Kant

[Anonymous No.11545958]

Brainlet here.
I'm in need of some help. I'm going through the CPR and I'm having some difficulty understanding just what the fuck this autistic German means. So in the introduction to the second edition, he says that cause and effect can't be a priori notions because you need to have empirical experience to get to that. Okay, fair enough. But then once I start the book proper he literally says that getting that 7+5=12 is an a priori notion, although a synthetical one. Is the implication here that the rules of mathematics aren't subject to cause and effect? And if not, why not? Is it because you don't need space and time to determine the result? That's the only reason I can think of why. Help me...

[Anonymous No.11545994]

It means that the truth of 7+5=12 is independent of experience. You don't take the equation to a lab to find out in a controlled series of experiments whether the result is 12. This is math, not physics. Brainlet.

[Anonymous No.11546003]

>>11545994
But how is adding 5 to 7 and getting 12 not a result of cause and effect? You've answered nothing that wasn't already stated in the OP.

[Anonymous No.11546009]

>>11546003
12 is equivalent to 5 add 7. There is no cause or efffect.

[Anonymous No.11546113]

>>11546003
Once again you do not understand what summation and equality are in mathematics, or causation. There's no causation in the truth of an equation. When I write "7+5=13", which is a priori false, is there a cause and an effect somehow happening within the symbols? Should something in the universe around me happen and prevent me from writing down an incorrect result, as it tends to happen whenever I try to emancipate myself from the laws of gravity and fly like Superman? Where is the cause and the effect when we are talking about its truth? Is it an equation, or a chemical reaction? You did advertise yourself as a brainlet, I think /x/ is where you belong.

[Anonymous No.11546146]

>Is it because you don't need space and time to determine the result?
It's because it's always true in any space and any time, an a priori truth is independent of space and time. Like it or not, the result is always and whenever 12. This truth is what your calculator has to conform itself to in order to be correct.

[Anonymous No.11546271]

>>11546113
>There's no causation in the truth of an equation.
How is there not when you are literally performing an operation and saying what happens?
>Should something in the universe around me happen and prevent me from writing down an incorrect result, as it tends to happen whenever I try to emancipate myself from the laws of gravity and fly like Superman?
Nothing stops you from writing down an incorrect result for anything. Does anything happen if I start scribbling on the walls that Caesar never existed? No.
>Where is the cause and the effect when we are talking about its truth?
I would say it's in the fact that if you didn't add a 7 to that 5, it wouldn't be a 12 - it'd be a 5.

[Anonymous No.11546480]

>>11546271
>How is there not when you are literally performing an operation and saying what happens?
Because my calculator's registers and logical ports, or my brain's synapses and neurotransmittants have nothing to do with the truth of what is written. Especially when they're doing it wrong. Now see >>11546146
>Nothing stops you from writing down an incorrect result for anything. Does anything happen if I start scribbling on the walls that Caesar never existed? No.
Probably not, but with enough damnatio memoriae and destruction of historical artifacts and records, people will believe there was no Caesar. The good news is that at least with math we can figure out who's in the right everytime, everywhere, even in 1984's dictatorship, even after the apocalypse, because there is no cause and effect.
>I would say it's in the fact that if you didn't add a 7 to that 5, it wouldn't be a 12 - it'd be a 5.
And indeed 5 is 5. Once again you don't understand equality. 5 = 5, always and wherever. The number 5 is subjected to no process. 5 does not transform into 12. The mathematical object on either side of an = is the same. Your attention should be drawn towards the operator +, not the number 5. This is an equation, not a chemical reaction. Anon, you weren't paying attention in class, and when you write an equation you do not understand what you are doing. If your brainletry were to spread people wouldn't be able to understand why summation has its properties.

[Anonymous No.11547835]

>>11546271
This is so fucking funny

[Anonymous No.11547877]

>>11545958
>Doesn't understand the basic methodological distinctions between rationalism and empiricism
>Tries to read Kant

Ideally you should have read Hume before reading Kant, but it honestly sounds like you should start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.11547913]

>>11545958
>cause and effect can't be a priori notions because you need to have empirical experience to get to that

This is the claim made by the ancient Skeptics and British empiricists. Kant will go on to dispute it, and claim that the relation of cause to effect is an a priori notion that corresponds to our logical ability to make hypothetical judgments "if...then..." He talks about it at length in the second analogy of experience.

> But then once I start the book proper he literally says that getting that 7+5=12 is an a priori notion, although a synthetical one. Is the implication here that the rules of mathematics aren't subject to cause and effect? And if not, why not?

Kant thinks that arithmetical judgments are a priori, because they can be discovered without appealing to experience. However, they are synthetic in that they genuinely extend our knowledge by putting two concepts together – that is, the concept of 12 is not contained within the concepts of 7, 5, and addition, and one has to somehow 'intuit' putting the two together to form the sum (by counting, using some visual representation of number as with one's fingers, etc.) This operation that must be performed means that we aren't just examining the concepts of the mathematical terms, like when we say "a bachelor is a man" (which is true by definition). But at the same time, we need no external experience to verify the proposition, and unlike empirical truths it is necessary.

[Anonymous No.11547927]

>>11545958
No big issue, OP. Cause and effect have a meaning regarding reality, regarding things (to say broadly), or regarding phenomena (to say it the way Kant would). They don't mean anything regarding mathematics because mathematics are concepts, not things.
(mathematics are not exactly concepts, but you get the idea)

principle and consequence (in a theory or a statement, as in mathematics) are not cause and effect (in physics)

[Anonymous No.11548021]

Cause and effect indeed a priori notions and it's essentially the main point of the book to demonstrate that

I wouldn't listen to anybody except this guy >>11547913

[Anonymous No.11548803]

>>11545958
There is a difference between logical "dependence" and temporal dependence, or causality.

Temporal dependence is the cause and effect Kant is speaking of. A priori synthetic notions are logically dependent. 7+5=12 because 7, +, and 5 are defined in such a way that they are logically equivalent to 12. Adding 7 to 5 does not cause 12; they both exist simultaneously.

Now, in the real world, if you own 5 apples, and you collect 7 more, this causes you to now own 12 apples. Notice that this causation has some feeling of time associated with it. Some causes and effects happen instantaneously (gravity causes you to not fall of the face of the earth). But the notion of gravity cannot by symbolically manipulated into the notion of you staying on the Earth.

[Anonymous No.11549062]

>>11545958
iirc, it's synthetic because 7+5 = 12 could just as easily be 7+5 = 75.
the fact that math works independent of experience makes it a priori, but the fact that we mean the former (=12) and not the latter (=75) is why it's synthetic.

but it's been a long time since i read, so i admit i could be wrong