J Kevin Quinn wrote: > "Humans perceive causal relationships between objects of > experience" is not analytic, chez Kant, but instead it is > "synthetic a priori." It is transcendentally justified, as > a condition of the possibility of any experience - not > a truth about language and thus not self-evident. To clarify, I am making two substantive claims: i. Humans perceive causal relationships between objects of experience ii. (i) is self evident I also indicated that I see this as a Kantian example. (That is, Kant influenced, as opposed to the view of Kant.) However I make these claims independent of any transcendental deduction. That said, since you raise the issue of Kant's view, I will ask for an explanation. (It has been some time since I read Kant.) You use some language that does not match my recollections. Specifically, where does Kant say something equivalent to "only truths about language are self evident"? To give a specific example, "3+4=7" is certainly for Kant synthetic and a priori, and I believe he would also say that it is self evident and not a "truth about language". More generally it seems you are conflating "self-evident" with "tautological", which is a conflation I do not recall in Kant. I also think you overstep in saying that Kant would consider causality "a condition of the possibility of any experience". For Kant, this is true of space and time (pure forms of sensibility) but not of the categories. (E.g., chapter 2 of the Analytic of Concepts.) However if you were to change this to "a condition of the possibility of any experience of an *object*" I would of course agree. Indeed, this is why I would find Kantian my claim that it is self evident that humans perceive causal relationships between objects of experience: Kant's transcendental deduction involves a claim that we cannot experience *objects* without the categories, including of course the category of causality. I do not pretend to be Kant scholar (or even an avid reader), but I hope at least that clarifies my claim. Alan Isaac