If the understanding is explained as the faculty of rules, the faculty of judgment consists in performing the subsumption under these rules, that is, in determining whether anything falls under a given rule or not. General logic contains no precepts for the faculty of judgment and cannot contain them. For as it takes no account for the content of our knowledge, it has only to explain analytically the mere form of knowledge in concepts, judgments, and syllogisms, and thus to establish formal rules for the proper employment of the understanding. If it were to attempt to show in general how anything should be arranged under these rules, and how we should determine how something falls under them or not, this could only take place by means of a new rule. This, because it us a new rule, requires a new precept for the faculty of judgment, and we thus learn that, though the understanding is capable of being improved and instructed by means of rules, the faculty of judgment is a special talent which cannot be taught, but must be practiced.

This is what constitutes our so-called mother-wit, the absense of which cannot be remedied by any schooling. For although the teacher may offer and as it were graft into a narrow understanding, plenty of rules borrowed from the experience of others, the faculty of using them rightly must belong to the pupil himself, and without that talent no precept that may be given is safe from abuse*.

A physician, therefore a judge, or a politician, may carry in his head many beautiful pathological, juridical, or political rules, nay he may even become an accurate teacher of them, and he may yet in the application of these rules commit many a blunder, either because he is deficient in judgment, though not in understanding, knowing the general in the abstract, but unable to determine whether a concrete case falls under it; or it may be, because his judgment has not been sufficiently trained by examples and practical experience. It is the one great advantage of examples that they sharpen the faculty of judgment, but they are apt to impair the accuracy and precision of the understanding, because they fulfill but rarely the conditions of the rule quite adequately...

* Deficiency in the faculty of judgment is really what we call stupidity, and there is no remedy for that. An obtuse and narrow mind, deficient in nothing but a proper degree in understanding and correct concepts, may be improved by study, so far as to become even learned. But as even then there is often a deficiency of judment we often meet with very learned men, who in handling their learning betray that original deficiency which can never be mended.

I'm reading Kant now - again.

Doubt you're gonna find too much in the way of western philosophical debate on this site, but, if so, I'll be checking it.

I found this, after reading it several times in order to get into his 'frame of mind' to be quite intriguing...

I had never thought about judgment quite like this...

The guy is brilliant, needless to say.

'Critique' was so instrumental in the paradigm shift.

How often can you read anything by Kant, or his peers - few there are - once . . . and really understand?

Kudos to you.

If your of sound reasoning and critical thinking skills to begin with, and you can truly love philosophical thought and pondering it is possible.

Spinoza is cool too, and Rorty, Witt, ah the list goes on and on.

One must be of the mind, I suppose. Oftentimes I read and re-read and sometimes re-re-read in order to get what Kant means. Logic is a necessity though, I would guess, to get any of it.

Thank you for the compliment.

So knowledge of a well-rounded nature is not enough to solve the problem of neither deficient judgment ability nor capability. However, experience plus knowledge increases capability and thus the chances that judgments will be rightly made. This is what I understand of the OP.

Actually I also see a bit of humor or perhaps amusement on the part of Kant.

At any rate, he seems to be writing what history has made apparent many times over but why is judgment so difficult a thing to get right?

I think the problem may not be as much a deficient ability as it is an inability to relate constantly updating information with constantly changing situations.

We make rules so there is no question of right or wrong, or good or bad consequences. But like philosophy of ethics we cannot possibly account for every person’s situation, or information about the event(s) outside the normal range from within which the rule was meant to function.

This is why we have a judicial system with a hierarchy of a Supreme Court. We make a rule (a law) which is affected over time by the changes society experiences. So when a rule (law) cannot be determined effectively we refer the situation to the Supreme Court for clarification. Sometimes the way in which the original rule was stated simply did not include all the possibilities of how the rule might be affected, and sometimes the rule has been so diluted by changes in societal norms that it needs to be updated or corrected by our lawmakers (congress).

So while we attempt to make rules (and here is where I see Kant’s amusement) we do so using a deficient frame of reference for our judgment. The rules themselves cannot be all encompassing nor can they be long-lived as long as society keeps changing “the rules” through culture, knowledge, technology and morals.

Sounds as though your early readings were Plato or the big "A". Of course, I agree, Kant, I believe, was enamored with his own amusement knowing himself to be and have to relate to mere mortals. Just a bit methodical for me at times (back when I was smart, I mean).

I'm certainly in complete agreement with the above. Kant didn't specifically address the importance of premises here, but it's clear that he's aware of them and has actually alluded to them under the 'faculty of rule'. And especially at the end where he focuses on determining whether anything falls under a given rule or not. Premises would certainly be important in making that determination.

He also states the following:



Exactly. One of the reasons that it can't contain them is because logic is applicable to many different premises. Logic is abstract. That's what makes it so powerful. It cannot contain the abstraction that it offers. If it did it would no longer be abstract. It would need to be a very concrete and fixed formalism in order to do that.



And again he clarifies that logic takes no account for the content of our knowledge. Logic is only useful in terms of the analysis of that knowledge. So once again, he's recognizing the importance of the foundational premises and the abstract nature of logic itself.



Now here he changes gears and speaks to the issues of applying logic incorrectly with respect to knowledge. He mentions the blatant misuse of the rules of logic in general (i.e. committing a blunder as he calls it).

Clearly everyone does not use logic correctly. In fact, I would personally hold that if a person insists that everyone must begin with precisely the same premises they are are actually using logic incorrectly. (i.e. they are making a blunder as Kant would put it)

It's a blunder to try to use logic 'backwards' to demand that everyone must begin with the same premises. That's a total misuse and misunderstanding of logic.

Logic is not in the premises. Logic comes 'after' the premises. If we change the premises the resulting logic leads to different conclusions. Yet in both cases the logic is 'correct'.

The best examples of this are in mathematics. The most obvious one being in geometry with the parallel-line axioms. (axioms are jsut premises)

If we begin a particular premise about parallel lines we end up with Eulcidean geometry.

If we begin a different premise about parallel lines we end up with Spherical geometry.

We can even choose a thrid premise about parallel lines and end up with hyperbolic geometry.

The logic in all three of these cases is impeccable. Yet they all lead to different conclusions. All because the premises were different at the beginning.

So there is no such thing as "absolute" logical conclusions for all logical conclusions are abstract and entirely dependent upon the unproven premises on which they are based.

Therefore no logical conclusion can be said to be "absolute". It can only be said to be correct within the foundation of a particular set of premises.

As I've already mentioned about mathematics, there are no absolutes. Where the logic leads is entirely dependent upon what premises have been accepted.

So it would be totally wrong to tell someone that they are being 'illogical' if what a person is actually disagreeing with is the premises. That would be a "blunder" as Kant calls it.

So, yes, I agree with Kant wholeheartly!

By the way, was their reason for this thread? I'm just asking because I didn't see a question in the OP.

Everything that Kant said here is pretty obvious to me.

Abra said


Now I am amused - Kant, Red, and Abra, all saying the same thing using varying sets of premises. Ah! no wonder Kant is so highly stationed in the world of philosophy.

Alonenotlonely - you are correct, I tackled Plato in my 20's - whew talk about ambition. And Aristotle came next but my knowledge and experience at that time were sorely 'deficient'. But the foundation is one I return to often as I learn more about history, science and philosophy. Sometimes the greatest advances ride on the coat-tails of error, but the error HAD to be made for advancement to take place, hence we applaud and honor those who made the error.

Commercial break:


Immanuel Kant was born in the late 1700's in Konigsberg. A town that is called something else now (forgot the name, but starts with a K). It is part of Russia now with a population of a little over 400,000.

Konigsberg was the name given by a King of the Teutonic Knight order who conquered the Samians who lived and thrived there at one time. The Teutonics believed they were Pagans and came to change their belief system at the time.

Of course this happened 500 years before Kant was ever born.

For those who are wondering who Kant is? His full name is Immanuel Kant and he was a philosopher that influenced much of German thinking at the time and for that matter many around the world today.

If you are interested in taking a glimpse of this man's history then google his name and click on the wikipedia link. It is very detailed indeed.

Okay, I assume you have had the time to get your popcorn and soda.

Back to the program philosophers and thank you for allowing me to make this million dollar 5 minute commercial

You are so right Red. You're interest in logical analysis leans heavily toward the humanities and the concept of social ethics. You are quick to recognize that what is 'logical' in that situation is dependent on many factors. From the very foundational premises, such as whether the ethics should be based on specific mythological doctrines, or whether they should be based on social consenus. Cearly those two different starting premises are going to lead to drastically different logical conclusions.

The other thing that you've recognized is the importance of contextual situations and how they clearly differ from one person to another.

In fact, in social ethics it's not even possible to implement strict logic because there are too many unknowns. We can't know what was in the mind of a person when they performed a certain action. That very state of mind is a form of "premise" before any logic can be used.

In other words, if we're trying to logically decide whether someone is guilty of murder or self-defense, the only answer to that question may truly be in the mind of the person in question. Did they have cold-blooded intent to kill? Or did they truly feel threatened and believe that killing someone was their only means of defense?

Without knowing the 'premise' (the genuine state of the person's mind) logic is useless. So in many instances in ethics logic can't even be applied. Some form of intuitive judgement must be made, or the benefit of the doubt given. Logic breaks down entirely through no fault of logic itself. A lack of a solid "premise" leaves logic totally useless.

This clearly shows that logic is nothing without the premises upon which it stands. Take away the premises and logic falls like a flimsy house of cards.

And premises are always guesses. So in that respect all logic reduces to nothing more than the complex analysis of guesses.

I was fortune enough to recognize this at a very early age. Thus when I view any logical analysis I always view it in the context of how much credence I give to the permises at it's foundation.

Often times I find myself torn between various premises. Thus I end up consdiering many different pathways of logic each dependent on it's own set of premises.

Just like is done in the geometic mathematics that I described earlier. Depending on which premises we accept we end up with different logical conclusions, and what is for more interesting is that all premises may actually be valid in different situations.

Therefore the 'logical conclusions' of various different situations also changes. What's logical at one place and time may not be logical at another place and time.

Logic is not absolute. (or to say that more precisely: Logical conclusions are never absolute, they are always dependent upon premises which in-turn are often not provable).

Therefore all logic ultimately amounts to is the complex analysis of primal "guesses" (or unproven premises). Or in the case of social ethics, logic is based on "abritrary ground rules" that have been agreed upon by the social consensus.

None of this invalidates logic. It just puts it in perspective to what it actually is.

To tell someone that they are being 'illogical' because they have chosen to start with a different set of premises is a total misunderstanding of what logic is all about. This would be a "blunder" as Kant describes it.

And this is true in social ethics, science, and mathematics. All logic is totally dependent upon the underlying premises which are totally 'arbitrary' and unprovable.

There are no such things as *absolute* logical conclusions. All conclusions must be *relative* to some initial premises.

This should be called the theory of "Logical Relativity".

I think that Kant is not just explicitly describing how and why judgement is subjective to a person's apprehension of what the rules are and how to apply them, but moreover, that a person can be very learned of the rules of understanding for any given general concept and yet be wrongful in their categorical use, be wrongful in their practical use... commit a blunder, not by not following the rules, but by wrongfully applying a set of rules to a situation in which they do not fit.

It seems to me that his focus is not upon how to apply logic, for he expressed the term general logic and not applied logic. He is describing how logic cannot contain the faculty of judgement, and when judgement is not done rightly to begin with, then no amount of schooling alone can correct that. For the rules of understanding contains precepts for their employment, yet there are no rules for the faculty of judgement, for that would simply be another knowledge precept, and that judgement rarely fills the requirements of the rules which outline the understanding to begin with.

I see no reason to believe that Kant is attempting to describe precepts for the use of logic. I feel it is much more likely that instead, he is attempting to drive a wedge between judgement and knowledge with the effective shewing of how judgement happens outside of the known rules of understanding. Most importantly, that even when a concept is well learned, that that does not necessarily equate to the knower's proper employment of that knowledge, for that must include both - the knowledge base and the rightful faculty of judgement which subsumes it.

Königsberg became Kaliningrad. I don't know what it's called now. Danzing? Moscov? Karlzbad? Czeszke Budejovice? Nyizsnyiy Novigrad?

Abra wrote:



As I was reading this I immediately thought of the scientific revolution and astronomy. For well over 1,000 years it was believed that the earth was stationary, the center of the universe, and that all other planets revolved around the Earth.

It took Copernicus, looking for ‘logical’ reasons to support that theory which would in turn support God as the creator. He was so concerned about what he discovered, he refused to publish the information until just before he died. It was then up to Tycho Brahe to pick up where Copernicus left off. But Tycho lacked the mathematical intellect to do so. He hired Kepler in the hopes he would be able to compile all the observable data he and his assistants had collected. It took Kepler 18 years but he was the first to put together what we call a mathematical law. Still, this was not enough to prove that the Earth was not the center but that all the planets, including Earth revolved around the Sun. It took Galileo to solidify the Copernican theory with the supporting date of Tycho, the logic of Kepler and Galileo’s theories of motion.

In the end, it wasn’t just man’s belief of how the universe ran that was challenged, it was more so religion. The premise of all theory, prior to Copernicus, was based on a belief in God and that humans were second in supremacy only to God himself. The scientific revolution brought religion to its knees. The only remaining argument remained the major problem of the Earth’s rotation. What kept people from the new ideas and still tied to religion was the absurdity of the Earth spinning about its axis at the same time traveling around the Sun. It simply could be possible or all of Earth, including people would be thrown about like leaves in the wind.

It took almost another 250 years before the French philisophe (or scientist), Jean Foucault constructed the Foucault pendulum. It was the first empirical proof that the Earth actually spins about its own axis as it travels around the sun.

Religion would have been broken completely if it had not been for evolution of Church doctrine, thanks to some creative and strategic thinking of religious intellectuals of the time who were interested in saving their own beliefs.

So the premise of all things always began with God which is why humanity remained in such a stagnated state for thousands of years.

Still it took Kant to tell the world that logic is faulty because it assumes the premises on which it is based is a logical absolute.



This is so true and the reason is because we can never be sure when making a statement that we have covered all the possible ways in which the statement might be manipulated. Remember the old Star Trek movie, where it describes Kirk’s “solution” to the Kobayashi Maru simulation, the unbeatable program? The designer (I think it was Spock) with his logic never considered that ANYONE would think to change the program.

This is why even “arbitrary ground rules” while based in logic may not be applicable to everyone, because the logic of one person never seems capable of expanding far enough to encompass the logic of every person.

I think that is why math has become the most basic language of science. Even though a mathematical equation created with a specific application may end up being wrong, it can still be logical to anyone regarding it from the standpoint of its specific application. This is not so of other languages. This is one reason why physicians and pharmacists all learned and wrote scripts in Latin. A dead language can not pick up new connotations, slang, styles and so on. Unfortunately, a dead language also has limited use because it cannot keep up with massive amount of new words in the medical field.



So I have only succeeded in restating what you already have, using different premises perhaps. But it was all in an effort to second the motion that:



Here,here!

P.S. - Hi Smiless - thank-you ever so much for your professorship and sharing some history that we sometimes forget to share in our conversations with others. Here's to you

The Critique of Pure Reason' in general highlights the error in in what Kant calls synthetic a priori knowledge. It does directly apply to what Red has been discussing in that it shows the empirical nature of transcendental premises which cannot be held as absolutes, and thus he calls such ideas an illusion of a priori knowledge.

Red has effectively shown examples of this in her use of words describing the synthetic a priori knowledge of 'God' and further supported Kant's idea that real life examples have the ability of honing judgment, although that judgment rarely fills all of the adequateness of the rule in which it is acting upon.

Abra, with the mention of social ethics furthers Red's line of thought, but I feel the choice of direction into attempting to describe the faults of logic is not at all what Kant does. Rather, he shows a misuse of the idea of what constitutes a priori knowledge, by describing how an empirical idea is being attempted to be used as though it is a priori when it actually is a conditioned-by-experience thought... synthetic a priori. It is actually an empirical idea which is being mislabeled through an error in judgement, and therefore the subject is guilty of the 'blunder' regarding subsumption.

Hi Creative,
I was not ignoring you (in my last post) but honestly, your post was not there when I wrote mine. But then I was writing in “word” and then copying to the thread, so I probably just missed your post as the times of our posting were similar.

As for your last post: To me,a bit of confustion exists becasue while agree with you on some points, overall I seem to have interpreted Kant a bit differently, or maybe I have simply failed to connect my thoughts to your own. So indulge me and allow me to explain.



I have not read the complete “Critique of Pure Reason” – well, I’ve read so many sections of it, I may have read the whole thing, but not in order. Anyway, I think the “error” Kant is attempting to expose was not in the concept of synthetic a priori knowledge, rather in our ‘natural’ tendency to prove (justify) the metaphysical with synthetic a priori knowledge – to judge the nature of reality with rational thought derived from empirical knowledge (synthetic a priori knowledge).

Synthetic a priori knowledge, according to Kant, is derived from the way in which we relate to/experience the physical world. In other words, how we translate our experiences is relative to the way in which we interpret our perceptions of objects. We cannot base universal knowledge on individual interpretation alone, even though we all categorize our experiences in much the same way, Kant refers this as “synthetic unity of the sensory manifold.”

This way or organizing allows the chaotic world of cause and effect to become a logical pattern of experiences in which time becomes a linear concept and space becomes a reference to a particular quality or quantity within time. This way of organizing out thoughts is part of our nature and nature is a metaphysical concept or matter of a priori knowledge and not empirical knowledge.

Therefore, we have created methods like mathematics as a form of universal justification for knowledge which cannot be specifically experienced (such as the first theories of how the planets actually moved.) That is what Kant calls synthetic a priori knowledge and it is not incorrect for it works based on the premise of how humans ‘naturally’ attempt to fit their experiences with their perceptions.

Continuing with your comments:



Remember that Kant actually began his critique to refute the philosophies of rationalism and empiricism because both had missed a technological point. The point is that a priori knowledge cannot be obtained through rational thought because rational thought can only be based on information that can be justified and the justification can only extend from comparing the external experience of cause and effect of objects as we experience them.

The same is true of empiricism, what we experience is explained according to our perception and to justify it we simply need to observe it.

The problem, according to Kant, is that a priori knowledge is not about reality based on our perception but rather the “nature of reality.” What Kant argues is that we cannot observe the nature of reality, for example - can we observe the way in which any human actually categorizes the knowledge they obtain? No, we can’t and neither can people explain it because it does not exist in OUR perception of reality, it only exists in the metaphysical nature of reality to which we have no observable connection.

Now Kant also argues that we do have natural a priori knowledge and he explains this at length in his Critique, but it is not knowledge that can ever be justified, because justification can only be given for synthetic a priori knowledge (which can be totally accurate on empirical terms).

I want to go into one final thing. I agreed with what Abra was saying because he is correct and even Kant would agree. Abra gave his justifications and if you notice all his justifications are related using synthetic a priori knowledge which is naturally based on premises, so he is correct.

He was also correct when discussing absolutes because anything that is interpreted to be knowledge based on an absolute premise of a metaphysical nature can not be knowledge AND THEREIN, MY MEN, is the error of logic which Kant is attempting to get across in his lengthy and difficult “Critique of Pure Reason”.

In summary, we cannot make judgments about the nature of anything because we can never have justification on the level on which the human experience is capable. We are not capable of perceiving the metaphysical world (the nature of reality) because we are not able to translate it into the categorical frame of reference that our human mind was designed to understand (the empirical).

Philosophy requires a lot of words – sorry for the long reply, but at least my explanation was nowhere near that of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." Thank-goodness

I just kant understand judgement... a judmental mentality.

I have honed my understanding of the world, I made my mind keen to and my judgment clear, and I've done this until I've become completely non-judgemental.

(Pun.)

Creative wrote in the opening post, "...General logic contains no precepts for the faculty of judgment..."

Logic does use truth and falsehood occurring in the real world. If it uses those, maybe it does not establish the actual distinciton, so it has no faculty of judgement, but logic does use the judgement by someone else.

That said, a system, namely mathematics, can be described in logical terms and nothing else, given a few axioms. And math, which is a subset of logic, can make judgements, such as when a theorem is presented, the proof does make a judgement whether the theorem is true or not. The judgment is not made over things in the physical world, but a judgement occurs nevertheless.

Therefore General logic does use the precepts for the faculty of judgement. Not in matter of the real world, but in some different systems.

I am actually studying it at this time, and it requires careful reading and cross-referencing. When you stated that the error Kant was attempting to expose was not in the intuition based idea of synthetic a priori which involves only time and space, and then went on to describe what it entailed only to describe the concept of a posteriori - which is empirically based, it left me wondering if we even have a different point of view of what constitutes synthetic a priori.



Yes, he describes time, space, and causality as our only natural means of sensibility... I believe. He holds this as self-evident for if it were not for these innate and natural concepts for us to render experience under we would have no intelligible experience. He goes on to describe, as you suggested, that all human experienced is categorized and understood in this way, through our innate and natural way of relating to the "world-in-itself" through our perception.



Here is seems that the theories would not be, in and of themselves, synthetic a priori, but would be instead contingent upon empirical intuitions concerning the observable universe and therefore be a posteriori. Time and space have no observable innate features in and of themselves, but only how they apply to our experiences in relation to one another, and therefore synthetic a prior would only constitute pure intuition based upon those things. Mathematics he places in that category, so the theories would use such knowledge but would be based upon conceptual understanding not pure inuition of time and space.



Abra's construct concerning the parallel lines was good, and I have no problem with that.



And I have no problem with the idea of inductive logic depending upon the truth of premise. I have a problem with the idea that a single true premise can logically lead to different and equally valid conclusions. That would be the only way to debunk logic itself.

I understand that Kant caused a paradigm shift with his thoughts by debunking the validity of what was previously considered to be a priori knowledge through his explanation of what constituted the framework of our cognition and judgement. I understand that Kant made the unique distinction bewteen the world as we perceive it and the world-in-itself, thereby effectively debunking the idea of both, pure empiricism and pure rationalism. I understand that Kant actually partially supported both of those schools of thought in various places throughout Critique of Pure Reason while simultaneously providing reason to believe that judgement had been thought of wrongfully prior to and was a natural and automatic part of our cognitive functioning which was responsible for the categorization of experience based upon both, intuitive and conceptual measures... simultaneuosly.



Not sure I agree with the assertion "...we cannot make judgments about the nature of anything...", transcendental ideas I can see how this fits, but the nature of things humanly constructed would be a different story.

Wow, that was a long response...