KANT’S PARALOGISMS by Joshua Jose B 09027

KANT'S PARALOGISMS

In the poeties Aristotle defined paralogism as falsely inferring the truth of an antecedent from the truth of a consequent premise. 'Whenever if a is or happens, a consequent B is or happens a consequent b is or happens men's notion is that if the B is the A also is-but that is false conclusion. With the background of this Kant defines a logical paralogism as a syllogism which is fallious in form, be its content what it may 'and a transcendental paralogism as one in which there is a transcendental ground, constraining us to draw a conclusion. in the psycological paralogism in transcendental dialectic Kant shows how the transcendental ground of thought , the I think (Aristotelian consequent B )is the basis of the inference s concerning the substantiality, simplicity,identity,and the relations of the soul or the thinking substance (consequent A).

One historically predominate metaphysical interest has to do with identifying the nature and the constitution of the soul. Partly for practical reasons, partly for theoretical explanation, reason lodges on the idea of a metaphysically simple being, the soul. Such an idea is motivated by reason's demand for the unconditioned. Kant puts this point in a number of ways, suggesting that the idea of the soul is one to which we are led necessarily insofar as we are constrained by reason to seek the "totality" of the "synthesis of conditions of a thought in general" (A397), or insofar as we seek to represent "the unconditioned unity" of "subjective conditions of representations in general" (A406/B433). More straightforwardly, Kant states that metaphysics of the soul is generated by the demand for the "absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject itself" (A334/B391).

An essential aspect of all these arguments is, according to Kant, their attempt to derive conclusions about the nature and constitution of the "soul" a priori, simply from an analysis of the activity of thinking. A classic example of such an attempt is provided by Descartes, who deduced the substantiality of the self from the proposition "I think." This move is apparent in the Cartesian inference from "I think" to the claim that the "I" is therefore "a thing" that thinks. For Descartes, this move is unproblematic: thought is an attribute, and thus presupposes a substance in which it inheres. Kant emphasizes the a priori basis for the metaphysical doctrine of the soul by claiming that in rational psychology, the "I think" is supposed to provide the "sole text" (A343-4/B401-02). It is this feature of the discipline that serves to distinguish it from any empirical doctrine of the self (any empirical psychology), and which secures its status as a "metaphysics" that purports to provide synthetic a priori knowledge

 

SOURCES

Bennett, Jonathan. Kant's Dialectic. Newyork, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Mahaffy, John. P. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Delhi, Orient publications,1988.