Kant's formula, he might maintain that the determination of the conditions of the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments forms at the same time the test of their validity; and Kant's statement of the problem of pure reason would remain intact. All the same, Kant himself, in giving a synopsis of the Critique twenty years later, specifically sets the question of objective validity side by side with that of psychological origin. The problem, he there states, was a twofold one: (1) How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? and, (2) How from synthetic judgments is knowledge a priori possible?[1] And the context shows that the knowledge which in the last question is distinguished from synthetic judgments, is only these judgments themselves, when validly referred to objective reality. Thus, to illustrate, when Kant asks, How is pure mathematic possible? he means to investigate, first, the subjective materials out of which, in the absence of all sensuous experience, it is constructed, or the conditions under which it arises as a psychological phenomenon, and, secondly, the grounds on which it can be referred to real things, its objective applicability and validity. And with regard to pure physics and metaphysics, the same two questions of origin and validity have to be raised. So that Kant's problem in general is both psychological and epistemological. He will explore the constitution of the mind, which makes the production of a priori synthetic judgments possible. And though we call this part of his task a psychological inquiry, it is independent of empirical psychology, which Kant explicitly repudiates; for this could tell him only of the growth of the contents of the mind, whereas he is bent upon dissecting the organism of intelligence itself. Perhaps it might be called a question of transcendental psychology. But however named, the inquiry is included in the general problem of the Critique. It is not, however, the principal problem. That is and remains the epistemological question: How are judgments which we form independently of experience valid for sensible objects but not for suprasensible?
- ↑ Ueber die Fortschritte der Metaphysik, seit Leibnitz und Wolff, VIII, 526. This important declaration refutes Riehl's (Philos. Kriticismus, I, 294 pp.) denial of the psychological aspect of the critical problem.
