The Paralogisms and Antinomy Arguments as ‘Necessary Inferences of Reason’

Chapter 7 turns to the first two of the three metaphysical disciplines whose inferences and conclusions Kant discusses in the Transcendental Dialectic, namely, rational psychology and cosmology. We show how the four transcendental paralogisms and the arguments underlying the four antinomies of pure reason can be read as ‘necessary inferences of reason’ and how they result in the corresponding transcendental ideas. The chapter considers the paralogisms and the psychological ideas, discusses the role of transcendental realism in the paralogisms, looks at the derivation of the cosmological ideas and the four antinomies, and reconstructs the role of transcendental realism in the antinomies. In doing so, we concentrate on those aspects that are relevant to understanding how Kant develops his Rational Sources Account in the Transcendental Dialectic.