Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy
Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy, Spanish
Here are his words: "All empirical judgments, as such, are synthetic.
For it would be absurd to ground an analytic judgment on experience,
since I am not obliged to go out of the conception itself in order to
form the judgment, and therefore can have no need of the testimony of
experience. That a body is extended, is a proposition which stands firm
_a priori_. It is no empirical judgment; for, prior to experience, I
have all the conditions of forming it in the conception of body, from
which I deduce the predicate, extension, according to the principle of
contradiction, by which I at once become conscious of its necessity,
which I could not learn from experience. But, on the other hand, I
do not include, in the primitive conception of body in general, the
predicate, heaviness; yet this conception of body in general indicates,
through experience of a part of it, an object of experience, to which
I may add from experience other parts also belonging to it. I can
attain to the conception of body beforehand, analytically, through
its characteristics extension, impenetrability, form, etc., all of
which are included in the primary conception of body. But I now
_extend_ my cognition, and, as I recur to experience, from which I have
obtained the conception of body in general, I find along with these
characteristics the conception of heaviness. I therefore add this, as a
predicate, to the conception of body. The possibility of this synthesis
therefore rests on experience; for both conceptions, although one does
not contain the other, yet belong as parts to a whole, that is to say,
to experience, which is itself a union of synthetic, though contingent
intuitions. But in the case of synthetic judgments _a priori_ we have
not this assistance. Here we have not the advantage of returning and
supporting ourselves on experience. If I must go out of the conception
A in order to find another conception B, which is to be joined to it,
on what am I to rely? and by what means does the synthesis become
possible?"[24]
[24] Ibid. pp. 9, 10.
279. The reason of this synthesis is found in the faculty of our mind
of forming total conceptions, in which the _relation_ of the partial
conceptions composing it is discovered; and the legitimacy of the
same synthesis is founded on the principles on which the criterion of
evidence is based.
The synthesis of the schoolmen consists in the union of conceptions,
and does not refuse to admit as analytical the total conceptions, from
the decomposition of which results the knowledge of the relations of
the partial conceptions.
If Kant had stopped with the judgments of experience, there would be
no objection to his doctrine. But extended to the purely intellectual
order, it is either inadmissible, or at least expressed without much
exactness.
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