Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Notes on Immanuel Kant Part 3              Kant attempted to synthesize the rationalist and empiricist tradition since he said that Hume had awakened him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Rationalists like Descartes and Ibn Sina believed that there is knowledge that is a priori or independent from experience while empiricists like Hume and Locke believed the opposite. Hume was critical of the traditional notion of causation, arguing that the belief in cause and effect is not grounded in reason but rather in custom and habit. He argued that there is nothing in the cause that necessitates the occurrence of the effect. In other words, one may observe one event regularly following another, but there is no inherent connection or power in the cause that compels the effect to happen. A rationalist, on the other hand, would contend that knowledge of cause and effect is, at least in part, a priori—that is, independent of experience. Kant argued that...

The Euthyphro Dilemma       If God commanded murder tomorrow, would the believer do it? If goodness is synthetic rather than analytical, the question is in virtue of what is the causal explanation for why God is good? If one appeals to God’s nature, goodness is either a standard that is external to God or it is arbitrary. If it is the former and God adheres to the standard of goodness but the theist provides and internal explanation for the standard coming from within God, is this enough to escape the dilemma? Is it possible for there to be a state of affairs in virtue of the good being external to God? Rather, it is within God’s nature to always be in accordance with that standard. There is an inherent primitive goodness in God as in His nature and that is the causal explanation for God’s moral commandment as good. Therefore, God’s nature is what sets the standard of goodness and God’s nature is the causal explanation. Why does goodness have to be an external proper...

  Mathematical a priori Statements       A triangle having three sides and angles equaling 180 degrees is an analytic a priori since the predicate of 3 sides and 180 degrees are in the word triangle. The equation, 2+2=4, would be a synthetic a priori because the concept of four is not present in two.       In the case of a triangle having three sides and angles equaling 180 degrees, the concept of a triangle already contains within it the idea of having three sides and angles adding up to 180 degrees. All three-sided polygon has 180 degrees and all triangles are three-sided polygons by definition. Therefore, the truth of this statement is considered analytic a priori, as it is true by definition and can be known independently of experience unless it can be proven otherwise.        On the other hand, in the case of 2+2=4, the concept of four is not contained within the concept of two. Rather, the truth of this statemen...