What is a priori synthetic judgment, with examples

A priori comprehensive judgment is a proposition that exists before experience and can add new chains of knowledge, such as mathematical axioms, laws of cause and effect, etc., which cannot be proved by experience. Immanuel Kant proposed the transcendental method to establish a complete philosophical system.

1. What is innate (a priori) and acquired (a posteriori)?

Kant believed that all knowledge begins with experience, but not all of it comes from experience. Therefore, everything is a result of the senses, and therefore it is not recognized that man has an innate conception, as the previous philosophers suggested. The so-called "a priori" is established without relying on experience, so some scholars translate it as "a priori", which is used in textbooks, and sometimes "priori" is used (because it is afraid of misuse with innate concepts).

A priori, as the name suggests, means prior to experience (the following is still based on the use of "innate"); However, it is easy to misinterpret the precedent here as preceding experience in time, but it should be more appropriately said to be a prerequisite for experience, that is, the prerequisite and foundation that makes experience possible. However, innate is relative to experience, so for experience it is called a posteriori or posteriori.

Therefore, the so-called "innate" in the process of knowing is the "prerequisite" in the process of knowing, that is, the prerequisites that make empirical knowledge possible. More specifically, it is the epistemic basis of the object being recognized, and this part is the epistemic structure and function of the subject that exists in the subject.

In short, the cognitive structure and function of the subject is an innate structure, which produces the so-called transcendental form in the process of knowledge, and thus derives empirical knowledge, so that the establishment of knowledge becomes possible. For example:

Innate: The internal structure and function of the sound The structure and function of the subject's cognition.

The day after tomorrow: the presentation of sound and the empirical knowledge of the object.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that the internal structure of sound can be the presentation of sound that produces or derives from it, just as the cognitive structure of the subject can derive the knowledge of experience; Therefore, the internal structure of sound is a prerequisite for the presentation of sound, just as the cognitive structure of the subject is a prerequisite for making experience possible.

Therefore, the innate or a priori, which is the prerequisite for the subject's cognition, is not from experience, but within the subject.

Our intellect has two functions: one is the logical function and the other is the cognitive function. The former prescribes the form of judgment of thinking on the basis of knowledge, which is the scope of formal logic; The latter, in turn, provides us with new knowledge, which is the domain of "transcendental logic".

Since Aristotle, our formal logic has been quite complete, and no one doubts that formal logic is universally necessary, i.e., "innate", and therefore the transcendental logic that provides the intellectual content of formal logic must also be innate, because it is the basis of formal logic. Therefore, formal logic corresponds to transcendental logic, and behind every form of judgment there is a certain transcendental element as its basis, and this transcendental element is the "category".