by Robert Wicks
With such thoughts in mind, Kant accounts for the necessary connection between the categories and any given sensory intuition, such as the baton in our example. Since the transcendental unity of self-consciousness’s fundamental act of synthesis is expressed variously by syntheses expressed by the categories, and since this fundamental act of synthesis also operates to integrate space and time themselves into individuals on a grand scale, and to produce particular sensory images (such as our baton), any specific sensory individual that is presented in space and time must also be subject to the syntheses expressed by the categories. In this respect, the transcendental deduction is ‘completed’ in explaining how the categories of the understanding must be brought into play when apprehending an image of, say, a twirling baton. Kant summarizes this situation in a footnote:
In this way it is proved that the synthesis of apprehension, which is empirical, must necessarily be in accord with the synthesis of apperception, which is intellectual and is contained in the category completely a priori. It is one and the same spontaneity, which in the one case, under the name of imagination, and in the other case, under the name of understanding, brings combination into the manifold of intuition.
(B161n).
Generally speaking, the second edition version of the transcendental deduction differs from the first edition version in its rhetorical tone. In the first edition, Kant is interested positively in showing how we ourselves produce ‘nature’ through the above-described synthetic activity of consciousness. In the second edition, he describes the same, but notes that the account only works if we suppose that the transcendental unity of self-consciousness is an empty form, indeed the most empty of forms. It is devoid of sensory content, it is unchanging, it is an active unity, and it is necessary, but that is all. Without some sensory inputs given by the faculty of sensibility, we have nothing to think about and cannot know anything.
To convey how the transcendental unity of self-consciousness is empty and dependent upon given sensations, Kant refers in the second edition periodically and contrastingly to an alternative style of consciousness, far more powerful, which by means of its thought alone, specific objects of knowledge would come into existence. This would be a divine consciousness, which upon the very thinking of an object would render the object into an existent reality, as in how God is thought to have made the world through a mere act of thought. Such a divine being would not fundamentally be an empty container that needs to receive some input from without itself, as is true for human beings. It would be a fully creative, self-sufficient being. Such a being would not need to receive sensory intuitions as we do, but would create its own intuitions through the activity of its own intellect. Humans, Kant emphasizes, lack this capacity for ‘intellectual’ intuition. We are restricted to sensory intuition, which must be given from without. The second edition of the transcendental deduction thereby articulates a more intense and explicit message of human finitude.
Dig Deeper
Henry Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, Part Two, Sections 6 and 7 (Yale University Press, 1983)
Eckart Förster (ed.), Kant’s Transcendental Deductions: The Three ‘Critiques’ and the ‘Opus postumum’ (Stanford University Press, 1989)
Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, Part II (Cambridge University Press, 1987)
Béatrice Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason (Princeton University Press, 1998)
Robert Pippin, Kant’s Theory of Form, Parts 4 and 6 (Yale University Press, 1982)
Study questions
1 In the transcendental deduction, does Kant use the term ‘deduction’ to signify ‘logical deduction’? Why or why not?
2 What is the main purpose of the transcendental deduction of the categories?
3 Why is the term ‘synthesis’ important in understanding the nature of knowledge?
4 What is the difference in the role of the ‘imagination’ in the first edition and second edition of the transcendental deduction.
5 Describe, using an example, the threefold synthesis of the imagination. What is the relationship between the threefold synthesis and empirical knowledge?
6 What does Kant mean when he says that we ourselves create ‘nature’?
7 What does Kant mean by an ‘object in general’? What is the relationship between the ‘transcendental unity of self-consciousness’ and an ‘object in general’?
8 Why does it make sense to say, in Kant’s view, ‘that is me’, when one sees a table or chair?
9 What are some ways in which the second edition version of the transcendental deduction differs from the first edition?
10 How does sensory intuition differ from intellectual intuition?
7
Substance, causality and objectivity
Kant’s ‘synthetic principles of pure understanding’ describe how each category of the understanding provides a necessary structure to our experience. Using the table of logical judgements as a guide, Kant considers the categories in four groups of three, structuring his discussion accordingly into (1) Quantity (Axioms of Intuition), (2) Quality (Anticipations of Perception), (3) Relation (Analogies of Experience), and (4) Modality (Postulates of Empirical Thought).
This chapter will review how each of the categories structures our experience, emphasizing the categories of relation in the Analogies of Experience. Widely discussed among Kant commentators have been the First and Second Analogies, which attend respectively to the categories of substance and causality. The chapter will conclude with a characterization of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism, which has also received much attention in scholarly books and articles on Kant.
Since the project of the transcendental deduction is to show how the pure concepts of the understanding apply necessarily to our sensory experience, one might expect Kant to include references to some of the pure concepts by name during this discussion. He does not do this, however. Without highlighting specifically any pure concepts in the transcendental deduction, he instead attends to the general problem of how concepts devoid of sensory content can apply to sensory experience, and how those concepts can apply necessarily. His concern is with what, at first sight, appears to be an unbridgeable gap between pure concepts and sensory intuitions. He addresses this question before explaining how any of the pure concepts, or categories, apply specifically to experience.
Kant accordingly waits until he has completed the transcendental deduction, before turning his attention to each category in sequence. In doing so, his procedure follows the logic books of his time, which, as noted earlier, begin with a treatment of singular ‘concepts’, continue to discuss dual combinations of concepts, or ‘judgements’, and conclude with an analysis of triadic combinations of judgements, or ‘syllogisms’, the basic patterns of logical inference.
Adhering to this format, Kant first completes the transcendental deduction, which falls under the heading ‘analytic of concepts’, since the deduction concerns the pure concepts of the understanding. The next section – the one we are presently considering – is the ‘analytic of principles’. It concerns the transcendental judgements that involve the application of the categories to experience. The third major section of the first Critique is the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’, which is structured upon syllogistic patterns of reasoning. We will discuss the Transcendental Dialectic in the next two chapters, in the context of Kant’s account of the ideas of ‘soul’, ‘world’ and ‘God’.
In terms of method, Kant sets the three logical divisions of ‘concepts’, ‘judgements’ and ‘inferences’ into a one-to-one correspondence, respectively, with the three faculties of human knowledge, ‘understanding’, ‘judgement’ and ‘reason’. The parallelism reveals how, as a whole, the Critique of Pure Reason is constructed upon the logic books of his time. Moreover, as expressed in his three Critiques, Kant’s philosophy as a whole is similarly insp
ired by this parallelism. The first Critique, the Critique of Pure Reason, investigates the power of the understanding. The second, the Critique of Practical Reason, concerns the power of reason in relation to morality. The third, the Critique of the Power of Judgement, reveals in relation to judgement, how the first two Critiques cohere, insofar as the third Critique confirms the compatibility between understanding and reason in reference to beauty and living things. The third Critique thereby enhances Kant’s expression of the compatibility between natural science and morality, and correspondingly, between determinism and freedom. The following excerpt, with which Kant starts the ‘analytic of principles’, our present topic, reveals the connections between logical form and the faculties of human knowledge:
General logic is built on a ground plan that coincides exactly with the division of the higher faculties of knowledge. These are Understanding, Judgement, and Reason. Logic therefore treats in its analytical portion, concepts, judgements, and syllogisms, corresponding with the functions and the order of the above-named faculties of the mind, which are generally comprehended under the general name of the understanding.
(A131/B169)
As we know, the transcendental deduction establishes that the pure concepts of the understanding apply to sensory experience through the forms of sensibility, space and time, which serve as an intermediary. A three-step relationship holds, reminiscent of the tripartite form of a logical syllogism, where each statement’s content partially overlaps with the next to determine a chain of reasoning. In the present case we have: (1) the categories are non-sensory, conceptual and a priori (i.e., universal and necessary), and they connect with (2) space and time, which are also a priori, but are furthermore sensory-receptive and individual, and these individual forms of sensibility in turn connect with (3) the sensory intuitions, which are individual, like space and time, but are a posteriori, (i.e., contingent, neither universal nor necessary). The pattern below shows how space and time are the connecting link between the pure concepts and the sensory intuitions:
In view of the above relationships, Kant develops an account of how each category is associated with the form of time. Later, at various junctures, he will also introduce the form of space in connection with the categories, when considering the objective structures of the external world. Whereas space applies only to outer experience, time applies to all experience and is involved in the construction of every sensory item. Since Kant’s project is the general one of showing how the categories apply to all possible experience, outer or inner, he initially unites the categories with the form of time, which applies to both outer and inner experience. Each category, when infused with a temporal dimension to render it compatible with experience, becomes a ‘schematized’ category. This temporalization modifies each category into a form determinate enough to prescribe the construction of sensory images.
The schematization, or temporalization – and one could even say ‘aestheticization’ (as in ‘transcendental aesthetic’) – of the categories is the preparatory condition for Kant’s discussions of the ‘synthetic principles of pure understanding’, where he sets out within the context of sensory experience in general, and hence, within the context of the passing of time, the specific rules for experience that the categories supply. Again, inspired by logic and the table of judgements, his account divides into four parts, following the fourfold division of the table of the categories, which themselves derive from the table of judgements in general logic. His exposition is arranged in the following sequence:
1 Axioms of Intuition: concern the categories of quantity (Unity, Plurality, Totality)
2 Anticipations of Perception: concern the categories of quality (Reality, Negation, Limitation)
3 Analogies of Experience: concern the categories of relation (Substance, Causality, Reciprocity)
4 Postulates of Empirical Thought: concern the categories of modality (Possibility, Existence, Necessity)
In reference to the categories of quantity – unity, plurality, totality – Kant makes a straightforward claim in the Axioms of Intuition. He maintains the categories of quantity, as they inform the manifold of sensation, introduce the concept of ‘number’ into the sensations. Recalling and relying upon the notion of the synthesis of a manifold, he asserts that the categories of quantity entail that every sensory intuition must be a unity composed of a set of successively added, and previously given, parts. Constructed as such, each sensory intuition has an ‘extensive magnitude’. The upshot is that ‘all appearances are therefore intuited as aggregates’ (A163/B204).
With respect to the categories of quality – reality, negation, limitation – the main claim in the Anticipations of Perception is equally straightforward. The notion of ‘magnitude’ remains, but complementing the ‘extensive’ magnitude that the categories of quantity contribute, the categories of quality introduce an ‘intensive’ magnitude into the field of sensation. By ‘intensive magnitude’, Kant means a ‘degree’ or ‘intensity’. The categories of quality tell us a priori that all sensations must have a certain intensity, or degree, which can be located on a continuum. Every sensation can intensify, and can fade out. It makes no difference whether the sensation is of green or red, bitter or sweet, or, if we could perceive X-rays or other kinds of electromagnetic phenomena, what those experiences would be like. Of whatever kind they may be, every sensation must have a given intensity that could increase or fade.
When Kant considers the third set of categories, the categories of relation – substance, causality and reciprocity – his treatment offers far more detail and depth. These categories importantly introduce necessary and stabilizing relationships, or ‘objectivity’, into given sensory intuitions, and to establish this idea effectively, Kant devotes separate attention to each category in what he refers to as the ‘Analogies of Experience’. The First Analogy is about the permanence of substance. The Second concerns relationships of causality, understood as necessary connections. The Third asserts the necessary interconnectedness between all things.
These applications of the categories prescribe necessary relationships between sensory intuitions, or, as in the case of the category of substance, the preconditions of those relationships. This is a departure from explaining in terms of magnitude, how sensory intuitions are constituted, as in the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of Perception. Kant expresses this difference by saying that the Analogies of Experience describe how the categories of relation ‘regulate’ the patterns of sensory intuitions, as opposed to ‘constituting’ them. Their relationship to sensory intuitions is regulative, rather than constitutive.
In the First Analogy, Kant characterizes the structure of human experience that issues from the application of the category of substance to the sensory manifold. As the term ‘substance’ suggests, the structure is that of something which ‘stands under’ something else as a constant and reliable support. Specifically, this category introduces into the sensory manifold, a supportive permanent background for sensory qualities. For any series of sensory changes, if they are to be comprehended, then those changes can only be made sense of as the alterations of some underlying object, as when we say that the pot of water becomes hot when placed over a campfire. The category of substance organizes the sensory manifold into a field of objects in which our sensory qualities inhere, and in so doing, it establishes the thought of an unchanging substrate in which all sensory qualities inhere. In conjunction with the application of the remaining two categories of relation (causality and reciprocity), we call this substrate ‘nature’.
Keeping in mind how as a form of sensibility, time is a precondition for all sensory experience and more specifically, how time infuses the categories in their schematic preparation to be applied to experience, Kant maintains that the category of substance when applied to the sensory manifold, expresses the constant presence of time. This refers to the single and abiding presence of time in every experience, rather than the fluctuation of sensory qualities that o
ccur in time. He holds that if we did not project the notion of an object in which sensory qualities inhere – and the category of substance is responsible for this – then there would be no experience at all, since the field of sensations would remain disorganized. Hence his statement that ‘permanence is thus a necessary condition under which alone appearances are determinable as things or objects in a possible experience’ (A189/B232).
Kant’s First Analogy helps to account for the peculiar experience of how, in our experience, it is always ‘now’. For any human being, that human being’s experience always takes place ‘in the present’ relative to that person. This is true for people’s experience in the past, it is true for us, and it will be true for people in the future. When someone gazed at the starry skies ages ago, it was ‘now’ for them when it happened. Kant states that ‘all existence and all change in time have thus to be regarded as simply a mode of the existence of that which remains and persists’ (A183/B227). He is referring here manifestly to the objects in which sensory qualities inhere, but with the deeper note that ‘change does not affect time itself, but only appearances in time’ (A183/B226), it is a short step to associate time’s permanence with that of an abiding object, as in the thought of a nunc stans, the ‘standing still’ of the present time.
In the First Analogy, Kant does not mention that the category of substance, like all of the categories, expresses the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, the ground of all synthesis. Recalling this connection, however, makes it more obvious that the permanent objects of experience in which sensory qualities inhere are, via the category of substance, none other than objectified projections of oneself as the subject of experience. In this respect, implicit in the First Analogy is the proposition that objects or ‘substance’ is identical with the subject of experience, as the objectification or projection of the subject. Subject and substance are identical in this sense.