Kant thaught that by explaining the nature of syntethic a priori statements one could determine the possibility, legitimacy, and range of all metaphysical claims. That is, solving the whole problem of differing wievs.

What exactly does the synthetic a priori concept implicate? I'm realy having a hard time figuring this out.

Any help will be much apreciated!

Guess my question realy was, how does the statement "every event must have an cause" depend upon a priori knowledge? Is it not possible to know this a posteriori?

I'm stuck in Bangkok, Thailaind atm, and I am not attending any philosophy course. Just genuine curiosity about Kants philosphy that made post the thread. A synthetic claim does not have the predicate contained within the subject. It rather amplifies the properties of the subject. By simplyfying the term one could say that a priori knowledge is knowledge that doesn't rely on experience for it to be known. So basicaly what he is saying is that if one could make judgements about an object without this being innate in the subject, and actually prove these claims one could "...determine the possibility, legitimacy, and range of all metaphysical claims."

Guess my question realy was, how does the statement "every event must have an cause" depend upon a priori knowledge? Is it not possible to know this a posteriori?

BTW. Sorry for any spelling mistakes. I'm norwegian so you'll have to excuse me

Yes, I have read some Hume. In Kants words: "...it was he who arose me from my dogmatic slumbers." The solipsism created by Humes philosophy was not a satisfying wiev of reality to Kant. Thus, he decided to revise the whole philosophy of Hume and arived at the conclusion that it had to be some sort of logical basis for substance for us to have any concept of, f.eks causality, where Hume would conclude that causality was simply an illusion we conjured up when we saw one thing happening after another. But even though our synthetic a priori concept of time and space could to some extent confirm that there was something of real substance that we percieved, I still cant see how, even though we found certain proof of this, that this would enable one to prove the legitimacy of all metaphysical claims. Maybe the answer is right in front of me, but one goes blind from staring at the sun

So what Kant was basicaly doing was saving metaphysics all together by constructing a philosophy which where open to an objective reality, that Hume denied even existed.

So, proving that there was, in fact, a logical basis for substance out there, and that we to some extent could percieve it was another way of saying that if synthetic a priori judgements could be verified we could termine what could explain what, and to what extent.