The lead question of Kant's first Critique, indeed his whole Critical Philosophy is ‘How is Metaphysics as a Science Possible?’ Neo-Kantian and recent Anglophone interpretations of Kant's epistemology have concentrated on the ‘Transcendental Analytic’ of the first Critique, and have taken Kant's positive and legitimate sense of metaphysics to concern the necessary conditions of our knowledge of mathematics, natural science, and of course, our common sense knowledge of a spatio-temporal world of objects and events. However, in the ‘Canon of Pure Reason’ in the first Critique Kant indicates quite clearly that, although two of the leading sub-questions of metaphysics — ‘What should I so?’ and ‘What may I hope?’ — cannot be answered on theoretical grounds, they may be answered on practical grounds (A804-05=B832-33). Those practical grounds are elaborated and supplemented (mainly) in the latter two Critiques and the Religion. In each case, however, a definite and positive answer to a metaphysical question involves giving ‘objective reality’ to a concept, e.g., the concepts of freedom or immortality. ‘Objective reality’ involves possible reference to an object, where ‘possible reference’ involves more than merely describing a logical possibility.
The Logical Possibility of Halting Oracles
