ABSTRACT
Identity, as well as existence, of particular instances of general concepts – that is, again, of those general concepts of which the particular instances, if any, are such as to be empirically encounterable – is bound up with space and time. In Immanuel Kant's view people knowledge of geometrical truths, though dependent upon intuition, is independent of empirical intuition. It depends in no way upon observation of actual physical objects such as we become aware of through the senses. He admits that there is no inconsistency in both maintaining a relational view of space and time and denying their transcendental ideality. To hold that the conception of a single unitary spatio-temporal system is "a priori" in the austere sense is, then, already to be involved in a quite complex commitment regarding necessary features of our experience. The sense which is uppermost there is that which introduces us ineluctably and immediately to the doctrinal fantasies of transcendental idealism.
