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Does Kant Demand Explanations for All Synthetic A Priori Claims?
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 52, Number 3, July 2014
- pp. 549-576
- 10.1353/hph.2014.0067
- Article
- Additional Information
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Kant’s philosophy promises to explain various synthetic a priori claims. Yet, as several of his commentators have noted, it is hard to see how these explanations could work unless they themselves rested on unexplained synthetic a priori claims. Since Kant appears to demand explanations for all synthetic a priori claims, it would seem that his project fails on its own terms. I argue, however, that Kant holds that explanations are required only for synthetic a priori claims about (purportedly) experience-independent entities, and that his project rests on a rationalist method of reflection that justifies certain basic synthetic a priori claims.