A Priori Laws and the External World

This thesis demonstrates that any interpretation of the status of ‘mind-independent reality’ or ‘the external world’ in Kant’s transcendental idealism is incomplete if it fails to account for the metaphysical implications of the Critique of Practical Reason. Moreover, I argue that Kant’s description of ‘experience,’ when taken in conjunction with the metaphysical implications of the second Critique, probably (if not necessarily) excludes the existence of the traditional conception of physical matter.