 The Dialectic is concerned to undermine three distinct branches of special metaphysics in the philosophical tradition: Rational Psychology, Rational Cosmology and Rational Theology. Each of these disciplines seeks to acquire knowledge of a particular metaphysical “object” — the “soul,” the “world,” and “God,” respectively. This being stated, the Dialectic proceeds systematically to undermine the arguments specific to each of these disciplines—arguments about, for example, the nature of the soul and the world, and the existence of God. Despite the difference in their objects, however, there are a number of problems shared by all the disciplines of special metaphysics. In its most general terms, the central problem with each of these attempts has to do with the fact that the alleged “objects” under consideration are “transcendent.” Although we think the soul, the world, and God (necessarily) as objects, these ideas actually lack objective reality (there is no object corresponding to the ideas that is or could be given to us in any intuition). It is thus not uncommon to find Kant referring to these alleged metaphysical entities as “mere thought entities,” “fictions of the brain,” or “pseudo objects.” Although the Dialectic does not presume to prove that such objects do not or could not exist, Kant is committed by the strictures of his own transcendental epistemology to the claim that the ideas of reason do not provide us with concepts of “knowable” objects. For this reason alone, the efforts of the metaphysicians are presumptuous, and at the very least, an epistemological modesty precludes the knowledge that is sought.