What are and what are the differences between judgments of perception and judgments of experience for Kant? Understanding how the mind works has been a major goal of philosophy and an important element of this deals with how humans come to experience the world. Many philosophers have attempted to study this question and Hume was successful in providing a framework for understanding human understanding. This writing, however, stimulated Kant's philosophical mind, waking him from his "dogmatic slumber" and leading him to develop his own framework for defining thought. As Kant strongly disagreed with Hume's position that "it was utterly impossible for reason to think a priori", he set out to correct Hume's erroneous view of custom as it relates to objective and subjective reality. ¹ The external world, as defined by Kant, is referred to as nature, and “nature considered materialistically is the totality of all objects of experience” (Kant, 36). Human interaction with nature leads to judgments of experience, and these are empirical by definition (p. 38). Empirical judgments are not, however, limited to judgments of experience. Judgments of perception and judgments of experience all constitute empirical judgments, and there are significant differences between the two (p. 38). In order to correctly define judgments of perception and judgments of experience, one must first examine the general framework of thought that precedes them. Kant begins by dividing cognition into two distinct parts: analytical and synthetic judgments (p. 9). Analytic judgments are simply statements about the status of an object and serve primarily as definitions. Analytic judgments are true in virtue, because they “express nothing in the predicate except what has...... middle of paper ... when looking at pure understanding. Because these concepts exist a priori, it is interesting that they are used in understanding experience. Kant is careful in applying his framework, however, because one of his goals was to delineate the boundaries of metaphysics as a science and determine whether "such a thing as metaphysics is possible" (p. 1). . Unfortunately for Kant, it is impossible for all things to be described with objective reality, as the case of the soul shows (p. 86). Although “determinable limits [to reason] cannot be thought of,” Kant successfully established a framework for examining thought and experience (p. 87). This framework, however, exists in itself as subjective and truly shows how pervasive metaphysics is. Works Cited Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to all future metaphysics. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc..., 1950.