Quiz: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. From which single metaphysical concept does Kant say Hume started?

   Substance Personal identity Cause and effect The existence of God
2. 2. What act of the understanding did Kant use as the principle for finding the categories?

   Judging Remembering Imagining Perceiving
3. 3. According to Kant, what did Hume’s opponents appeal to instead of answering his problem?

   Mathematical demonstration The authority of Aristotle Revelation Common sense
4. 4. What does Kant say can be proved about the permanence of the soul?

   Only its permanence during life Nothing at all, even in life Its simplicity and immortality Its permanence after death
5. 5. What kind of cognition of the Supreme Being does Kant allow through examples like the watch, the ship and the regiment?

   Demonstrative proof from pure concepts Cognition by analogy of relations Direct intuition of God in his works None, since all such talk is meaningless
6. 6. What name does Kant now prefer for his “transcendental idealism”?

   Visionary idealism Critical idealism Dreaming idealism Empirical idealism
7. 7. What does Kant’s example “Gold is a yellow metal” illustrate?

   A judgment of perception A synthetical judgment a priori An analytical judgment, a priori though its concepts are empirical A synthetical judgment a posteriori, learned by assaying samples of gold
8. 8. How did the Göttingen reviewer characterise the Critique?

   As a system of transcendent, or higher, idealism As a restatement of Wolff As a work of natural theology As a defence of Hume’s scepticism
9. 9. In Kant’s image, where did Hume run the ship of metaphysics ashore?

   On common sense On scepticism On dogmatism On mathematics
10. 10. In whose work does Kant find “an indication” of his division of judgments?

    Leibniz’s Monadology Hume’s Treatise Euclid’s Elements Locke’s Essay
11. 11. What is the relation of the understanding to nature’s universal laws, according to § 36?

    It receives them from God It invents them arbitrarily for each science It learns them from nature by experience It prescribes them to nature
12. 12. What everyday example does Kant use for things alike in every respect that cannot replace each other?

    Two coins of the same mint Two drops of water Two copies of a book A hand and its mirror image
13. 13. For whom does Kant say the Prolegomena are intended?

    Pupils beginning philosophy The general reading public Future teachers of metaphysics Historians of ancient and modern philosophy
14. 14. How does Kant resolve the first two (mathematical) antinomies?

    Both thesis and antithesis are false They are left undecided The thesis is true and the antithesis false Both are true in different senses
15. 15. Which of the following is not one of the four questions into which Kant divides his problem?

    How is pure natural science possible? How is pure moral philosophy possible? How is pure mathematics possible? How is metaphysics as a science possible?
16. 16. Why does Kant call 7 + 5 = 12 synthetical?

    Twelve is not contained in the concept of seven plus five; intuition must be added It is a generalisation from repeated counting of objects in experience, so only inductive It follows from the law of contradiction alone It is only probably true
17. 17. What does Kant grant that he says separates his view from idealism?

    That space and time are properties of things That only thinking beings exist That there are bodies outside us, though unknown as they are in themselves That sensation resembles its object
18. 18. To what does Kant compare the relation of critique to the common school metaphysics?

    Grammar to rhetoric in the schools of oratory Physics to mathematics, mechanics to geometry Chemistry to alchemy, astronomy to astrology Natural law to the positive law of states
19. 19. How does Kant’s solution to Hume’s problem reverse Hume’s procedure?

    It derives mathematics from experience It derives the categories from Aristotle It derives experience from the pure concepts, not the concepts from experience It derives the concept of cause from custom and repetition, as Hume himself had done
20. 20. In Kant’s § 29, what turns “if the sun shines long enough upon a body, it grows warm” into a judgment of experience?

    Agreeing with all other observers by an explicit common convention Deducing it from the law of contradiction Observing it again and again until no exception has ever been found Thinking the connexion as necessary, under the concept of cause
21. 21. Until when are metaphysicians “suspended from their occupations”?

    Until the Academy awards a prize Until they refute Hume Until they publish a complete system Until they answer how synthetic cognitions a priori are possible
22. 22. On what pure intuition does Kant say arithmetic rests?

    Motion Space Time Substance
23. 23. How can nature and freedom both be attributed to the same thing without contradiction?

    Freedom applies to animals, natural necessity to human beings As phenomenon it is natural, as thing in itself free Nature applies to it before birth, and freedom after Freedom is only an illusion produced by natural causes
24. 24. What does Kant say “the suggestion of David Hume” first interrupted?

    His belief in common sense His dogmatic slumber His work on astronomy His sceptical despair
25. 25. What does Kant say metaphysics lacks, compared with geometry?

    A definite subject matter of its own Any analytical judgments of its own A book that is the science itself Students and teachers willing to study it
26. 26. What is Kant’s main criticism of Aristotle’s list of categories?

    It omitted space and time It was collected at random, without a principle It was copied from Plato It contained too few categories
27. 27. What kind of judgments are “the room is warm, sugar sweet, and wormwood bitter”?

    Analytical judgments Judgments of perception, valid only subjectively Synthetical judgments a priori Judgments of experience
28. 28. From what does Kant derive the three ideas of reason?

    The three faculties of the mind The three dimensions of space The three Persons of the Trinity The three forms of syllogism
29. 29. What mistake does Kant attribute to Wolff and Baumgarten?

    Declaring all metaphysics impossible as a science of things in themselves Treating causality as a mere habit of the mind formed by custom Denying that the propositions of mathematics are known a priori Trying to derive sufficient reason from the principle of contradiction
30. 30. How does Kant contrast the method of the Prolegomena with that of the Critique?

    The Prolegomena is a dialogue, the Critique a treatise The Prolegomena analytical, the Critique synthetical The Prolegomena synthetical, the Critique analytical Both proceed historically, through earlier systems