More from Peter Coffey's Epistemology; Or the Theory of Knowledge follows.
In Volume 2, Chapter XXI Coffey critiques Kant's a priori view of space as follows.
Kant: "Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from external experience. ... [T]he representation of space cannot be borrowed through experience from relations of external phenomena, but, on the contrary, this external experience becomes possible only by means of the representation of space" (CPR).
Coffey: The drift of the argument is plain enough. It is that in order, for example, to apprehend that A is in front of me and to the right of B, a spatial relation, I must have first apprehended empty space. Therefore, apprehension of space is an a priori perception.
I skip Coffey's first counter-argument that pertains to geometry.
"Secondly, we have no actual sense or sense intuition of empty space antecedently to our empirical sense perception of individual spatial things and relations, or indeed subsequently either" (191).
Thirdly, as Kant argues, if to apprehend things as extended and spatially related, we must not only have the capacity to do so, but also an a priori actual perception of empty space. Then why doesn't he argue similarly for individual colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc.? Instead, he disclaims the need of a priori forms for them.
"Fourthly, the space of which Kant was thinking as perceived a priori is de facto space conceived in the abstract by the understanding" (192).
The second and fourth arguments seem strong, but the third argument less so. Color regarded abstractly, but no particular color, akin to an empty placeholder, makes sense. Ditto for sound, taste, and smell. Kant could have said that colorless, soundless, tasteless, and odorless are properties of some real, non-abstract things, hence a posteriori. However, he denied a posteriori empty space. He wrote, "experience can never supply a proof of empty space" (CPR 200, Penguin Classics)." Huh? What about an empty space on a bookcase shelf?
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