My Final Essay on Kant’s Critique
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Kant calls “the explanation of the way in which concepts can relate to objects a priori their transcendental deduction” (A85). So he wants to prove that it is possible and to explain how it is possible for non-empirical concepts to relate to empirical objects.
He distinguishes it from “the empirical deduction, which shows how the concept is acquired through experience and reflection on it” (A85).
There are two kinds of a priori concepts: categories are a priori concepts of understanding of all possible experiences, while the pure intuitions of space and time are a priori forms of sensibility (B118). As it was shown before, to have any experience at all we need sensibility and concepts (without which the sensibility would be blind). But why the pure ones? Because we could not have understood anything particular without general rules for all experiences already presupposed, as we could not have any particular sensible intuition without general pure intuitions of space and time already presupposed.
In B127-128 Kant criticizes Locke and especially Hume for that “their empirical derivation . . . cannot be reconciled with the reality of the scientific cognition a priori that we possess, that namely of pure mathematics and general natural science, and is therefore refuted by the fact”. Kant now attempts to “steer human reason between Locks enthusiasm and Humes skepticism”. He further explains the categories as “concepts of an object in general, by means of which its intuition is . . . determined with regard to one of the logical functions for judgments”.
Speaking of the latter he is concerned with the relationship of the subject to the predicate, saying that objects “empirical intuition in experience must always be considered as subject, never as mere predicate” (B129) with all categories.
“Pure a priori concepts can certainly contain nothing empirical . . . must nevertheless be strictly a priori conditions for a possible experience, as that alone on which its objective reality can rest” (A95)
“Now these concepts, which contain a priori the pure thinking in every experience, we find in the categories, and it is already a sufficient deduction of them and justification of their objective validity if we can prove that by means of them alone the object can be thought. . . we must first assess the transcendental constitution of the subjective sources that comprise the a priori foundations for the possibility of experience” (A97).
Kant further describes the faculties which make cognition possible. Receptivity here must be combined with spontaneity. “This is now the ground of threefold synthesis, which is necessarily found in all cognition: that, namely, of the apprehension of the representations, as modifications of the mind in intuition; of the reproduction of them in the imagination; and of their recognition in the concept” (A98).
Synthesis here means a combination of intuition an thinking. A merely analytical cognition is applicable only to the words, but not to the objects. It obviously could not be used for the deduction of categories for empirical knowledge. We have to remember that even the knowledge of pure mathematics is a synthetic one for Kant.
“Every intuition contains a manifold in itself, which however would not be represented as such if the mind did not distinguish the time in the succession of impressions on one another; for as contained in one moment no representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity. Now in order for unity of intuition to come from this manifold (as, say in the representation of space), it is necessary first to run through and then to take together this manifoldness, which action I call the synthesis of apprehension” (A99).
It must be exercised a priori. For without it we could not have a priori representations of space and time (generated only through the synthesis of the manifold that original sensibility provides. We therefore have a pure synthesis of apprehension (A100).
Further Kant explains why the synthesis of apprehension is combined with the synthesis of reproduction and how the later belongs among the transcendental actions of the mind (transcendental imagination).
In 3 Kant says that one consciousness unifies the manifold that has been successfully intuited, and then also reproduced into one representation.
We compose geometrical figures in accordance with the rule according to which such intuitions can be always exhibited. This unity of the rule determines every manifold and limits it to conditions that make the unity of apperception possible. (A105)
Every necessity has a transcendental condition as its ground. “Now I call this original and transcendental condition . . . the transcendental apperception. . . The consciousness of oneself in accordance with the determinations of our state in internal perception is merely empirical . . . and is called inner sense or empirical apperception. That which should necessarily be represented as numerically identical cannot be thought of as such through empirical data. There must be a condition that precedes all experience and makes the latter itself possible, which should make such a transcendental presupposition valid.
Now no cognitions can occur in us, no connection an unity among them, without of that unity of consciousness that precedes all data of the intuitions, and in relation to which all representation of objects is alone possible. This pure original, unchanging consciousness I will now name transcendental apperception. That it deserves its name is obvious from this, that even the purest objective unity, namely that of the a priori concepts (space and time) is possible only through the relation of the intuitions to it. The numerical unity of this apperception therefore grounds all concepts a priori, just as the manifoldness of space and time grounds the intuitions of sensibility” (A107).
If I simplify this argument:
(1)The unity of apperception is a necessary condition of experience. (2)Necessity makes it transcendental. (3)Still it is applicable to experience. Hence the product of such apperception the categories can be pure and applicable to the experience. At this point the task of the argument Kant endeavored is pretty much accomplished. It is strong convincing and revealing. The rest is merely a detailed presentation of the categories.
15. Explain Kant's distinction between the "constitutive" and "regulative" employment of concepts. Give examples of concepts that Kant believes to have a legitimate "constitutive" use and concepts that have only a "regulative" use.
The principles are called constitutive if using them we “would be able to compose and determine a priori, i.e., construct the degree of the sensation of sunlight out of about 200000 illuminations from the moon” (A179) They have to bring the existence of appearances under rules.
The regulative “principles can concern only the relation of existence of appearances under rules a priori. Here therefore neither axioms no intuitions can be thought of” Under those the “existence cannot be construed” (B222).
Mathematical principles are constitutive, while philosophical ones (categories) regulative.
16. Explain Kant's Third Antinomy and his resolution of it. What did he mean by saying that a human being is a citizen of two worlds? [You may find Kant's Groundwork, 107-109, helpful here.] How does the distinguishing our regarding things as "phenomena" from our regarding things as "noumena" come into this story?
Kant points out that there are two contradicting ideas of reason on the possibility of freedom, and there are seemingly consistent proofs for each of them.
One states that another causality through freedom is also necessary in order to explain the derivation of the appearances of the world.
The other: There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens in accordance with laws of nature.
The first is proved by looking at the natural causality in the world as needed causal explanation itself. Here we are offered to look at natural causality as one of the appearances, which are under that law.
The second is proved by pointing out that freedom as a special kind of causality could be looked up on as requiring a cause itself in accordance with that assumed law of nature.
Kants solution is that freedom does not belong to the phenomenal world of appearances, but rather to the world of noumena, about constitution of which we have no real idea, because our lack of intuition of the kind. The causal determination on the other hand belongs to the world of phenomena, which is grounded in our own psychological structure. The former is given to our sensibility and understanding, while the latter is deduced by pure reason. Reason still has its limits and no insight into noumena.
Without noumena we could not give any account for objectivity of the phenomenal world.
Man is a citizen of two worlds means that he is physically determined to the extent of his physical nature and free in his noumenal sense. Freedom is transcendental, natural causality (determinism) immanent. Freedom is real determination is just an appearance, which is determined