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My question relates to the relationship between Kant's logic and predicate logic.

My intuition is that Kant's notion that some ideas transcend the bounds of logic, is evidence for the insufficiency of predicate logic as compared with propositional logic.

For example, our idea of the world, is something Wittgenstein engaged with - saying it does not make sense to make metaphysical propositions about the character of metaphysical reality, since "the world" can be thought of as "all that is the case" and in order to describe the limits of logical form, we would need to be able to step outside the bounds of logical form. Kant's "transcendental logic" may have attempted to reach the same kind of harmony/synthesis about metaphysical propositions as Wittgenstein at the end of his Tractatus, yet with the difference that Wittgenstein said that attempts to give content to analytical propositions about logic were necessarily void of meaningful content, whereas Kant seems to have thought you could meaningfully systemise this new logic - with terms like the synthetic a priori.

What do you think?

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    Hi. What do you mean by "Kant's notion that some ideas transcend the bounds of logic"? – Ram Tobolski Jul 23 '17 at 22:46
  • the second para of section 4 on this page describes what I think I am referring to plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/#WorRatCos: 'the idea of the “world” purports to be an idea of an unconditioned but somehow still sensible object... it both purports to refer to a somehow sensible object AND ... involves thinking that object as already given in its totality' – l_ruth_ Jul 24 '17 at 10:25
  • You are trying to connect concepts that seem totally unrelated. Perhaps you could elaborate (in the question) and give some motivation for your intuition – Ram Tobolski Jul 24 '17 at 10:48
  • Thanks; I've edited the question, hope this explains more my approach to the question. – l_ruth_ Jul 24 '17 at 21:43
  • I am afraid you are operating on a wrong presupposition, predicate logic and quantifiers were not introduced until about a century after Kant died. To him formal (analytic) logic was Aristotle's syllogistic, and the transcendental "logic" went beyond mere form, and hence is not comparable to calculi, predicate or otherwise. That sense of "logic" is not used today, the closest translation is "epistemology", see How does Kant derive the categories of the understanding from the logical forms of judgment? – Conifold Jul 24 '17 at 23:30

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