Formalne warunki możliwości doświadczenia a możliwość chaosu w filozofii krytycznej Kanta

Abstract

In Kant’s critical philosophy, the concept of chaos means a counterfactual situation in which appearances do not merge into the unity of experience according to universal laws of understanding or particular empirical laws. The possibility of complete disagreement between the appearances and the formal conditions of thinking is incompatibly with the principles of possible experience, because appearances as to the form must accord with the universal laws of understanding. The legislation of understanding, however, does not extend to the matter of appearances and the unity of nature according to empirical laws (material unity of experience) is a contingent unity in relation to our understanding. The formal conditions of possibility of experience are therefore partial conditions and do not exhaust the whole of the conditions of experience, as such, they allow for the real possibility of empirical chaos in the sense of the lack of material unity of experience. Such possibility is synonymous with the possibility of non-existence of experience, as experience is one and includes both the formal and material unity of appearances. The main thesis of this paper is that the principles of possible experience do not eliminate the contingency of our experience and are necessarily valid under the condition of the harmony of nature in the variety of its particular empirical laws with our cognitive faculty.