Posted in another forum;
Here is a clue [not the full proof] to Kant’s explanation that the idea of God is a transcendental idea, i.e. a transcendental illusion.
Note ‘idea’ in Kant’s case is specifically ‘philosophical idea’ not just an ordinary ideas.
For Kant, however, ‘The Idea is a Concept of reason whose Object can be met with nowhere in Experience’ (L p. 590), or precisely that which does not stand in any relation to an Object.
-Howard Caygill
The syllogism;
1. All transcendental ideas are transcendental illusions.
2. The idea of God is a transcendental idea
3. God is a transcendental illusion.
One will need to read the whole of the Critique of Reason to understand [not necessary agree with] to counter the above argument.
Here is a clue to P1;
-
ALTHOUGH a purely Transcendental Idea is, in accordance with the Original Laws of Reason, a quite necessary product of Reason, its Object, it may yet be said, is something of which we have no Concept. A339
-
For in respect of an Object which is adequate to the demands of Reason, it is not, in fact, possible that we should ever be able to Form a Concept of the Understanding, that is, a Concept that allows of being exhibited and intuited in a Possible Experience.
-
But we should be better advised and less likely to be misunderstood if we said that although we cannot have any Knowledge of the Object which corresponds to an Idea, we yet have a Problematic Concept of it. B397
-
The Transcendental (Subjective) Reality of the Pure Concepts of Reason depends on our having been led to such Ideas by a necessary Syllogism. 1
-
There will therefore be Syllogisms which contain no Empirical premisses, and by means of which we conclude from something which we know to something else of which we have no Concept, and to which, owing to an inevitable Illusion, we yet ascribe Objective Reality.
-
These conclusions [of transcendental ideas] are, then, rather to be called pseudo-Rational 2 than Rational, although in view of their Origin they may well lay claim to the latter title, since they are not fictitious and have not arisen fortuitously, but have sprung from the very Nature of Reason.
-
They [transcendental ideas] are sophistications not of men but of Pure Reason itself. Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them. After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
Re P2;
‘The Ideal of Pure Reason’ in CPR
In short, we shall be able to determine it, in its Unconditioned Completeness, through all predicaments.
The Concept of such a Being is the Concept of God, taken in the Transcendental sense; and the Ideal of Pure Reason, as above defined [pg 489], is thus the Object of a Transcendental Theology.
A580 B608
What is 'Transcendental’ re P1 and P2;
Neither Space nor any a priori geometrical Determination of it is a Transcendental Representation;
what can alone be entitled Transcendental is the Knowledge that these Representations are not of Empirical Origin, and the Possibility that they can 2 yet relate a priori to Objects of Experience.
The application of Space to Objects-in-General would likewise be Transcendental, but, if restricted solely to Objects of sense, it is Empirical.
A56 B81
What is Empirical?:
An Empirical Concept or Intuition is one which ‘contains Sensation’ and thereby ‘presupposes the actual presence of the Object’ (CPR A50/B74).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence
Because the ‘transcendental’ cannot be of Empirical Origin, it cannot be of objective reality, i.e. really-real.
Even for the above, one will need to understand each term very carefully and precisely in accordance to what Kant intended them to be.
Any ideas [general] to the above?