Reading Kant's 'Synthetic A Priori' as 'Necessary A Posteriori'

(Note: I could use the term 'analytic a posteriori' instead of 'necessary a posteriori'.  Both of these have a sense of being contradictory for Kant, but I supposed that 'necessary a posteriori' would bring this contradiction out without any confusion.)
In the second edition introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant discusses features of secure sciences.  I think it could be helpful to use the description of secure science in the Critique as a tool for interpreting why Kant pursued knowledge concerning the 'synthetic a priori', it also allows us to see an alternative that is equal in the same way transcendental idealism is taken by Kant to be the flip side of empirical realism.

A basic feature of secure science is that we are always able to guide them by putting something down in advance ourselves.  Mathematicians construct their concepts without having to check in with experience first to determine if there are such things, while natural science combines mathematical insight a priori in order to frame experiments regarding the reality of physical systems.

In addition to giving something in advance, knowledge also requires some material by which to connect concepts in our judgment.  Mathematics would be impossible without a pure intuition, that is, without the possibility of being able to construct its concepts. Natural science would be impossible without experience to see which mathematical models hold for appearances.

A synthetic a priori judgment is a paradox: it demands that we consider connections without anything given to connect them.  Something must in some manner be put down prior to experience in order for experience to acquire its order.  I think the reason for this paradoxical terminology is that it is modeled off of how secure sciences have things put down in advance.  Put in other terms, while Transcendental Philosophy is without hypotheses, its structure is at least modelled off of systems that have hypotheses.

What other option is there other than the synthetic a priori?  Unfortunately it seems only equally paradoxical terms are possible: if 'synthetic a priori' is a transcendental idealist term, then perhaps the empirical realist term is 'necessary a posteriori'.  I will take a few steps back before returning to this.

Kant does not make himself the sole arbiter of human reason, rather he insists that all others are the judge of his understanding just as much as he must be the judge of his own and theirs.  Kant's Critique concerns what all beings possessing human reason can say about themselves without requiring any similar experiences in particular.  What is the common structure we can all agree on for human reason (as a unity of our powers)?  Kant has no special mode of making visible the elements of reason apart from his analysis of experience, and his choice to talk about the elements of experience in terms of a system of them accords well with a customary scientific mode of building a system to reason about.  

We can also see Kant as starting a discourse about what he sees in his experience that he thinks every other humanly rational being (i.e. beings like himself) will agree with.  In this we can see how he is striving for a discourse that concerns something a posteriori - his reflections about experience, the limitation of his imagination with regard to experience - but at the same time claims universality and necessity as it is a discourse framed on experience to talk about the elements of it he is compelled to hold as common.

Now, while Kant denies the possibility of necessary a posteriori knowledge, he does not preclude the striving for it, which is all that a Critique can attain to even when pursuing knowledge of the synthetic a priori.  The reason for this is, of course, that in both cases the judgment of all humanly reasoning beings must be brought to bear in this striving.  Here we simply see a paradox of objectivity that afflicts all human knowledge, and which I will illustrate in another post.

My interest in raising this matter isn't to criticize Kant's choice to model transcendental philosophy after science, but to learn about the approach he did take by seeing that he could have gone another way with the same project.  To me, phenomenology (taken etymologically as discourse about that which shows itself) attempts the other manner of speaking about the same work Kant was doing, and so can be counted as an empirical realist mode of transcendental philosophy.

The Problem with Philosophy (qua Discipline)

The problem of philosophy as a historical practice, or discipline, handed down through institution is that it has a great tendency to lose its problems.  It loses them to such an extent that there are often concerns of whether there are any problems at all in philosophy.  The institution may preserve the name 'philosophy' but no philosophy (as an activity) is guaranteed to be present in it.

The history of philosophy contains plenty of problems (in proposition form), and these seem to be the things that are most easily discoverable.  A beginning course in philosophy always attempts to raise some metaphysical doubts, questioning what we can know to be true, or if there are external things, or if we exist, &c.  But, for those that first posed these problems, the problems only found their expression in propositions after struggling with an anxiety that had to be wrestled into place.  These problems, encoded into propositions, are handed down as the problems of philosophy, however this is insufficient: the proposition does not preserve the subjective state of affection required for the problems: the propositions do not preserve the anxiety that is required to grasp their scope, and the real conditions for their solution (the resolution of the anxiety).

(I do not here make philosophical problems into mental disturbances, but simply note that we cannot notice our problems, or their resolution, without a more intuitive standard.)

Once inheriting these propositions, we seem to find it sufficient to deal with them in logical terms that are only suited to evaluate the consistency of statements, and not help recover the problem (the anxiety) any more.  Those that participate in philosophy have their own anxiety, however, and not connecting their anxieties with those of others, and guided by this personal anxiety, formulate their own resolutions to these problems to their own satisfaction.  Often because the language of the objective world is borrowed (since this language often feels required to relieve our anxiety), these solutions conflict with those of the past.  Dogmatic metaphysics emerges in this manner.

Philosophy will never find its center until it begins to recover those basic problems that run through it, and preserve its real order and continuity, and contain direction for its real truth, that would otherwise pass unnoticed on the surface in the presence of continual debate.  Much of the importance of Kant is exclusively in an attempt at providing future philosophy an understanding of its own problems, and the possibility of its problems (the possibility of the natural disposition to metaphysics).  (Heidegger seems to have taken up this challenge more exclusively.)

Rather than restating philosophical problems from the history of philosophy as if it was obvious that they are problems, beginning philosophy courses should strive to induce the real anxiety required for entering into these problems, and generating the sort of statements off these problems originally that would be required to understand past statements of them.  This way the history of philosophical thought will not just be a wasteland where thoughts are criticized in a quite superficial manner.

(There is a certain concern I have with religious traditions: that the wisdom of the past generation provides formulas that actually prevent the future generations from admitting the problems required for understanding religious feeling.  I believe that this sort of phenomena was treated by Kierkegaard in the Concept of Anxiety with a special concern for hereditary sin, and how this has us overlook how each of us - and not just Adam - bring sin into the world ourselves.)

Philosophy is not the only place where this problem exists, but it may be the only discipline that can't get off the ground and take its proper place as a result.  For example, mathematics has direction for its problems, and has advanced consistently.  However, education in mathematics does not produce mathematicians (who are truly very few), since it doesn't provide a real understanding of the problems of mathematics, and only provides a guide for correctness of results from computation (until one proceeds far enough).  This leads to revealing humor, such as the joke about doctors in math being unable to calculate their share of a bill.  This humor is revealing because the actual problems of mathematics do not start or end with computation.  The joke is on us for not realizing that this humor reveals that what we teach under the name of mathematics is no such thing.

In physics as well we find steady and regular progress, however, students of physics are left to standards of correctness of computations, and application of principles.  Physics is not principally concerned with computation: computation is merely a means for physics for testing and reforming theory.  

The genuine problems of a discipline, which always manifest in anxiety originally, should be a much larger matter of concern to educators that are interested in opening up a field to a student, and not merely running them through the algorithms of correctness.  Correctness is something we demand, but it is not itself a primary goal.

On Hypothesis and Questioning

I want to discuss 'hypothesis', and this will be my attempt to set out some thoughts concerning it.  I want this to expand how I think of science, while still keeping it in close contact with how I think of philosophy, and particularly, metaphysics (as the study of the Being of beings).

Hypothesis is often used in terms of a prediction we make, and then test through experiment.  I don't know how recently this came to be the standard usage, and I am not interested in rejecting it but understanding why it has become natural for us to think of things as predictable.  I am going back to some usage I have seen in Kant and Plato which inspired me, and seeing if I can get better insight into my own thought about both science, and my work in metaphysics.

Hypo-thesis has a nice etymology: under-placing.  In this way you could imagine a hypothesis as a foundation for a building - something that one allows something else to stand.  I would like to emphasize this under-placing through a different image so that I can avail myself of certain language that I think will be helpful to develop other thoughts I have related to the subject.

Imagine a completely white space, brightly lit, so that you cannot see any differentiation in the field of view.  You are looking forward as a black backdrop is lowered some distance behind you.  As this happens, you see a number of all white objects that were in the field of view that were hitherto invisible (due to their non-contrasting with the environment) have now become visible.  I would like to consider the black backdrop here, which allows the white objects to stand out (exist, presence themselves), as illustrating hypothesis.

hypotheses allow things to show themselves.  A scientific hypothesis, taken in this sense, is a way of constraining the environment in advance in order to see something that stands out.  I do not want to consider hypotheses as physical equipment used to reveal things (so the black backdrop is only a metaphor): a light switch is not a hypothesis.  A hypothesis is rather a way of thinking of our environment in advance in a planned way - a way of constraining the environment in order that it seems different to us while we operate under the hypothesis.

In Plato's Meno, Socrates and Meno are unable to decide what virtue is, but Meno still persuades Socrates to answer if virtue can be taught.  Socrates advises that they continue as a geometer by operating under a hypothesis.  They agree to suppose that knowledge considered valuable, and teachable, will be taught, so that if virtue is both valuable and teachable then we should discover it being taught.  But it is not taught, and good men have bad sons.  If we agree or disagree with the hypothesis does not matter here.  What I am interested in is how something is used to reduce the field of inquiry to just those things which are being taught, and upon looking at this reduced field not finding virtue there, the conclusion that virtue cannot be taught is decided.

For complicated reasons (which I do not understand) we say that if a certain statistical regularity shows itself (through data gathered in a graph that reveals a bump or cluster), then we have reason to suppose that there is a higgs-boson particle.  This is a hypothesis.  This data is not gathered at random, but depends on many other hypothesis that have constrained the environment so precisely that, at CERN, we have built a particle accelerator on these hypotheses.  Presently, we have no other way of hunting around for the higgs-boson, and this particle accelerator served the need to to let the particle stand out, and in a way, first exist.  All of these scientific operations clearly suppose the regularity of nature, but nature is not regular - no events ever repeat.  We do not hold to hypotheses because nature operates in a regular manner: only by holding to a hypothesis can beings become predictable and regular.  If we forget this we risk forgetting how science works.

For many of us, in our school days, we measured the volume of things by seeing the displacement of something in water.  Perhaps we remember Archimedes' eurika story, as well.  In our experiment we already knew in advance that a displacement in water signified the amount of space that an object takes up.  Having this understanding in advance allowed us to operate in our environment in a certain way to provide answers to questions we were given to ask.  For Archimedes, who had a lingering problem that he was trying to solve, his own displacing of water in a bath tub led him to realize that he had found the answer.  Such fortunate accidents do not just happen, but with Archimedes, as with the story of Newton, our own questioning state of mind leads to such dawning consciousness.  Our own questioning operates on the environment in order to reveal in a way that a hypothesis does, but without knowing in advance what such an answer will look like, and so different from us in our classroom experiments.

Kant says that no hypotheses are allowed in his critical enterprise.  What does this tell us about his approach?  While operating under no pre-consideration of things, he is yet asking.  He is not trying to constrain the field of beings in order to simply let some beings appear, or for them to appear in a special way - he just wants things to be as they are.  However, as soon as he begins to provide his interpretation of what emerges in this space, he sticks to one part of beings - the immediate presence to intuition (sense) - as a guide.  This can distort, for his readers, the original view that he had towards the Being of beings, a view also required for him to write the second and third critiques.  (The third seeming to approach most closely to a pure interpretation of presencing with the judgment of taste.)  This may help illustrate how I think the basic difference between a special science and the general science of metaphysics (or ontology).

Special sciences, already operate in advance with an understanding of their hypothesis, and constrain the view to let certain beings appear.  Metaphysics, on the other hand, does not hold hypotheses, but asks concerning the Being of beings.  Sometimes this asking is just in regard to the Being of beings in a certain discipline (what is it to be a being of mathematical physics?), while sometimes it is with regard to a pure view to beings as such.  But even with our most pure view to beings, they are already in advance something that is able to be taken up by us into our asking, and so already we can see that they have a character that is able to be questioned (a questionable character).  This tells us about the pure Being of beings, and also about us and how we emerge in relation to the Being of beings as thinkers.

Regarding Conflicts Between Science and Forms of Experience

   By 'forms of experience' (or forms of unity, forms of cognition, forms of order, or, simply, form) I understand the basic power (unities, orders, cognitions) we can speak of that make up our considerations of anything.  By 'forms of experience' I understand only primitive forms, not forms of things only knowable empirically; forms of experience concern only forms that are necessary, that is, where their possibility is sufficient to show their existence - things we cannot learn from experience, yet are required for experience.

   Because sciences are higher level organizations of what is given through our forms of experience, it is clear that all sciences are governed by forms of experience.  By being drawn from only some forms of experience, a science excludes consideration of other forms, or brackets them from consideration, which excludes concern with sciences grounded through other forms of experience.  Additionally, no science can undermine a form of experience, nor should it be considered rightful in any science to reject a form of experience.  This is because either a science has bracketed forms of experience, and so has no dealings with them,  or the science is developed out of those forms of experience, and so depends upon them.  (It is true that science first begin without a clear determining ground, but this does not mean that they do not depend upon this ground.)

   In spit of the relationship between forms of experience and sciences, confusion about this relationship leads forms of experience to be challenged by arguments drawn from the vantage point of certain sciences.  More often than not, these challenges really arise from conflicts between two sciences which are each grounded on different forms of experience, and seem to have incompatible concepts.  Compounding these difficulties is the apparent fact that many conceptions of a science are given the same name, and so different things are sometimes spoken of as equal.  The summation of all this is that many disputes that proceed along the lines of these perceived difficulties are chaotic and undisciplined (they  have no clear grounding principles).  In time I would love to address all of these difficulties, but for now I will restrict myself to clarifying the supposed conflicts between forms of experience and sciences, so far as these forms of experience lead to sciences that appear to compete.

   When someone is drawing from a science in order to reject a form of experience they are either:

a) demanding that the analysis we have carried out for some form of experience be clarified, since we have excluded possible experiences, or including impossible experiences, within the forms we have accounted for.  Or,

b) that the science is itself concerning forms of human experience.

In the former case there is no conflict of science, but if there is something excluded (or superadded) by our account of the forms of experience, then we have an excellent opportunity to improve our account of the forms of experience.  In the latter case, there will be a conflict of metaphysics (systems of forms of experience), and we can work to see if the basic principle of our forms of experience are compatible or not with the others suggested.  When comparing different systems of metaphysics we must decide if there are real conflicts, or if the conflict is ultimately over terminology and the structure of terms - a procedure that is beyond the scope of this essay.

   In my experience of philosophical disputes, a conflict between forms of experience is rarely acknowledged, and usually  a distinction between forms of experience and sciences is needful.  In order to illustrate this more common scenario, I will select an example that, I hope, will be familiar.

   Physics draws its basic concepts from some forms of experience of objects (of a possible experience), while excluding other forms of experience.  It is often supposed that freewill is in conflict with laws of physics.  I do not intend to resolve this debate here explicitly, but merely to show the landscape of the debate from the vantage point of the distinctions I have been articulating.

   If we grant that the science of freewill, which I will call praxology, is derived from forms of experience excluded by physics, then physics and praxology are not themselves in conflict; instead, we have a question concerning our understanding of forms of experience.  As we already noted, if a science has a concern with the accuracy of our articulation of the forms of experience, this conflict is to be understood as a demand to clarify, and once more explicate, our forms of experience - a practice that is always needful.  However, the debate rarely becomes this productive since the following circumstances are often in play:  someone thinking vaguely along the lines of physics - a science which is not, by its nature, interested in freewill - does not recognize that they have bracketed certain forms of experience which praxology depends upon, and concludes the absurdity of praxology.  At the same time, a praxologist who also does not see this bracketing will be unable to understand how their own manner of thinking is able to be rejected, but is also unable to justify it.  By ignoring the difference between forms of experience, and sciences, this arrangement will never lead to a productive discussion, but only confusion.  

   Praxology, understood along the lines of Kant's practical philosophy, depends upon a different conception of cause than physics does, namely the notion of a self-cause.   Cause and self-cause both form foundations for different manners of organizing knowledge, and their is no need to suppose that the discussion of either comes in to determine what the state of the other is.  I hope to face this particular example in greater detail soon in order to clarify the notion of a self-cause, but there is no room in the current essay for this.

   The arrangement above is not an attempt to describe disputes between sciences as empty, but as typically in a chaotic state.  There is a lot to be gained by coming to terms.  I hope that all of this suggest that when sciences come into conflict, and particularly when they come into conflict with forms of experience, there is a lot to consider in order to make sure that those who argue do not make a spectacle of themselves.  Unfortunately, the crowd who may recognize such a spectacle for what it is seems to be small, since it is far more common that these sorts of conflicts tend to divide people into factions immediately, and before any investigation into the origin of the dispute has been made.