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CRITIQUE OF KANTS CONCEPTUALISM

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2005.

Immanuel Kants transcendental idealism advocates conceptualism, a particular answer


given to the problem of the universals which affirms that our concepts are indeed universal, but
denies that they correspond to anything in extra-mental reality. For Kant, universal terms indeed
signify mental concepts, but these are constructed by the mind from a priori categories of the
understanding working on the initial molding of the matter of chaotic sense impressions by the
two a priori forms of sensibility, namely, space and time. Conceptualism, explains Coffey,
admits that the human intellect can form genuinely universal concepts, and can by means of
each such concept, apprehend as a mental or conceptual unity an indefinite multitude of similar
individual data of sense; but denies that there is in these latter any real ground for the concept,
anything really represented or apprehended through the concept; and therefore concludes that the
universal concept gives us no genuine or valid insight into the nature or reality of the data of
sense.1
Although Kant affirms that the universal concepts which are at the foundations of all
knowledge, namely, the categories of the understanding, are validly applicable to the intuitions
of sense, his description of the way empirical concepts are formed, as a synthesis of a sense
intuition with a pure a priori category of the understanding, renders this synthesis impossible to
provide us with a genuine insight into the nature of what is given in the sense intuition. In Kants
transcendental idealism, we unify the manifold data which is given in sense intuition by
synthesizing it with the pure a priori categories of the understanding, and thus we are able to
apprehend in the products of such syntheses, in phenomena, objective, necessary, and universal
relations that constitute scientific knowledge. Thus, for Kant, we apprehend such relations and
connections in the data of sense intuition only because they have been further molded by the
superimposed pure a priori forms of the understanding. Therefore, for Kant, the empirical
concepts so formed, as well as the judgments in which we used them as predicates, are unable to
give us knowledge of the character of the manifold data in the domain of sensibility, let alone a
knowledge of extra-mental noumenal reality, but only a subjective construction of the mind
working on these manifold sense data, spatialized and temporalised by the two a priori forms of
sensibility, namely, space and time, two forms which are likewise subjective, like the a priori
categories of the understanding.
The Transcendental Aesthetic
Aesthetics or Esthetics2 here in the Transcendental Aesthetic (or Transcendental Esthetic)
of Immanuel Kants (1724-1804) Critique of Pure Reason (first edition 1781, second edition
1

P. COFFEY, Epistemology, vol. 1, Peter Smith, Glouchester, MA, 1958, p. 330.


Studies on Kants Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason: C. B. GARNETT, The Kantian
Philosophy of Space, Columbia University Press, Morningside Heights, New York, 1939 ; W. HARPER, Kant on
Space, Empirical Realism and the Foundations of Geometry, Topoi, 3 (1984), pp. 143-161 ; C. PARSONS, The
Transcendental Aesthetic, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by P. Guyer, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1992, pp. 62-100 ; L. FALKENSTEIN, Kants Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental
Aesthetic, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1995 ; R. BRANDT, Transzendentale sthetik, 1-3, in Kritik der
2

1787), means what was originally denoted by , namely, the doctrine of sense perception.
Kant calls transcendental every knowledge that has something to do with the way the human
mind knows objects. Transcendent is that which goes beyond all experience. The
transcendental esthetics scope is to examine how mathematics and geometry are possible. He
retains that these sciences are possible because the mind is endowed with two a priori forms that
have the characteristics of universality and intuitivity: space and time. Space and time are not,
for him, extra-mental realities, or have their foundation in extra-mental reality, but are rather a
priori forms of sensibility.3 Kant writes: In a phenomenon I call that which corresponds to the
sensation its matter; but that which causes the manifold matter of the phenomenon to be
perceived as arranged in a certain order, I call its form. Now it is clear that it cannot be sensation
again through which sensations are arranged and placed in certain forms. The matter only for all
phenomena is given us a posteriori; but their form must be ready for them in the mind (Gemth)
a priori, and must therefore be capable of being considered as separate from all sensationsIn
the course of this investigation it will appear that there are, as principles of a priori knowledge,
two pure forms of sensuous intuition (Anschauung), namely, space and time.4 Bittle observes
that bearing in mind Kants axiom that nothing necessary and universal can be derived from
experience, but must proceed exclusively and a priori from the mind itself, Kant finds that senseperception contains a double element: the manifold of sense impressions, which is derived from
experience, and space and time, which are pure forms of the mind. External to the mind there
exists a world of things-in-themselves (Dinge-an-sich) or noumena; they are real physical
beings. These make impressions on the sense-faculty, and the faculty responds with an intuition
or perception. These impressions are unarranged, chaotic. This chaotic manifold must be
arranged in a certain order, and this is done by means of the two sense forms space and time.
Space and time are in no way attributes of the things-in-themselves,5 but merely cause the
manifold matter of the phenomenon to be perceived as arranged in a certain order, i.e., as
arranged in the order of space or in the order of time. Since all intuitions or perceptions
appear as arranged in a spatial and temporal order, space and time are universal and necessary
conditions of sense-perception and as such must exist a priori in the mind. They are like mental
molds into which the unarranged raw materials of sense are poured, so that, after the molding
process of cognition is completed, all phenomena appear arranged and molded in space and
time. The objects themselves are, so far as we know spaceless and timeless.6
In the transcendental esthetic, Llano observes that Kant develops a theory of sensation
and of the phenomena of experience understood as the indeterminate object of an empirical
intuition. The matter of the phenomenon is sensation, the subjective reaction of consciousness to
having the senses affected. The matter of phenomena is given to us a posteriori since it comes
from exterior reality, whose existence Kant must admit, in some way, as the origin of the
empirical data passively received by our senses. The primal characteristic of empirical data is
their multiplicity, because they come from multiple stimuli. In contrast, the forms of phenomena
reinen Vernunft, edited by G. Mohr and M. Willaschek, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 1997 ; D. WARREN, Kant and
the A Priority of Space, The Philosophical Review, 107 (1998), pp. 179-224 ; C. POSY, Immediacy and the Birth
of Reference in Kant: The Case for Space, in Between Logic and Intuition: Essays in Honor of Charles Parsons,
edited by G. Sher and R. Tieszen, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000.
3
I. KANT, op. cit., B 42 and B 49.
4
I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, (trans. Max Mller), Macmillan, New York, 1927, pp. 16-17.
5
Cf. I. KANT, op. cit., pp. 18-20, 24-28.
6
C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1936, p. 111.

space and time are the unifying and ordering structures of empirical intuitions. Space and
time are conditions for the possibility of empirical phenomena. These a priori or pure forms are
imposed upon phenomena by the nature of our senses: space is the form of the intuitions of the
external senses and time is the form of the intuitions of the internal senses. As forms of all
phenomena, space and time are universal and necessary; thus scientific (synthetic a priori)
judgments are possible in geometry (constructed upon the pure spatial form) and in arithmetic
(built upon pure temporal structures).7
For Kant, the impression of our external and internal senses makes up the matter of all
knowledge. And this matter is elaborated in us, the first elaboration being due to two a priori
forms or determinations which belong to the structure of the faculty of sense-knowledge,
namely, time and space. The external senses represent all objects as extended in space, while the
internal senses represent all conscious states as succeeding one another in time. Space and time
are thus a priori conditions of sensation, two a priori forms of sensibility, pure forms of our
intuition. They are molds, so to speak, into which the impressions of our internal and external
senses are received. For Kant, then, a sensation of an object would be an impression formed in
space and time.
In the transcendental esthetic, Kant treats of space and time as the two a priori forms of
sensory intuition. These mere forms of appearances are two a priori forms constituting the
primary fundamental forms whereby the human mind orders or shapes the raw material of
sensation. The space and time a priori forms work upon this sensuous material of sensuous
affection to make all knowledge, even that of sense perception, possible.
For Kant, the intuition of time is logically prior to that of space, the latter space being
the condition of external (outer) sense perception, and the former time being the condition of
internal (inner) sense perception. And since the outer sense perceptions come under the internal
sense, this sense is placed above these perceptions. For Kant, all intuitions of space are
considered in terms of time, but not vice versa. Time, being more important for Kant than space,
would constitute the intuitional form of all phenomena in general (time also plays an important
role in the transcendental analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, in Kants elaboration of the
categories of the understanding).
The forms of sense-perception, inasmuch as they are universal and necessary, are the
same in every man; in every human person every sensible impression appears necessarily in
space and time. But because these forms belong entirely to the structure of the faculty of senseknowledge, their value can be only phenomenal, not noumenal; we cannot apply to things-inthemselves (noumena) the properties in accordance with which they appear before us
(phenomena).
The only form of intuition that man is endowed with, says Kant, is sensible intuition.
Thus the mind can reach only phenomena (things which appear to us) and not noumena (thingsin-themselves). We only know things as they appear to the human mind and not extra-mental
reality as it is in itself. In The Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena to any Future
Metaphysics Kant affirms the existence of noumena (things-in-themselves) that are the cause of
7

A. LLANO, op. cit., pp. 94-95.

the phenomena, but as to what noumena are in themselves, we simply do not know.8 Bittle
explains Kantian noumenal agnosticism, writing: Do we really perceive external objects, so that
the objects of sense actually exist, as we perceive them, outside our person? We do not. The real
objects of the physical world can never be perceived; we know absolutely nothing about the
noumena or things-in-themselves: All our intuition is nothing but the representation of
phenomenaNothing which is seen in space is a thing-in-itself, nor space a form of things
supposed to belong to them by themselves, but objects by themselves are not known by us at all,
and that what we call external objects are nothing but representations of our senses
(phenomena).9 All we can know, then, are phenomena or appearances, and these are always
subjective in character, without any resemblance to the things-in-themselves. Even mans
perception of his own body is thus seen to be only phenomenal; whether any extra-mental
reality corresponds to what he perceives to be his body, man can never know. Kant admits the
existence of things-in-themselves as the exciting cause of sense-perception on the grounds of
inference; but they remain an unknown and unknowable XSince all our knowledge in senseperception is limited to intra-subjective phenomena, he is a transcendental idealist. He failed to
overcome the Cartesian antithesis between mind and matter; the mind remains imprisoned in its
conscious states and can know nothing of the external world and non-ego objects.10
Kants matter receiving its primary elaboration by the two a priori forms of sensibility,
space and time, that is, the impression, is incapable of telling us anything at all of the inner
nature of the extra-mental world, since every impression, as it is in us, is anthropocentrically
informed, elaborated, or structured. Thus, in the immanentist transcendental idealism of the
philosopher of Knigsberg, things-in-themselves or noumena, in contrast with things which
appear to us or phenomena, must always remain unknown and unknowable. Kant describes his
anthropocentric and subjectivist phenomenalist immanentism at the end of his expositon of the
transcendental esthetic, writing: What we have meant to say is that all our intuition is nothing
but the representation of appearance; that the things which we intuit are not in themselves what
we intuit them as being, nor their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us, and
that if the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed,
the whole constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time
themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. What
objects may be in themselves, and apart from all their receptivity of our sensibility, remains
completely unknown to us. We know nothing but our mode of perceiving them a mode which
is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared in by every being, though, certainly by every human
being.11
The Transcendental Analytic
Just as phenomena stir the sensibility to act, so the finished products of sensation stir the
next knowing power, the intellect, to act. The intellect takes in these finished products of
sensation which are empirical intuitions and conforms them to its shape, its inborn a priori
8

I. KANT, The Critique of Pure Reason, A 19, A 109, B 34; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Prologue 13,
remark 2.
9
I. KANT, op. cit., pp. 34, 24.
10
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 111-112.
11
I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 42, B 59, Norman Kemp Smith edition, Macmillan, London, 1933, p. 82.

forms. These forms are four sets of triple judgments called the twelve categories. These
categories are like molds into which the molten metal of empirical intuitions is poured, and the
resulting piece of knowledge is, in each case, a judgment. The four master categories (each of
which has three branches) are: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Thus the judgment A
comes from B as effect from cause is not the objective knowing by the human mind of a state of
fact, as it is in realism, but rather, it is merely the result of the action of the intellect putting the
empirical intuitions of A and B through the mold or category of relation, and through that branch
of relation called cause-effect. Causality is not, for Kant, something that we know is occurring in
extra-mental reality between things, but is rather subjective and immanent to human
consciousness.
The Immanentism of the Transcendental Analytic
After dealing with the Transcendental Aesthetic, where we have seen Kant affirm that
space and time are two a priori forms of sense intuition, Kant deals with his a priori categories
of the understanding in his Transcendental Analytic,12 that make the science of physics possible.
In this second stage of the process of the attainment of knowledge (the first being that of the
Transcendental Aesthetic), our human understanding, explains Kant, transforms perceptions,
(which have already undergone a first molding process by the two a priori forms of intuition,
namely, space and time, spatializing and temporalizing these perceptions) into concepts or ideas
possessed of analytical unity.
Alejandro Llano explains the immanentist foundations of the Transcendental Analytic,
showing that the key concept of the Analytics is specifically that of the transcendental subject.
By transcendental Kant means all knowledge, not about objects in themselves, but about our
way of knowing them, since this must be a priori possible. It is the spontaneity of our intellect
which synthesizes and confers conceptual objectivity upon empirical phenomena, which possess
only a spatio-temporal structure. The basis for scientific knowledge and the proper objects of
this knowledge must be sought, therefore in the a priori formal principles of the intellect. This
faculty unifies and determines sense phenomena, formalizing them according to the structure of
our judgments. The classification of judgments is precisely the path towards the deduction of the
table of categories. The Kantian categories are the root-concepts, the fundamental modes of the
synthesis of phenomena: they are the forms of experience in general.
Through the categories, or pure concepts, is carried out the unifying synthesis of
phenomena around the transcendental ego, and this culminates in transcendental perception, an
intellectual function by which all perceptions are referred to the consciousness of the thinking
ego. But how are these a priori forms of the transcendental subject valid for the knowledge of
objects? Precisely Kant has to reply because these subjective forms are the condition and the
foundation of all knowledge: The conditions for the possibility of experience in general are, at
the same time, the conditions for the possibility of the objects of experience and therefore they
have objective value in a synthetic a priori judgment.13 Thus, according to Kant, it is the
intellect which imposes its conditions upon sense phenomena and not vice versa. This is
12

Studies on Kants Transcendental Analytic: R. P. WOLFF, Kants Theory of Mental Activity: A Commentary on
the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1963.
13
I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 158, B 197.

precisely the Copernican revolution which Kant carried out: instead of the subject attending to
objects, it is the objects which depend on the thinking ego. In broader term, we are facing a
transfer of the foundation from being to thought: now it is thought which founds being.
Such is the line of argument of The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, in
which Kant tries to demonstrate that an objectively valid a priori synthesis of the a posteriori is
possible, thanks to which Kant justifies the existence of synthetic a priori judgments in the
physical sciences. For Kant, nature is no more than a set of formalized phenomena whose laws
are not given by the structure of things as they are in themselves, but rather are prescribed to
nature by the intellect. It is we, says Kant, who introduce order and regularity into natural
phenomena, and we would not be able to discover this order and regularity if it had not originally
been placed there by the nature of our minds.14
Scientific knowledge is, then, a rational construct related exclusively to empirical
intuition. The categories have not been extracted from experience, but are valid only for
experience, so that they cannot be applied beyond the domain of sense phenomena. From the
meeting of what is posited by the intellect with what is given by sense intuition arises objectivity:
Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.15 But given how
Kant has set things up, this statement is highly problematic, so he will have to seek a third
element: time, as a transcendental schema, a product of the imagination, which will carry out an
artificial mediation between the categories and the phenomena. The harmonizing of the intellect
with the senses is, without a doubt, one of the weakest points of Kantian gnoseology.
As we can see, Kant only admits knowledge of what is immanent to the subject: we do
not know things, but rather our way of knowing them (we could almost say our way of not
knowing them). We cannot reach things in themselves, only the objects of experience are
accessible to us. Kant draws a drastic line of separation between noumena: things are as they are
in themselves, which can only be thought, but not known, and phenomena: things as they appear
to us. So as not to fall into total idealism Kant must, nonetheless, admit in some way the
existence of things in themselves as the unknowable origin of the matter of phenomena. But this
transcendental remainder does not fit into the context of the immanentist approach. This is why
Jacobi (1743-1819) observed that without the thing in itself one cannot enter into the Kantian
system, but with it one cannot remain within the system. This contradiction is one of the
principal reasons for the rise of post-Kantian absolute idealism.16
Critique of Kants Conceptualism
Coffeys Critique of Kants Conceptualism. General Criticism of Kants Theory of
Universal Concepts. A. The Theory Fails to Account for the Facts. I. If conception consisted in
combining or unifying systematically a sense-manifold, and if this manifold were in itself wholly

14

I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 125.


I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 151, B 75.
16
A. LLANO, Gnoseology, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 2001, pp. 96-98.
15

unsystematic and chaotic, then we should expect not a plurality of categories or ways of
combining it into concepts, but one general activity of mental synthesis.17
Thus, to take the example given by Prichard,18 suppose the manifold is given to
the mind to be combined consisted of musical notes, we could think of the minds power of
combination as exercised in combining the notes by way of succession provided that this be
regarded as the only mode of combination. But if the mind were thought also capable of
combining notes by way of simultaneity, we should at once be confronted by the insoluble
problem of determining why the one mode of combination [or category] was exercised in any
given case rather than the other. If, several kinds of synthesis [or categories] being allowed, this
difficulty be avoided by the supposition that, not being incompatible, they are all exercised
together, we have the alternative task of explaining how the same manifold can be combined in
each of these ways [or why it is not always combined de facto in every way, i.e., by the
simultaneous exercise of all the categories: which reflection on our cognitive processes reveals
never to be the case]. As a matter of fact, Kant thinks of manifolds of different kinds as
combined or related in different ways; thus events are related causally and quantities
quantitatively. But since, on Kants view the manifold as given is unrelated and all combination
comes from the mind, the mind should not be held capable of combining manifolds of different
kinds differently. Otherwise the manifold would in its own nature imply the need of a particular
kind of synthesis [or, in other words, would have affinities] and would therefore not be
unrelated.
Since what is given in the manifold of sense intuition is, according to Kant, a chaotic
manifold of isolated sense impressions, in themselves unknowable, he has really no right to
assume different kinds of manifolds.
This line of criticism is so destructive of Kants theory that we will add an alternative
statement of it by a scholastic writer:19 Suppose the conception of the object of the
understanding were a result of the natural [synthetic a priori] functioning of the mind in presence
of the passive impressions of the sensibility, should not the same impressions [and impressions
are always the same: a chaotic manifold of unknowable isolated units] necessarily determine the
same functioning, the exercise of one and the same category? And on this hypothesis how are we
to explain that one and the same matter [or datum] originates different concepts, sometimes, e.g.,
that of substance, sometimes that of cause or action, etc.?
17
As a matter of fact the mental process of knowing, i.e., of interpreting, of apperceiving, recognizing, is
fundamentally one and the same, whether it be conceiving, judging, or reasoning. It is essentially a mental
apprehension and assertion of something, some datum, as real. Reasoning not only involves judgment, but is itself
judging: it is apprehending relations of dependence in the reality given to thought, and thus asserting reality to be
such or such (cf. Science of Logic, i., 79-80, pp. 160-162; 148, pp. 296-297). Judging, in turn, is using concepts
to interpret the real, and thereby implicitly asserting that the content or object of the concept is real; while
conceiving is itself intellectually apprehending, and implicitly asserting to be real, what is given in and through
sense perception. Reality as known intellectually, as object of intellect, has the features of abstractness and
universality: the only features which reflection shows to belong not to the content, but to the mode, of thought. And
that there are different kinds of concepts, judgments and inferences is due of course to the complexity and variety of
the given reality determining those differences in our cognition.
18
H. A. PRICHARD, Kants Theory of Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909, p. 214.
19
D. MERCIER, Critriologie Gnrale, ou Thorie Gnrale de la Certitude, Louvain, 1906, 140, pp. 383-384,
3me. arg.

If therefore, conception were a function of systematically combining a priori into


definite unities a chaotic manifold given in sense intuition, it is inexplicable why there should be
a plurality of categories, or why, granted such a plurality, any one rather than any other should be
called into operation in any given case of conception.
II. In the second place, even if such plurality of the categories were explained, and such
selective employment of them accounted for, it would still be true that each category is in itself
utterly inadequate to account for the numerous distinct modes of its application; or, in other
words, there would need to be as many categories in the understanding as there are universal
concepts, specific and generic, which the understanding can form, and not merely the dozen or
so which Kant maintains to be exhaustive and to account adequately for all our conceptions.
When Kant is explaining how knowledge and self-consciousness alike imply the
synthesizing of a manifold by the a priori forms or principles of synthesis his illustrations clearly
show that each such synthesis requires a particular principle which constitutes the individual
manifold a whole of a particular kind [e.g., a triangle or a sum of five units]. But if this be the
case, it is clear that the categories, which are merely conceptions of an object in general, and are
consequently quite general, cannot possibly be sufficient for the purpose. And since the manifold
in itself includes no synthesis and therefore no principle of synthesis, Kant fails to give any
account of the source of the particular principles of synthesis required for particular acts of
knowledge.20
For instance, he illustrates the process (of combining a sense-manifold through a
category), whereby the sense-manifold acquires objectivity in general, or relation to an object
in general, or systematic unity and connectedness in general, by the example of a synthesis on
a particular principle which constitutes the phenomenal object an object of a particular kind.
The synthesis which enables us to recognize three lines as an object [a triangle]21 is not a
synthesis based on general principles constituted by the categories, but a synthesis based on the
particular principle that the three lines must be so put together as to form an enclosed space.22
If the categories can only contribute a general kind of unity, and not the special kind of
unity belonging to an individual object,23 or class of objects, then it is clear that the categories
cannot account for the conception of all the numerous specific and generic unities which the
objects of our universal concepts: Suppose it be conceded that in the apprehension of definite
shapes we combine the manifold in accordance with the conception of figure, and, for the

20

H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 207 (italics ours). Cf. ibid., p. 177, n. 2; supra, 89.
In this example (Critique, p. 87: Thus we conceive a triangle as an object, if we are conscious of the combination
of three straight lines, according to a rule, which renders such an intuition possible at all times), the process plainly
requires a synthesis of a very definite kind(H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 217, n. 1), and not merely a synthesis
according to the general category of quantity.
22
Ibid., p. 185. According to Kant, to know a sense-manifold as having systematic unity in general is to know it as
an object, or as objective; and it is made objective by the application of a category. In order, therefore, to apprehend
a sense-manifold as objective, i.e., in order to exercise the function of a category, we should not need to know the
particular kind of systematic unity which the manifold is to have. Yet, from his examples, it is clear that we must
know the latter as a means of knowing the former. Cf. op. cit., ibid.
23
Ibid., n. 1.
21

purpose of the argument, that figure can be treated as equivalent to the category of quantity.24 It
is plain that we apprehend different shapes, e.g., lines25 and triangles,26 of which, if we take into
account differences of relative length of sides, there is an infinite variety, and houses,27 which
may also have an infinite variety of shape. But there is nothing in the minds capacity of relating
the manifold by way of figure to determine it to combine a given manifold into a figure of one
kind rather than into a figure of any other kind; for to combine the manifold into a particular
shape, there is needed not merely the thought of a figure in general, but the thought of a definite
figure. No cue can be furnished by the manifold itself, for any such cue would involve the
conception of a definite figure, and would therefore imply that the particular synthesis was
implicit in the manifold itself, in which case it would not be true that all synthesis comes from
the mind.28
Thus, then, the categories can give at most only the widest and most generic sort of socalled objectivity, or systematic unity, to the manifolds of sense intuition; they cannot
originate our specific and generic universal concepts.
Nor does Kant prevent this breakdown of his theory by ascribing the principles of the
less universal syntheses to the productive imagination, for with Kant this faculty must mean the
understanding itself working unreflectively; and anyhow he fails to account for the intermediate
principles of synthesis which he locates in it. We have seen how in explaining the synthetic a
priori function of these faculties he felt forced to admit an affinity in the elements of the sensemanifold. But the exigencies of his theory prevented him from ascribing this affinity to any
real or extra-subjective or extra-mental factor: since the manifold is originated by the thing
in itself, it seems prima facie impossible to prove that the elements of the manifold must have
affinity [of themselves, or derived from their real source, viz., things in themselves], and so be
capable of being related according to the categories.29 Accordingly, he tried to carry out to the
full his doctrine that all unity or connectedness comes from the minds activity, by maintaining
that the imagination, acting productively on the data of sense and thereby combining them into
an image, gives the data a connectedness which the understanding can subsequently recognize.
But to maintain this is, of course, only to throw the problem one stage further back. If
reproduction, in order to enter into knowledge, imples a manifold which has such connection that
it is capable of being reproduced according to rules, so the production of sense-elements into a
coherent image in turn implies sense-elements capable of being so combined. The act of
combination cannot confer upon them or introduce into them a unity which they do not already
possess. The fact is that this step exhibits the final breakdown of his view that all unity or
connectedness or relatedness is conferred upon the data of sense by the activity of the mind.30
We see then that if all our universal concepts be, as Kant claims, a priori syntheses of
forms of the understanding (or the productive imagination) with sense-manifolds, the mind
24

It is de facto, a more concrete conception than the category, and therefore more favorable to Kants contention.
Critique, p. 749.
26
Ibid., p. 87.
27
Ibid., p. 764.
28
H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 216.
29
Ibid., pp. 219-220; supra, p. 214, n. 2.
30
Ibid., p. 226.
25

should be furnished with a separate and distinct synthesizing principle or form for every specific
or generic class-notion which it can conceive.
III. Whether the a priori categories of the understanding, whether the a priori
schematizing and image-producing functions of the productive imagination be one, or few, or
indefinitely numerous, the sort of synthesis ascribed to them by Kant is incapable of originating
the universal concepts which de facto enter into our knowledge.
To synthesize or combine the elements of a manifold is to relate them somehow to one
another as terms (and, in Kants meaning, also to recognize them as systematically inter-related,
as forming a conceived objective unity). But in order that the elements be capable of entering
into relation with one another they must, as terms, (1) be adapted to the general nature of the
relationship to be effected; and (2) to the special kind of relation to be effected within that
general order of relationship. For example, (1) if two terms are to be related as more or less loud
they must be sounds;31 if as right and left they must be bodies in space; if as parent and
child they must be human beings, etc. And similarly, (2) if one sound is to be related to
another by way of the octave, that other must be its octave; if we are to combine or relate a
manifold into a triangle, and therefore into a triangle of a particular size and shape, the elements
of the manifold must be lines, and lines of a particular size; ifinto a house, and therefore into
a house of a certain shape and size, the manifold must consist in bodies of a suitable shape and
size, etc. Hence the manifold must be adapted to fit categories not onlyin the sense that it
must be of the right kind, but also in the sense that its individual elements must have that orderly
character which enables them to be related according to the categories. But in Kants theory the
manifold to be related consists solely of a chaotic stream of sensations, or isolated space-andtime perceptions.32 The question therefore returns, Whence have these isolated data of sense the
characteristics of affinity which fit them, as terms, for the relations which the mind is supposed
to establish between them by synthesizing them into systematic objective unities or concepts?
For Kant the chaotic manifolds of sense data are originated by the extramental reality,
which, though according to his own theory unknowable, he always thinks of in the plural, as
things (in themselves) or individuals.33 His first distinction between sensibility and
understanding was that between the passive faculty by which an individual is given and the
active faculty by which we bring the individual under, or recognize it as an instance of a
universal.34 Then he came to regard the given individuals as terms, and the function of the
mind (the understanding and the productive imagination) as that of relating those terms. Thus he
confounds the two quite distinct processes of bringing individuals under a universal and
establishing between the given manifold of terms relations which transform these manifolds into
definite, systematic unities or objective concepts, describing both as if they were one and the
same process of a priori synthesis, and thus ascribing all unity or connectedness to the activity of
the mind. But it is plain that before an individual can be brought under a universal it must first be
apprehended as an individual. The process by which we recognize an individual plane figure as
an instance of the universal triangle cannot be the same as the process by which we recognize
31

Cf. H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 218-219; 226-229.


Ibid., p. 218.
33
And implcitly identifies with bodies in space (56-59), H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 67n., 77n., 257., 265.
34
Op. cit., p. 228.
32

10

the given sense manifold (of perception or imagination) as a consciously apprehended individual
sense datum. According to Kant the latter process is one by which we so relate among
themselves and unify the isolated elements of the given manifold that we apprehend the products
as an individual-space-bounded-by-straight-lines. But it is impossible for Kant to hold,
consistently with his general theory, that the isolated elements of the manifold are given as
terms, and that the mind contributes the unifying relations. For in the first place, if the elements
are given as terms they are given as having mutual affinities whereby they are of their own
nature mutually referable by the mind apprehending them: but Kant denies that the elements of
the manifold have in themselves, or derive from things in themselves, any affinity whatsoever:
indeed he holds that the manifold given in sense does not and cannot enter into consciousness at
all as it is, but only as unified by the activity of mental a priori forms. And in the second place, if
the manifold of sense be given as a manifold of terms, i.e., of elements which have mutual
affinities, which of their very nature demand and necessitate certain relations, and it is thus that
the manifold of sense is de facto given, then the ground of such relations, and the motive for
the minds formally establishing or apprehending them, are given with the sense-manifold, and
are apprehended in it by the mind: and so Kants main thesis falls to the ground, viz., that the
mind, in inter-relating the manifold of sense consciousness, in interpreting the given by means of
concepts and judgments, in knowing the given as an orderly system of objects of scientific
knowledge, is not guided by evidence furnished to it in and with the data of sense; but through an
instinctive, subjective process of synthesizing unknowable data with a priori mental factors
creates for itself a system of mental products which are the phenomenal world, or physical
Nature.35
That not only a manifold of individual terms (and not a chaotic stream of isolated sense
impressions), but a manifold of individual relations, is given in sense consciousness,
introspection itself clearly testifies.36 To illustrate this in the case of the (perceptive or
imaginative) apprehension of an individual sense datum Prichard takes Kants favorite
instancethe apprehension of a straight line.37

35

As a matter of fact since Kant holds that the real, whether Ego or non-Ego, is unknowable, and since he represents
the categories as transcendental functions, or functions of the noumenal Ego, he is inconsistent in maintaining that
reflection on our processes of cognition can discover the grounds of the laws and relations which make the objects
of knowledge a system or cosmos, in the categories, or in these with the transcendental unity of apperception, for
this position implies that we can after all discover something as to the character of the noumenal or real Ego. Cf.
supra, 59, 89, p. 336, n. 5; p. 337, n. 1.
36
We here appeal to consciousness as testifying that the grounds of our conceptions and judgments are given with
the data of sense-consciousness, and are apprehended by intellect therein. Kant would probably object that nothing
can come into consciousness except already synthesized products; that the reason why the products are such as they
are cannot be found in consciousness but must lie beyond consciousness, in the transcendental Ego. (Query: Why
there, rather than in the transcendental non-Ego?); and that therefore it is impossible to argue from the facts of
consciousness against his theory (cf. supra, p. 215, n. 1). We join issue with this position in pointing out that Kants
theory, by denying that the grounds of conception and judgment can be discovered in the facts of consciousness,
thereby contradicts facts of consciousness; for while his main contention that these grounds are transcendental is
practically an agnostic confession that they are ultimately undiscoverable, our contention is that they are
discoverable in the data of consciousness and knowledge, that they are discovered there in the process of cognition,
and that they guide the mind in this process.
37
Op. cit., p. 226.

11

This, according to Kant, presupposes that there is given to us a manifold, which


whther he admits it or not must really be parts of the line, and that we combine this manifold
on a principle involved in the nature of straightness. Now suppose that the manifold given is the
parts AB, BC, CD, DE, of the straight line AE. It is clearly only possible to recognize AB and
BC as contiguous parts of a straight line, if we immediately apprehend that AB and BC form one
line of which these parts are identical in direction. Otherwise we might just as well join AB and
BC at a right angle, and in fact at any angle; we need not even make AB and BC contiguous.38
Similarly the relation of BC and CD and of CD to DE must be just as immediately apprehended
as the parts themselvesRelations then, or in Kants language, particular syntheses, must be said
to be given in the sense in which the elements to be combined can be said to be given.39
Hence the apprehension of a sense-manifold as an individual unity is not to be
confounded, as Kant confounds it, with the apprehension of this individual unity as an instance
of a universal. For, on the one hand, a relation between terms is as much an individual as either
of the terms. That a body A is to the right of a body B is as much an individual fact as either A or
B. And if terms, as being individuals, belong to perception and are given, in the sense that they
are in immediate relation to us, relations, as being individuals, equally belong to perception and
are given. On the other hand, individual terms just as much as individual relations, imply
corresponding universals. An individual body implies bodiness just as much as the fact that a
body A is to the right of a body B implies the relationship of being to the right of something.
And if, as is the case, thinking or conceiving, in distinction from perceiving, is that activity by
which we recognize an individual, given in perception, as one of a kind, conceiving is involved
as much in the apprehension of a term as in the apprehension of a relation. The apprehension of
this red body as much involves the recognition of an individual as an instance of a kind, i.e., as
much involves an act of the understanding, as does the apprehension of the fact that it is brighter
than some other body.40
That the systematic unity and connectedness of the concept is not due to any instinctive
synthesizing operation of the transcendental and unknowable Ego on a chaotic sense-manifold
originating in the mind from an equally unknowable non-Ego, but that it has its ground in the
apprehended sense-manifold itself, this is a doctrine of such capital importance, as against
Kants theory, that we will now further illustrate the real nature of the synthesis involved in
conception, by Merciers statement41 of the line of argument we have been so far developing:
Any specific essence [he writes] is composed of notes [or elements, or factors] each of which is
contained in the data of sense, and the formation of its concept is constantly guided by these. The
formation of a [concept of a] specific essence [or kind of thing] is conditioned by a series of
judgments all of which refer to one and the same subject [or datum] of sense experience, the
notes successively abstracted therefrom by the mind. According to Kantthe first42 combination
of the notes that constitute a conceived object would be an exclusively subjective function of the
mind devoid of any guarantee that such combination corresponded with things [or reality], so
38

In order to meet a possible objection, it may be pointed out that if AB and BC be given in isolation, the
contiguity implied in referring to them as AB and BC will not be known.
39
Ibid., pp. 227-228.
40
Ibid., pp. 228-229.
41
D. MERCIER, op. cit., 140, pp. 380-383.
42
Or earliest, or fundamental: cf. supra, 88, p. 333, n. 1, where it was noted that synthesis must precede analysis,
that all concepts are synthetic-a-priori.

12

that our concepts would perforce be destitute of real objectively. Now this account misrepresents
the process of conception. No doubt the conception of an intelligible object [or kind of thing] is
a work of synthesis. The human mind at first apprehends only fragmentarily, so to speak, what a
given thing is: such is the law of its finite nature. The adjustment of several fragmentary notes
into a whole is therefore the inevitable consequence of our abstractive mode of apprehending the
intelligible aspects of reality, and is accordingly the sine qua non condition of our knowing an
essence [or kind of thing]. But the union of any two elements of an intelligible object
presupposes their comparison, and hence a judgment. But comparison implies intuition of the
terms compared, and judgment the intuition of their compatibility or incompatibility. And since
the total synthesis of any conceived object is only the sum of the partial syntheses of its
elements, it is the product of comparisons and judgments. But what is it that determines the mind
to operate these partial syntheses and to gather them into a total synthesis? A subjective law of
the mind? On the contrary, it is the real unity of the sense datum perceived by the external senses
or reproduced by memory. The mind is conscious of representing to itself, by the aid of a
plurality of abstract notes, a thing which in its concrete reality is one; and it is moreover aware
that it must unify these [successively apprehended] notes into one single [whole or] essence in
order to gain for itself a faithful representation of the reality. It is therefore undoubtedly the
intuition of the unity of the objective reality that guides the mind in the formation of concepts.
To illustrate this let us suppose that in presence of a person whom I actually see I form
the concept of a being subsistent-corporeal-living-sentient-rational. Before uniting the two
notes being and subsistent I have apprehended that what is subsistent is a being; before uniting
with subsistent being the note of corporeity I have apprehended that a body is a substance and a
being; and so, likewise, the notes of life, sentiency and rationality have revealed themselves as
compatible with those of corporeity, subsistence and being, before I combine the former with the
latter. In a word, whenever I unite any two notes [or factors] to form synthetically an intelligible
essence I am conscious of comparing them firstly and then by an act of judgment attributing the
one as predicate to the other as subject; and I am conscious, moreover, that such a union, so far
from being a fusion [or synthesis] of which I could see merely the result and in nowise
apprehend the determining reason, is formally an act of cognition. Now the partial syntheses
terminate in an act of total synthesis whereby I conceive the intelligible essence. And what
determines the mind to effect this total synthesis? The sense reality, apprehended by [sense]
experience. The individual person whom I saw with my eyes drew upon himself the active
attention of my mind and furnished to it the material for abstractive acts whereby I successively
conceived abstract being, abstract substantiality, abstract corporeity, and so on. But while I was
successively abstracting those vatious notes [or aspects] I was well aware that, in the person I
saw, these notes did not exist mutually isolated from one another; on the contrary I was aware of
them as united in one single reality, and of myself as unable nevertheless to grasp them mentally
by one single effort of thought. The irresistible tendency which naturally impels me to conform
my concept with the thing in Nature [the given reality] made me combine again the notes which
analysis had separated. Clearly, therefore, it is the sense reality that furnishes the notes [or
factors] of conceived essences [or objects]; and it is on a [ground or] substrate in sense that the
[synthesis or] unification of those elements into a conceived essence is based.
Sometimes this sense substrate is an image: then the intellect grasps the notes of the
essence [or objective concept] in imagined representations, and the concept is of the ideal order.
13

Sometimes the sense substrate is given in perception: the intellect apprehends the identity of the
notes of the essence in a datum of actual sense experience, and then the concept is said to be of
the real, or more strictly, of the existential order. But imagination can only represent elements
given in perception. So that in ultimate analysis we must always find the notes or factors of our
concepts in some previous or original percepts, before synthesizing them [into a conceived
object]. Consequently Kants presentation of the process of conception as an a priori synthesis,
to account for the formation of objective concepts, is in conflict with the testimony of
consciousness.43

43

P. COFFEY, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 343-352.

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