Universal)
2. Socrates is a man (particular)
3. Socrates is mortal (universal determines the particular)

However, the universal principle (all men are mortal) determines the
particular (Socrates) only by virtue of being supplied with the minor
premise (Socrates is a man), whose particular content can only be
known by the understanding.

[Or said all at the same time, Reason takes the results of the
understanding's work as its object, and then attempts to think the
unconditioned totality of those results].

(c) Furthermore, since the understanding alone has knowledge of
objectivity, whose reality is grasped not from universal concepts but
from the given particulars of intuition, the ideas of reason are not
real, but irreducibly transcendent. Consequently, reason can here
prescribe no law to reality nor contain any grounds for either
knowing it or determining anything real and particular. All such
reason can do is provide a subjective regulation for the
understanding, bringing its rules into consistent harmony, achieving
the formal identity of non-contradiction that is indifferent to the
particular content involved.


(1) Kant sees this as the fate of thought; Hegel regards it as an
abandonment of reason that reduces the unconditioned, individual
determination of rational principle to the formal lawfulness of the
understanding.
************

When we say that Kant's argument is falicious about the hundred

> bucks because it deals with the finite only and does not deal with

God as

> infinite, we are talking about a dualism of two realities, one

based on cognitive

> information and one based on a priori information.

Of course the Hegelians

> will argue that there is only one reality, that of the Concept and

the

> infinite can be known by the force of the Hegelian System, which,

for Hegelians is

> far beyond just a priori information.
>
> Regards,
>
> Bob Fanelli

******
O.K to conclude, Hegel will challenge the validity of Kant's faculty
of intuition, thus the limits which Kant sets will have to re-
worked. However, Hegel does not completely abandon Kant, instead he
works to complete Kant through the spontaneous element of Kant's
transcendental apperception via Fichte.


Kind regards

Randall