Dr. Pepper's notes on Kant's Transcendental Deduction

Remember the Nutshells, gang.

Nutshell One: Kant is the most important Philosopher of All Time.
Nutshell Two: He is this because he fought against the Moderns, the Ancients, and The Skeptics (and won).
Nutshell Two Part B: He did this with the assertion, argued appropriately, that we can know.
Nutshell Three: The most famous argument that he made was The Critique of Pure Reason.
Nutshell Three Part B: The most famous (sub)argument in there is The Transcendental Deduction (Preferably Part B) in The Critique of Pure Reason.

Dr. Pepper has this to say:


Notes on the Transcendental Deduction Part B

Introduction

The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories si supposed to be the centerpiece of CPR, but it is extraordinarily difficult to make sense of it either as a whole or in detail. There are many different interpretations oand reconstructions of it in the secondary literature, and it is widely thought that as an argumetn it fails. One commentator, Jonathan Bennett, describes it as "a botch." But there is also widspread agreement that it is full of interesting philosophical ideas and that it contains important insights that have made a huge difference to the philosophical landscape. Our main cgoal should be to identify positie, useful, and constructive ideas without denying the shortcomings of Kan'ts argumetns.
Kan'ts Question in the Transcendental Deduction is "By what right do we apply the categories (in experience)?" In the Principles, which come later in