Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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NEW CHEMICAL LABORATORY ject in the objective world. For instance when we make the judgment “Fire is the cause of burning we speak of something which we do not know and which we can- not know. We cannot know causality be- cause we have never experienced it and yet we are made in such a way that we. must understand things in the relation of cause and effect. When we say fire causes burning, all we see is first the fire, and afterwards the burning, but we do not know the causality. So with the other eategories of quantity, quality, modality, ete. We cannot see the quantity of a thing, we cannot see its one-ness; and yet we say this thing is one and this other is many. They are merely “а priori forms; we are made in such а way that when we see first the fire and then the burning, we say the fire causes the burning. So when we speak of causality or of other non-empirical concepts, we speak of something which ean never be found in the objective world. Now science does not consist in an un- related collection of judgments, but in а systematic grouping and classification of these judgments. This the reason does. The reason is the third phase of the cog- nitive faculty, an d its particular duty is to systematize these judgments of the intel- lect. It places these judgments іп а few branches; reduces them to a few headings. So there must be some headings in the reason under which to put them. Thus it is that there are forms of the reason, not known by experience, under which every judgment of the intellect ean be placed. These forms are called ideas, and are three in number, the Ego, God, and the universe. . These ideas exist. But are they objective? We do not know. We know that there is à tendency of our reason to group all judgments under these ideas. We are made in such a way that in considering things, the mind takes the ex- istence of God, for instance, for granted. “But,” we might object, “the existence of God is not a mere form, a mere shadowy idea which we cannot substantiate; we have proof positive of the existence of God. Kant takes each argument and tries to refute it, to convince himself at any rate; he shows thus that by the power of our reason we cannot attain to the exis- tence of God. The reason we cannot do this, he says, is simply because we ca nnot have a true and certain knowledge of the noumena. In like manner he shows how everything pertaining to the universe can be reduced to four antinomies, which are propositions in opposition to each other, but each of which can be affirmed with equal truth. Whatever is said in psychol- ogy, the science of the Ego or the soul, is a paralogism, contains a fallacy, the fall- acy of giving objectivity to what is only a tendency on the part of the intellect. Now Kant has shown us that science must consist in synthetic “a prior?” judg- ments; he has shown us how these “a priori' forms of the intellect have no ob- jectivity in the world of things; so he con- m,

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 19 as they are in themselves, but as they appear to: us. Pursuing this question along logical lines, the question comes “How is it that we know only the phenomenon and cannot know the noumenon? Тһе solution read- ily appears when we make a survey of the cognitive faculty. Тһе cognitive faculty is three-fold, namely, sensibility, intellect and reason. With the sensual perception we see material objects; but true science ean never consist of judgments of the sen- sibility. The two are radically opposed. They are as different as day and night, as opposed ав spirituality is to what is material and corporeal. Science is necessary апа universal, whereas empirical knowledge is con- tingent and particular. Only judgments that are necessary and universal can find a place in science, because science con- cerns itself, not with the fact that such a thing happened, but asks why it hap- pened; it deals with the laws that govern phenomena, not with instances or partic- ular happenings. Now empirical knowl- edge is not necessary but contingent, since experience tells us what is, but not that it must necessarily be so and not otherwise; it is not universal but particular, because what we perceive is not house nor horse, but such a house, such a horse. When we visit a big city we do not visit city in gen- eral, but we visit this particular city. So, Science can never be found in the percep- tion of the sensibility. Kant now shows us that we do not per- ceive the phenomena wholly as they really are. We partly do, in as far as something of what we know exists in the world of reality; and we partly do not, in as far as not all of what we know of them exists in reality. What the sensibility adds is space and time; two forms which the sen- sibility imposes on whatever enters it. Space and time do not really exist, but nevertheless, every sensuous intuition is stamped as it were with these “a priori forms, space and time. When the mind sees an object it sees it not as it is but sees it in space. And when man has a subjec- tive modification, when, for instance, he feels that he is sleepy, he has that modifi- cation in time. Не feels he is not only Sleepy, but sleepy now, and not in ten minutes. Now there are no such things in the objective world as space and time; because if there were, we would have seen them, felt them or at least noticed them at some time or other. But we cannot see time nor space. When we see an object, we cannot see the space. And yet we af- firm that the object exists in space. Why do we do this? Why do we say there is such a thing as space, when we cannot know it? It is because that is the way we are made. Space and time are forms of our sensibility; our minds are во constituted that they cannot see things except in space and time. Therefore, sen- sual perceptions include two elements, matter and form. The matter is the phen- omenon, the form the way in which it is perceived. Science, we have seen, does not consist in perceptions of the sensibility. It remains then to see whether it can be found in judgments of the intellect. Kant answers that it can, but not in all judgments of the intellect. Let us first explain that a judg- ment is nothing more than the affirming of the identity or non-identity of two ob- jective concepts. Now judgments may be either analytic or synthetic. An analytic judgment is one in which the predicate is already found in the subject, e. g., when I say “А circle is round, the very idea of circle tells me it must be round. I do not add to the idea of circle something which I did not know of it before. It follows then that this kind is a judgment in name only and does not contribute to science, because I do not compare two concepts. I really know one and the same thing. A synthetic judgment on the other hand is one in which the predicate is not found in the subject, e. g., The earth attracts bodies to it by the force of gravitation. А syn- thetic judgment may be a posteriori or “а priori. It is “a posteriori when it is taken from experience, and it has already been seen that judgments taken from ex- perience are not valid, considered scien- tifically, because they lack two elements requisite to scientific knowledge, namely necessity and strict universality. Ап “а priori judgment is one that is not taken from experience. Only the synthetic “а priori' judgment then has scientific value. Now we have just said that the relation existing between the subject and the pre- dicate іп an “а priori judgment cannot come from experience. Where then does it come from? It comes from the pure understanding, the intellect, which places every judgment in a sort of pigeon-hole of the mind called categories. These cate- gories are twelve in number, corresponding to the twelve forms of judgment the mind may make and, in nature, are strictly “а priori. They have no corresponding ob-

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW 21 cludes with perfect consistence that no judgments of the pure reason are valid and that the sciences built upon them are worthless. With these sweeping assertions, Kant closes his criticism of the pure reason and leaves us with the ruin and wreckage of our intellectual structures strewn about our heels. If the ideas we have of God, the soul and the universe are not objective, that fact should sound the death-knell of morality. Religion should be shovelled off as useless, and decency and self-respect should be dragged off after it. But he hastens to mend the damage he has done and shows us how, face to face with these new conceptions of things, still the moral order remains unbroken. How- ever, our purpose in this essay is to expose merely Kant’s doctrine without en- tering into the discussion of his moral sys- tem. Summing up therefore what has pre- ceded we conclude that, considered coldly and impartially, subjected to a close and careful scrutiny, Kant’s system stands out as it really is, a clever and ingenious fabrication, a wonderful display of the powers of the human mind, but never a system of philosophy verified by a true conformity to fact. The very principles ж жж Che Shepherd is Mead Another shepherd called to rest, His weary watching o’er! His work is done, and with the blest He lives for evermore. His flock he tended faithfully Through stormy days of war, And in their troubles willingly With them their sorrows bore. And when the dove returned to land, Not less he watched his fold; But guided it with steady hand And prudent words, yet bold. Seen will he be no more on earth, True Father to the weak— True counsellor, whose golden worth Our mourning hearts shall seek. Rest to thy soul, Father and Pope, Upon the eternal shore! Pray for thine orphaned sons, who hope To be with thee evermore. H. P. PHELAN, ’25. which he took for granted and yet on which his whole system is based, are false. The principle of gravitation, which is strictly universal in its truth, and yet, as Kant admits, is derived from experience, is alone enough to refute him. It is not on these grounds, however, that we wish to question him, but there is a greater flaw in his sytem, which becomes apparent upon closer examination. It is nothing else but that the system which he so carefully built up is one monstrous, un- palatable contradiction. His aim was to find out how far our intellects could at- tain truth, but he did this by means of his own reason, whose veracity he doubted. Surely it is a contradiction to announce a fact as certain; and then to state that the means by which he proves this are them- selves not to be trusted. Surely it is a bla- tant and appalling contradiction to say that our reason cannot be trusted; and then to deliberately prove this fact by that same human reason. If (as he asserts), we cannot trust our reason, then we most certainly cannot attempt to use it to prove its own worthlessness. If our mind can- not attain truth, then surely it is the most glaring folly to prove an abstract truth by it, and “a fortiori to attempt to build up a system upon it. GERALD Bray, ’22. к= El GRAVE OF LIEUT. RODOLPHE LEMIEUX, M.C., LEGION OF HONOR, LIGNY-SAINT-FLOCHEL