Kant and Causality: An Introduction to the Transcendental Deduction 

This is the most underrated video in existance.

The most underrated channel in history

I continue to come back to this video even years later. Thank you very much for providing this! I can’t thank you enough sir.

HOLY, as a philosphy student who is taking epistemology classes right now and started reading Kant for the very first time, I can't stress enough how helpful this video is in understanding the material. I've been having trouble understanding how Kant could argue that space and time are purely mental. Great video overall.

I have enjoyed this video a thousand times, each time I have learned something new to me. It is amazing how many concepts can be condensed in so little time!

never written a comment before on RU-vid but this demands an exception; absolutely brilliant explanation that finally put all these complex ideas together in a coherent way. Thank you. Keep it up.

This really IS the most underrated video in existence

I struggle to put into words how helpful this is. What a great explanation. So much secondary literature on transcendental deduction either just refers back to the critique of pure reason or mimics its confusing vocabulary. I finally got it. I think....

Ed - we need more videos from you. Please try to find the time to create more. These are amazing

The most intelligible explanation of Kant I've come across so far!

Thank you. This video and Humes video helped me out so much. I was having trouble understanding how Kant came up with his Categorical Imperative. To understand how, I had to understand his metaphysics. To understand his metaphysics I had to learn about Hume and his understanding of causation and necessity. Your videos helped immensely. Thanks again.

I'm reading the transcendental deduction and secondary material for a class. This helps a lot, thanks.

Best summary of kant ever! And the music is cool too.

Finding fleshed out categories is Impossible! Awesome...

Step 1: Try to read Kant yourself to prove yourself as someone who can read Kant. Step 1b: Make no progress. Step 2: Watch a 10 minute video on yt. Step 3: Re-read Kant. Step 3b: Kant makes sense.

Please make more videos. I love these videos and i have watched them several times in the last two years.

Without a doubt a fantastic video. Kant is hard enough to understand, videos certainly mkae his works intelligible.

This is the most underrated video in existence (2).

lol i really appreciate that you have a cartoon version of the picture of kant's head leaning to that one side you always see on all things regarding kant

Thank you! Very easy to understand, good supplement to my class on perceptions and reality

Great job man, what an amazing video

That was great. I owe you so much. Keep up with the good work..!!!

Nicely done man. You obviously put a lot of work into this.

Thanks for the video Ed. Appreciate your effort.

This was a really good explanation of Kant. Thanks a lot ! 🙏

good work, keep going with these, they're fun and make learning difficult stuff easier

I wrote 5 pages of conversations that arose in my mind to "Understand" the "Givens" in this video. Some grammatical error in the subtitle gave me hard time. Great job man.

This video is a masterpiece

I love your cartoon of Kant's profile

Yes causality is supported by the las of physics but the next question is: Is causality absolute as in observers will always agree on when events happen with respect to each other? Because special relativity shows us that causality is a principle but observers do not have to agree on when events happen with respect to each other depending on if their reference frame is inertial or accelerating.

Awesome video, awesome explanation, awesome visuals and music. Now do Hegel.

Comprehensive? Great simple animation? Yes to both; thus helpful: 10/10 video quality. Oh.. quality... It is a built-in form, can't help it 😀.

This is very good. Well done.

Amazing, amazing explanation !!!!

Hi! Could you please tell me the name of the song at the ending? It's really nice and it fits perfectly with the video :)

wonderful video thanks too much to you

In fact, it boils down to the idea that the concept of "judgment" itself, IS consciousness. Its modalities are interesting insofar as they hint at the a priori dimensions of semantics (i.e. 'meaning') in our psyche (i.e. 'understanding'). Quantity, Quality, Relation and Modality are these dimensions, as postulated by Kant, but other philosophers have made overlapping yet somewhat different models. Aristotle's Categories being a prime example. At any rate the concept of 'categories' simply mean "the cognitive metrics of judgment". Time is not a product of our minds - time is understood by our minds. The distinction is tautological.

Why u r not uploading videos anymore?

This was awesome!

Perhaps a better title for the video will allow more people to see it and gain an understanding of Kant's views (kinda like I have thanks to you), otherwise, very helpful illustrations and explanations!

I wouldn't equate the subconscious with the TE. The nonconscious workings of the brain are mechanical rather than lead by logic. But modern people might say that these mechanisms set up the categories for experience.

Hume's argument was that through empirical investigation there was no such thing as causation. Causation he reasoned must show a "necessary conection" between on thing and another thing in an event. There was no such "connection" to be found using the senses. The only thing to be found was a "constant conjunction". A consistency in the behavior of objects in Nature without the observation of a "force", or some other agent, controlling or connecting these objects. Kant is asserting that this fact that Hume uses to banish causation, cannot be "understood" by means of the sensibility but only by means of the subconscious categories of the mind. By the category of relation in its psychological "insistence" of causation. Kant agrees with Hume that causation is not to be found by means of the senses: empiricism; but Kant disagrees with Hume that causation is therefore not scientific. Kant "believes" that he has discovered the true source of science. It is not to be found in empiricism; it is to be found in the conscious and subconscious categories and judgements of the understanding. Experience and empiricism merely confirm what is already there in the human mind. Time and space are not to be found in clocks and rulers, or the outside world, but in the human psyche.

Seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to arrive at the observation that consciousness is simultaneously the "mechanism" of knowing, the "container" within which all is known, and the "substance" of which all that is known is made of. This is the ancient knowledge of several hindu schools of thought, namley advaita vedanta. It's also easily verifiable in each person's lived experience, and can be deduced with some simple logical questioning.

this is underrated

It's a shame Kant never questioned his own framework. He simply assumed that the categories must be fixed, and couldn't possibly change over time. He also didn't really succeed in making it "objective", if by objective we mean experience independent. Sure, he added a subonscious that acts on the sensory data before it arises in experience, but this doesn't really make it "objective" in a truly independent sense we want. It makes it subconscious dependent instead. Which is no better.

brow we need more videos of kant from you

Cause must be in the noumenal if the noumenal causes the phenomenal, which must be the case.

Nice video-but I believe it is intuitions that do the combining of givens, not the understanding, although perhaps it might depend on which combining you are talking about.

Bravo 👏

impressive video

Ok now this is epic

amazing content!

Why u discontinued youtube?

Thanks! This really helped

So Kant didn't actually solve the problem that causality is a human invention? He just created a different framework to explain it? And if you want yet another question, where do emotions play a role in this model?

there’s definitely a chance you have just saved my degree

This was somewhat helpful

The "necessary conditions of human understanding" were, for Kant, the a priori unconscious categories. This is like saying that the brain is the source of consciousness. That "whatever" is out there in Nature: the "thing in itself", cannot be known in entirety: completely. That our brain proscribes us from such knowledge. Kant doesn't mean that there is no Natural world outside the brain; only that the understanding, given by the brain, filters Nature according to the subconscious categories. The understanding proscribes consciousness from complete knowledge. Science is incomplete. This is a complete inversion of Hume's view. For Hume observation confirms science. For Kant the subconscious categories informs science and is confirmed by consciousness: science (the understanding) prescribes the incompleteness of consciousness. Complete consciousness is prevented from being revealed by the understanding. What is revealed by the sensibilities is prescribed by the conscious judgements. Kant's view is that the linguistic mind is prior to consciousness: that consciousness is dependent on the linguistic mind or that there is no consciousness without the linguistic mind. According to this view a baby's brain 🧠 would have to posess language. Is that what is found? No. Baby's have no language, language must be taught. The categories and judgements must be learned. But babies have consciousness. Kant's view is a premonition of neuroscience. Which, to this day, has not solved the hard problem of consciousness. The "self" of the understanding eludes science.

How is this not just an argument saying that cause and effect are purely cognitive phenomenon

Wow

Our intelligence, using consciousness, learns from the very nature that contains and forms it. I’ll make this eternal circular word salad to be the first philosophical sentence that was modelled with an actual C++ code. Run your idea, basically:) We will see where this idea leaks, at the very least.

🤯

Hi Ed

It's not "Can't", it's "Kaunt" - German isn't hard to pronounce.

good video but background music was so distracting and unnecessary

The absolute

But please lets lets pronounce his name correctly.

Quran says: “Allah:there is no deity worthy of worship except he”:The Neccessary life/consciousness,sustainer of life/consciousness.” Wire like neuronal structures that conduct electricity via ions/neurotransmitters in the CNS/PNS possess no attribute of thinking/life and yet that has “randomly” led to life. Consciousness/thinking is an innate idea(“Fitra”)that is distinct from carbon skeleton and yet the materialist scientist believes that chemistry turned into biology via “god of randomness”/”Emergent property”/”law of nature”. Consciousness can only stem from Necessary Consciousness (Allah-one/indivisible/loving/self-sufficient infinite perfection.

It's pronunced like Kaunt otherwise good video

Kant fails Wittgenstein's test: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

Reported this time wasting nonsense

ok good explanation but you have to stop with the excessively weird animations such as your intro it almost made me leave immediately as well as the Hume face rotating around with his mouth opened for like 10sec