A

COMPANION
TO KANT'S
CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

Transcendental Aesthetic
and Analytic
Karl Aschenbrenner
university of California, Berkeley

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PRESS OF
AMERICA

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What are meanings? or What is
it for an expression to have a
certain sense? Until fairly
recently philosophers have not
stepped back from their easels
to consider what philosophy is,
or how doing philosophy differs
from doing science, or doing
theology, or doing mathematics.
Kant was the first modern thinker
to see or try to answer this
question--and a very good begin-
ning of an answer he gave.
Gilbert Ryle
"The Theory of Meaning"

iii
 Acknowledgements

I acknowledge with thanks permission that has been

granted to reprint excerpts from two papers published
for the Mainz Kant Kongress by, respectively, Walter
de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1974 ("The Derivation and
Completeness of the Analogies of Experience"); and
Bouvier Verlag, Herbert Grundmann, Bonn, 1981 ("Kant's
Transcendental Deduction in A: A Newer Perspective") .
vi
 Table of Contents

Page
CKC NKS

Introduction 3 41
I. The Difference Between Pure
and Empirical Knowledge. 3 41
II. We are in Possession of
Certain Forms of A Priori
Knowledge and Even Common
Understanding is Never
Without Them. 5 43
III. Philosophy Stands in Need of a
Science Which Can Determine the
Possibility, the Principles and
the Extent of All Our A Priori
Knowledge. 7 45
IV. The Distinction Between Analytic
and Synthetic Judgments. 9 48
V. All Theoretical Sciences of
Reason Contain Synthetic
A Priori Judgment as Principles. 14 52
VI. The General Task Which Confronts
Pure Reason. 20 55
VII. The Idea of and the Divisions
Under a Special Science Bearing
the Name of a Critique of Pure
Reason. 22 58

Transcendental Doctrine
of Elements 25 65
First Part: The Transcendental
Aesthetic 1 29 65
Section I. Space 35 67
Metaphysical Exposition of
the Concept of Space 2 35 67
Transcendental Exposition
of the Concept of Space 3 42 70
Conclusions from the Above Concepts 48 71
Section II. Time 51 74
Metaphysical Exposition of
the Concept of Time 4 51 74
Transcendental Exposition of
the Concept of Time 5 57 76
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CKC NKS
Conclusions from These
Concepts 6 59 76
Elucidation 7 65 79
General Observations on the
Transcendental Aesthetic 8 66 82
Conclusion of the Transcen-
dental Aesthetic 74 90

Second Part: The Transcendental Logic 75 92

Introduction: Idea of a Transcen-
dental Logic 75 92
I. Logic in General 75 92
II. Concerning Transcendental Logic 78 95
III. The Division of General Logic
into Analytic and Dialectic 79 97
IV. The Division of Transcen-
dental Logic into Tran-
scendental Analytic and
Dialectic 82 100
First Division: Transcendental Analytic 83 102
Book I: Analytic of Concepts 86 103
Chapter I: The Clue to the Dis-
covery of all Pure
Concepts of the
Understanding 87 10 4
Section 1 : The Logical
Employment of the
Understanding 88 105
Section 2 : The Logical Function
of the Understanding
in Judgments 9 95 106
Section 3 : The Pure Concepts of
the Understanding or
Categories 10-12 108 111
Chapter II: The Deduction of
the Pure Concepts
of the Understand-
ing 120 120
Section 1 : The Principles of
Any Transcendental
Deduction 13 120 120
Transition to the
Transcendental
Deduction of the
Categories 14 123 125
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CKC NKS
(Transcendental Deduction:
Edition A) 129 129
Section 2: On the A Priori
Grounds of the
Possibility of
Experience 129 129
Preliminary Reminder 132 131
1: Synthesis of Apprehen-
sion in Intuition 139 131
2: Synthesis of Reproduc-
tion in Imagination 143 132
3: Synthesis of Recogni-
tion in the Concept 147 133
4. Preliminary Explana-
tion of the Possibil-
ity of the Categories
as A Priori Knowledge 154 138
Section 3: The Relation of the
Understanding to
Objects in General,
and the Possibility
of Knowing These
A Priori 158 141
Summary Representation of the
Correctness of this Deduction
of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding, and of its
Being the Only Possible Deduc-
tion 163 149
(Transcendental Deduction:
Edition B) 165 151
Section 2: Transcendental
Deduction of the
Pure Concepts of
the Understanding 165 151
On the Possibility
of Combining in
General 15 165 151
Of the Original
Synthetic Unity of
Apperception 16 168 152
 Page
CKC NKS
The Fundamental
Principles of the
Synthetic Unity of
Apperception is
the Supreme Prin-
ciple of All
Employment of the
Understanding 17 175 155
What Objective
Unity of Self-
Consciousness Is
18 176 157
The Logical Form
of All Judgments
Consists in the
Objective Unity
of the Appercep-
tion of the Con-
cepts Contained
Therein 19 177 158
All Sensate Intu-
itions are Subject
to the Categories
as Conditions
Under Which Alone
They in Their
Multiplicity Can
Enter into a
Single Conscious-
ness 20 179 160
Supplementary Re-
mark 21 181 160
The Only Use of
the Category Look-
ing Toward Know-
ledge is its
Application to
Objects of Exper-
ience 22 182 161
-- 23 183 163
The Application of
the Categories to
Objects of Senses
in General 24 184 164
 Page
CKC NKS
-- 25 187 168
The Transcendental
Deduction of the
Universally Possi-
ble Use in Exper-
ience of Pure
Concepts of Under-
standing 26 189 170
Outcome of this
Deduction of the
Concepts of Under-
standing 27 191 173
Brief Formulation of
This Deduction 194 175
Book II: Analytic of Principles 195 176
Introduction: Transcendental
Judgment in
General 197 177
Chapter I: The Schematism of the
Pure Concepts of
the Understanding 198 180
Chapter II: System of All
Principles of
Understanding 213 188
Section 1: The Highest Prin-
ciple of all
Analytic Judg-
ments 216 189
Section 2: The Highest Prin-
ciple of all Syn-
thetic Judgments 218 191
Section 3: Systematic Repre-
sentation of all
Synthetic Princi-
ples of Pure
Understanding 220 194
1. Axioms of
Intuition 223 197
2. Anticipations
of Perception 227 201
3. Analogies of
Experience 231 208
 Page
CKC NKS

First Analogy:
Substance 236 212
Second Analogy:
Causality 242 218
Third Analogy:
Community 256 233
Postulates of
Empirical
Thought 262 239

Possibility 263 239

Actuality 264 242
Refutation of
Idealism 267 244
Necessity 272 247

General Note on the System

of Principles 274 252
Chapter III. On the Ground of
the Distinction
of the Objects
in General into
Phenomena and
Noumena 276 257

Appendix: The Amphiboly of

the Concepts of
Reflection 283 276

Xll
 Preface

The description 'Comment' is probably more appro-

priate to this effort than 'Commentary'. For this one
may turn to the enormous literature on Kant. I have
sought rather to emphasize the importance of Kant to
us and his relevance to the place that philosophy has
now reached. To ask about his value for us means to
take him in a manner he himself could not have antici-
pated and thus in some degree to distort him. But
Kant's historical place is far too secure for it to be
injured by our effort to see what use he can be to us.
I am inclined to think this is far greater than we may
have supposed, even considering the recent revival of
interest in Kant.

Comment with this kind of emphasis may diverge from

what may be deemed historically accurate. Resolute
Kantians may be disappointed or offended. But Kant is
truly only now coming into his own. It is a serious
error to read Kant only as a precursor of the German
idealist school. I believe he might have thought some
of its famous figures often slightly mad. His problems
are those of Leibniz and Hume, yes, and of Russell and
Wittgenstein, more than those of Hegel and Fichte.
Twentieth century philosophy really proceeds on from
Kant without a break. It is a pity one must make
allowance for Kant's passing before the great achieve-
ments of chemistry, physics, and mathematics in the
nineteenth century, of logic and methodology in the
twentieth were known to him, every one of which he
would have followed with a voracious intellectual appe-
tite.

With Kant the modern intellect cuts every last link

with the Middle Ages. That past had finally passed,
and not without his help. He faces resolutely a limit-
less universe in space and time and possibility: it is
what we make of it, intellectually and morally, no
more, no less. Like Russell, Kant is a man for our
season, a clear-headed realist, above all a philosopher
of common sense, despite the apparatus of his archi-
tectonic, which must not distract us. The twentieth
century philosophers are like Kant too in that they
turned their backs on the Romantic age in all its
forms: Kant never had to undergo the Romantic agony.
 Since one must learn to divide the Critique in
order to command it, we must ask how this is to be
done. If we consider Kant to have undertaken some
three tasks, analytical, dialectical and methodologi-
cal, the Critique may be separated into three rather
unequal parts.

Analytical. First, the Prefaces may be detached

in order to be read with the dialectic. This leaves
us with the first part of the Critique running from
the Introduction nearly to the end of the Analytic of
Principles.The interest here is analytical, concerned
with the nature, foundations and limits of empirical
knowledge.

Dialectical. Second, the Prefaces, having been

written when Kant had the whole Critique before him,
turn to its larger and final questions. Kant treated
with a compassion unknown to Hume those desperate
hopes of mankind and pretensions to transcendence that
have been encoded in religion and moral systems. No
one has more earnestly sought to do justice to them
"within the bounds of reason alone" than Kant. The
material in the Critique that bears the weight of this
great concern begins with the two prefaces, resumes at
the chapter on the distinction between phenomena and
noumena and then occupies most of the Transcendental
Dialectic.

Methodological. The sequel to the foregoing, the

Transcendental Methodology, concerns the manner in
which the command of the system of knowledge may be-
come operative. Kant retains this didactic feature
of the baroque systems of thought of Wolff, Baumgarten,
and others. The preceptors of the Enlightenment were
all engagees and held it their duty to show how one
could use what one had just learned. The methodologi-
cal material in the Critique, however, is brief and
uneven: what was needed was not more and more
Erkenntnistheorie but a vast expansion of empirical
knowledge, the very result that the nineteenth century
produced.

The present study provides comment on Kant's con-

tribution in the Critique to the first of these great
topics, the analytical. Every sectional and sub-
sectional division of the Critique is carefully observ-
ed. I have hoped not merely to rehash the original,
but rather to discuss it in such a way that it may be
read with rather more ready profit than its difficult
idiom usually affords the reader. But as for that,
there is really no such thing as reading Kant, only
re-reading.
This study of Kant's Critique is offered as a
tribute to the late Professor Jacob Loewenberg who
taught the Kant course at Berkeley for more than
twenty-five years and was my teacher and an inspiration
to me for years afterward. His lectures were models of
organization and argument and made a pleasure of the
hard work and careful thought required by him. I could
not have believed that I was destined to be his chosen
successor in teaching the Critique and other works of
Kant. This Companion was prepared over some thirty
years while teaching at Berkeley and is equally a trib-
ute to Kant, Hume and the other masters of Eighteenth
Century thought.
xv i
Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason:

Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic

 INTRODUCTION
The Introduction is undoubtedly the most lucid
portion in all of the Critique and stands in little
need of further exposition. This is not to say that
it does not stimulate questions. One could wish that
Kant had dwelt at even greater length and with the
same clarity on its well-known topics : the terms
'analytic' and 'synthetic' in application to proposi-
tions, the nature of a priori knowledge and of syn-
thetic a priori propositions, the need to determine
the limits which knowledge obtained through pure reason
may reach and may seek to exceed. With great care
he works up to the question which he thinks should be
foremost in our thought in the investigation of pure
reason: How are synthetic judgments possible a priori?
The subject matter of the Critique from the Introduction
through the Analytic of Principles covers Kant's answer
to this question, and more besides. Thereafter, in the
Dialectic, he turns to the pathology of pure reason:
the penalties, and even in a way the rewards, that a-
wait pure reason in following its inherent bent to ask
insoluble questions and demand answers to them. Its
reach always exceeds its grasp and, Kant concludes with
Browning, that's what a Heaven's for.

The Introduction is considerably recast in B.

There are several substitutions and additions in the
earlier sections. The thought remains essentially the
same, but B adds some turns of phrase that are memora-
bly Kantian, for example, "All our knowledge begins
with experience ... but it does not all arise out of expe-
rience." If the Critique can be reduced to an apothegm,
it is this.

I. Of the Difference Between Pure and Empirical

Knowledge
The difference which Kant describes is of course
not a creation of his own since it goes back to ancient
philosophy. Its mention prominently at the beginning
of the Critierue does, however, underline a difference
between himself and Locke and Hume, for example, es-
pecially the latter.

Kant is taking pains to affirm the difference

between two sources of our knowledge, whereas Locke
sought from the outset to show that, although we might
be tempted to think otherwise, all our knowledge is
derived from experience. Locke adds immediately that
under experience there are two sources of our ideas:
sensation and reflection. But the identification of
the second source here does not at all serve to make
the point Kant is making, for it is described as in-
ternal sense. Kant's reply to this would be that sense,
whether internal or external (and a distinction bearing
at least this name is also made by Kant) is but one
source of our knowledge, one "place" where it begins,
and that a second kind of knowledge and a second source
must also be allowed for, that is, speaking generally,
a priori knowledge and an appropriate source of this
which the Critique proposes to lay bare.

The response to Hume is similar. Hume regards im-

ressions, of sensation and of reflection, as the ulti-
mate source of all ideas in an even more radical
fashion than Locke. His program is one either of deny-
ing that ideas have any validity if they cannot be
traced to this source, or of saying that although we
may often think we have ideas from some other source
the fact is we do not have them at all in that case,
and we are deluding ourselves.

What Kant is saying on the other hand is that some

ideas can be traced to intuitions, or as Hume would say,
impressions, and some must be traced to an altogether
different source. Kant's standpoint is one that in
effect agrees with rationalism, however much of his
explanation diverges from that of the supporters of
innate ideas. He insists that a priori ideas are not
innate at B 167 (in the Transcendental Deduction of the
Categories). He has a different explanation of their
inherence in the human mind.

One should notice what powers Kant here attributes

to objects, Gegenstande: they stir our sense into
activity and produce, in some sense, .representations
Vorstellungen; they set the understanding into motion
to compare, connect and distinguish representations;
and thus work them up into "that knowledge of objects
which we call experience." At this point he has not
yet made clear to us in what sense 'objects' is to be
understood. Things themselves? Appearances? It is
most likely he means the first of these; the second are
in part a result of the activity of the first.

The first two paragraphs are united by the contrast

of "beginning with" and "arising out of experience."
The latter has of course important implications for
what is to be said later in the Critique We should
not, however, read it altogether in the light of what
follows. All that Kant is saying here is that we must
be prepared to find experience to be a much more com-
plex affair than the empiricists supposed. Of course
all knowledge begins with experience, but it is a thing
of such complexity that there may very well be elements
in it that do not arise from the impressions of sense
and that we may not be able at a glance, and without
skill and practice in analysis, to trace to their
origins. This is, in fact, the very contingency we
had better prepare ourselves for.

If there is an ingredient in our empirical knowledge

that does not owe its presence solely to impressions of
the senses we may call it a priori. It is not yet taken
as established that there is such a component: the
proof of this is to come in the very next section, as
we see from its title, "We are in possession of certain
kinds of a priori knowledge, and even common under-
standing is never without them."
The remainder of the section is meant to make the
idea 'a priori1 clear, distinguishing it from mere
predictions about phenomenal trains of events, such as
what is said to be bound to happen if one undermines
the foundations of a house. The a priori knowledge
which the Critique is investigating is to be understood
as knowledge in which there is no appeal to experience
but is such as to apply to the world of experience, and
indeed to make it possible. These are uniquely Kantian
theses that we do well to have in mind from the very
outset.

It should be noted that the sections marked I and II

in B were added in that edition replacing the two para-
graphs with which section I of A began. As noted, B
adds the phrases about the Anfang and the Entsprung,
that is, beginning with and arising out of experience,
and it contributes a welcome, but still insufficient
exposition of the notion of necessity as applied par-
ticularly to propositions such as causal laws.

II. We are in possession of certain kinds of a priori

knowledge and even common understanding is never
without them.
 We learn presently that the task of a critique of
pure reason is to show how synthetic judgments are
possible a priori. If we overhear someone asking how
it is possible for someone to steal the gold in Fort
Knox, having just entered the conversation at that
point, our first or prior question is likely to be:
What? Has someone stolen the gold? So here before we
ask how it is possible for there to be so and so we
need to know that there are examples of so and so.
What then is pure or a priori knowledge and how is
it recognized or1acquired? It is not to be acquired
through experience, which can at most tell us what is
the case as a matter of fact but not that it must be
as it is. As we have already noted, we also use the
term 'a priori1 in a relative sense of the future when
we say that if we undermine a house we know a priori ,
that is in advance, that it will fall. But this rests
merely on previously confirmed empirical knowledge.
What then characterizes a judgment that is absolutely
a priori? The first mark of such a judgment is that it
is necessary. Kant adds that if the judgment is not
only necessary but itself deducible from a necessary
judgment then it is valid absolutely a priori. But it
is not clear what this can add to its simply being a
priori.

The second mark of an a priori judgment is that it

is universal in its range. Again, we must look beyond
mere experience. In the sense of an inductive accumu-
lation of positive instances, experience can never lend
the character of strict universality to any proposition,
for this is merely to know that there have been no
exceptions hitherto. A proposition that is strictly
universal, says Kant, is one to which no exceptions will
be permitted (dass gar keine Ausnahme als mglich
verstattet wird!. This clause should be carefully
stored in memory, since it is relevant to Kant's view
of the peculiar necessity attaching to synthetic a
priori principles of science, considered in the Analytic
of Principles, but of course also much in view before
then. We shall recur to it. Examples of these judg-
ments are now brought forward. The propositions of
mathematics and the causal law are mentioned prominently-

Necessity and unlimited universality have been

treated as practically synonymous in this section though
Kant has not given a real explanation of necessity as
yet. Indeed one of the major shortcomings of the
Critique is Kant's failure to give an adequate
explanation of what he means by the necessity of the
principles which it is the main purpose of the Critique
to enunciate and prove. So far we have been told that
they are of unrestricted universality and that we will
not permit exceptions to them. He now adds a kind of
third property that pertains to them, that they are
jjrii spensable(unentbehrlich) for the possibility of
experience and therefore, he says (or it might be better
to say "in that sense" instead of "therefore") a priori.
The question he has not yet addressed himself to is how
they differ from analytic a priori propositions. Once
this has been done we shall have to return to the
question as to what he means by saying that certain
_^nnnepts are a priori.

At the end of the present section he devotes a

paragraph to exemplifying such concepts. It is no
accident that he here uses almost the very same notion
and procedure that Descartes resorted to with the ball
of wax and also arrives at the same result. If we
think away the color, weight, impenetrability and other
properties of a body we inevitably arrive at an irredu-
cible minimum, namely the space occupied by the body.
And, says Kant, the same process should lead us to the
notion that there is a support of all the qualities of
a body in a substratum or substance. This is also
characteristic of Locke's approach to the idea of
substance. Many more such echoes from the past are to
be discerned in the Critique, but as we shall see,
Kant renovates radically the notions he borrows.

The two sections just finished thus first make the

distinction between pure and empirical knowledge and
then assert that pure or a priori knowledge is not a
mere abstract possibility but that we do in fact possess
such knowledge.

III. Philosophy stands in need of a science which can

determine the possibility, the principles and the
extent of all our a priori knowledge.

The next question then is where these a priori

propositions are to be found. Kant points out that
certain metaphysical propositions are particularly to
be numbered among them and that they go beyond every-
thing empirical. Up to now Kant has taken examples
of "transempirical" propositions only from mathematics
and the causal law. In a paragraph added to the text
in the second edition (paragraph 3 in III) Kant
particularly identifies the subject matter of metaphy-
sics as the ideas of God, freedom and immortality.
He has not yet pointed out that metaphysics has several
senses for him. The sense in which God, freedom and
immortality are the subject matter of metaphysics is
quite different from that in which causality is. Ideas
such as the former in his view inevitably lead to illu-
sion and confusion though they have some redeeming
features in the end; causality on the other hand is an
absolutely indispensable notion for both science and
common experience. Nothing in Kant's critical philoso-
phy is more important than the line he draws between
these two different sets of notions. Both of them
readily lead us beyond experience, but the needs they
serve are utterly different.

Our success in mathematics in seeming to leave

experience behind us emboldens us, says Kant, to under-
take even bolder transempirical researches. We tend to
overlook the fact that the notions of mathematics must
in principle be illustrable or exemplifiable in intui-
tion, but we confuse this kind of intuition with con-
ceptual thought. The metaphysician is like a dove that
feels the resistance and pressure of the atmosphere
upon its wings and supposes that its flight may be
easier in a space wholly devoid of air. Just so Plato
left the world of the senses and took flight with the
wings of ideas into the inane atmosphere of the pure
understanding. He failed to notice that the under-
standing can really advance nowhere in such a flight:
to transcend is necessarily to go beyond snmpt-.h i ng and
to measure one's distance from it. The inclination of
human reason is to ignore this, to give no thought to
the foundations of its speculative structures.

The source of the illusion that palpable progress

is being made in metaphysical researches lies in
misunderstanding the nature of the propositions being
formulated, particularly those that are a priori. The
mere analysis of what is contained in concepts is useful
and informative, but it actually does not materially
advance our thought, although it may falsely be con-
strued to do so. We must distinguish a priori knowledge
which expounds what is already implicit in our thought
from a priori knowledge which does in fact advance to
new truths. To understand the difference, Kant deems
it necessary to undertake a study of the form of
propositions which express our various kinds of know-
ledge .

8
IV. The distinction between analytic and synthetic
judgments.

We now arrive at the acknowledged locus classicus

of this celebrated distinction. Two pairs of distinc-
tions are put forward in the Critique: analytic-
synthetic, and a priori-a posteriori, but only the
first of these receives any extensive discussion here.
The second has in effect already been taken up in the
earlier sections. Kant first explains the distinction
between analytic and synthetic judgments offering ex-
amples of each, and then discusses an example of
judgments that are both synthetic and a priori.

The analytic-synthetic distinction is based upon

formal considerations and is regarded as exhaustive.
In an analytic(judgment the predicate is said to be
;fintained in the subject, and in a hidden or covert
fashion (versteckterweise). In a synthetic judgment
the predicate is not contained in the subject but is
connected with the subject, since in fact we have said
that A _i_s B. An explanation of defining phrase is
added by Kant to the effect that the two kinds of
propositions are "thought through identity" and "without
identity," respectively. He also calls them explicative
and augmentative judgments (Erlauterungsurteile and
Erweiterunqsurteile) .

All judgments of experience are synthetic. The

predicate is not to be discovered or confirmed by con-
fining ourselves to an analysis of the subject, as in
the analytic judgment. We must look beyond the subject,
acquaint ourselves with its relations toward other
things. If such judgments are confirmed by experience
we have extended our knowledge. Although the predicate
is not contained in the subject, the two do form a
unity which Kant characterizes as a "whole of experience
itself a synthetic unity of intuitions."

But although all judgments of experience are syn-

thetic, the reverse is not the case. There are also
synthetic judgments which are a priori. In these there
is a necessary connection between subject and predi-
cate, but not by virtue of the fact that the predicate
is contained in the subject or logically related to it.
The best example is "everything that happens has a
cause." This illustrates our a priori speculative
knowledge. Propositions of this sort are at the very
center of the concerns of the Critique.
 In order that we may be as faithful as possible to
what Kant actually thought and said about the analytic-
synthetic distinction it may be well to quote the text.
In doing so, I shall also suggest a possible way of
distinguishing what seem to be several strands of Kant's
thought on the subject. I suggest that there are some
four rather different but overlapping ways that Kant
tries to make the distinction. (I shall quote almost
verbatim from Kemp Smith's translation, so that the
English-speaking reader can readily locate these pas-
sages particularly in IV and V of Kant's Introduction.)

(1) Containment. The first and most apparent way

Kant makes the distinction is to say that in an analy-
tic proposition the predicate is contained in the
subject. There are various ways he expresses this.
The concept of the predicate is covertly
contained in the subject.
We need merely analyze the subject through
the predicate.
We add nothing to the subject through the
predicate.
In the analytic proposition our knowledge is
not extended.
Appropriate modifications or negations are made for the
synthetic proposition in these and the other quotations.

(2) Dependence on the principle of contradiction

or of identity.
We can extract the predicate from the subject
in accordance with the principle of contra-
diction .
The judgment is thought through identity.
We proceed in accordance with the principle
of contradiction.
The predicate is bound up with the subject.
The predicate belongs to the subject.
In these expressions nothing is said that literally
requires the containment of the predicate in the sub-
ject. Rather, there is said to be a necessary
connection between the two that may be revealed or
demonstrated through appeal to logic or the "laws of
thought."

(3) Psychological connection between subject and

predicate. I must be careful to explain this
style of connection. I think it is doubtful that Kant
actually intended to interpret the connection as psy-
chological in nature. One may, however, come to the

10
conclusion that what Kant says about the relation may
in the end come down to, amount to a psychological ex-
planation of the connection. Certainly his prima facie
characterization of the relationship sounds psychologi-
cal:
I must become conscious to myself of the
manifold which I always think in the subject.
In the analytic proposition, the question is
whether I actually think the predicate in
the representation of the subject (Axioms
of Intuition, A164/B205).
The question is not what we ought to join in
thought to the given concept but what we
actually think in it, even if only obscurely
(Kant's emphasis).
There is still more that suggests that Kant was close
to a psychological version in the Introduction, as we
have already noted. If we think it a little implausi-
ble to regard 7 + 5=1.2 as synthetic, Kant asks us to
think of large numbers, e.g., 104,787,223 + 888,926,415
+ 688,923,147 = 1,682,636,785, Of course, for most
persons the sum here will be a "psychological novelty"
arrived at through careful arithmetical calculation.
But we also believe there is a right and a wrong about
addition regardless of how perfectly or imperfectly
individual calculators may add, regardless of their
thought processes.
It should be apparent that Kant might have been
willing to correct the impression that the analytic
relation was only psychological. If so we are thrown
back on (1) or (2). There is, however, a revision of
(3) that suggests itself:

(4) Relationship of concepts. This we might call

Kant's conceptualism, since Kant from the outset commits
himself to the distinction between concepts and intui-
tions. What enters into the subjects and predicates
of judgments such as appear in the theoretical general-
izations of science is concepts (particularly in
predicates). It is quite possible to interpret judgment
and thought in Kant as being the work of a wholly dif-
ferent part of the human Geist from intuitions.
Intuition is what confronts us in inner sense, in intro-
spection , and is the subject-matter of psychology.
But thought must in some way be exempted from the juris-
diction of psychology, although of course, thinking
has to be done with intuitional aids.

If one can accept this division of labor, the

11
reduction of the connection between subject and predi-
cate to something psychological becomes less inevitable.
I am not certain that it is wholly set aside inasmuch
as Kant in V once more insists that the question is
not one of how we ought to relate predicates to concepts
but how we actually think (B17). But I think we must
not equate "how we actually think" with what we have
called "psychological reduction", even though it is
tempting. The emphasis should be on think or thought,
on what actually is included in the thought of the
subject, and we should remember that thought is never
in Kant reducible to intuition. With this in mind we
may now reflect on the following passages which present
the relation in "conceptualistic" terms:
The concept of the predicate is contained in
the subject.
We must go outside the concept of the subject
in the synthetic judgment (but not in the
analytic).
All the conditions for the (analytic) judg-
ment are present in the concept of the
subject.
I must analyze the subject to reveal the
predicate.
I must become conscious to myself of the
manifold which I always think in the subject.
It will be noted that we repeat the last of these from
(3) above, thus underscoring the problem of whether we
are to regard it as psychological or conceptualistic
in character. Of course the passages we have quoted
under (1) and (2) also lend themselves indirectly to
interpretation under (4).

The issue must ultimately come down to what we are

to understand by 'thought' and 'concept'. I do not
think Kant has anything original to< say on this matter
or to help us solve the puzzles that have been endemic
to it since Plato. We may in the end exonerate Kant
of the charge of psychologizing logical matters but
it is not so clear how we are to understand his
"ontology of thought".

Our impression of Kant's "psychologizing" may

stem from his tendency to think not in terms of pro-
positions and sentences but of judgments. It is easy
to regard the former as objects or "objectives" of
some sort and it is a wrench to think of them as acts
of mind. This characterization, however, suits judg-
ment and Urteil perfectly and the objective style is
correspondingly alien. Possibly the "content" of

12
every judgment could be regarded as a kind of adverb,
that is, "A judges thus: snow is white." A judgment
is a kind of performance characterized by what we
think of as the assertion. Seen in this way, as an act
of mind, it is natural in using the idiom of judgment
and Urteil to speak of it in those terms which, under
(3) above, sound psychological or psychologistic.
The discussion introducing the synthetic a priori
judgment in the last paragraph of IV briefly defines
and illustrates this judgment. In Section V Kant
asserts that there actually are such judgments and lo-
cates them in the several fields of knowledge.

An exemplary synthetic a priori judgment is,

"whatever happens has its cause". This cannot be known
on the evidence of experience; it is to be thought of
as a necessary truth; and yet it is not true because
it is analytic.

It is well to note the phraseology which Kant uses

of this type of judgment. In it the predicate is
joined to the subject completely a priori " on the basis
of mere concepts" (aus blossen Begriffen). Usually
Kant says that logical or analytic a priori judgments
join their predicates to their subjects on the basis
of blosse Begriffe, for without going either to exper-
ience or to any fundamental preconditions for experience
we can decide their truth simply by the inspection of
concepts alone. Since that is Kant's customary and
even emphatic phrase to characterize analytic judgments
and procedures, the present wording may be construed
as the result of an oversight or inadvertence. If
Kant is certain of anything, it is that the causal
principle is not analytic.

I believe that Kant's view of the role of analytic

a priori judgments is altogether modern, or at least
compatible with typical thought of our century on the
subject. Kant in principle regards the conditionals
corresponding to the valid forms of the syllogism as
analytic and regards other logical operations in a
similar light. Of course premises and conclusions may
themselves be synthetic, but the principles guiding
the inference are analytic. "Pure logic," he remarks
a
t A54/B68 "is a body of demonstrated doctrine, and
everything in it must be entirely a priori." It is
also worthy of remark as early as possible that Kant
cer
tainly intends to separate logic from psychology
]ust a g fundamentally as Frege, Peirce, or Russell

13
have done, in spite of the fact that, as noted above,
his analysis of judgment is not altogether free of a
psychologizing tendency. He parts company with one of
the major current viewpoints when it comes to the
homogeneity of mathematics and logic, since he regards
mathematical propositions as synthetic and a priori.
Hence they could not be derived from logic.

V. All theoretical sciences of reason contain synthe-

tic a priori judgment as principles.
Although the nature of synthetic a priori judgments
has been as yet only sketched out by Kant, he now af-
firms that there are such judgments. He has cited a
few examples but said little about the domains in which
these examples, and others of their kind, are to be
found. We now learn that three domains contain such
judgments: all mathematical judgments are synthetic;
natural science , and in particular physics, contains
synthetic a priori judgments as principles,- and at least
in intent (ihrem Zwecke nach), all propositions of
transcendent metaphysics, are synthetic and a priori.
Even in this section we must permit Kant a considerable
latitude: he will not in a matter of moments be able
to show us that there are synthetic a priori judgments,
nor that those of mathematics, pure natural science,
and metaphysics are of this kind. We may therefore
regard the present section as enunciating his principal
thesis rather than proving it. The Critique as a whole
must be appealed to for proof, if it is forthcoming.

In the next section (VI), we learn that the

question to which the Critique addresses itself is:
2
How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?

We have already remarked that we need to ask the

question, how p can be true (or possible), only if we
already know that indeed p, or p is true. Kant did
not in practice separate clearly the two questions
whether there are such propositions, and how they are
possible, although he explicitly recognizes in VI a
difference that is close to it: we may properly ask
how there can be pure mathematics and pure natural
science, for that there are such enterprises is shown
by their actually existing (B20-21). When one scans
the whole expanse of the Critique in detail there is
probably as much of an answer to each question as one
may hope to find.

14
 One must not dismiss the whole program of the
Critique by saying, there are in fact no synthetic a
priori truths and therefore a campaign to discover
how they are possible is doomed from the beginning.
The real questions are such as these: how can there be
necessary truths in geometry and arithmetic; what is
the basis of our (assertedly unshakeable) belief that
every event has a cause; are we compelled to believe
that there must be a first cause if we believe that
every event has a cause? Kant believes his predecessors
have given inadequate answers to such questions, and
his own answers to them deserve serious consideration
even if it could be shown that the key propositions
involved are not synthetic and a priori in nature.

The first area that Kant identified as containing

synthetic a priori judgments is judgments of mathe-
matics.^ He says that it was erroneously supposed that
the Grundstze (axioms) of mathematics were analytically
true because the proof of them proceeded by means of
principles that were analytically true. We can also
find support among earlier thinkers for the view that
mathematical propositions are true on the ground that
they are instantiations of the law of contradiction
and are thus analytic.

Kant offers but two examples in support of his view

about mathematical propositions. The first is the
arithmetical truth that 7+5=12. This Kant declares
to be synthetic on the ground that it cannot be regarded
as analytic. Why then may it not be thought to be
analytic? The reason he cites sounds even more expli-
citly "psychological" than was the account given of
the nature of analytical propositions in IV. He is
arguing that if thinking of whatever is thought in 7+5
were somehow identical with thinking 12, or if one
could not think the one without thinking the other,
then the statement would be necessarily and analyti-
cally true. If on the other hand one can think of one
without the other the statement of their equality is
synthetic.

It is now said that the concept of the sum of 7

and 5 contains nothing more than the combination (or
rather the combining) of the two numbers but that it
does not contain what issues from the process of com-
bining, that is, 12. The term Vereinigung (unification,
combination) is just as tolerant of being interpreted
as an act in process as it is as the product of an
a
ct completed. The English term 'combination' on the
15
other hand leans heavily in the second direction.
He may therefore be saying that we must not identify
the act of combining 7 and 5 with the result of the
act, 12. Would it be compatible with what Kant says
to regard 7+5 as a kind of command, thus: "Combine
7 and 5"? This would not at the outset reveal the
outcome, which might in principle be novel or surpri-
sing. Only the carrying out of the task would reveal
the result. Unfortunately, this interpretation, while
seeming to account for the difference of the two
members, (7+5) and 12, would be useless, since obeying
an imperative yields nothing one can judge to be true.

The rest of the exposition may in fact be psycho-

logical, but it also lends itself to the kind of
conceptualistic interpretation developed above. The
difficulty with this is that it would require more of
a theory of concepts and conceptual thought than Kant
offers. But more importantly, it is incompatible with
Kant's firm conviction that the necessity of mathe-
matical judgments is based on a priori intuitions and
not concepts.

So far as the psychological aspect of mathematical

operations is concerned, one may readily concede that
a sum may not be readily recognizable in a series of
addends. But the mere fact that a sum turns out to be
a psychological novelty is an inadequate ground for
regarding the judgment as not analytic. We must also
remember that any psychological process takes place
in time. When we interpret the left hand member of an
arithmetical formula as an operation to be carried out,
the result will not be "inevitable" until the operation
is carried out. Kant does in fact rather courageously
consider an intimate connection between arithmetic and
time, for example in the Prolegomena But it can
scarcely be thought to lead to anything except unwel-
come results.

Kant's second mathematical example is of course

drawn from geometry: the straight line is the shortest
distance between two points. What Kant says on this
subject is altogether insufficient to prove that the
proposition is synthetic. It rests on the assertion
that 'straight' is a qualitative and 'shortest' is a
quantitative term. But how this yields the conclusion
in question is not explained. If we consider a near
equivalent of this proposiiton, namely Theorem 20 in
the first book of Euclid, we find a demonstration that
makes no appeal to a distinction of quantity and

16
quality. Euclid's proposition reads: "Any two sides of
a triangle are greater than the third side." This is
proved solely by appeal to the equality of the base
angles of an isosceles triangle, to Axiom 9 which states
that a whole is greater than its part, and to previous
Theorem 19 which states that if one angle of a triangle
is greater than another then the side opposite the
greater angle is greater than the side opposite the
lesser.

To prove: AB+AC > BC

Produce AB to D
Join D, C
Let AD=AC
iDC < IBCD
BD > BC, etc.

Without reference to a concrete case such as this Kant

simply states that intuition must be called to our aid
to effect the synthesis, between the key notions in the
subject and predicate (straight and shorte st) .
Kant emphasizes what we may speak of as our thought-
processes in geometry and presumably our mathematical
thinking in general. We must, he says, attend to how
we actually do think, and when we do, we shall see that
we must appeal to intuition to effect a connection be-
tween subject and predicate. He does not explain why
in fact intuition, even pure intuition, should yield an
unassailable result. In any appeal to empirical intui-
tion one would certainly be wise to draw conclusions
with caution. Yet pure intuition is credited with
yielding infallible results.

One should remark finally that the notion of syn-

theticity touches not only the form of certain proposi-
tions, but is generally taken in the explicit sense
that whenever a proposition is synthetic, there must
occur a process of synthesis and an agent who performs
the process of synthesis. This agent cannot, however,
simply be said to be you or I, or Smith or Jones: we
must look to something which we may designate the
Paradigmatic self. With this phrase we may draw atten-
tion to the "we" to whom Kant assigns such momentous
tasks as devising or applying the categories,

17
among several others. For example, speaking of the
categories he says, "we ourselves introduce into
appearances the order and regularity we call nature"
(A125) and countless similar things. It is paradigmatic
in the sense that it is not the local you or I that is
doing any of this. (We shall explain the identity and
function of this self in more detail as we proceed.)
One should now observe that attributing the process of
synthesis in 7+5=12 to a paradigmatic self would effect-
ively remove the operation from being subject to the
criticism in terms of psychologism. It would however
do so at the expense of our trying to understand this
operation in any familiar terms, since it would be,
as it were, taking place "behind the scene."

The second area that contains synthetic a priori

judgments is natural science. The development of the
concepts and the demonstration of the principles
underlying science is referred to by Kant as meta-
physics in a certain sense, what we can call natural
metaphysics. True synthetic a priori judgments of
natural metaphysics are necessary but unlike analytic
propositions they are not necessarily true because
their contradictories are self-contradictory. Neither
are they highly probable or highly confirmed synthetic
truths, to which there are no known exceptions. To
say of them that they are necessarily true is to say
that, come what may, we will not under any circum-
stances permit ourselves in speaking of this world the
thought of their falsity, dass gar deine Ausnahme als
m'glich verstattet wird (Introduction II, and else-
where). This suggests that we have adopted some kind
of rule, one that inherently rules out the falsity of
the rule. Kant has in fact, in the Transcendental
Deduction and elsewhere, and very prominently, referred
to these synthetic a priori propositions as rules.

But, rules! Are we not seeking to find the truth

about the world and how _i_t is? How can we prescribe
rules to the order of nature? Does not nature go its
own way in spite of us?
Kant's answer is a radical revision of the received
doctrines of empiricist philosophers. If we ask, how
can VT prescribe to nature, Kant's answer is, because
the order of things that we are ruling and ordering is
a world partly of our own creation, the world of
appearances, and must therefore tolerate our regulistic
venturesomeness. This is the world we confront in
perception and in all our scientific efforts to wring

18
the truth from nature. It is not a world of things
themselves but as he says, appearances or phenomena
(Erscheinungen).
This then is what is at the bottom of the claim
that there can be, and indeed there are, necessary
truths about the world around us: because in fact it
is, _iri its formal aspect, a world of our own creation.
The fundamental truths about or the laws of this world
are in fact rules governing it.

It might seem to be a rather arbitrary and capri-

cious state of affairs where we can make our own world.
Kant's answer is that the "creation" which we here
speak of is not yours or mine. The "creative agent" is
the paradigmatic self. We must seek to lay bare the
efforts and achievements of such a self, and the
Critique is the record of doing just this.

We should be prepared in reading the Critique for

a shift in the "mode" of such a statement as the causal
law. At the outset we are invited to rethink our
"sentential categories," allowing for synthetic as well
as analytic a priori propositions, and we are asked to
regard these propositions, or at least certain of them,
as necessarily true. In the Deduction we learn that
they must be treated as rules: of course this is a
wrench to our thought since we generally do not speak
of a rule (nor does a German speak of a Regel) as true
or false. As we go on to the farther reaches of the
Critique, to the sections that follow upon the state-
ment of the Antinomies of Pure Reason, we detect a
reinterpretation of the rules in pragmatistic terms:
the causal law is to be followed because it is scien-
tifically good advice, because it leads us to material
truths about the world which we would not know how to
search for, or to find, if we proceeded without it.

The third area containing synthetic a priori

propositions or principles is that of transcendent
metaphysics. It remains to be seen, however, whether
they are true or even meaningful at all or whether
they are merely so in the intention of the propounders
of such principles. Their domain comprises rational
Psychology, cosmology, and theology.

It may be well to remark again that neither the

theses of natural nor those of transcendent metaphysics
are provable by appeal to experience, nor to concepts
alone (that is, they are not analytically true). What
19
distinguishes them is that the theses of natural, but
not those of transcendent metaphysics apply to exper-
ience and are needful to make experience possible.
The proof of such principles can only be, as Kant says,
transcendental. The defense of these contentions makes
up the content of the transcendental analytic and dia-
lectic .

VI. The general task which confronts pure reason

Having explained the nature of judgments, analytic
and synthetic, and shown that certain sciences contain
judgments that are not only synthetic but a priori,
Kant now sets himself the task of setting forth ex-
plicitly a momentous problem that arises about them.
We must ask the question how such judgments are possi-
ble, and this necessitates an undertaking that we may
call a critique of pure reason.

The examination of the pretensions of pure reason

to knowledge outside or beyond experience, to a priori
knowledge in short, comes down to just this question
about the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments.

We may make this clearer to ourselves if we raise

similar questions about other judgments; Kant did not
explicitly raise these questions since they answer
themselves in the framework of the Critique. The
questions are:
How are synthetic a posteriori judgments
possible?
How are analytic a priori judgments possible?
Whereas the comparable question ,about the possibility
of synthetic a priori judgments occupies a book of
nearly 900 pages (in B ) , one would think that these
questions should be less difficult to answer.

Synthetic a posteriori propositions are the day

in and day out reports of our experience, inner or
outer, accumulations of information, and generalizations
about the world, both the most problematic and the most
unexceptionable. If we ask how this knowledge, or at
least information, is possible we must first say that
it is because it is based upon experience. The rest of
our task will be to offer interpretations of this as
it applies to various areas of experience: the past,
present, and future; the remote and the accessible;

20
the abstract and the concrete; the general and the
particular; the theoretical and the actual; and so on.
The task should not be as arduous as the one we have
uncovered for synthetic a priori propositions. In fact,
however, even a moment's reflection on the philosophi-
cal effort that has been expended on the question of
the nature of truth should show us that the question is
no less difficult than the one Kant puts at the center
of the Critique. What is even more important is the
involvement of the two questions with one another.
Take a simple Kantian example of a judgment of exper-
ience , the sun warms the stone. Kant's point is that
this and all such judgments of experience are possible
only because certain synthetic a priori propositions
are antecedently true.

If we ask how analytic a priori propositions or

judgments are possible, the answer Kant would propound
is, they are possible because in some judgments pre-
dicates are already contained in their subjects. We
can be a priori certain of whatever is asserted of
these subjects whenever we know or can show that indeed
the predicates are so contained.

But can we be and, if so, how can we be a priori

certain of any assertion when we find that its predi-
cate is not contained in its subject, and that no
accumulation of experience bears on the truth of it?
The prior question is, are there any such .propositions.
Though Kant has put forth no great effort to show this,
he has satisfied himself that there are three areas in
which they are found. These propositions are either
mathematical or they set forth the basic propositions
of natural science (call this natural metaphysics) or
of transcendent metaphysics.

This is the framework for the inquiry called the

critique of pure reason. Kant says that metaphysics,
whether natural or transcendent would not have fared
as ill as it has in his time, if the problem of the
synthetic a priori had been broached. Hume failed to
do so with regard to natural metaphysics, in particu-
lar the causal axiom (every event has a cause), and in
a sense rejected it along with the whole apparatus of
"divinity or school metaphysics." Kant says that if
Hume had hit on the problem he himself has uncovered
about the synthetic a priori, he would have seen that
his conclusions would equally invalidate or "liquidate"
all of mathematics, a result Hume would certainly have
abhorred.

21
 We are thus said to be confronted by an unavoid-
able and most arduous bask, to see how we can justify
necessary truths that are not analytic. If we fail
not only will school metaphysics collapse, but science
and mathematics as well. Such a serious outcome must
be avoided. Kant was ever a man to embrace his duty
when he saw it, but he came to the realization of it
only slowly. At a time when many men think of retiring
from their labors, Kant had just begun the enormous
labor of producing the Critique , and to this he found
it necessary to add two others.

The task he found to be that of providing a

foundation for all knowledge and in the end he found
this would have to include even that pretension of
knowledge, metaphysics. It cannot be ignored as the
sceptics have done. Its roots, Kant found, are far
deeper than one might suppose. As he explains in
this section, although metaphysics cannot claim to
have arrived at any knowledge hitherto, we cannot doubt
that there are certain deep-seated drives in man that
insistently issue in questions of a metaphysical
character. Hence we must try to discover how meta-
physics as a natural human disposition is possible.
This should enable us to learn whether metaphysics as
science is possible. In this way we can answer the
basic questions that must be addressed to pure reason,
regarding mathematics, science, and metaphysics.
Since this is an investigation of something entirely
within our grasp, the powers of the human mind, and
not of a subject matter that stretches on through in-
accessible reaches of time and space, we can hope to
complete the investigation, definitively. But we shall
succeed only if we keep our eye on the question how,
whether, and in what domains pure reason can hope to
extend its knowledge materially.

VII. The idea of and the divisions under a special

science bearing the name of a critique of pure
reason
The final section of the introduction presents
little that is essential to the total economy of the
critique that is now to unfold. It proposes to present
a general summation of the tasks to be undertaken by
such a critique but actually offers a rather confusing
picture of it, hesitating between terms to character-
ize it such as organon, doctrine, and canon, all of
them dear to the system-loving Kant. The principal

22
result, looking to what Kant has said here and else-
where, is that a critique of pure reason is not
coextensive with a system of pure reason, but "an
examination of the faculty of reason in general in
respect of all knowledge toward which it may strive
independently of all experience? (A xii). Kant seems
to have contemplated at one time the construction of
the entire system of pure reason, but this proved to
be a more ambitious program than he was ever able to
carry out. We have, however, a fragment or sample of
it in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
and in certain ethical writings.

Although it does not present the system of pure

reason thus contemplated, the Critique presents both
more and less of it than we may expect. The principles
in the Transcendental Analytic go a considerable way
toward supplying a knowledge of the content of such a
system. Thus we learn in considerable detail how the
ideas of substance and causality are supplied by it.
Yet if we look for a consequent analysis of these
notions we are disappointed. We learn, for example,
that a cause is said to be a materially necessary and
sufficient condition of its effect, much in the manner
of Hume's positive doctrine on the subject (Treatise
I-IV-XV) but the many vexing questions which it occurred
to Hume to raise are not raised by Kant. This cannot
be because he had no appreciation of their reality and
gravity, but because in a critique he thought himself
justified in hastening on to all the other problems
that a propaedeutic of pure reason must address itself
to. The Critique proved to be an even more formidable
and arduous task than he may have conceived it to be
at the outset.

23
24
 TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS
We proceed now to the body, though not yet the
heart of the Critique, a term we must reserve for the
doctrine of the categories and the categorial princi-
ples. It should be said at once that we cannot even
mention all of the most important issues that have
arisen about the Transcendental Aesthetic or Logic.
We must restrict ourselves to a brief exposition and
elucidation with such suggestions about further prob-
lems as can readily be exhibited within this framework.

It is very well-known that Kant thought himself

obliged to follow an expository plan that would suit a
treatise on logic. Here we must think of logic both in
a very general sort of way which applies to the Cri-
tique as a whole, and also in a more particular way
that is illustrated in the distinction between Trans-
cendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Logic and in
the divisions within the latter.

Kant follows the general organization of logic

prevailing in his day, the division of the subject into
a Transcendental Doctrine of Elements (Elementarlehre)
and a Transcendental Methodology (Methodenlehre), a
distinction that he found precedents for in the ontolo-
gies and logics of the Leibniz-Wolff school which he
himself had studied and which he used in his lecture
courses. We may say that the Doctrine of Elements is
intended to answer the question through what means
synthetic a priori judgments are possible and the
Methodology, through what methods they can be realized.

If the model of logic is followed in further de-

tail, the traditional divisions would be Concepts-
Judgments-Inferences. In the transcendental doctrine
of elements we ask about the possibility and authority
of a priori concepts, judgments, and inferences. Here
one must first pause over the term 'transcendental,1
and even more must be said of this by and by.
Kant is saying that there are certain conceptions
and principles of an a priori nature which are absolutely
indispensable for human experience and for the larger
and more formal extensions of such experience in science
and theoretical endeavor in general. These conceptions
and principles are limited, however, in that they must
apply to experience and that they are not only irrele-
vant when applied beyond experience but in fact
generate a peculiar set of intellectual errors when
25
they are so applied. Since they do not arise
experience, they may be said to transcend it in a
limited sense; the transcendence is not absolute.
In order to make just this distinction, Kant uses
'transcendental' for concepts that do not arise from
but yet apply to experience and make experience and
science possible, and 'transcendent' for concepts
that neither arise from experience nor are necessary
as presuppositions of experience (Cf. A296/B352).

With this definition, we must now look for the

body of a priori conceptions, judgments (or principles),
and reasonings. The conceptions comprise two broad
areas that are essentially distinct from one another:
first, space and time, and tuen,the twelve categories.
It is best to employ the somewhat vague term 'concep-
tion' rather than 'concept' to cover these two families,
because Kant holds that our representations of space
and time are not concepts. It is true that he occasion-
ally refers to them in this way, but only after he has
driven home the distinction. What it means to say
that they are not concepts is specifically explained in
the Transcendental Aesthetic.

Following this model of logic further we find a

priori i udgments or principles considered in the second
book of the Analytic, namely the Analytic of Principles.
The clue to these is supposed to be provided by the
four classes of categories, although the derivation is
somewhat forced in several important respects, as we
shall see.

Finally the reasonings or inferences of an a

priori nature that we engage in, or that we are likely
to engage in, are to be found in the second large
division under Transcendental Logic, called Transcen-
dental Dialectic. The articulation of topics here has
also been the subject of criticism, but Kant's intent
is perfectly clear. Ordinarily, human beings are
probably inclined to consult experience in their dis-
course about their affairs. But quite often they
confront what is inaccessible, at least for the time
being, to experience. They must make predictions about
the future and hypotheses about the past. They must
invent theories and explanations for what they have not
experienced, and so on. The outcome is often readily
introduced by the phrase "it stands to reason that."
Reason, pursuing its ordinary tasks, is what we must
rely on in such instances; it goes beyond the present
into one or another more or less unknown area, but not

26
unknowable in principle.
We are also inclined, or we may yield to the temp-
tation to employ concepts and principles that are
established in relation to experience in areas which
lie beyond experience. The issue now is about the
phrase 'beyond experience.' In the previous case this
could mean unknown areas of space or time that we have
never traversed but that are not in principle unknow-
able: there is no error in applying concepts of
experience in these areas. But if 'beyond experience'
means beyond all possibility of experience then reason
is guilty of a most serious fallacy if it now employs
concepts specifically devised to deal with experience.
It has exceeded the proper limits within which the in-
tellect in general may operate. Its reasoning now
becomes dialectical. Of the many uses of this term
Kant selects the one that equates it with a "logic of
illusion." These are not ordinary illusions. They
are the errors that underlie pseudo-sciences such as
Rational Psychology (the doctrine about the immortal
soul, its origin and destiny in a hereafter, its re-
lation to a body and a physical world of space and
time), Rational Cosmology (the doctrine that affirms
an absolute origin of the causal series, a ground of
freedom beyond determinism, and several other doctrines)
and Rational Theology (the demonstration of the exis-
tence of a divine being from his concept or possibility
alone). The last of these perhaps typifies the logic
of illusion best, for it seeks to demonstrate a reality
or fact of existence from concepts alone without even
the most tenuous connection to experience. It is exem-
plified in St. Anselm's ontological argument for the
existence of God.

We may now offer a glance at the whole territory

to be surveyed. There is no better way to do this
than to reproduce the Table of Contents that appeared
in the first edition of the Critique in 1781. (The
second edition presents all or most of the many often
minute sectional divisions but makes a perspicuous
view much more difficult.)

27
 I. Transcendental Doctrine of Elements
Part I Transcendental Aesthetic
Section 1 Space
Section 2 Time
Part II Transcendental Logic

Division I Transcendental Analytic

Book I Analytic of Concepts
Book II Analytic of Principles
Division II Transcendental Dialectic

Book I The Concepts of Pure

Reason
Book II The Dialectical Infer-
ences of Pure Reason
II. The Transcendental Methodology

Chapter I The Discipline of Pure Reason

Chapter II The Canon of Pure Reason
Chapter III The Architectonic of Pure Reason

Chapter IV The History of Pure Reason

Part I and Part II through Book I supply the concepts
or conceptions to be considered. Bpok II supplies the
judgments or principles. Division II expounds the
inferences of pure reason. In this way the general
model of the divisions of formal logic has been fol-
lowed. The Methodology at the end is supposed to show
us how all of these "Elements" can now be put into
operation to accomplish the task of gaining knowledge
worthy of the name. As we shall have many occasions
to observe, this "architectonic" often supplies Kant
with rather poor justification for taking up certain
subjects, but the subjects are almost invariably of
momentous importance even when the justification
appears faulty.

28
 TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS
First Part
1 Transcendental Aesthetic^

Kant introduces the Transcendental Aesthetic with

a preliminary section that amounts to a glossary of
terms, among them the following: intuition (Anschauung)
sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) , concept (Begriff) , sen-
sation (Empfindung) , appearance (Erscheinung) , and
matter and form. We may take these us in order some-
what different form his, not to improve upon it, but
to proceed rather more plainly from the general to the
particular.

The most general terms are probably matter and

form. This ancient Aristotelian distinction is fre-
quently adverted to both here and in what follows. In
one sense it cuts across the lines of the intuitive-
conceptual. It cannot be simply equated with intuition
and concept because of something which emerges from a
further division that emerges particularly in 8 of
the present series of subsections:

29
The pure concepts (of the understanding) are the cate-
gories, to which we shall come in due time. The pure
intuitions, also called a priori intuitions, are space
and time. The empirical concepts are classes and rela-
tions such as man, table, fire, to strike, drowning,
magnetism. The empirical intuitions include the appre-
hension of what Kant's predecessors called the secondary
qualities: color, sound, taste, feel, smell. -> But
the conceptual and intuitive are not coextensive with
the formal and the material, for Kant regards anything
that is a source or domain of relations as formal.
This puts the pure intuitions, space and time, among
the formal notions.

In general it is "we" who are responsible for the

form of the objects and processes in our experience,
for ordering them in the manner that they are. The
empirical matter is a kind of brute reality which we
cannot attribute to the activity of ourselves, of the
paradigmatic self. Kant's account of this varies, but
it is usually attributed in some manner to things them-
selves. When we ask after this "manner" one cannot
help but think that Kant's answer owes more than a
little to Locke : things-we-know-not-what leave effects
upon us that we come to speak of in the language of
empirical intuitions, color, sound, etc. These are
given to us, he says in the present section; they are
attributed to sensation, and we may speak of the
capacity to receive them as sensibility.

The whole complex of an experienced object or

process comprises all of the four factors, conceptual
and intuitive, empirical and pure. Organized in these
terms, the ordinary object of our attention is what
we may call an appearance or phenomenon (Erscheinung).
In the Preface to B (B xxvii), Kant makes a hazardous
inference to the effect that such an appearance justi-
fies us in affirming that something appears, which is
of course a thing in itself. It is hazardous, if not
worse, since it is an empty inference based solely on
the fact that we have called it an appearance. (Since
x is an appearance, something must appear in it.)
It is also a somewhat half-hearted inference, since we
can only infer a thing itself as something that may be
thought, rather than as anything known. We shall of
course have to recur many times to this problem of
the thing itself.

An even more general term than any of the fore-

going is representation (Vorstellung). This term

30
refers to anything whatever that may come before the
mind, or of which we may be aware: intuition, concept,
perception, category, etc.
The distinctions Kant is working out in these
early pages should be supplemented at once by reference
to other terms that he employs from time to time.
Thus the present section introducing the Transcendental
Aesthetic should be compared with a parallel section
that introduces the Transcendental Logic at A50/B74 and
with a section that opens the so-called Metaphysical
Deduction, A66/B91 ff.

In the first passage he speaks of two sources of

our knowledge: receptivity, which is of course the
capacity of receiving impressions and is essentially
co-extensive with sensibility in the Aesthetic; and
spontaneity which is the power of conceptual thought.
Intuitions and concepts are specifically identified as
the two elements jointly indispensable to knowledge.
Matter and form, terms which have appeared earlier, are
alternative ways of speaking of receptivity and spon-
taneity .

Another way of characterizing the same distinctions

appears at A66/B91 where he speaks of intuitions rest-
ing upon affections, concepts upon functions. That is,
in intuitions we are receptive, or affected by some-
thing other than ourselves. With concepts, the mind
is itself active or spontaneous. If the term 'functor1
had been more readily to hand, Kant might well have
employed it since to speak of a concept as a function
seems to our ears a slight mixture of types. (I shall
in fact later on speak of the categories, that is the
pure concepts of the understanding, as functors A
functor may be understood as a kind of instrument or
agent in the hands of the paradigmatic self performing
a certain epistemic task.)

Throughout we see a variety of terms employed,

yet Kant is on the whole consistent. Problems of course
arise when he comes to speak of narrower epistemologi-
cal problems. What must particularly be remembered in
the foregoing is that sensation must not be identified
with intuition, since some intuitions are formal or
pure while others are empirical, directed toward sen-
sation. As Kant conceives of his problem in the last
paragraph, in order to arrive at the pure or transcen-
dental elements in knowledge we must look both toward
intuition and conception. The Critique will be con-
cerned very little with specific empirical concepts
31
and even less with empirical intuitions. In the
Aesthetic Kant abstracts from all concern with such
concepts and all concern with intuition narrowly con-
strued as sensation. He confines his interest to Space
and Time, that is, to non-empirical or pure intuitions.
In accordance with Kant's own divisions, I shall
in the course of this study treat the analytical por-
tion of the Critique (the Aesthetic and Analytic) as
a kind of effort to analyze experience, to "unpack"
the object of experience of its various "contents" and
to track them down to their sources. But when we put
the matter so .we seem to need to say that one of the
sources of experience ^LJJ experience. How can we di-
vest this of its apparent vacuity?

To answer this we need to observe a most important

distinction which is nearly always perfectly clear in
Kant (once we are made aware of it). Two different,
though related, things are intended in the Critique by
the term 'experience' in different circumstances.

The two senses may be distinguished in the follow-

ing manner. In the first sense, the term 'experience'
is used to designate the having of empirical intuitions,
whether of inner or outer sense. As functional parts
of the total object of experience we should not pro-
perly say that we are aware of these in seeing, hearing
and so on. What we see and hear are whole appearances:
persons, houses, bells and dogs. Empirical intuitions
are more nearly sense data, or perhaps the simple im-
pressions Hume spoke of. We are perhaps sometimes
aware of these by themselves: normally what philoso-
phers such as Kant are speaking about as intuitions
present themselves only after an effort to analyze the
familiar objects of experience -- namely houses, dogs,;:
etc. Intuitions are objects of experience in a narrow'
sense and our apprehension of them as ingredients of
appearances may be designated intuitional experience,

In the second and more familiar, pre-analytical,

sense of experience, Kant means our apprehensions of
what we are referring to with the familiar language
of things and process, that is, appearances: persons,
trees, houses, hats, planets, walking, flying, build-
ing. This we may call apparent or phenomenal exper-
ience , E2

32
 The first sense is almost invariably present when
Kant speaks in negative terms. When for example, he
warns us of the penalties of attempting to employ the
categories without reference to experience it is intui-
tional expereince that he has in mind, or E-j. It would
not be E2, since apparent or phenomenal experience, or
appearances themselves inherently involve the organi-
zation of the categories, and also space and time.

Kant's analytical method, the method of "unpacking"

is to subject what is present in E2 to analysis, to
bring to light what it involves, contains or presuppo-
ses, that is, the pure concepts or categories, the
pure intuitions, space and time, but before all of
these, E.J , the data of empirical intuition. The order
of our encounter with these is different in the two
cases. In point of the order of time as ordinarily
experienced, E2 precedes E-| : we do not first have sense
data and then build rocks and trees of them nor does
Kant think so. Rather, in this sense, we first find
ourselves in a familiar world of phenomenal objects
and processes and then by a process of analysis uncover
various "ingredients" such as sense data. But in point
of the order of ground, E. precedes E2. This is the
order that the deduction of the categories lays bare :
the order of the construction of the appearances in E2
proceeds from component,or ingredient intuitions through
the processes of synthesis to objects and processes
familiar to the light of day.

I believe Kant adheres strictly to this division

of senses of the term. Its most significant instances
come to light after he proceeds to the Analytic of
Concepts and Principles and it is central to the doc-
trine of the Dialectic. The purpose of the aptly named
Analytic is to analyze phenomenal experience and its
objects; the purpose of the Dialectic is to warn us
of the disastrous consequences of proceeding without
recursibility to intuitional experience. It is well
also to have this distinction in mind in the Aesthetic.

33
34
 Transcendental Aesthetic

Section I
Space
2 Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Space

A high degree of modernity, meaning relevance to

our philosophical affairs and our way of going about
them, can be attributed to Kant from the fact that he
is the first of the great philosophers who couches his
problems in something approaching the so-called formal
mode of speech. He asks about judgments (sometimes
he says Satze, propositions or sentences), what they
refer to, how we verify them, how they are possible.
The failure of Hume to do so explicitly is one of the
serious weaknesses of his approach. After Kant one
must wait until the twentieth century to find philoso-
phers who take hold of their problems in this manner.
The material mode of speech asks how we acquire ideas,
what ideas and objects are, how "we" build up complex
ideas out of simple ones, and so on. Kant is a transi-
tional figure and employs now the formal, and now the
material mode. The point is, the new mode has been
discovered and used.

The general question of the Critique is, how are

synthetic a priori judgments possible, and that of the
Aesthetic is, how are the synthetic propositions of
geometry and arithmetic or in general of mathematics
possible. This question is not, however, precisely
the question considered in the two sections of the
aesthetic as a whole. Rather it is the question which
is particularly raised by what, in B, is called the
Transcendental Exposition, in both sections on space
and on time. The Exposition for space raises the basic
question in somewhat the following form: since geometry
is concerned with space, what must our conception of
space be to account for geometrical propositions being
both necessary and synthetic. Kant is not concerned
now with geometry itself, but what our notion of space
must be to square with the fact that the propositions
of geometry are of a certain sort. The Metaphysical
Exposition has provided the answer: space is not an
empirical concept; it is a necessary and a priori re-
presentation, and so on. (Time is treated in similar
fashion.) Thus the Metaphysical Exposition is a kind
35
of "lemma" for the Transcendental: since, according
to the Metaphysical Exposition, our conception of
space is so and so, we can explain how the propositions
of geometry can be such and such. The character of
our geometry is determined by our view of space a
reasonable view if geometry i_s_ concerned with space.

The term 'transcendental' may by now appear to be

a fairly well-chosen term for what is said in 3 (and
in 5). The term 'metaphysical' is perhaps a little
more obscure in application. It may be thought that
the term is chosen because it is the nature of space
or of time that is, in a very special sense, being
expounded. But the question Kant asks in 3 is what
our representation of space must be if we are to ex-
plain how geometry is possible. Thus it is more nearly
the conception (Begriff) of space, rather than space,
that is being examined. Kant's own explanation in 3
is that "an exposition is metaphysical when it contains
that which presents a concept as given a priori" ; but
this is not far from what elsewhere he seems to mean
by 'transcendental'. It is interesting to speculate
on the analogy which Kant no doubt has in mind between
the subsequent metaphysical deduction of the categories
and the present metaphysical expositions of space and
time, but we shall not pursue the matter further.

It should be noted that in B Kant modified the

sentence at the beginning of B38 from, "In order to
enlighten ourselves on this matter, we shall first
examine space," to "...first give an exposition of
the concept of space." The term "concept" (Begriff)
is only to be understood with qualifications. In the
body of the four arguments about space, and this is
re-affirmed later, we learn that our notion of space
is precisely not a concept; 'space,' is not a class
name. Space is in fact a kind of "individual" or
"particular" for there is only one space (and one
time). Our representation of space is emphatically
an intuition and thus fully antithetical to a concept,
but it is of a unique kind, an "a priori" or "formal"
or "pure" intuition.^

1. Turning now to the arguments themselves,

Kant's exposition begins with the observation that
space is not an empirical concept, where the emphasis
is clearly on 'empirical'. The denial that it is a
concept is taken up in 3. We cannot derive the repre-
sentation of space from anything outside ourselves.
Here 'experience' means empirical intuition. Thus
36
Kant means to say that the representation of space is
not based upon visual and tactile sensations, since
these are unthinkable without already presupposing
some grasp of space.

The issue is over 'outside' and 'based upon'.

Kant's terms are ausser mir (outside m e ) , abgezogen
(derived from),and bezogen (referred or related to).
As to the first, if he means outside in a literal sense,
the argument is not trivial. If he does not, it is
indeterminate. The same must be said of bezogen , and
of abgezogen, the first of which is the vague and ab-
stract 'related to' and the second is built on the
figure 'drawn from', again inviting speculation as to
what is intended.

But here another consideration must be introduced

for which we should refer to the opening sections of
the Transcendental Deduction, of the categories A85/B117
ff,(just prior to the section referred to in the foot-
note a moment ago). Here Kant makes a most important
distinction, if not indeed, a concession. He says we
must not confuse the process by means of which in act-
ual psychological fact we learn or come to possess
notions such as either space and time or the categories
with their ground or, as he says, the principle of their
possibility. The explanation of the first could be
called an empirical deduction or an "explanation of
possession," the second a transcendental deduction.

This distinction is relevant here and will remove

some of the doubts we have about Kant's first argument.
He himself would have said, and did, that Locke and
Hume provided for the first adequately (at least in
intent) but never faced the second squarely.

Let us suppose then that an empirical deduction,

an explanation of possession, has been provided (in
our day we might call for Piaget's aid, and perhaps
that of the "cognitive psychologists") and let it give
a functionally adequate psychological account of how
we acquire the concept of space. What more are we
entitled to ask? What falls outside it? For this
we must see what enters into our conception of space
and we need only point to the spatial infinite and
infinitesimal to see that these involve us in concerns
beyond psychology, because psychology at most may
succeed in giving an account of our imagery (of the
infinite) but scarcely whether our idea of it is true
or
false, clear or confused.

37
 This expansion of Kant1s thought with the means
he himself has provided serves to show that there is
"more" to space and time than can be explained by any
empirical deduction. What is needed in addition to
such a deduction is to show that what we think under
space and time must have objective validity
(Gltigkeit). Similar considerations hold for the
categories: an empirical account cannot answer philo-
sophical questions. Kant wants to provide reasons why
we may extend the notion of space beyond our personal
and local imagery in the unrestricted manner that is
necessary for geometry, as he conceives it. An analo-
gous procedure will be followed in the deduction of
the categories.

If the deduction of the categories or a justifi-

cation for the employment of the notions of space and
time can be given in one sentence, it will be this,
"The categories and space and time must be presupposed
because otherwise knowledge and experience are im-
possible; since however, these are real, we may affirm
the validity of the categories and space and time."

It will now be said that this simply comes down

to saying that we are justified in applying the cate-
gories and space and time to experience because without
them there would be no experience, and that accordingly
the whole argument is, as C.I. Lewis and others have
said, question-begging.

But there is another way to construe Kant's effort

and we arrive at this when we see that his whole effort
in the Critique was one of taking the limitlessly rich
notions of "experience" and "knowledge" and progressive-
ly unpacking them of their contents, a process that
would reveal not only the contents but in what circum-
stances they could be used. Looked at in this way,
Kant's method may be spoken of as diremptive. "Pre-
suppositions" such as the pure intuitions and concepts
are progressively revealed in the Critique, enabling
us to give an account of experience. Of course one
first needs to know what counts as knowledge or as
experience and what makes a mere pretense at it.
Thereafter one needs a skillful philosopher to manage
the analytical effort of "unpacking." This effort is
already present in the Aesthetic.

2. in the second argument we learn that space is

an a priori representation, that it underlies all
outer intuitions. In a sense this simply reaffirms
38
what appeared in 1. In 1 the emphasis1 is on denying
that our representation of space is empirical. In 2
it is on affirming the alternative to this, namely,
that space is a priori. The two statements are
essentially equivalent. If in 1 Kant could argue that
space must be presupposed if we talk of anything out-
side us, this must also include what is said in 2 to
the effect that if we have outer intuitions, space is
a necessary condition of them. 2 goes on to say that
objects presuppose space, but not vice versa. Since
one can conceive of space from which objects have
been removed, empty space is not nothing. in our
thoughts about the world we inhabit, the world of
appearance, space can never be absent. This may readily
be granted, but it is far less convincing to be told
that our representation of space is a priori (and not
just that sentences about it are a priori) considering
the consequences Kant will draw from this in the
Transcendental Exposition: that only on the condition
that our representation of space is a priori can we
explain how synthetic a priori geometrical prepositions
about space are possible.

One of the serious omissions of the Critique is

its failure to explain to us how we are to construe
'a priori' in two such different contexts as when we
say first of our representations of space or time that
they are a priori and then when we say this of propo-
sitions or judgments. Of course Kant wishes to have
the phrase construed in such a way that space , or
time, is logically, not temporally, prior to objects
or events in it. But how can the representation of any
thing or existent be a priori? There are alternative
phrases such as zum Grunde liegen , that space or time
must lie at the foundations, or must be presupposed,
but what precisely are we to understand by such
phrases?

It should also be observed that what is meant by

being able to conceive of is not made clear. Here
he says one cannot think of what it may be like to
think away space: Man kann sich niemals eine Vorstel-
lung davon machen, dass kein Raum sei. If it means
something like "one cannot picture to oneself..." the
remark is trivially true since pictures are spatial.
It cannot mean that one cannot make sense of "space
does not exist" or that one cannot draw any consequences
from such a proposition.

39
 More important, one is throughout advised that
space and time and other a priori representations
pertain only to the world of appearance. This certainly
has the consequence that we are thought "to be able
to conceive of" a world of things themsleves which do
not lie in any space or time. How then does our not
being able to think away space and time in the world
of appearance relate to our being able to think them
away in a "world" of things-themselves? The conceiva-.
bility of that world is never adequately explained,
although we are told several times in the Critique
that we must be able to think it even if we cannot know
it.

Finally, a serious issue about time must be anti-

cipated in the present argument. We will be told in
5, argument 2, that time (like space) can be thought
void of events. But the first premise of the First
Analogy is that time cannot be perceived in itself
(kann fr sich nicht wahrgenommen werden). We must
be prepared for some differences in the problems of
empty space and empty time.
3. The third and fourth arguments are also
closely linked and in part overlapping. Both of them
assert that the representation of space is one, and
is not a concept. A concept is a representation (an
object of thought or attention) that may have other
concepts of lesser generality subsumed under it (unter
sich). It is not a representation that holds within
it (_in sich) these subordinates or that contains the
individuals that may be classified under concepts.
This amounts for Kant to saying that the representation
of space must be an intuition rather than a concept
the division is exhaustive.

May there be more than one space? Our thought of

space is not of a multitude of spaces somehow sewn
or joined together but of one seamless "particular"
within which divisions can be made. If it were not
such a seamless whole we would be able to say of it,
as we do of other aggregates, that the whole of it
is a summation of its parts. (One should read this
section in conjunction with the Axioms of Intuition
at A162/B202 ff.) We cannot think of space in terms
of aggregates as if one might add encompassing shells
bounded not by more space but by nothing. Rather we
see that "spaces" must be encompassed by more "spaces"
and thus we are merely subdividing one space with
every advance in the exploration of it. I think this
40
j_s the trend of Kant's somewhat confusing line of
thought here.
If the representation of space by some such argu-
ment can be declared an intuition, since it is not a
class concept that comprises a great many members,
Kant thinks it must also be regarded as a priori since
we see (intuitively, in a sense less technical than
Kant's) that we grasp the whole of it without building
u p our view through piecemeal research. What we grasp,
what we lay hold of, in our intuition of infinite
space, or space as infinite, is not just a generaliza-
tion about "all space" from the spaces we are acquainted
with. We suppose that this grasp of it may accomplish
what piecemeal inspection and generalization cannot
hope to do. We are not prepared to have to revise our
view of it because of some future finding that may
force us to alter our view. (Perhaps we could con-
fidently think so at least until the twentieth century.
But the interpretation of the "new physics" and of
"bounded space" is by no means complete as yet.)

4. Kant's principal point is given in the last

line, namely that the representation of space must be
regarded as intuition not concept. His reason is
that while the range of instances subsumable under a
concept is potentially infinite a given space contains
or is divisible into an infinite number of spaces.
Since no concept contains its instances and space does
contain them space is not a concept. The only alterna-
tive is to regard it as some kind of intuition.

What is essentially new in 4 is that space is

infinite, an "infinite given magnitude," (eine unendliche
gegebene Grosse). I believe this interpretation may be
given. To come to know what space is, as we emerge
from infancy, is to see that there can be no end of it,
for any alleged end would be a bound, and a bound would
imply further space. Space cannot be bounded by
nothing unless the nothing is itself space; but if it
is, then it is simply a contiguous part of one space.
And so on, and on. Common sense grasps something that
it intuitively sees cannot be limited, cannot extend
merely so far, and no farther. We are in command of
something boundless, infinite when we grasp what
space is; anything less than this would not be space.
And since we cannot ordinarily conceive of any new
fact" that would compel us to revise our notion and
nothing that would nullify it, Kant feels justified
in speaking of it as a priori.

41
 These then are the arguments that are meant to
establish that the notion of space is a priori, that
it is an intuition, that it is not "based upon" exper-
ience although we come to "possess" it through exper-
ience, that it is not a concept of a "commodity" like
tigers, windows, right hands, or grains of sand. This
would not be too far from affording a notion of space
that common sense could recognize as a clarification
of its own thought on the matter and not a revision or
correction of it except for the fundamental unclarity
of what it means to say that space, not propositions
about space, as in geometry, is a priori, that it
somehow inhabits the soul as an original, not derived,
possession. But if we could satisfy ourselves on this
matter, the next question would be whether the notion
of space so expounded could serve to demonstrate what
Kant says it will in the next section, namely, the
a priori and synthetic nature of the propositions of
Euclidean geometry.

3 Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Space

We have already alluded to the approach Kant adopts

in the Transcendental Exposition. Its purpose is to
explain how geometrical propositions can be synthetic
and known a priori. We can explain how we can have
such a priori knowledge only if the conception of
space is understood in the terms of the foregoing
Metaphysical Exposition as an intuition that can pre-
cede objects and determine the concept of them a priori.
Space can be regarded as a priori because it is an as-
pect of the form of the object of appearance. The
paradigmatic self is the author of the object of
appearance insofar as its form is concerned, and this
means first of all relations of space.

The Aesthetic is meant to be the first fruits of

Kant's "Copernican Revolution".9 Why are "outer"
objects as they are? Because the observer is as he is
and because the object is itself but an appearance, not
a thing itself.

When Kant's argument in the expositions, together

with an assumption, is plainly stated we can see where
current thought diverges from it.

The propositions of geometry are a priori (1)

The propositions of geometry are synthetic (2)

42
In addition Kant assumes,
Geometry is descriptive of space or spatial
figures. (3)

The question is, what must be true if all of these are

true? The answer is given in the Metaphysical Expo-
sition :

Space is an a priori represenation, not learned

from experience. (4)
Space is an intuition, not a concept. (5)
These two say that space is a formal or a priori in-
tuition. They may not be so much proved (or deduced)
as expounded (hence, their exposition). We are also
to understand, as we see in the next subsection, that
the a priori nature of space means that:

Space is the form of appearance, not a property of

things themselves. (6)

What now is the source of modern divergence from Kant?

The challenge is to (2) and (3). The fact is, I think,
that Kant did not offer adequate grounds for (2), and
for rejecting the antithesis of (2), that they are
analytic or true by virtue of their concepts alone.
The two propositions seemed to him to go together.
But the present-day repudiation of (2) has made (3)
unnecessary. Since the alternative to (2) is that the
propositions are analytic, (1) would of course immedi-
ately follow.

It seems to me therefore, that what we have in the

Aesthetic is a fairly clear account that simply begins
from premises that are no longer acceptable. It is
not confused or otherwise impossible.
The situation in mathematics currently as it affects
these matters is that geometry is not inherently about
space, not even Euclidean geometry, that several other
enterprises have asgood a claim to be known as geome-
tries, and that in their current formulation the
propositions of geometry deserve to be regarded an
analytic. What made the Aesthetic appear necessary to
Kant was that the propositions of geometry had to be
interpreted as synthetic (this was to be explained by
an appeal to some kind of intuition) and that they
were nevertheless necessary truths, or as Kant said,
a priori (this was to be explained by the fact that
43
they were about space , and that space was an a priori
representation). It is not surprising that the
Aesthetic is now thought to be superfluous, at least
in respect to space.

The concept of space must be considered in the

light of three possible interpretations of the propo-
sitions of geometry:

(a) If geometrical propositions express and

conform themselves to our visual intuition,
then, for example, the postulate of parallels
and its consequences, (if not the whole of
Euclidean geometry) become at most merely
probable; whether the described lines as
extended do or do not meet in a point is a
matter of probability only and subject to
experience.

(b) If geometrical propositions need not conform

to visual intuition, they express only the
logical consequences of the original ideas
and the axioms expressed with their aid;
neither the choice of these ideas nor of the
axioms or their consequences reflect our
notions of visual space.

(c) Geometrical propositions are neither the

consequences of arbitrary axioms nor are they
empirical, conforming to visual intuition,
but conform to an a priori intuition of
space and of flgural relations in space.

Kant in effect proposes (c) as an alternative to

either of the preceding alternatives. The points and
lines spoken of in geometry are neither tubelets of
ink on paper nor do 'line' and 'plane' merely signify
sets of elements defined in a certain arbitrary manner.
For Kant a geometrical line has no palpable breadth or
weight as does the ink of a line drawing, but it is
not a mere conceptual entity. The geometrical imagina-
tion is capable of grasping "perfect" and "abstract"
notions though usually not without the rough stimulus
to the imagination afforded by actual visual depiction.
No eye of sense can grasp a line without breadth or
a perfect solid, but the geometrical imagination, or as
Kant calls it, a priori intuition can do so. That is
how Kant sees the matter.

44
 But Kant's proposal of a third way between the
empirical and the conceptual has the consequence that
the a priori intuition proposed as the foundation of
geometrical knowledge cannot serve to support geometry
either as an empirical or as a theoretical science.
The a priori intuition he supposes relies in effect
upon our commonsense visual perceptions of space but
then he hopes to be able to refine upon the visual
meaning we attach to 'line', 'triangle', 'plane' and
the like, and to divest them of crudity and inaccuracy.
Such an intuition is impossible to identify either in
experience or imagination and it is unnecessary to
presuppose it for our gross commonsense use of geome-
trical notions. To demand "perfect" points, lines,
planes in order to have a reference for geometry is
like demanding a perfect horse or elephant to provide
a perfect exemplification of the species type depicted
in zoology. This would make the species preeminent
and the individual specimens derivative instead of
basing the species on the specimens. It thus pleases
Platonists but no one else. Such a hypothesis of
geometry would remove it from the area of scientific
concern; its alleged perfection would be irrelevant to
the development of empirical geometry and unduly re-
strict theoretical.

If geometry is empirical (or in the respect in

which it is), restrictions other than those imposed by
the methods of inquiry employed are artificial. If it
is theoretical, the constraints normally imposed by
experience are irrelevent. Kant's a priori intuition
offends in both senses: even if there were such
intuitions, empirical and theoretical geometry would
proceed without their aid.

But we must not leave this matter under the im-

pression that Kant has simply made a few blunders.
Before we leave the discussion of space we must con-
sider two further topics. The first is why Kant feels
it necessary to propose the kind of solutions he did
and thus why he gets into the situation just described,
the second is just what he had in mind under "pure
intuition."

The questions that are agitating Kant are how

this marvel of perfect science, geometry, is possible
and how it can be provided with a sounder philosophi-
cal basis than those of the Platonists, Leibnizians,
and Empiricists.

45
 We must call to mind the unusual position which
geometry had come to occupy in men's thoughts. Here
was a science that appeared to be empirically relevant
to the world around us, that enjoyed in architecture,
engineering, astronomy, and many other subject matters
the most explicit practicality and confirmability
conceivable, and that at the same time appeared to
consist of nothing but the most self-evident and
necessary truths conceivable. By the seventeenth
century its triumph was so evident that it became the
model of all truth: significant and relevant, not
"empty" as logic appeared to be, and yet demonstrable
in the most rigorous manner. It was celebrated for it-
self and the truth it contained and also for the method
it used and exemplified. The method in particular
came to be generalized and made a model for the presen-
tation of all thought and possibly even for its
discovery: the mos qeometricus was made even more
famous by two celebrated practitioners, Spinoza and
Leibniz. Suspicion of the Achilles' heel of Euclid's
geometry, the postulate of parallels, had not yet
raised any searching questions about its method or
meaning although in Kant's own lifetime Saccheri had
really raised such issues without knowing how serious
their consequences would be.

It is not surprising that Kant should wish to pro-

vide a firm ground for geometry. Its truths were
indeed necessary, as everyone thought, but he thought
they were not true solely from their concepts and
definitions. They were moreover significant truths,
relevant to the real world. Kant thought, and rightly,
that there would be bound to be serious consequences
unless an explanation were forthcoming for both pur-
ported facts about geometry: necessity and material
truth. His uncovering, if not discovery, of the
analytic-synthetic distinction appeared to him to
explain the second, the doctrine of the a priori nature
of space, already affirmed in the Inaugural Disserta-
tion of 1770, contributed much of what was needed for
the first. But it was only with his invention of the
a_ priori or pure intuition that he felt that all the
parts of the explanation fell into place. This raises
the second topic we need to discuss here before con-
tinuing, namely what Kant means by pure intuition.

First of all, pure intuitions must be distin-

guished from empirical intuitions. The latter would
be what we would experience in using our eyes where
visual contrasts of color, or light and shade, together

46
with other knowledge enable us to identify, let us say,
a rectangle, a house, a table,a sheet of paper. We are
not being entreated to turn up empirical intuitions of
this sort, nor to make measurements upon round or
square physical bodies when we are told by Kant that in
mathematics one must go beyond mere concepts and their
necessary relations to intuitions to clinch our in-
sights and proofs. But if it is not to these fully
concrete intuitions then what are we being asked to
turn to?

It should be noted that for much the same reasons

as those Plato appealed to, Kant would say that em-
pirical intuition could afford us examples of points,
lines, planes, volumes, edges and so on only in a
crude sense as visual aids. But what would they be
aids to? It can only be supposed that it would be
the imagination in one sense or another. Thus, what
the imagination makes a n effort to grasp is the line
with but one dimension and without the breadth or
thickness that anything in the visible world possesses
if it is at all visible; or the plane, or volume with
similar perfections. The imagination may succeed in
its effort but only under the stimulus of visible
objects that are in themselves crude replicas of per-
fect lines, planes, and volumes.

Hume had followed Berkeley in the rejection of

the notion of abstract general ideas.

" ' T I S usual with mathematicians to pretend, that

those ideas, which are their objects, are of so
refin'd and spiritual a nature, that they fall
not under the conception o r the fancy, but must
be comprehended by a pure and intellectual view,
of which the superior faculties of the soul are
alone capable. The same notion runs thro1 most
parts of philosophy, and is principally made
use of to explain our abstract ideas, and to
show how we can form an idea of a triangle,
for instance, which shall neither be an isosceles,
nor scalenum, nor be confin'd to any particular
length and proportion of sides."
(Treatise I-III-I)

Although in general Kant rarely echoes Plato's view,

in this instance he is certainly closer to him than
to Hume. What he is defending as pure or a priori
intuition is in a sense a re-affirmation of the abstract
ideas which Hume and Berkeley thought mathematicians
47
were in the habit of claiming to have, with the pro-
vision that they are to be regarded as intuitive,
anschaulich, and not conceptual or "intellectual."
Kant could not have foreseen that the requirement of
the corroboration of some sort of inner vision would
in the course of the development of mathematics be
unnecessary or impossible to meet. But even so he
might well have offered a direct response to the views
of the British philosophers (assuming that he was
acquainted with Berkeley's Principles and Hume's
Treatise). His requirement of intuition to support
mathematical demonstrations neither brings it closer
to "experience" nor shows in consequent fashion why
proof that resorts to concepts alone must be insuf-
ficient or invalid.

There are better ways than Kant's to account for

the empirical relevance and the necessity of geometri-
cal propositions. But it is the development of mathe-
matics rather than some inherent error on Kant's part
that has shown this.

Conclusions from the Above Concepts

Kant now draws a number of consequences from the

foregoing exposition and places the idea of space in
a larger framework.

(a) Given that appearances and things themselves

are exhaustive alternatives, if our representation of
space must be declared a priori (in order for there to
be, as is alleged, truths of a synthetic a priori
nature in geometry), then space can be neither a thing
itself nor any determination of such things, because
we cannot assert anything a priori about things in
themselves.

(b) When Kant now says that "space is but the

form of all appearances of outer sense," this is
permitted by his "matter-form" terminology, since space,
as well as time, falls to the side of form. He goes
on to say that just as we must suppose that the sub-
ject's receptivity for intuitions must be presupposed
for his having them so also must the form precede all
appearances of outer sense. Whatever he can count to
the side of form, of relation, is to be numbered among
the stock of what we already possess although who
or what the "we" or " I " is in this connection is not,
at this point at least, made clear.

48
 The schools of Descartes and Leibniz are here un-
mistakable. Not only is Kant speaking in the manner of
Leibniz of an original endowment of the mind, the pro-
cess relating and forming that with which we are affect-
ed (afficiert), but we are also repeatedly reminded of
Descartes' procedure with the ball of wax when he finds
that only extension cannot be removed by doubt. And yet
when Kant confronts himself with the doctrine we may
call innatism, as at B167f., he rejects it out of hand.
The term he uses there is "implanted" (eingepflanzt) and
he argues that if categories were simply implanted dis-
positions to thought they would be robbed of their
necessity. "I would not then be able to say, the effect
is (necessarily) tied up in the object with the cause,
but that I am so organized that I can only think this
representation as so connected." But Kant does not
think through the consequences of what he has here ad-
mitted, and he never fully clarifies the numerous
phrases he uses throughout the Critique to describe our
original posession of the categories and pure intuitions
nor distinguishes this from innate or implanted poses-
sion. In the passage in the Aesthetic we are discussing
the phraseology is vague: only from "the human stand-
point" (Standpunkt eines Menschen) can we speak of
space. The constant use of outer intuition and "recep-
tivity" in contexts where things-themselves are the
"givers" is never clarified, yet conclusions are as con-
stantly drawn from assertions involving them. Until
such clarification is forthcoming many sentences such
as those in the early paragraphs of this section will
appear to be question-begging, and there are many more
of this kind elsewhere.

Kant now introduces a distinction to which he ad-

heres throughout the Critique, between the empirical
reality of space (later also of time) or we might say
its empirical reference, and its transcendental ideal-
ity. This is the coup of a master philosophical strate-
gist. For he lays claim to the term 'real' ( a valuable
piece of metaphysical property) and applies it to the
object of appearance or experience which, as so far "un-
packed" , contains empirical and formal intuitions and
will later also prove to involve empirical and pure con-
cepts. The supplemental phrase "transcendental ideal-
ity" adds the further provision that the class of asser-
tions these four classes of representations make possi-
ble not only applies to human experience but is re-
stricted to it. Elsewhere Kant allows that it is only a
cautionary, not a necessary restriction.

49
50
 Transcendental Aesthetic

Section II
Time
4 Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Time

There is no concept that permeates the fabric of

Critique quite in the manner that time does. At
the very outset one should learn that the Aesthetic is
but one place where it occupies the center of the dis-
cussion. The other places are the Schematism (A137/B176
ff.), the Analogies of Experience (A176/B218), and the
First Antinomy (A426/B454), not to mention important
encounters of lesser scope elsewhere. Moreover, these
later references often seem to revise or even to con-
flict with what was said earlier.

Not only does the Critique recur to the topic of

time but it is also an emphatic part of its whole sub-
ject matter. Kant more than any philosopher before him
including Leibniz and the empiricists placed natural
scientific knowledge about a world generally in space,
but invariably in time, at the center of the cognitive
enterprise. His standpoint involves what George Boas
in his Howison Lecture so aptly termed "the acceptance
of time."1" But while Kant does not present a picture
of the universe in the eternal and immutable terms
that Plato, Leibniz and the rationalists used, neither
does he exalt time, change, or process in the manner
of Hegel, Marx, and others in the nineteenth century.
He simply sees time as central to all cognitive con-
cern with man's existing universe.

Kant is moreover scrupulous in what he regards as

outside the scope of time, notably logic. Even if his
view of what logic is or does is traditional, he seeks
to exclude from it all temporal, psychological, and
rhetorical involvement. He has a clear view of the
line between these two which emerges in his frequent
and careful segregation of logical from temporal prior-
ity or sequence. This may be shown by referring to
the form of judgment Kant adverts to in his derivation
of the concept and principle of causality. Logically,
an if-p-then-q proposition connotes nothing about the
temporal priority or order of p in relation to q. But
when we use this form to express a process in nature,
51
what p expresses may be a cause and q an effect where
the one may report an earlier and the other a later
event. Thus, unlike some rationalists, Kant sees
clearly that causal relations differ from logical im-
plication precisely because of the factor of time. In
a similar manner a subject-predicate sentence is a
mere form. When it is employed to express the fact
that something has a certain property time enters the
picture. We are now thinking in terms of a temporal
series, a set of passing conditions or states (expres-
sible as predicates) possessed by a permanent substance
continuant in time (expressible by the subject).

Kant sees that if we are talking about the world

we attend to in daily experience and in science then
we are dealing in time-suffused concepts. "Time,"
he says, "is the formal a priori condition of all
appearances whatsoever." (A34/B50)

We should be aware at the outset that while the

principal concern of the Aesthetic is to establish the
a priori character of space in order to explain the
asserted synthetic a priori character of the proposi-
tions of geometry, the concern with time is not pre-
cisely parallel and indeed may even appear to diverge
widely from it. There is no science of time comparable
to geometry that one might call, let us say, 'chrono-
metry' or perhaps 'chrononomy', and that must be
explained by supposing or presupposing the a priori
nature of time. Kant succeeds, however, in turning
up two propositions about time: it has only one di-
mension; different times are not simultaneous but
successive.

In fact, however, it is not necessary that propo-

sitions be derived from a science about time. All that
is required is that there be propositions of some sort
that are synthetic and a priori that owe this character
solely to the fact that time is an a priori representa-
tion. The propositions just mentioned are found in the
third argument of the Metaphysical Exposition of the
Concept of Time. In the Transcendental Exposition
Kant argues also that certain concepts such as altera-
tion and motion presuppose an a priori notion of time.
The proposition about alteration that must be explained
is that "only in time can two contradictorily opposed
determinations be found in one thing, that is, by one
of them succeeding the other." This would be a propo-
sition of metaphysics, one would suppose.

52
 In the Prolegomena (|10) Kant asserts a connection
between time and arithmetic, virtually as a parallel
to that between space and geometry, and in the Schema-
tism he says that "the pure image (Bild) of all magni-
tudes for outer sense is space, that of all objects of
the senses as such is time. The pure schema of magni-
tude as a concept of understanding is number which is
a representation that gathers together the successive
addition one to one of homogeneous elements." And in
the Introduction he has said that in performing the
operation of addition one must go beyond the mere con-
cepts of the addends to call in the aid of intuition
by referring successively in time to fingers or points.
This is said in support of the notion that intuition
must be called in to support our understanding of arith-
metical operations. Presumably, as Kant says elsewhere,
if we encounter larger numbers we can proceed in
"decadic" fashion: we refer first to the ten fingers
to make one decade, then again to the same source, if
necessary to make further decades, and then a decade
of decades to make a hundred, and so on. He does not
elaborate but in the discussion later on of the anti-
monies he affirms the notion that quantities must be
conceived of through a process of "successive synthe-
sis." (e.g. A433/B461). It is not clear how Kant
would think we proceed with irrational numbers such as
t. On the whole one must agree with Kemp Smith's
view that "in regard to the nature of arithmetical
and algebraic construction he had never really attemp-
ted to arrive at any precision of view" (Commentary,
p. 131). And he may further be right in saying that
Kant probably omitted because of further reflection
any effort in the second edition to define the intui-
tions that arithmetic is said to rest upon in terms of
time (Commentary, p. 133). We may now turn to the
arguments of the Metaphysical Exposition.

In this exposition Kant undertakes to show that

our representation of time is a priori not empirical,
that it is an intuition not a concept, that it is a
necessary, that is, an absolutely indispensable notion,
that time is infinite, and that it is in some grand
sense one, a kind of transcendental particular or
individual. We turn now to the arguments.

1. The representation of space was said not to

be derived from observation or from anything "outside
me" (ausser mir) for this notion already necessarily
involves space. In the present section we learn that
the representation of time could not arise from any
53
source in experience for it would then either succeed
or coexist with such a source: but either of these
relations would itself be temporal, one of the "modi
of time", as Kant calls them, and thus presuppose time.
It is hard to see that such an argument deserves
very much attention. What should we understand by
such a phrase as 'derived from1 (abgezogen) as applied
to time? If it means simply learned from~experience
we should remind ourselves that Kant has generally
allowed that even a priori notions must in some sense
be learned or acquired although this process of learn-
ing cannot show us on what their a priori authority
rests. Neither of course can the fact that they have
to be learned rob them of such authority. What Kant
in this connection calls empirical deduction is a psy-
chological or as he puts it at B119, a "physiological"
enterprise that may, as he later says, reveal to us
how we acquire concepts and categories even though
it may not provide evidence such as one may hope to
attain in a transcendental deduction. (It is interes-
ting to note that the characteristic Wittgensteinian
gambit, "how do we learn...?" would not have seemed
philosophically adequate to Kant; at least he rejected
all of Hume's and Locke's efforts.of this sort -- not
because their derivation of the ideas was false but
because it could not also explain their a priori char-
acter.) Kant offered no examples of what a mere
empirical deduction would be like, except to say it
was what we have Locke to thank for. It would be
particularly interesting to know what he would have
had in mind as an empirical deduction of space and time.
The corresponding point is made by Hume with an almost
impudent brevity: "The table before me is alone suf-
ficient by its view to give me the idea of extension"
(Treatise, I-II-III).

2. Time is a necessary or indispensable condition

for having any intuitions, says Kant. If we accept
the ultimate difference between concepts and intuitions,
between thought and sensation, as we are everywhere in
the Critique asked to do, and if simultaneity is a modus
of time, this proposition is acceptable. It would
seem to say that two or more intuitions or parts of
intuitions are always either successive or simultan-
eous. It also says much more than this. Time permeates
all of what in a narrow sense is experienced. Would
it also exist even if there were no intuitions? Is it
prior or fundamental in that sense? This appears to
be what Kant says, yet I think he does not mean that

54
there can be empty time. Kemp Smith's translation
is very misleading here if not flatly wrong. What
Kant says is, Man kann in Ansehung der Erschein-
ungen berhaupt die Zei~selbst nicht aTIflTeBen, ob man
zwar ganz wohl die Erscheinungen aus der Zeit wegnehmen
TTann: "Although one can quite well remove appearances
"from time, one cannot eliminate time from appearances
themselves." The dependent clause does not say "though
we can quite well think time void of appearances" as
Kemp Smith translates it. Kant does not mean that
time may be empty, or that appearances a_s a_ whole may
be removed from time, leaving an empty receptacle, but
rather that any given appearance can be removed, in
thought, from time. Of any given event we may say
that its non-occurrence is conceivable. If it is asked,
can one then conceive of all events as obliterated,
leaving empty time, or is it a necessary truth that
there be at least one event, or possibly, at least two,
I think we must say that the supposition is void of
significance: no one knows how to interpret the phrase
1
all events' .

The degree to which time permeates all our thought

about the material world is scarcely to be questioned.
Rather, one must ask what Kant means in saying that
time apart from our experience is nothing. We will
return to this theme in connection with the empirical
reality and transcendental ideality of time at the end
of the Aesthetic. An even more difficult question i,s
what we are to understand by the phrase 'time itself'
which, as we have seen, is crucial in the Analogies,
where it is said we cannot perceive (wahrnehmen) time
in itself. To this theme we shall of course recur.
One thing I believe we must say is that 'time itself'
does not mean empty time.

3. As we have explained in the Metaphysical Ex-

position of Space (p.36 n.7) and as Kant himself
concedes on the following page, argument 3 belongs in
the Transcendental Exposition of Time and adds nothing
not to be found there except examples of axioms of
time, such as that time has but one dimension. We may
therefore postpone discussion until we reach the Trans-
cendental Exposition.

4. The fourth argument parallels argument 3 re-

garding space (in B ) . Its essential point is to say
that time is a kind of particular or individual, not
a class or a class concept. Our representation of
this individual is an intuition. The one-ness of time
55
will scarcely need much argument if we confine our
attention to events and processes in a world of things
seen and felt.
It is obvious that 4 is incompatible with what we
must now think about time. The special theory of
relativity led to a drastic revision of our views of
space, time, and motion. "Before the advent of the
theory of relativity," said Einstein, "it had always
been assumed that the statement of time had an abso-
lute significance, i.e. that it is independent of the
state of motion of the body of reference." The
anomalies resulting from the empirical confirmation of
the constancy of the speed of light independent of
the motion of its source led Einstein to abandon the
fundamental tenet of classical mechanics that the
"time-interval (and the space-interval) between two
events (or two points on a rigid body) is independent
of the condition of motion of the body of reference."
One can no longer use the terms 'succession', 'simul-
taneity' and the rest of the time vocabulary in any
absolute sense: there may be different times that are
not part of one and the same time. According to
classical mechanics if we have two uniformly moving
coordinate systems devoid of rotation, then natural
phenomena run their course in both of them in accor-
dance with the same general laws. But if we are deal-
ling with bodies that are moving with velocities much
closer to the speed of light than those of terrestrial
or even planetary bodies, then times and distances will
be significantly different for them than for ourselves.
At most then the Kantian doctrines of space and time
can retain their significance only for a confined,
although important, area of physical science. But
this is incompatible with their absolute or transcen-
dental character for experience as a whole.

5. The final argument asserts that the infinitude

of time signifies that all determinate times are but
limitations of one such infinite time. Time is an
intuition and it is not constructed by the successive
addition of parts in the way we progressively probe
with ever more powerful telescopes the depths of the
world in space to expand the cognitive empire.

It is important to distinguish between space and

time themselves, each seen to be infinite, and the
physical world in space and time. Kant is here speak-
ing only of the former. Even a fairly young child
early comes to see that what he thinks of as space
56
and as time can inherently have no limits, either in
large or small, for space can only be bounded by space,
and time by time. But the world in space and time is
something else again. When Kant comes to the solution
of the antinomies, the difference becomes more appar-
ent. We cannot speak a priori of the limitless extent
in either space or time of the universe, and can neither
affirm it nor deny it, for to do so is to go beyond
the limits of application of space, time, and the
categories, that is, perception or intuitive experience.
Here we must work for every meter we advance into the
unknown. This world is not an already-given, that is,
gegeben, it is assigned to us (by ourselves of course)
"s i task, aufgegeben. At no point is Kant asking
whether time has a beginning we already grasp its
limitless character, if we grasp it at all. Nor does
he ask whether space has an outer edge even a child
sees this to be senseless. What he asks is what
notions are necessary to facilitate our progressive
advance into the unknown reaches of the world, into
the remote and the minute. Two such necessities are
the notions of limitless space and time, and then also
categories and principles.

5 Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time

The term or concept 'time' by itself seems nearly
as baffling as 'eternity' so that one scarcely knows
what he is being asked with the questions what he
thinks time is or whether it is real or illusory. The
prior question should rather be whether one understands
the time vocabulary: 'duration', 'period', 'interval',
'while', 'before', 'after', 'hitherto', etc. One must
know the "modi of time" and must be able to employ the
vocabulary in the most specific manner. Only when we
approach time so, may we be said to know what time is
in the primary sense, though of course not exhaustively.
If we do, we know for example that if t precedes u and
u precedes v, then t precedes v. This proposition is
evidently synthetic, certainly not merely conventional.
Its necessity rests upon a grasp of a whole scalar
system and not merely upon "the meaning of the word
'precede'." If this is so I would conclude that in
this particular the Transcendental Exposition is cor-
rect: this theorem of chrononomy, if we may so call
it, is synthetic and its syntheticity rests upon
something one might wish to call an a priori intuition,
as Kant does. To this extent his contentions are
Plausible.

57
 The purpose of the Transcendental Exposition'3
is to show that only if the generalizations about
time in the Metaphysical Exposition are accepted can
we explain the truth of the following propositions,
which are presumed to be synthetic and a priori:

Time has only one dimension.(1)

Different times are successive not coexistent.(2)
In addition it is said: (3) that only presupposing an
a priori notion of time is it possible to explain how
alteration in the state and the properties of anything
is possible. Propositions (1) and (2) are merely
cited as examples. Offering one or two examples in
the foregoing sections on space is sufficient for
the purpose, since we may be referred to Euclidean
geometry for many more examples if we demand them.
But the examples for time are altogether too few since
there is no body of propositions known as a science
of time to which we may be referred for the purpose.
If we produce more examples it is at our own risk if we
assert that they are synthetic and a priori. Here as
elsewhere Kant's procedure is probably to be explained
by saying that he was in some haste to compose the
Critique and was therefore concerned to abbreviate
examples and expositions wherever he thought the reader
might be spared them. But one might well prefer to
have more time devoted to the elucidation of concepts
such as time or the categories and less to other matters
such as the Amphiboly or the Transcendental Methodology
at the end of the Critique. (At A82/B108 we are told
that "in this treatise, I purposely omit the defini-
tions of the categories, although I may be in possession
of them." The want of a true analysis of such notions
is itself one of the severest obstacles to our accep-
tance of the deduction of the categories.) In the
present section the want of examples is a serious
matter: we are being asked to grant the a priori char-
acter of time not because there is a whole science such
as geometry that cannot be accounted for without it
but merely a few propositions that may well have other
explanations.

It is one of the ostensible purposes of the

Transcendental Exposition to account for the concept
of alteration. But this is scarcely in order, since
the exposition is originally said to have been neces-
sitated by the fact that there are synthetic a priori
judgments (or propositions) . At the beginning of 3
we are told that a certain kind of knowledge is what ;
58
necessitates the Transcendental Exposition. Of course
the mere concepts of alteration and motion are scarcely
knowledge. As it stands, all that 5 contributes on
this subject is that time is an analytic component of
alteration and of motion. This is plausible no doubt
but it is not apparent why the notion of time that is
necessitated must be an a priori representation charac-
terized in the manner just shown in the Metaphysical
Exposition of time.

It should be noted that Kant does cite a body of

knowledge as that which necessitates the Transcendental
Exposition namely general phoronomy (allgemeine
Bewegungslehre). It is not clear, however, what he
has in mind here: mechanics, Newton's Principia, or
theses such as those of the Metaphysical Foundations of
Natural Science. Mechanics is an empirical not
an a priori science and thus not in need of a trans-
cendental exposition (by 3). Parts of the Principia
may well deserve such an exposition (as well as the
deduction that the conservation, causality and reci-
procity principles receive in the Analogies) but it is
not apparent why the notion of time as expounded in 4
is necessitated.

One of the most interesting consequences of this

section is perhaps the stimulus it affords to present
our knowledge of time in a systematic fashion. But
we may concede that the Transcendental Exposition of
Time is not a very potent portion of the Critique,
considering what an important role time plays later on.

6 Conclusions from these Concepts

The intended outcome of the foregoing exposition

of time is that time is to be considered as an a priori
representation. Clarification of this assertion is
the purpose of the present subsection. It is safe to
say that no philosopher before Kant had said (or de-
nied) precisely this before and so the need to expand
upon it is apparent. It had been said, and denied,
that notions like time were innate, but Kant's view
of time and space is more subtle and complex than this.
What then are we to understand by his characterizing
space and time, not only propositions about them, as
a priori?

(a) Time is not something which might exist of

itself or as an attribute or relation of things in

59
themselves. It is in fact not objective but subjective,
a feature of our apparatus of thought about ourselves
and the world. This is sufficiently startling in it-
self but the manner of expressing it is more startling.
Time (or space) is said to be not simply a subjective
representation but an a priori representation, and the
two expressions are intended to make the very same
statement. Why then is the characterization 'a priori1
preferred? For the reason that Kant wishes to be en-
tirely sure that no one understands him to mean by
the representation time only a psychological entity --
subjective in that sense. Time and space and certain
other notions are presented by Hume as such constructs
and an elaborate apparatus of their psychological
origin and functioning is worked out. But for Kant
this could never enable us to see how, for example,
each of these is a system that is necessarily infinite
in scope. The "laws of chrononomy" are in that event
merely contingent generalizations about how "time
passes" in our subjective world: but then the use of
either space or time for intellectual or scientific
purposes is destroyed. This Kant meant to avoid at all
costs.

The cost was to present time as many things at

once: subjective but not psychological, real but not
transcendent, abstract but not intellectual, intuitive
but not sensate, and so on. It is the subjective
framework for all our empirical intuitions, it is the
form of inner intuition. The emphasis here is upon
"form." These are the traits of time that Kant tries
to pack into the assertion that it is an a priori
intuition.

(b) Kant now endeavors to combine these several

near-paradoxes into a consistent picture of time it-
self. Time is the form of inner sense, a set of re-
lations that holds together in one system our mental
life, abstracting from all content. But introspection
suggests no kind of shape for them -- Kant says
Gestalt. We are forced to resort to analogy. We hit
on the device of a line extending without limit fore
and aft.

It is easy to forget that all our intellectual

devices have had to be invented. The idea of time on
the analogy of a divisible, extendable line, so trite
to ourselves, was likewise one of man's triumphs of
discovery, possibly as significant as counting itself.

60
 The aptness of a good analogy is not only that it
codifies what we already know but facilitates intel-
lectual venturesomeness and leads us reliably to new
truths. This is the consequence of the line analogy
for time. As soon as we grasp it we find an applica-
tion for the fact that a line is extendable without
limit, divisible without limit, that we may pass smooth-
ly from one "point" to the "next", that we may number
the points, grouping them at will as we proceed. The
projection of one line upon another also has a useful
application to time. Thus,

A B
for every point in A' B1 there is a corresponding point
in. A B, so that if A B is a segment of the time series
representing a set of experiences (A B ) , then some
other longer line A' B' may represent a "richer" exper-
ience (A' B 1 ) concurrent with it and be coordinated
to it. Any further sets of events or experiences
(e.g., M N) can be coordinated in the same manner, so
that A B , A1 B', M N, and so on, are not different times
but coordinated to one time (as Kant says, "different
times are not simultaneous times but successive", and
thus simultaneous times are not different, 4 ) .
There is, however, one exception, says Kant. The
points of the line are simultaneous, whereas the moments
of time are successive. This reminds us of a funda-
mental and unsolved mystery in time: how we can "hold
experience together" without the arrest of time. But
such an arrest must be meaningless. Strictly speaking,
all that is real in time is the present moment, but if
we are forever hovering on this moment (it is of course
not an identical "this") we do not have the time exper-
ience. The completely irreducible intuitive component
of the experience of time is what we grasp as the
Passage of time, ranging from the few seconds of the
specious present William James spoke of to the
"ein-mein" experience of a whole lifetime (B132).
In order to analyze fully this feature of time we
must go beyond the one-dimensional figure. In the
Analogies Kant seeks to show that permanence,

61
succession, and simultaneity presuppose three intel-
lectual (as against intuitive) constructs, the
categories of relation. As he there shows, we must
try to do what is strictly impossible, that is, grasp
"time itself" and we can do this only by taking a step
beyond intuition. Hence, the need for categories or
their principles. The Aesthetic must be supplemented
by the Analytic.

Kant has drawn an interesting picture of our view

of time. Physics has not revised it. Our experience
of time has in no sense undergone any alteration, and
experience is what Kant is analyzing.
(c) The third generalization Kant permits himself
is that time is the formal condition of all appearances,
inner or outer. We cannot fail to notice the apparent
conflict between statements in (b) and (c) that "time
cannot be the determination (Bestimmung) of outer
appearances" and that time is "the immediate condition
(Bedingung) of inner and the mediate condition also
of outer appearances." The statements are equally
obscure. If the first one is taken to mean that events
in space cannot be ordered in time, the statement seems
certainly false even if space has only the qualified
"objectivity" Kant accords it. We may then suppose
that it is Kant's intention to see time as determining
only inner sense. Then if outer events are mediately
inner events, as may be asserted by (c), they too are
conditioned by time. This would be to take time in a
very "subjective" sense, something like an "experience
of duration" which we do doubtless have. But it is to
seriously weaken, if not destroy, the idea of equably
flowing time that Newtonian physics presupposes. We
shall recur to these themes of "inner" and- "outer"
below.

The emphasis upon time as the condition of all

appearances (c) makes explicit Kant's "acceptance of
time". All things in heaven or earth are ultimately
subject to human "interpretation" and thus to formal
determinants in our experience. The most pervasive
of these Kant now declares to be time. This seemingly
innocent statement may, and I for my part think that
it does, contain the seeds of disaster in the Kantian
system. We shall see this emerge even more clearly
as we proceed to the doctrine of synthesis later on.

Kant here states explicitly that the time exper-

ience is the fundamental framework of all experience.
62
All representations are inner before they are anything
else. There is a want of any definition of 'inner'
and 'outer': obviously their one- or three-
dimensionality is insufficient for this purpose. We
are left with the bare assertion that all experience is
inner experience -- including outer experience. The
inner is inner and the outer is inner too! We cannot
here employ the ordinary naive use of these terms :
only an extra-ordinary use and definition would obviate
the paradox, and this is nowhere proposed.

Kant's purpose is to make a broad generalization

about experience. We commonly suppose ourselves able
to distinguish between experience about ourselves, our
aches, pains, sensations and do on, and about the
things around us, trees, houses, chairs, hats, and
shoes. Kant is pointing out that the latter are first
of all sensations, or intuitions, before they receive
the more complex organization of causal laws afforded
through the categories and are experienced in a broader
sense of the term. This distinction is incidentally
of the utmost importance in Kant. Experience in a
kind of rudimentary sense, we may call it experience^
(E. ) , is simply having sensations, sense data, more
or less what Kant calls empirical intuitions. Exper-
ience of objects and processes regarded as and treated
as objective and fully organized by the categories is
experience in the more familiar sense; we may designate
it experience, (E2). Kant's point now is that we have
E-j in either the inner (subjective) or the outer
(objective) sense only within the framework of time.
Thus as he says, "Time is an a priori condition of
all appearance whatsoever." Notice that he says a
condition (eine Bedingung) , for there are others, such
as empirical concepts and also the categories.
(Appearances are objects and processes fully organized
by pure and empirical intuitions and pure and empirical
concepts.)

But not only is time, as a pure intuition, a

necessary condition of intuitions, but the reverse is
also true: if we abstract from intuitions time is
nothing at all. If we try to think of time outside
the framework of an organized active and receptive
mind it vanishes. "Time is solely a subjective
condition of human intuition."
If we now recall that things themselves are pur-
ported entities totally other than appearances, it
follows that we cannot ascribe temporal attributes

63
to them. The phrase transcendental ideality of time
is meant to convey just this. Time is an indefeasible
aspect of the world of phenomena. Kant does not claim
that a world of things themselves would be one of "non-
time" or "anti-time." He merely warns us that time
cannot be ascribed except where conditions of inner or
outer intuition are met.

At the same time, by a bold stroke, as we remarked

earlier, he claims the fullest right to speak of the
empirical reality of time. He throws out a challenge
to anyone who, like Berkeley's Hylas, locates the truly
real in an inaccessible substratum, mental or physical.
The first question to be addressed to such a philoso-
pher would be what warrant of experience enables him
to attribute meaningfulness to assertions about sub-
strata. None of course. By this, the foremost rele-
vant test, time is certainly real. First, as Berkeley
himself (or Philonous) has reason to speak of himself
as a realist (had he chosen to do so), so Kant may
claim to be a realist and in a closely similar sense,
although his misreading of Berkeley made him think;
Berkeley an "idealist", a confusion that continued
through the nineteenth into our own century.
There is also a further interpretation that brings
Kant even closer to ourselves. The transcendental
ideality of space and time is meant first of all to ex-
clude the substratum metaphysicians for whom reality
is everywhere except in our experience. But in a less
metaphysical sense it also liberates as well as re-
stricts. There is no reason why physical research which
finds itself forced to speak in such terms as curved
space, reversible time, and converging parallel lines
must be regarded by the Kantian as uttering nonsense.
"Apart from experience, space and time are nothing";
this means, if the conditions of ordinary "terrestrial"
intuition cannot be met, then the absolute coordinates
of space and time are no longer applicable. The meta-
physician may here fall into paradox and confusion.
But the theoretical physicist is no metaphysician who
reaches into a world of things-themselves when he
employs his bizarre concepts: he is simply compelled
to resort to a more complex language which appears to
defy geometry but is in fact only something other than
familiar geometry. No one experiences anything that
is denoted by 'curved space' and 'reversible time 1 ;
hence space and time are in this sense "nothing."

64
 What Kant wishes to exclude is metaphysical non-
sense, not theoretical novelty. It is inconceivable
that with his lifelong enthusiasm for and unusual
competence in science, he could have wished to set
metaphysical bounds to physical explanation. We must
expand our knowledge by the orderly progressive devel-
opment of the laws of nature, provided that we can
always recur to an experienced world of space and
time. The Kantian view is hospitable to the progressive
expansion of the scientific view of the world. But we
cannot ignore the authority of naive space and time.
What is the world in total abstraction from them?
Kant does not say with more recent positivists that
the question is meaningless. He merely answers that
it can be nothing for us.

7 Elucidation
This subsection proceeds from the immediately
preceding topic, the transcendental ideality and
empirical reality of time (TIER), to considerations
touching not only on time but space as well. Kant
begins by attending to an objection which proceeds as
if it were uttered by someone who believes him to have
said something such as "time is not real." Change,
alteration, it will be said, is undoubtedly real and
it is impossible unless time elapses. Hence time must
be real. Of course, replies Kant, I grant the whole
argument, and goes o n to reaffirm the position just
developed of the empirical reality of time. He adds
that it is only "absolute reality", reality as per-
taining to a substratum or thing itself, that cannot
be accorded to time (kann ihr nicht zugestanden
werden). In the latter phrase, Kemp Smith's "has to
be denied" exceeds what Kant says: it is one thing
to deny reality to time, another to be unable to attri-
bute reality to it.

Defenders of this "objection" will propound it

specifically regarding time but not space, says Kant,
because while inner experience will appear to entail
the reality of time, nothing will so convincingly
entail the reality of space: we are thought to be
intuitively certain of and to immediately confront
the self, whereas the external world is thought to be
"problematic." Kant of course boldly sweeps all of
this aside. The "self" is just as problematic as
the outer world, and also just as little. What we are
dealing with are representations, the psychological
65
phenomena of the inner and the physical phenomena of
the outer world, that is, the world of appearance.
The forms of appearance, time and space, do "really
and necessarily" belong to this world.
After a glance back at the ideas of the trans-
cendental expositions Kant turns to the defense of
TIKR. He sketches out where he stands in reference
to the supporters of absolute space and time and rela-
tional space and time, typified respectively by the
mathematische Naturforscher and the metaphysische
Naturlehrer. In neither instance is it the actual
content of physical science that is brought into ques-
tion, since Kant was a Newtonian, but rather the meta-
physical interpretation given to space and time. In
other words, as far as physics itself was concerned
Kant's adherence to the doctrine of fixed coordinates
for space and for time was in no degree weakened by
his interpretation of them as a priori intuitions: the
Aesthetic was not proposing a revision of physics.

What he now says is that the first of the above

two views renders the synthetic a priori character of
geometric propositions inexplicable since it presents
space as only transcendentally real. The second view
cannot account for the necessity of the propositions
since on that view space is not a priori but deriva-
tive from experience. Kant argues that his own view
disposes effectively of both difficulties.

Finally, there are no other forms of pure intui-

tion than these two, Kant states. All other physical
notions, for example, motion and alteration, involve
something empirical. Space and time are the only pure
elements in experience and in its extension in science
other than those that are pure concepts, that is, the
categories.

8 General Observations on the Transcendental Aesthetic

I. The concluding division of the Aesthetic,
particularly I, offers a rather lucid account and some
further defense of the whole position that has been
arrived at. It states in general the case for the a
priori nature of space and time and assures us that
this is now established beyond doubt. Alternative
standpoints, particularly those of Leibniz and Wolff
and less specifically Locke, are declared again to be
untenable. In a word, the position defended is that

66
of TIER, which has been affirmed in 3 and 6 for
both space and time and the doctrine of the Aesthetic
that space and time are the a priori forms of intuition,
of outer and inner sense.

The distinction of appearance and things them-

selves must be maintained absolutely: Kant says toto
coelo. One of the worst of errors, he says, would be
to weaken this by supposing that a more assiduous
scrutiny of appearances might at last reveal things-
themselves. It is just possible to offer such an inter-
pretation of Locke's view of physical inquiry into
substance. The study of matter was progressing in his
lifetime and was already foreseen to be likely to pro-
gress further almost without limit. It is difficult
to discern a perfect distinction between Locke's idea
of body or matter, over which the senses range, and
what he called the philosophical idea of substance.
But certainly at times Locke speaks as if the empirical
advance of physical science in the former will diminish
our ignorance of the latter, the "real constitution"
of substances. This is what Kant disputes. He seeks
to leave us in no doubt about the range of difference of
appearances and things themselves. (Of course Kant's
own use of the term 'substance' must not be set in
place of Locke's or identified with that of 'things
themselves': its reference is wholly to appearances.)
Kant's distinction between appearance (comprising matter
or substance) and things themselves is wholly philo-
sophical and would remain in force even if in some
manner we might plumb the depths of matter to an ulti-
mate level, as in a certain sense science has done
since Kant's time. His effort here is again a defense
of science, giving it the assurance that no philosophi-
cal bounds can conceivably be imposed upon it.

The Leibnizian view seems to Kant to have done

just that. All notions based upon the senses, upon
space and time, are declared essentially confused by
the rationalist. Only clear and distinct, conceptual
ideas present us with realities. Kant points out that
the difference between clear and confused ideas is
"merely logical" for by definition the content is the
same, now confusedly, now clearly discriminated. For
Kant, on the other hand, what is given in and through
perception or related to it by confirmed physical laws
is real. To locate realities in a realm grasped only
by the intellect is to render the world of phenomena
and phenomenal processes illusory and to grossly mis-
understand the role of the intellect, the understanding,

67
in knowledge and its acquisition. Thus Kant on every ;
occasion reaffirms the tenet that science is what is
definitively knowledge (not metaphysics, or mathematics:
as Plato and perhaps also Descartes conceived it, or
theology, still less, mysticism, poetry or other candi-
dates that had been proposed). The rationalist does
justice neither to intuition nor to the understanding, ;
neither to the domain of sense nor to that of the in- '
tellect. "The Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy," says
Kant, "has given an altogether wrong direction to the
investigation of nature and the origin of knowledge,"
locating reality in a domain that transcends intuition
and misconceiving the instruments by which knowledge
is acquired. What is identified here as a world of
reality is indeed a world, in some manner of speaking,
of things themselves. But it is not a world that in-
tuition somehow tries but fails to apprehend or know:
it is not known at all in any manner, even by the
intellect. The intellect, it is true, can think it,
but it cannot know it, having ex hypothesi no support
from the side of intuition: this must accompany all
non-vacuous cognitive thought.

It is of the utmost importance to see that Kant

is truly revolutionary in the direction and method of
his thought. He is not merely reshuffling the cards
as between "rationalism" and "empiricism." The meta-
physical period of philosophy has been brought to a
definitive end. The roles of philosophy and of science
have been interchanged: the paradigm of knowledge is
science itself. The task of philosophy is critical.
From here, after the divagations of the Hegelians in
the nineteenth century, the way leads directly through
the Neo-Kantians to the positivisms of the twentieth
century. Kant's is the first philosophy of science
and the first philosophy for science. He is wholly
acclimated to the idea as even Hume was not, that
science was henceforth to be the domain of truth.

Returning to the Leibnizian distinction, Kant

presents what amounts to a defense of sensibility. It
is not to be treated as merely confused as against
clear cognition, as if it were an obstacle to truth
that needed to be removed. It differs not logically
or formally from conceptual thought but materially.
That is to say, sensibility and thought each contri-
bute independently two necessities of knowledge.

Moreover, to treat these as respectively the

sources of error and truth (for this is what is being
68
done with the distinction of the confused and the
clear) is to ignore the reliable, common sense methods
of distinguishing these in the domain of sensibility
itself. We know perfectly well, Kant is saying, how
to tell what in appearances is valid for all human
minds and what appears only incidentally in this mind
or that or under certain conditions. Appearance is
the domain of sensible knowledge; to identify truth
with things-themselves is to remove it beyond our
reach.

Here Kant makes an important distinction in the

use of the term 'appearance1. His own term is of
course Erscheinung and can also be translated by
phenomenon'. He warns several times in the Critique
that we must not confuse Erscheinung with Schein, that
is appearance (phenomenon) with illusion; in English
one might say we must not confuse appearance and
apparition. In this primary sense, an appearance for
Kant is, in the ordinary sense, first of all a genuine
occurrence,a reality, a thing or event that is inter-
subjective, publicly verifiable, there for all to see.
An appearance is, as the colloquial phrase goes,
something that "puts in an appearance." With this, in
the same ordinary sense, we often contrast what we say
is a mere appearance. The rainbow, Kant says, may
be regarded in this manner in comparing it with rain.
Both the rain and the rainbow are, however, part of
the world of nature as perceived, the world of appear-
ance in Kant's primary sense (A45/B63).

With appearance in this sense Kant now contrasts

the world as thing in itself. We must not suppose
that the latter is the real world and that the former
is illusion. On the contrary, as just noted, the
world of appearance is the world to which the term
reality applies.

Thus we must keep separate the distinction between

appearance and reality in the ordinary sense (the rain
as against the rainbow) from the distinction between
appearance, the world of phenomena in general, and
the world as thing-in-itself.

The term appearance may therefore mean, occasion-

ally, something which, as Kant says, belongs to
intuition only accidentally; more commonly it means
for him the world of experience generally as against
the world of things themselves. "An appearance (in
Particular) is simply an undetermined object of

69
empirical intuition" (A20/B34) .
The term 'reality', correlated to the first of
the foregoing uses of 'reality' is that which in common
sense ways is distinguished from what are deemed illu-
sions. In Kant's sense, these are empirically distin-
guishable in the world of nature to which the term
'reality' is primarily applicable. Finally, the unique
philosophical use of 'reality' to refer to things in
themselves as if these and not the world of nature
were the world of reality is something which Kant
invariably denounces as disastrous metaphysical con-
fusion. Things themselves may be said to be trans-
cendentally ideal. To attribute to them transcendental,
or as he also says less felicitously, absolute reality,
leads us directly into the errors of the so-called
rational sciences.

Finally, section I attempts yet another proof of

the principal contention of the Aesthetic, that space
and time must be regarded as a priori. In effect the
transcendental expositions are repeated or reaffirmed:
we must account for all synthetic and a priori judg-
ments. We observe of certain judgments concerning
time and space that they are necessary and universal
truths. We ask whether we arrive at them through
concepts or intuitions, and whether they are a priori
or a posteriori. It is evident that no merely empiri-
cal or a posteriori source suffices. When we then
ask whether the a priori source is that of concepts
or intuitions we see that it cannot be the former.
Appeal to mere concepts is for example, insufficient
to convince us that two straight lines cannot enclose
a space or that given three straight lines a figure
is possible. We are forced to appeal to an intuition.
When we ask whether it is an a priori or an a posteri-
ori intuition, we see that it cannot be the latter,
for here we are not at all prepared to undertake an
empirical investigation. The intuition must be a
priori.

Since the question of what not just an a priori

proposition or judgment is, but what an a priori in-
tuition is, is altogether crucial, we may again ask
whether on this occasion Kant has thrown any more
light on the matter than he did in the Aesthetic. He
asks, if there were no such intuition here, how could
you say that that which is necessarily contained in
the subjective conditions you are specifying for the
construction of a triangle must also characterize the

70
triangle itself? (Wie k'nntet ihr sagen, dass, was in
euren subj ektiven Bedingungen einen Triangel zu
konstruiren notwendig liegt, auch dem Triangel an sich
selbst zukommen msse?) Or again, if it were not so,
you could not a priori affirm anything of a synthetic
nature about external objects (so k'nntet ihr a priori
ganz und gar nichts ber "ussere Objekte synthetisch
ausmachen.)

This of course reiterates one of the basic pre-

mises of the Aesthetic that it is impossible to offer
fully consequential proofs of geometrical truths from
concepts alone. As Russell observed in his Principles
of Mathematics (p. 4) in the early years of the devel-
opment of modern logic, the Aristotelian logic and its
early successors in the nineteenth century were in
fact "inadequate to mathematical reasoning... In this
fact lay the strength of the Kantian view, which
asserted that mathematical reasoning is not strictly
formal, but always uses intuitions, i.e., a priori
knowledge of space and time." Russell adds that "this
part of the Kantian philosophy is now capable of final
and irrevocable refutation." This undoubtedly still
represents the prevailing view.

II. The remaining sections are additions of

edition B, and as so often happens in this edition, do
not always succeed in improving on A. Kant first pro-
duces arguments in further support of the TIER of the
appearances presented in outer and inner sense.
Appearances, we must remind ourselves, are presentations
fully structured by the mind's efforts, and all form,
structure, or relation derives from this source.
The matter of our knowledge, deriving from empirical
intuition, enters into knowledge only in connection
with our apprehension of structure, that is, the loca-
tion of the relata, their change of location, and the
laws about forces that determine such changes. Of
the being of objects we know only that they are related
to a subject. As things themselves they are trans-
cendentally ideal: we know things only as they appear
to us, not as they are.

Kant argues that we are in a similar situation

regarding inner sense. Here we have as little a
direct apprehension of the self as we had of the ex-
ternal things themselves: we are not gifted with a
direct or "intellectual intuition"1^ of a spontaneous,
"self-active" self. It also is a world of appearance
and we apprehend the self not as it is but only as it

71
appears. We have as little comprehension of a trans-
cendentally real self as of a transcendentally real
world of things themselves: our position towards these
must be that of transcendental idealism. But if we
agree with Kant that the obverse of this coin is the
empirical reality of the physical world and of inner
experience, it is not we but the defenders of TREI
who have contented themselves with a phantom.
We may at this point anticipate latter matters by
sketching out Kant's threefold view of the self. The
"inner world" of immediate consciousness, of intro-
spection, may be called the empirical consciousness in
order to distinguish it from what Kant by and by will
characterize as the transcendental unity of appercep-
tion. The latter could properly be called the
epistemic presupposition or epistemic self. The em-
pirical consciousness and the epistemic self may be
numerically identical, but in fact we can never know
this. To have knowledge of x presupposes that we
have appropriate intuitions of x, precisely what we
do not have of the epistemic self. It is a necessary
presupposition of knowledge not an object of knowledge.
But our awareness in empirical consciouness affords the
subject matter of empirical psychology, which with
physics is one of the twin sciences basic to all others
for Kant.

One must also distinguish both of these from the

soul of which theologians and rational psychologists
(as against empirical) claim to be able to speak.
Kant challenges their capacity to say anything what-
soever that is cognitively meaningful in the Paralogisms
of Pure Reason further on. The theologian's mistake
rests upon his neglecting to identify and distinguish
the empirical consciousness and the epistemic self, as
we shall see.

III. The third topic discussed continues the

second and simply adds the now familiar caution that
while the worlds of inner and outer sense are trans-
cendentally ideal (and of course empirically real)
they are not illusions. On the contrary the alternative
to this does render them illusory, since it locates
reality not in the world of inner and outer sense (which
it treats as empirically ideal) but in a world that is
either inaccessible or is purported to be accessible
only to the intellect but not to the senses. That way,
says Kant, lies illusion, the inner and outer worlds
both dissolving into nothingness with only the dubious
72
compensations of other worlds promised by Platonists
and Leibnizians.
We may here remark once again Kant's fundamental
and irrevocable hostility to scepticism and to Plato-
nism in most of its tenets, and his equally unshakeable
commitment to common sense and to science as the prime
locus of truth and knowledge. Not only is he hostile
to scepticism he ignores it as a madness that is
scarcely worth more than patronizing regard. His en-
tire system is built on the premise that there is
knowledge: the problem is to find what it is and "how
it is possible." He is a descriptive metaphysician,
in Strawson's phrase, leaving the world as he finds
it and concerned to analyze or "criticize" our know-
ledge or purported knowledge of it. To the sceptic
he says curtly, "Don't be a fool! Of course there is
knowledge. Let us do all that is in our power to
understand what it is, what its limits are, and how we
must interpret what lies outside it." Kant's splendidly
sane gesunder Menschenverstand is a tower of hope and
optimism.

This subsection shows, however, that Kant might

have found allies in the very quarter in which he
thought he saw sceptics. The "good Berkeley" is
alleged to have denied the reality of bodies when in
fact his standpoint in regard to outer sense is essen-
tially identical with Kant's in various respects and
compatible in others. Berkeley himself repelled
charges that he was a sceptic by effectively turning
them against his adversaries. Kant either misread
Berkeley or, more likely, had inadequate opportunity
to read him and spoke of him only on the basis of in-
direct report, for he knew little English.

IV. The final argument in defense of TIER of

space and time is theological and not likely to be of
much interest to us since it speaks of nearly unin-
telligible attributes (intellectual or original
intuition) of an unconfirmable being. If, says Kant,
contrary to TIER we affirm TREI of time and space,
they are then conditions of all things, even of God's
existence. Surely this could not hold true of the
primordial being, Urwesen. But if space and time
cannot be TR they must be thought to be conditions
of finite, derivative or sensible intuition, such as
our own. A similar kind of intuition may be attri-
buted to all finite beings including those, if any,
that may be other than human. This argument concludes

73
the defense of the standpoint enunciated in the
Aesthetic.

Conclusion of the Transcendental Aesthetic

The general task of the transcendental philosophy
is to answer the question how synthetic propositions
are possible a priori (on this occasion Kant says
"propositions," Stze, instead of "judgments").
In space and time we have two of the indispensable
necessities for answering this question. If in a
proposition the intention is to go beyond the concept
of the subject, these a priori intuitions are precisely
what is needed in order to effect a synthesis with
the idea of the predicate. But the range of the pro-
positions in which this is possible is the objects of
the senses, objects of possible experience.

74
 TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS

Second Part

Transcendental Logic
Introduction
Idea of a Transcendental Logic
I. Logic in General

A fairly prevalent view holds that Kant's preoccu-

pation with logic and especially his use of the formal
logic of his day as a model for the organization of
the Critique (indeed all three Critiques) are mislead-
ing and that they suggest to him and often seem to
compel him to take up topics that have nothing much to
do with the business at hand. The artificiality of
the organization is said also to affect the content.
This is not an altogether inappropriate criticism.
Yet in the end it must be conceded that all of the
topics Kant takes up are in some measure relevant.
Even when Kant's reason for taking up a topic, being
often dictated by the "architectonic", is not good,
what he has to say on it is almost invariably signifi-
cant. One must avoid constantly offering to rewrite
an author's book for him. No philosophical author
has had to endure so much advice on this matter as
Kant.
The short sections introducing the Transcendental
Logic are relevant examples. We must frequently ask
ourselves what role Kant assigns to logic in the struc-
ture of knowledge and in particular what he conceives
a priori truth to be. The present sections help to
answer such questions, on the whole clearly and much
to the point. (The subject is taken up once more in
a section preceding the Analytic of Principles, at
A150/B189.)

Kant's view of logic fortunately antedates the

Hegelian and later conceptions of it and accords it
a much more significant and proper place than the
empiricists did. The developments of logic in our own
century are almost wholly compatible with what Kant
had to say about analytic a priori propositions. What
he called transcendental logic is not, nor was ever
75
intended, to be an alternative or rival to formal
logic: it is tied up rather with his philosophy of
science. What is important in it is not in any very
familiar sense transcendental and in fact most of
what Kant speaks of as "transcendental" is expressible
also in other more familiar terms. There is no doubt
that Kant could accept the essential core of modern
logic: question would arise only over such questions
as whether he would insist on retaining his view of
mathematics as synthetic and a priori or accept the
views of those who see it as continuous with logic.
He could however, without any offense to logic main-
tain his view that the basic principles of the meta-
physics of science (e.g., the causal principle) are
synthetic and a priori and demand a proof such as he
thinks has been provided in his Deductions, for those
are matters that lie outside of logic.

We may be brief with his outline of logic since it

presents no particular difficulties. What is archaic
in it is essentially harmless and corrigible. Pure
logic he tells us, "is a body of demonstrated doctrine
and everything in it must be entirely certain a priori.'
(A54/B78). It has nothing to do with empirical prin-
ciples nor does it borrow anything from psychology.
It abstracts from all content and is concerned alto-
gether with the form of thought. His division of the
subject illuminates the distinction between transcen-
dental logic and what he calls common logic; certain
divisions are not particularly well discriminated.

Transcendental Logic Common Logic

Special Logic General Logic
(Rules or organon
for a particular
science)
Applied Logic Pure Logic,
(A cathartic of Formal Logic
the understanding (pure
the psychology of doctrine of
thought and reason)
persuasion :
rhetoric)

76 .
 It is somewhat obscure, but unimportant, precisely
what Kant intends by "special logic." Perhaps he is
alluding here simply to the procedures which practi-
tioners of particular sciences, and arts too, employ
and inculcate in order to advance knowledge. It is
not apparent that these techniques or procedures of
investigation are different from what is narrowly a
part of logic, but in a provisional way allowance may
be made for them.

One thing is significantly missing here and if it

had occurred to Kant to include it, his whole view of
the deduction problem might have been different, name-
ly a logic of induction, probability, or generalization.
He might, that is to say, have conceived the problem
of the Causal Principle in terms closer to both Hume
and John Stuart Mill. They were all certainly speaking
of the very same thing. What is unique in Kant is his
proposed solution of the basic question of the ground
of induction (or the uniformity of nature, or the
unique "necessity of natural laws") by resting every-
thing on the "possibility" of a special kind of pro-
position which is said to be both synthetic and a
priori.

It is almost superfluous to draw attention to the

oft-quoted words of this section regarding the mutual
necessity of sense and understanding. Since they re-
quire no explication we need merely read them and be
prepared to reflect on them almost constantly from
here to the end of the Transcendental Logic.

"Our nature is such that intuition can never

be other than sensate, being the mode in
which we are affected by objects. The capa-
city to think objects of sensate intuition,
on the other hand, is understanding. Neither
one of these capacities is to be preferred to
the other. Without sensibility no object
would be given us, without understanding
none would be thought. Thoughts without
content are empty, intuitions without con-
cepts are blind. Hence it is as necessary
to render our concepts sensate (that is, to
support them with an object in intuition)
as it is to make our intuitions intelligible
(that is, to bring them under concepts).
The understanding cannot intuit, the senses
cannot think anything. Only through their
union may knowledge arise." (A51/B75)

77
 II. Concerning Transcendental Logic
What Kant now proceeds to describe as "trans-
cendental logic" is, as noted, in no sense a rival or
alternative to formal logic. It is given the task
of demonstrating certain truths that are indispensable
to the pursuit of empirical knowledge. Formal logic
performs a different kind of service, demonstrating
the principles that must guide sound argument on any
and all subject matters. Of course it would now be
said that this is certainly not the only purpose of
formal logic.

Pure or formal logic, says Kant, considers only

the form of judgments without regard to whether their
content is empirical or a priori. The inquiry he calls
transcendental logic abstracts not from all content
whatsoever but only from all empirical content, thus
confining itself first of all to a priori representa-
tions. But to this limitation another must immediately
be added: not all a priori representations are trans-
cendental. Only those considerations are to be called
transcendental which are essentially "enabling" in
character, making experience of objects and thus empir-
ical knowledge possible. One of Kant's most un-
shakeable tenets is that experience is not something
poured into our heads or our sense organs from the
"outside": it is itself the product of conditions
other than the functioning of intuition or sensation.
This is shown by the fact that we are able to say
some things a priori about the (inner or outer) world
so experienced, and what we can say is not merely
guided by the a priori procedures of logic as it is
when we say that a cat being a mammal is a vertebrate.

We must investigate this "enabling" power. The

issue is in no sense a novelty but Kant has placed it
into a comprehensive frame of reference. Hume's
Treatise had set itself the problem: for what reason
do we "pronounce it necessary, that every thing whose
existence has a beginning, shou'd also have a cause."
And Leibniz had deemed it necessary to propound a
principle of sufficient reason in addition to that of
identity to account for knowledge. The indispensable
role of this ingredient in the economy of empirical
knowledge is what Kant singles out for investigation.
But his approach is somewhat closer to Leibniz than
to Hume, for he is concerned more with why in general
categorial notions are indispensable to knowledge than
he is with what in detail they say -- and as we recall,
78
Hume's struggle with this issue is heroic, if anything
philosophical can be so characterized.

We are then in transcendental logic to examine

what conceptual conditions are indispensable to know-
ledge, as in transcendental aesthetic we pursued
comparable intuitional conditions. Such a science,
says Kant, must study the "origin, extent, and object-
ive validity" of these concepts.

III. The Division of General Logic into

Analytic and Dialectic

The essential contemporaneity of Kant's views on

logic is further confirmed in the present section which
in three brief pages expounds the distinction between
material and logical truth and expatiates on the use,
or rather the misuse, of the latter. Here we must
repudiate the caricature, of "mere game-playing", as
the section has been characterized. The distinction
of analytic and dialectic enables Kant to make the
momentous distinction between non-empirically derived
notions such as those named by the categories and
rational cosmological, psychological, and theological
notions such as the First Cause, the Immortal Soul,
and God. Showing that the first class of notions is
absolutely necessary and the second absolutely foreign
to the economy of experience, and scientific knowledge
occupies almost the rest of the Critique. It is a
master stroke of philosophical strategy. Whatever
shortcomings Kant's analysis of the categories and
the categorial principles has, his specification of
the criteria by which these "rational ideas" are to
be excluded from the domain of empirical knowledge
is still very generally respected.

The issues which Kant is now on the verge of

broaching are that of the real and the illusory in
knowledge, of the meaningful and the meaningless,
the verifiable and the unverifiable, although none
of these notions is here taken in its whole extent.
He will speak of unverifiable "rational ideas" in
the compassionate manner of one who seeks to under-
stand how and why they arise, what human significance
their place in the history of thought betokens, and
not with the obtuse pretensions of latter-day positi-
vists who are satisfied only with a brutal Totschlag.
Kant now seeks to show that one cannot do justice to
science, morality, or religion without a careful dis-
tinction of their function and orientation.
79
 The first thing Kant has to say about truth is
that there can be no universal criterion (his term)
of material truth and indeed that it is absurd
(ungereimt) to look for one. What a proposition p
claims is that some condition P exists, and P can
render p and u> other proposition true, unless it be
some other sentence synonymous with p. To cite
"correspondence" as what renders a proposition true
is in effect merely to offer a definition or even a
synonym but in no sense a material criterion of truth.

May we then suppose that there is a formal cri-

terion of truth? The answer is as follows. A monadic
sentence may have a predicate which is identical with
or "contained in" the subject, or incompatible with
it, or neither identical nor incompatible with it.
If the first situation prevails, the sentence is logi-
cally true; it has no material content and makes no
material affirmation about anything. If the second,
the sentence fails to make any affirmation at all.
These are the situations in which formal considerations
are alone decisive. For Kant we need go no farther
than the concepts themselves to decide this. The
truth of the third type of sentence lies wholly out-
side this scheme of things; material considerations
alone are relevant. We may add, if we wish, that
sentences of this sort must not contradict themselves
but this is strictly unnecessary. It is merely cau-
tionary, a conditio sine qua non; a necessary, not a
sufficient condition; a canon of truth, not an organon
a negative touchstone of truth, Probirstein der
Wahrheit.

Kant's procedure then is this: (1) inspect the

sentence to see if the predicate is formally identical
with the subject; if it is, the sentence is true;
(2) if the predicate is incompatible, that is, formally
identical with the subject in all respects except that
it negates the subject, the sentence is false; (3)
all other predicates are compatible with their subjects
(unless other criteria than logical are invoked: e.g.,
when we exclude, for example, 'red is rational'),
being neither identical (1) nor incompatible (2).
In this way, Kant, admittedly with some elaboration
on our part of what he is saying, seeks to show that
logical truths say nothing of a material nature and
that logical criteria for sentences show us only
which sentences need or do not need material corro-
borat ion.

80
 Here as elsewhere it is not inappropriate to say
of Kant's use of formal logic that its purpose is
solely good housekeeping: it keeps the house of
reason clean and efficient for its purpose, nothing
more. Kant's view of logic while scarcely inspiring
to the modern logician is at least acceptable on most
essentials. There was no reason whatever to attribute
very many virtues to logic as it stood in Kant's day.

We may now be content to employ the logical cri-

terion of identity in the manner and for the purposes
described. We may, however, lose sight of these con-
ditions and proceed as if we were able on the basis
of mere logical considerations alone to determine
truths without resorting to the empirical inspection
of facts. When we do so, we employ formal logic as an
organon and not merely as a canon of truth. We have
used it as regards its subject not only for analytical
purposes but dialectical as well. We may mention an
example drawn from transcendental dialectic though it
will also serve the purposes of general or formal
dialectic, namely the Ontological Argument. The whole
purpose of this argument is to show that solely on the
basis of a concept, God, we can demonstrate a material
truth, God's existence. The source of this fallacy
Kant has definitively exposed in the Ideal of Pure
Reason. There are also other examples of the misuse
of logic, or indeed, of pure reason, as the very title
of the Critique suggests.

Kant's reason for adopting the term 'dialectical'

in this connection to label a certain misuse of thought
goes back to Aristotle. The distinction between
demonstrative and dialectical reasoning is made in the
Topics (100a25ff). The misuse of reason or at least
its use for questionable or nefarious ends is a fami-
liar topic in both Plato (cf. Gorgias) and Aristotle.
Whatever the precedent may have been, Kant uses
'dialectic' to mean a logic of illusion, covering both
the orator's comparatively trivial misuse of reason
to impress an audience with pseudological stratagems
or the serious effort, as in the Ontological Argument,
to reach material truths solely through logical means.
As we shall see, transcendental dialectical illusion
is far different from and far more philosophically
insidious than mere rhetorical deception.

81
 IV. The Division of Transcendental Logic into
Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic

The application of the distinction in the previous

section can now be made very easily. We must again
remember that the designation 'logic1 is not an abso-
lute necessity for this portion of the Critique. It
suits it only in the sense that intuitions and concepts
may by a traditional distinction be assigned respect-
ively to the area of the aesthetic and the logical,
in a primary sense of the terms.

'Transcendental' may be defined as pertaining to

that which does not arise from experience and so in a
limited sense transcends it but applies to experience
and makes it possible. In the Transcendental Logic
we isolate "that part of thought which has its origin
solely in the understanding" (A62/B87). In the pre-
ceding section we saw that we cannot with the help of
logic alone or through mere conformity to it hope to
establish material truth: conformity to material
conditions is as necessary as logical circumspectness.
So here we must be careful not to sever the bond
Intuitions-Concepts. To suppose that knowledge may
yet be possible when we employ the Pure Concepts which
are now to be expounded in the Transcendental Analytic
without providing a reference to intuitions is to be
the victim of dialectical illusion. It is to employ
such a body of concepts not merely as a canon but as
an organon of knowledge. The results will be the
evident transgressions of the metaphysical or "rational"
sciences -- rational, that is, because they suppose
that they may significantly employ transcendental
concepts even without possible reference to empirical
intuition to establish truths about God or the soul.

With these explications, Kant is in a position to

introduce the system of pure concepts, to show their
provenance and demonstrate the validity of their appli-
cation in experience, and to expose the errors of
their inevitable misuse.

82
 Transcendental Logic

First Division
Transcendental Analytic

Kant now launches the momentous program aimed at

discovering the contribution of the understanding to
our store of a priori knowledge having to his satis-
faction exhibited the contribution of intuition to it.
In both instances a transcendental justification is
needed. In the present division of the Transcendental
Logic we must first identify the pure concepts of the
understanding and then its principles. In the second
division we will observe the dialectical employment of
these concepts and principles and thus the genesis of
the "logic of illusion" and its cause and cure.

The pure concepts are not to be picked up like

pebbles: a clue, a Leitfaden, must first be turned
up that will lead us to them. Kant is determined
that the search be free of haphazardness, of groping
here and there. Four guidelines are to be observed.

First, the concepts we are seeking must be pure

and not empirical. Little can be said now in regard
to this since it is not yet fully apparent what the
difference in fact is. If we focus attention on the
question how synthetic propositions are possible a
priori, we must of course begin by asking what con-
cepts are employed in the formulation of such proposi-
tions. But it is well to be prepared as early as
possible to learn that pure concepts are not somehow
simply another species of concepts along with empiri-
cal concepts.

Second, the concepts must be derived from thought

and not intuition. Kant has already decided that
certain a priori representations are intuitions, namely
space and time. The transcendental logic will seek to
identify those concepts that have their source in
the understanding alone.

Third, the concepts must be basic or elementary

and not composite or derivative. In the sequel Kant
devotes too little time to this matter. There is a
want of rigor which he excuses by saying that instruc-
tion on the matter is easily found in the manuals of
ontology or that he will devote his remaining energies
83
to setting up the system of pure reason as soon as
the critique of pure reason is complete. Only the
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science in some
measure realizes this promise. In general, one wishes
Kant had devoted more attention to the analysis and
articulation of concepts and less to certain peripheral
matters in the first Critique.

The fourth requirement of completeness is one that

Kant earnestly seeks to meet in the early part of the
analytic of concepts, the so-called metaphysical de-
duction. But the question whether we may not turn up
concepts necessary to experience or science that are
neither among those on the basic list nor derivative
from them probably cannot be answered decisively for
a reason that could threaten the enterprise of the
Critique itself: how can we know exhaustively what
experience is and thus what is needful to it or "makes
it possible" if experience is by its nature exploratory
in nature? This question should make us reflect on
these alternatives:

We must know in advance of experience what is

necessary to or what will count as experience. (1)
We cannot know in advance of experience what
experience is. (2)
Of these Kant elects the first. In order to do so he
must assume that experience is not an empirical concept.
The whole Critique is built on the notion that we must
in advance of experience (not of course in a temporal
sense) be able to make certain generalizations about
it, namely the Principles expounded in the Analytic.
For example, perception cannot validate itself: it is
a presupposition of natural science that perception
reveals realities, and this presupposition cannot
simply be confirmed by perception. Perception does
not show us that we can trust perception. Yet a critic
may well ask whether anything but experience could tell
us whether we can trust experience. This is the kind
of "dialectical problem" that the Critique inevitably
stimulates.

Here the clue to the categories becomes important.

Perhaps there is some way to determine all of the
basic concepts and principles on which experience and
science rest. In any event, the clue is the only
place in which Kant undertakes to show this.

84
 In view of Kant's further development of these
problems, we need not pause over his treatment of the
question of elementarity and completeness. He himself
qualifies the elementarity of the categories by saying
that the third category in each of the four classes
"arises out of the union of the second with the first"
(this is said only in B at B110). It is interesting to
see what further modifications would have to be made in
the table of categories if Kant had been in a position
to approach the "table of judgments" from the standpoint
of present day notions of the sentential and predicate
calculus. We shall consider these when we take up the
categories themselves.

85
 Transcendental Analytic

Book I

Analytic of Concepts
A further introductory paragraph disclaims the
intent or need in the present context of analyzing
particular concepts. A "logical treatment of concepts"
is not what is called for in a transcendental inquiry
despite the description of an "analytic of concepts."
Although we may reiterate our regret that an analy-
sis of the pure concepts was omitted from the Critique,
or its sequels, this is not to say that what Kant in-
tends to do in the analytic is labor lost. The study
of these concepts pursued "to their original seeds and
dispositions in the human understanding" deserves
every support. But it is artificial to separate from
one another the explicit analysis of concepts and the
study of their origin and function in the economy of
knowledge.

86

j
 Analytic of Concepts
Chapter I

The Clue to the Discovery of all Pure Concepts

of the Understanding

Still another introductory section repeats what has

been said several times, that the pure concepts of the
understanding are now to be collected and examined,
that they have a unity or connection deriving from the
understanding itself, and with the proper approach or
clue we may be certain that we have considered all of
them and thus accomplished the most important task of
a critique of pure reason.

87
 The Clue of the Discovery of
All Pure Concepts of the Understanding

Section 1

The Logical Employment of the Understanding

After what appears an endless round of prelimin-

a r i e s , we come at l a s t to grips with the main issue
of the C r i t i q u e , the exposition of the contribution
of the understanding to our a p r i o r i knowledge. The
turning point i s reached in two pages of unbelievably
compact and pregnant thought beginning at A68/B93.
They seem possessed of a force scarcely p a r a l l e l e d in
a l l of modern philosophy, but also of enormous d i f f i -
c u l t y , u n t i l a clue here and there enables everything
to f a l l into p l a c e . One should refer to these pages
in the further reading of the Critique again and again.
Since i t i s only a matter of some dozens of l i n e s ,
t h i s passage must be quoted e n t i r e so t h a t we can have
i t constantly before u s . The d i f f i c u l t y l i e s in the
thought i t s e l f , not in the phraseology. Kemp Smith's
t r a n s l a t i o n i s sound enough for the purposes. (I s h a l l
refer where necessary to the l i n e s as numbered.)

"The understanding has thus far been explained

merely negatively, as a non-sensible faculty
of knowledge. Now since without sensibility
we cannot have any intuition, understanding
cannot be a faculty of intuition. But be- 5
sides intuition there is no other mode of
knowledge except by means of concepts. The
knowledge yielded by understanding, or at
least by the human understanding, must there-
fore by means of concepts, and so is not in- 10
tuitive, but discursive. Whereas all intui-
tions, as sensible, rest on affections, con-
cepts rest of functions. By 'function' I
mean the unity of the act of bringing various
representations under one common represen- 15 i:
tation. Concepts a r e based on the sponta- '-
neity of thought, sensible intuitions on
the receptivity of impressions. Now the
only use which the understanding can make ;.,
of these concepts i s to judge by means of 20 j
them. Since no representation, save when j
i t i s an intuition, i s in immediate relation,
to an object, no concept i s ever related to
an object immediately, but to some other

88
representation of i t , be that other represen- 25
tation an intuition, or itself a concept.
Judgment is therefore the mediate knowledge
of an object, that i s , the representation
of a representation of it. In every judg-
ment there is a concept which holds of many 30
representations, and among them of a given
representation that is immediately related
to an object. Thus in judgment, 'all bodies
are divisible 1 , the concept of the divisible
applies to various other concepts, but is 35
here applied in particular to the concept
of body, and this concept again to certain
appearances that present themselves to u s .
These objects, therefore, are mediately
represented through the concept of divisi- 40
bility. Accordingly, all judgments are
functions of unity among our representa-
tions; instead of an immediate representa-
tion, a higher representation, which com-
prises the immediate representation and 45
various others, is used in knowing the
object, and thereby much possible knowledge
is collected into one. Now we can reduce
all acts of the understanding to judgments,
and the understanding may therefore be 50
represented as a faculty of judgment. For,
as stated above, the understanding is a
faculty of thought. Thought is knowledge
by means of concepts. But concepts, as
predicates of possible judgments, relate 55
to some representation of a not yet deter-
mined object. Thus the concept of body
means something, for instance, metal,
which can be known by means of that con-
cept. It is therefore a concept solely 60
in virtue of its comprehending other
representations, by means of which it can
relate to objects. It is therefore the
predicate of possible judgment, for instance,
'every metal is a body'. The functions of 65
the understanding can, therefore, be dis-
covered if we can give exhaustive state-
ment of the functions of unity in judg-
ments. That this can quite easily be done
will be shown in the next section." 70

89
 What has been said earlier regarding Kant's
"breakthrough" in directing the attention of philoso-
phers to sentences (propositions, judgments) may now
be doubly affirmed. It is the first great step away
from the material to the formal mode of speech. In
effect Kant is here asking what a sentence is and
showing us why the answer is all-important. Perhaps
we should devote a moment to the second question
before considering the first.

Sentences are important, all-important, because

for Kant what he calls experience (we have earlier
designated this phenomenal experience , E2) is through
and through conceptualized and, if we may coin the
terms, propositionalized or sententialized. To exper-
ience is to be able to assert propositions or to make
judgments. In every waking moment as we make our way
through personal or public space and time we are sotto
voce, as it were, uttering an endless series of propo-
sitions, identifying, classifying, relating, predicting.
There is virtually no such thing as finding ourselves
in an "alien" world: it is a world of appearances
"constructed" (in some sense: Kant will try to explain
it to us) out of bits of intuition that owe their
origin to things-themselves and of relations that are
"our own" creation: space, time, and concepts, both
pure and empirical.

Kant takes over the structuralistic epistemology

of simple and complex representations bequeathed by
Locke and Hume. We are on the one hand receptive (as
to the bits or materials that enter into experience)
and spontaneous (as to the ordering of this material
through concepts and judgments). In this section still
another pair of "antonyms" is added to matter and form,
receptivity and spontaneity, namely affections and
functions. In empirical intuition we are affected by
something, passively; but a concept is functional, that
is, it is a sign of activity and functioning. ( H ) We
can call a concept a functor. The role of such a
functor is to relate and synthesize. Concepts are
contributions of the mind: orderings, relatings,
classifyings, synthesizings are our own work. Among
concepts there are no such things as ready-mades.
This is a fundamental article of faith in Kant. We
shall recur to the term functor when we come to the
categories.

Kant tells us that the only use the understanding

can make of these concepts is to judge by means of
90
them; thus anticipating "the meaning of a word is its
use in a sentence" that has impressed itself so deeply
on recent thought. (18) One might add that our contem-
poraries might also benefit by seeing the problems
this thesis brings with it, as shown in the Critique.

The next step Kant takes is to say that if we can

understand what concepts and judgments are, thoroughly
'excogitating what we have manufactured these astonish-
ingly complex instruments for, we shall have gone a
long way toward explaining what experience, knowledge,
and indeed nature itself are. Only when we see that
the structure of sentences is what is decisive, can
we throw light on all these matters. This then takes
us back to our first question: what is a sentence
(judgment, proposition)? This too Kant endeavors to
explain in this intense pair of pages.

The terms judgment and understanding are sometimes

sharply distinct in Kant. When they are, understanding
means the employment of the intellect (to use a neutral
generic term that is here needful) to develop and state
the broadest theoretical formulations of knowledge or
science. All theory is thus under the care of the
understanding, particularly as it approaches the
generality of, let us say, the theory of gravitation
or mechanics in general, or in later times than Kant's,
theories about biological natural selection or electro-
magnetic phenomena. Judgment on the other hand is a
skill that points in the opposing direction, toward
the particular case rather than the general law. Here
one appeals to a general law, as being already deter-
mined and confirmed by the understanding, in order to
explain a particular instance as falling under the
law, for the sake of practical application, arbitrament,
counsel, discrimination, and the like. The distinction
is made more specific at the opening of the Analytic
of Principles. It is, however, more necessary at
the present juncture to note that whether one is
moving in the direction of theory or of specific appli-
cation, both of these faculties express themselves in
sentential form. (Kant's use of the term 'faculty'
though liberal is from the standpoint of modern psy-
chological criticism harmless). Kant expresses this
by saying that the understanding is a faculty of
judgment. ^ 50 '

The focus of the problem is now on judgment: to

experience, to know, to understand is to judge. We

91
now ask what judgment is. First of all, it is the
irreducible unit, the pound or penny of knowledge, or
we might also say, it is the cognitive molecule. In
the universe of knowledge there are no free atoms or
ions; they are all parts of molecules, or judgments.
Again, the only use we "can make of concepts is to
judge by means of them" ( 19 )- But we can say what the
atoms are, even if they do not occur alone; they are
distinguishable though not separable components of
judgments. These atoms are concepts.

We must now close in upon concepts. What does a

concept do? Its function, Kant says, is essentially
that of appearing as a predicate in a judgment (38).
Taken by itself it is, as Russell was later to say,
merely a form of a possible proposition, a proposition-
al function. "Concepts (are) predicates of possible
judgments" (54). Thus: "...is white," or "...loves
roses," etc.

This tells us something formally about concepts.

Their principal purpose is to appear as predicates,
not but what they may also at a suitable level of
abstraction appear as subjects: "Color is a quality,"
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness," "Time is money,"
etc. But these are theoretical manipulations quite
distinct in Kant's scheme from judging, where a sub-
stance appears as the subject and some property is
attributed to it in the predicate. (Kant's view of
substance still retains an Aristotelian flavor in
that it is a part of the nature of substance to appear
only as subject, never as predicate.
Can we not say more than this of concepts? In
addition to their formal use, as predicates, we can
also say that concepts are devices of synthesis (this
is explained in the Deduction in A ) : a judgment
is here called "a function of unity among our repre-
sentations" (41) . vfe may first look at Kant's account
of this and then see whether a simpler alternative to
it is possible, preserving the essence of what he
says. Kant's account is more complex than it needs to
be.

Kant supposes that in a judgment such as, all

bodies are divisible, we begin with actual bodies:
* * *. Then the subject term 'bodies' in some sense
represents these bodies. The predicate term relates
to, applies to (bezogen) the subject term, and thus,
he says, the actual bodies are indirectly represented

92

i
(werden mittelbar vorgestellt) by the predicate.
Perhaps thus:
'divisibles -> 'bodies' -> * * *
Asserting the proposition in question (it is a "func-
tion of unity") is in some way to bind together and
give a unique cohesion to many particulars. '41;

But this is obviously not very satisfactory and

what Kant says in the last part of the paragraph sug-
gests the following, which, thought it adds some logi-
cal notions not used by him, is, I think, compatible
with his account. Seeing that precisely what a concept
is and does will be worked out in the Deduction, we may
for the time being content ourselves with saying that a
concept (that is, a predicative term) has the function
of associating an aggregate of particulars or of clas-
ses of them. Thus the concept 'divisible' is here to
be thought of as a specification of a number of proper-
ties the possession of which entitles something to be
called a divisible. The sentence 'All bodies are
divisible1 is now taken extensionally as saying that all
all of the bodies are numbered among the divisibles.
Thus in an old-style Venn diagram, the class of the di-
visibles comprises the bodies and possibly other di-
visibles also, and the judgment asserting this has now
brought a measure of order (or unity as Kant says) into
the situation by detecting a way of connecting bodies
with other divisibles in a larger group, the divisibles.
(39)

Concepts thus function as synthesizers, "functors" of

unity, but only in judgments, and there they operate
(in the cases under consideration) as predicates. We
now see that the predicate is a class that may include
other possible particulars and assimilates the parti-
culars comprised under the subject. All of this is
concerned only with the extension of the terms: Kant
is talking only about propositions of physics that may
be so construed.

To judge is to realize or perfect this unification

or assimilation. To use the copula 'is', Kant says

93
later on, is to say that we are now distinguishing an
objective from a mere subjective (associational) unity
of representations (B142). This is an immense advance
over Hume who scarcely distinguished assertion from
the association of ideas.

Kant now offers another example, which however

is really not well chosen: ein jedes Metall ist ein
Krper.- This has to be interpreted (I do not mean
translated) "every piece of metal is a body," or some-
thing on this order, for surely it is neither fact nor
good grammar, in English or German, to say "gold is a
body," "platinum is a body/' etc. Kant would have
made his point more effectively had he said, for ex-
ample, "every animal is a body." (Of course, this is
a minor objection.)

But now we must come to the fulfillment of what

this account of judgment promised. If we can see in
general how judging, by means of concepts, brings
order or unity into experience, the next step is to
study judgment itself in its varied forms. This may
reveal to us a variety of devices of unification,
depending upon the type of judgment. And since, as
we said at the outset, experience is judging we shall
hereby be in a position to unpack all the other com-
ponents of this complex notion.

Kant is the first philosopher to assert that the

way that philosophers can best help us to understand
the world is to hold up to the light the kinds of
things we say about it. He was in fact so emphatic
about this, we may say that he thought it the only
way we would ever understand it. The clue to the
problem is language itself. Kant loses not an instant
after these two momentous pages to turn to a study of
the structure of language. Alas, his study of it is
too sketchy and superficial to justify the conclusions
he draws from it. One hastens to add that this is
largely owing to the moribund state of logic and
linguistics in his day. There are also momentous
philosophical difficulties. )

94
 The Clue to the Discovery of all Pure Concepts
of the Understanding
Section 2
915
The Logical Function of the Understanding in Judgments

Having shown why the proposition or judgment must

be regarded as the fundamental unit of experience,
Kant now proceeds to examine the form which proposi-
tions take. We shall not pause long over the actual
classification despite the fact that the shape of
things to come in the Critique is determined by it.
No part of the Critique is in greater need of revision
than this. It is, however, pointless to try to revise
it. It is much more important for us to look at our
present thought on the subject of the forms of sen-
tences and to ask how matters stand on their "categorial
presuppositions," having learned all we could from
Kant. In a sense this is constantly being done at
the present time. Kant is lost sight of because his
thought has entered into the fabric of philosophical
practice. We shall make a few suggestions of revision
simply to put the categories into a new light.

The actual derivation of the Kantian classifica-

tion has been explored by various scholars. A recent
one is that of one of Kant's most hostile critics,
Magdalena Aebi (Kant's Begrndung der Deutschen
Philosophie, Basel, 1947). One may find precedents
in Aristotle and in later medieval and early modern
logicians, but these are of no great relevance. What
Kant has in mind is in this instance perfectly clear.
(As a handy way of distinguishing the table of judg-
ments in 9 from the table of categories in 10 we
shall call the first "Screed I" and the second "Screed
II." Particular forms or categories may then be
marked 1-1, II-1, etc.)
Screed I suggests, though Kant thinks these
details needn't be gone into, that propositions are,
as to quantity, either universal, particular, or
singular, and, as to quality, either affirmative,
negative, or infinite, and as to relation, either
categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive, and, as to
modality, either problematic, assertoric, or apodeictic.
With some qualifications to be explained later, we may
say that each proposition must have one and only one
of three characters under each of the four classes.
95
 Screed I Screed II

Table of Judgments Table of Categories

Quantity

I - 1 Universal II - 1 Unity
I - 2 Particular II - 2 Plurality
I - 3 Singular II - 3 Totality
Quality

I - 4 Affirmative II - 4 Reality
I - 5 Negative II - 5 Negation
I - 6 Infinity II - 6 Limitation
Relation

I - 7 Categorical II - 7 Inherence-
I - 8 Hypothetical Subsistence
I - 9 Disjunctive II - 8 Causality-
Dependence
II - 9 Community
Modality

I - 10 Problematic II - 10 Possibility-
I - 11Assertoric Impossibil-
I - 12Apodeictic ity
II - 11 Existence-
Non-exist-
ence
I I T- 12 Necessity-
Contingency

96
 Turning first to Screed I we can illustrate its
classifications with the following examples:

1-1 All S is P. 1-7 All S is P, or simply,

S is P.
1-2 Some S is P. 1-8 If S is P, T is Q
1-3 a is P. 1-9 Either S is P, or T is
Q.
1-4 All S is P. 1-10 S may be P.
1-5 No S is P. 1-11 S is P, in fact.
1-6 All S is non-P. 1-12 Necessarily, S is P.
But it is obvious that this is little more than a
sketch of some of the possibilities. 1-1, for example,
specifies only that a proposition be affirmative, but
if so, then it may also be Some S is P, Some S may be
P, S is necessarily P, and so on. With leisure one
could explore a good many other possibilities, but
perhaps not very profitably.

When we come to Screed II we may then expect

that the categories which organize experience and which
are, as it were, being invoked in particular experien-
ces or Erkenntnisse, are, depending upon what has
been asserted, similarly determined. Thus a proposi-
tion negatively but universally generalizing some
causal fact but only as a possibility, will normally
have been expressed by a proposition formally classi-
fiable under 1-1, 1-5, 1-8, 1-10. ("Unity" in II-1
may loosely be read "Universality" for the moment.)
No doubt there are other ways of interpreting the
organization of the screeds, but this- one seems the
most intelligible from the present standpoint.

It is evident that Kant's program of tracking

down the a priori concepts in experience by observing
the forms of language makes many assumptions. Consider
the following. If the forms are truly empty, they can
scarcely even be read. If we read 1-8 as "If p, then
q", we are already offering an application or inter-
pretation of the form, saying at least that some
assertion depends in some way upon some other asser-
tion; but this already places a limit upon the form,
so that it is not a truly uninterpreted form. On the
other hand, if we cannot even read the forms we do not
know what possible relevance they can have as clues to
the pure concepts. The latter is a serious or even
fatal issue for Kant, for he proposes to learn some-
thing about experience and scientific thought from
inspecting the forms. But if he cannot even read the

97
the forms . . . ? '

Kant certainly does not wish to say that every

if-then proposition is about a causal event, where
we may be saying that the if-event preceded the then-
event, etc. He knows that we also use this form when
we want to cite a reason for something: "If A took
the money, A was desperate": taking the money is not
necessarily the cause of A's desperation.

Or again, take, "Necessarily, P." Theologians

have said, "Necessarily, God exists," or physicists,
"Necessarily, no velocity exceeds c," perhaps in the
same sense, perhaps not. In Screed II Kant is con-
cerned with assertions having the unique kind of
necessity ascribable to natural laws. (See his dis-
cussion of the third Postulate of Empirical Thought --
the name is carefully chosen for the interpretation
of "Necessarily, P," as it appears in science, at
A226/B279 ff.) But he knows also that, "Necessarily,
Barbara," a law of logic, has an exemplification in
1-12 though not in 11-12. Thus he cannot wish to say
that every instance of 1-12 is an instance of 11-12,
inferring the nature of scientific thought from lan-
guage, that is, from this form alone.

Our only hope or understanding the derivations

is to take the whole thing in a much looser manner
than Kant desires. It may prove to be much less than
the deduction he describes the derivation of Screed II
from Screed I to be (that is, a "metaphysical deduc-
tion", see 26 below). How can it be a deduction, we
may ask, when from mere uninterpreted forms of judgment
nothing follows about empirical thought: if anything
can be learned, must we not attend to more than mere
forms? Rather than pursuing a deduction, the question
should be, to what uses do we put the various forms of
judgment, taking these to be something much less
formal than what we would mean by 'uninterpreted
forms.' It is too much to say that from Kant's point
of view he ought to have begun with Screed II instead
of trying to arrive at it through I for then he would
really not have needed I at all. I think there is
something valuable to be learned from Kant's approach
although it needs to be modified drastically. It is
really a question of resorting to a different but
still altogether Kantian approach: instead of the
method of atomistic synthesis, one should adopt a
method of reductive or diremptive analysis, of
"unpacking."

98
 The approach of the Prolegomena is often dismissed
as a failure. To the contrary, I believe it offers a
real solution. Kant begins with a proposition or judg-
ment of experience, as he calls it, and in full cogni-
zance of what it says, thinks out, ex-cogitates in a
very particular way, not merely what it means (this is
in a familiar way obvious), but rather asks himself
what sources of thought and experience must be drawn
upon to interpret it and establish its cognitive value
(be it truth-falsity, or some other).

"In the first place we must state that, while all

judgments of experience are empirical (that is,
have their ground in immediate sense-perception),
all empirical judgments are not judgments of
experience; but, besides the empirical, and in
general besides what is given to the sensuous in-
tuition, special concepts must yet be superadded-
concepts which have their origin wholly a priori
in the pure understanding, and under which every
perception must be first of all subsumed and then
by their means changed into experience.

"Empirical judgments, so far as they have object-

ive validity, are judgments of experience, but
those which are only subjectively valid I name
mere judgments of perception. The latter require
no pure concept of the understanding, but only
the logical connection of perception in a thinking
subject. But the former always require, besides
the representation of the sensuous intuition,
special concepts originally begotten in the under-
standing, which make possible the objective
validity of the judgment of experience...

"As an example, we may take the following: 'When

the sun shines on the stone, it grows warm.' This
judgment, however often I and others may have per-
ceived it, is a mere judgment of perception and
contains no necessity; perceptions are only usual-
ly conjoined in this manner. But if I say, 'The
sun warms the stone', I add to the perception a
concept of the understanding; namely, that of
cause, which necessarily connects with the con-
cept of sunshine that of hear, and the synthetical
judgment becomes of necessity universally valid,
namely, objective, and is converted from a percep-
tion into experience." (Prolegomena, 18, 20.)

99
Here we see Kant's diremptive method at work. In a
proposition such as "air is elastic" (that is, it
expands), the method uncovers the facts that certain
judgments of perception are relevant to this (for ex-
ample, in a toy balloon I observe the distention of
the bag itself, its tautness, the pressure on my hand
when I remove the cap, and so o n ) , that I am speaking
of something occupying space and very likely a stretch
of time, that a certain passing state is at hand, that
that which the state qualifies may qualify several
states successively, and so on. I also observe that
the subject and the predicate of the sentence in
question are employed in a certain manner to express
all of this.

This method only lays bare the components of the

fact (one must beware of the mechanical metaphor
here), but of course that is its sole purpose. The
task which Kant undertakes in the Transcendental
Deduction is yet to be done, tracing each of the
"components" to its source or origin, the rules of its
application, and so on.

In the example "when the sun shines on the stone,

it grows warm," we have two subjects (or substances)
qualified by states, an implied duration, a relation
between them identified as causal, and so on.

We learn none of this by simply scrutinizing

"S is P 1 , or "if S is P, T is Q 1 , ever more sharply
but only by close study of what a fact is and what
a sentence is and of the purpose that each serves.
The problem with the diremptive method is that there
is no way one can readily see to terminate the task,
how one can be certain that all such ingredient notions
as space, time, substance-state, cause-effect, possi-
bility, and so on have been tallied up. If that is
so, it only means that one cannot speak in full a
priori confidence about the world -- a situation we
ought accept with what grace we can command.

Here the method of the Critique, the so-called

Metaphysical Deduction, seeks to offer an alternative.
It hopes to cut short the endless way toward identi-
fying the contribution of the understanding to experi-
ence and to science. In the Prolegomena there is the
suspicion that the trail must be blazed step by step.
The Metaphysical Deduction by contrast hopes to

1 00

I
accomplish it all at once. The difficulty is that mere
forms like Screed I tell us so little. Are "air is
elastic" and "iron is malleable" the same kind of
fact or not? Are the same categories involved in
both and is it because they have the same "form of
judgment?" Is "all nitrates are soluble in water"
or "cinnabar is red" different from these or not? Are
we not well advised to explore a range of facts before
we say what enters into the act of asserting them?

The forms of judgment explored, expounded, and

systematized by formal logic are in Kant's opinion
the best guide to the kinds of fact there are and
to the kind of stance we take toward factual content.
For example, we may formulate the following for him.
(One would prefer Kant's having done so.)

1. Universal propositions have the purpose of

uniting many different representations under
a class designated by a predicative term.
3. Singular propositions have the purpose of
relating an individual to a class designated
by a predicative term.
5. Negative propositions have the purpose of
saying that a designated stretch of space
and of time is occupied by nothing of a
specified description.

7. Categorical propositions have the purpose

of affirming that some continuant in time
has a certain property or is in a certain
state at a given time.

8. Hypothetical propositions have the purpose

of affirming a relation of dependence of
some continuant, or some state or property
of some continuant, upon some other.

12. Some substance, event, or process is entirely

determined in terms of empirical laws.

These show us the uses to which propositions are put

when they are employed to talk about events and pro-
cesses in space and time. But the point must be made
that we know none of this from the bare forms (truly
bare), and that if we take account of the content of
the propositions, then we must be open to instruction
by the facts. In other words, we have not in fact
learned nor can we learn thing-and -property, causation,
1 01
possibility and the rest of these notions from the
forms alone. Therefore Screed I can at most hint at
what we have in Screed II and then only because we
have independently reflected upon facts.

It should be pointed out that Kant's programmatic

reliance upon formal logic as an architectonic model
makes a serious error in not distinguishing between
the apodeictic certainty of the formulae of logic, of
analytic a priori truths, and the much less certain
character of the dodecuple division of propositional
types. The formulae are no less true now than they
were in the previous Aristotelian framework. The
dodecuple division has disappeared, but one need only
reflect on the revisions that have been made in
modern logic to see that many if not all of the notions
Kant mentions in his division find a new place or
different interpretations as a result the theory of
quantification, of classes, relations, identity, des-
criptions, of modal logic and so on. What one can
learn from Kant in this is that questions analogous to
those which he raised using the classical logic as
the model of language may be just as appropriate if
not imperative for a logic of quite a different order.
One might well call this kind of inquiry metaphysical
in the same sense in which Kant's Analytic is.

A single very particular example of the conse-

quences of a revision in logical categories may be
cited for the forms I - 7,8,9. Kant hangs a number of
for him momentous issues on the division into cate-
gorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive forms. It is
not just II-7, 8, 9 that depend upon it but also, for
example, the three divisions of the Transcendental
Dialectic, the transcendentally pseudological arguments
in the Paralogisms, the Antinomies, and the Ideal of
Pure Reason.

Kant recognizes properly that there is an impor-

tant difference between 1-7 and 1-8, 1-9 in that the
first (assuming it to be a monadic sentence) is a
relation between two concepts (subject and predicate),
while of the latter the first is a relation between
two propositions and the second a relation among two
or more propositions. Leaving aside 1-7, we may ask
whether 1-8 and 1-9 have the ultimacy or irreducibility
Kant attributes to them and can serve for the excogi-
tation of II-8 and II-9. Of course, we are not taxing
Kant with failure to uncover the truth-function but
merely seeking to show that an alternative scheme to

1 02
h i s j u d g m e n t s of r e l a t i o n t h a t m o d e r n l o g i c h a s e s -
tablished necessarily puts categories I I - 8 , 9
( c a u s a l i t y and c o m m u n i t y ) i n t o an a l t o g e t h e r d i f f e r e n t
light.

F o r e x a m p l e , R u s s e l l and W h i t e h e a d , u s i n g the
n o t i o n s of p r o p o s i t i o n , n e g a t i o n , and d i s j u n c t i o n as
b a s i c d e r i v e the e n t i r e s e n t e n t i a l c a l c u l u s from i t .
If K a n t had had t h i s l o g i c a l s c h e m e at h a n d h i s c h o i c e
of c a t e g o r i e s w o u l d p r e s u m a b l y h a v e r e f l e c t e d it and
a v e r y d i f f e r e n t k i n d of C r i t i q u e w o u l d be the r e s u l t .
W h e n o n e c o n s i d e r s n e x t the s i m p l i f i c a t i o n i n t r o d u c e d
by S h e f f e r ' s s t r o k e - f u n c t i o n for the l o g i c a l n o t i o n
of i n c o m p a t i b i l i t y , r e p l a c i n g n e g a t i o n and d i s j u n c t i o n ,
s t i l l a n o t h e r r e v i s i o n of c a t e g o r i e s w o u l d a p p e a r to
be in o r d e r .

M o r e o v e r , one can a l s o go in the o p p o s i t e d i r e c -

tion. T h e r e are s i x t e e n d i s t i n c t t r u t h - f u n c t i o n a l
c o m b i n a t i o n s of two v a r i a b l e s w h i c h a K a n t i a n p h i l o s o -
p h e r m i g h t h a v e set up and u s e d as the b a s i s for
categories. The o n e s t h a t are r e a d i l y r e n d e r e d by
f a m i l i a r t e r m s in E n g l i s h are t h e s e :

1. Con]unction: p and q
2. Implication: if p , t h e n q
3. Strong Dis-
junction : e i t h e r p or q, b u t n o t both
4. Weak D i s -
junction : p and/or q
5. Joint Denial : neither p nor q
6. Equivalence: if and o n l y if p then q

T h e s e and the ten o t h e r r a t h e r m o r e n a m e l e s s

p o s s i b i l i t i e s a r e e a s i l y r e n d e r e d in t e r m s of R u s s e l l
and W h i t e h e a d ' s p r o p o s i t i o n , n e g a t i o n , and d i s j u n c t i o n .
B u t if some f i c t i o n a l p h i l o s o p h e r , P s e u d o - K a n t , had
k n o w n n o t h i n g of t h e s e r e d u c t i o n s , he m i g h t h a v e r e -
g a r d e d all of t h e m as u l t i m a t e and b a s e d some s i x t e e n
r e l a t i o n a l c a t e g o r i e s on the lot of t h e m . (One m a y
r e a d i l y i d e n t i f y t h e m in W i t t g e n s t e i n ' s T r a c t a t u s ,
5.101). ~

It is u n n e c e s s a r y to l a b o r the p o i n t t h a t the
c h o i c e of " f o r m s " h e r e is a l l i m p o r t a n t . It w a s so
for K a n t . But a l s o , a s i m i l a r p r o b l e m can be c o n -
jured up for l o g i c and l a n g u a g e in its p r e s e n t s t a t e .

1 03
 Kant appends comments on each of the four classes
of judgments. We may be brief with these since as
already remarked drastic revisions would in any event
have to be made in the table to square it with current
thought.

ad 1. Kant remarks on the fact that in the tra-

ditional logic the singular judgment (e.g. "Socrates
is a man") functions in some essential respects like
the universal proposition. Thus the subject term
is treated as "distributed." On the other hand, says
Kant, one must distinguish the two, since the indi-
vidual is to the universal as unity to infinity.
Certainly Kant's distinction is endorsed in modern
logic, but the role of proper names and definite des-
criptions is much more complex than the old syllogistic
provides for.

Kant's general philosophical point concerns the

derivation of a category from 1-3. Here the result
is baffling because II-3 is totality, which has no
apparent kinship with 1-3. Nothing further is heard
in the Critique about totality or, in this sense, about
singular judgment. The Schematism (A137/B176 ff.)
which attempts to define in intuitional terms or at
least to establish a link between the doctrine of
the categories and the Aesthetic mentions all the
categories except this one. The question of progres-
sing from 1-3 to II-3 is in this instance abandoned.
The Axioms of Intuition make no mention of totality
.i
although nominally they are based upon II-1, 2, 3,
and thus 1-1, 2, 3.

That there is more to this question than first

meets the eye is readily apparent when we look at
Kant's other works. Recently Michael Frede and Lorenz
Kruger have reviewed the question of the coordination
of the two screeds in "ber die Zuordnung der
Quantitten des Urteils und der Kategorien der Grosse
bei Kant," Kant-Studien, 61-1, 1970, pp. 28-49.
The fact is that two different coordinations are
possible and are in fact both mentioned by Kant.
B .. A
1-1 Universal II-1 Unity I -1 II-3
1-2 Particular II-2 Plurality I -2 II-2
1-3 Singular II-3 Totality I -3 II-l

B is the coordination of the first and second editions

of the Critique and of the text of the Prolegomena.
A is the coordination of the footnote to 20 in the

1 04
Prolegomena and of several of Kant's lecture manu-
scripts. Prof. Frede and his colleague show why
A should be regarded as corresponding to Kant's real
intentions in this matter, that is, the category of
unity to the singular, not the universal, judgment,
and totality to the universal, not the singular judg-
ment. This interpretation brings Kant more closely
into line with modern logic.

ad. 2 The assimilation of the infinite predicate

(e.g. "The soul is non-mortal") to the affirmative
judgment is acceptable so far as syllogistic form is
concerned. But no further development appears beyond
II-6 (Limitation)which is in effect explained here
rather than in II. No further mention appears of the
infinite judgment in the Schematism or in the Anti-
cipations of Perception (A166/B207) which are ostensi-
bly based upon II-4, 5, 6.

ad. 3 The division of the relation of judgments

into the categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive
has already been gone into at some length. It is
interesting to note that Kant sees disjunction as
creating a logical sum or union of elements distinct
in themselves. But the derivation of II-9, community,
from 1-9 is not convincing. Would not the notion of
conjunction, the logical product, have been more
appropriate as a source for the idea of community?
The world would then be the conjunction of facts,
"everything that is the case." Kant seems to have
grasped the notion of logical sum or union correctly
but what he needs to derive community is more nearly
the logical product.
No hint is here given of the use of the hypothe-
tical proposition in formulating causal facts nor of
the categorical in making assertions about substances
and their properties. In this instance the metaphy-
sical "deduction" fails to point the way to the
categories.

ad. 4 Virtually everything Kant says must puzzle

us in 4. We are now told that unlike quantity,
quality, and relation, modalities contribute nothing
to the content of judgments. But from the first we
have been treating only the form of judgment,
jJLg_tracting from all content (B96) . Either Kant has
incredibly forgotten this program or 'content' must
nave a somewhat different or much looser meaning at
point.

L 1 05
 Second, Kant fails to concentrate on the nature
of these functions of judgment themselves. To explain
what the three modal characters of propositions are,
Kant says, nothing more than that in assertoric
propositions, the affirmation or negation (as the
case may be) is set forth as being true; in the pro-
blematic it is called optional (beliebig), scarcely
an apt characterization since the question of truth
is not left to our option but is rather put in abey-
ance; in the apodeictic it is said to be necessary.
But instead of explicating optional . true , and neces-
sary , and showing how these qualifiers may affect any
proposition, universal, particular, singular, affir-
mative, negative, infinite, categorical, hypothetical,
and disjunctive, he limits the application to the
last three in a very particular manner. Thus in the
hypothetical judgment he believes the apodosis is
problematically asserted, the protasis assertorically.
This ignores the fact that the proposition is asserted
as a whole. It should more nearly be said that the
protasis is not asserted at all and that the apodosis
is problematically asserted only on the condition of
the protasis. We must be able to consider the propo-
sition as a whole to be true or false and as necessar-
ily or only problematically so. Instead, Kant assimi-
lates the hypothetical and disjunctive judgment to the
problematic, or perhaps better, problematic character
pertains only to hypothetical and disjunctive judgments.
But if it were simply a trait of these types there
would scarcely be any need to have separate classifi-
cations for them under Relation and Modality.

What might have been a better alternative than

this? Kant might have simply singled out three modal
operators, "Possibly (p) " , "Necessarily (p) " ,
"Assertedly (p)", and then gone on to ask what a priori
modes of thought are presupposed when p is some judg-
ment of experience or proposition of, let us say,
physics. This would then lead him directly to the
categories, if anything would, and the forms would
be true clues to their discovery. Aristotle's
treatment of modal operators had already provided a
clear precedent, which Kant might more profitably
have followed (De Interp. 21 a 35 ff).

It is hard to resist the charge of mere game-

playing regarding the last dozen or more lines of 4
which try to link the three modalities with the three
propositions of the hypothetical syllogism, where
major, minor, and conclusion are assimilated

1 06
respectively to the problematic, assertoric and
apodeictic modes. (Further development of this sort
of "analogizing" is found in the introductory sec-
tions A and B to the Dialectic, A299/B355 ff.)

107
 The Clue to the Discovery of all Pure
Concepts of the Understanding

Section 3
10

The Pure Concepts of the Understanding or

Categories j,j;
!':

One may well prepare himself by turning back to

Section 1 at A68/B93 since the present section in a :
sense continues the analysis begun there. ^The purpose
of the present section is to show what is involved in
synthesis, both as process and and as product. In
Section 1 synthesis was found to be the inherent pur-
pose of judgement, of the capacity ot express our
experience sententially. It involves first, a multi-
plicity or manifold of elements, of data in a basic
framework of space and time; second, the elements
must be "gone through, taken up, and connected" with
the aid of imagination, that is, what is absent
(either past or elsewhere) must be made present; ana
third, a unity must be lent to these data. A multi-
plicity of representations must be put together and ,
held together in one act of knowledge.

Kant believes that in some original sense or

on some original level representations are separately
and distinctly presented and a process of connecting
simple ideas into complex ideas transpires (A 99).
As a result of the synthesizing process we arrive at
the ordinary objects particularly of vision., Only
when we arrive at this result can we begin to speak of
experience, of knowledge. The question is, through
what instruments, what functors of synthesis do we
arrive at the end or result? <

The process of synthesizing, Kant says here, is

a "blind but indispensable function of the soul."
At its most primitive level it is merely the capacity
to associate and reproduce, to make present what is
absent or distant in time or space.J This is precisely
the mind's capacity of imagination'. But our imagin-
ation is not simply held in a lockstep with the past
experience, as we may fancy is the case with our

108
animal cousins. Our imaginations are selective or
productive, not merely reproductive. The device by
which our selection is organized, so that we avoid
a mere mechanical revival of every odd thing that
has happened to attach itself to a given representation
in past experience, is the unique instrument of the
understanding or intellect -- the concept., A concept
is inherently a scheme of selection: it is a rule
uniting traits a...z and associating a name to the
union. Such a selective device enables us to scan
experience, discard what is irrelevant, and retain
what is conforming. Unless such a functor is at work,
we cannot speak of experience: the dog or horse can
be conditioned in certain ways and his response
approaches, at some distance, such selective devices.
But he cannot carry this very far, or he could orga-
nize his thoughts, devise language, develop experience,
and so learn to command his environment more effect-
ively (as this is seen from our standpoint). We see
comparable results with those who are senile or in-
tellectually subnormal: here the imagination runs in
ruts; the conceptual apparatus that guides,, develops,
and selects, bringing past experience to bear upon
the present, is defectivej

In order to emphasize the dramatic difference

that the concept makes in this situation, Kant now
resorts to a phrase that is as anomalous in German
as it is in English. What is needed or what transpires
in this "higher synthesis" is "to bring the synthesis
to concepts", die Synthese auf Begriffe zu bringen.
It is only when synthesis has broken through the
barrier and devised for itself this functor of
selection, the concept, that one can speak of experi-
ence. Any concept is such a device. It brings order
among our representations. It introduces in one
word, necessity. Every concept does this. For when
I recognize something as a cat, a typewriter, a planet,
and so on, I have for the moment satisfied myself that
some particular K has all of the traits that are
necessary to its being a K. It does not mean that
one part of K is necessarily connected with some other
part of K (the front and hind paws of the cat), but
that I have found K here and now to conform to my
notion of a cat: it has all the necessary or defining
traits of a cat, or at least an apparent sufficiency
to satisfy me. It makes little difference that I
may be hard put to state accurately the defining
traits of a cat -- this is true of most of the concepts
that I manage somehow to use without being able to

109
analyze them.
Kant's meaning is clear. I must be able to
organize, to synthesize my representations by means
of concepts if there is to be any meaning to my
experience. Experience is governed by rules, and
the rules are of my own devising. (Again this "my
own" is purely paradigmatic, as remarked before).
Kant goes even further. There is really no line that
can be drawn between empirical concepts and what we
call laws of nature. In view of this, we must in the
end regard the very laws of nature as rules. This
is probably not as startling as it sounds at first.
But the plausibility of it must not be judged before
we come to the end of the Analytic.

If this is what Kant means by 'bringing the

synthesis to concepts' we must also ask how we know
how to devise concepts. ( We need rules for devising
rule s. This is a possible interpretation of what
Kant means by categories at least the most important
of them, the categories of relation, which set forth
what is meant by obj ects in nature, continuous
processes , and the system of nature as a whole in space
and time. These are the categories that show us how
necessity is exhibited in the scientific account of
nature. The other categories can be explained in
other ways. There may be no one way in which they
can all be explained. We must draw upon the resources
of both the Analytic of Concepts and of Principles for
this. I will show what I mean in a single case,
leaving the other categories until we come to them.

There are three things to consider here: (1) the

elementary fact (of the limitless number of these let
us use Kant's own example, the elasticity of the air);
(2) the monadic sentence (this is 1-7, the categorical
sentence); (3) the category of inherence and sub-
sistence (II-7). Kant supposes that in what he calls
the Metaphysical Deduction, or identification, of a
category, we proceed from (2) to (3). But (2) una-
dorned can tell us nothing -- if it is sufficiently
unadorned it is a mere smudge on paper. The fact is
to learn anything at all about language or meta-
physics we must suppose that we already have a great
number of elementary facts expressed in some such
way as 'air is elastic' is expressed. Only through
thought about (1) may we at length arrive at (3),
devising the notions of thing and property (substance
and accident, subsistence and inherence). Only after
we have a command of these do we proceed to (2).
110
We see that the term 'air' serves one purpose, 'elastic'
or 'is elastic1 another. We have learned to identify
the monadic sentence (categorical proposition).
I think Kant might accept the account so far. It
merely sketches out the stages of our grammatical and
philosophical learning. He now wishes to contrast
this "genetic" account with another one that shows
what must be prior here in principle and what is de-
rived from it. What comes first is not (1) but the
capacity of mind marked by (3). The mind must first
of all be capable of organizing its sense-information
(but not in any sort of system learned from sense) in
such a way that it discriminates a relatively perma-
nent body from the body's changes of state (qualities,
properties). Given the capacity to make this dis-
crimination it organizes its sense-information, employ-
ing for the purpose the monadic sentence (2) which in
public and systematic manner clearly exhibits the
inherent and the subsistent, or at least enables it
to be understood. The parts of (2) and (3) are corre-
lated with each other: subject and substance, predi-
cate and property. All of this has transpired for
all persons in principle, but most of us are aware only
of (1), a limitless number of bits of information.

The category (3) may now be seen to be a rule (a)

for devising rules (b). In this instance we have
devised (a) the distinction between inherents and sub-
sistents which we then put into effect when we devise
the generalization (b) that air has the property of
elasticity. Why? I think no answer can be found
except the effect of using the rule : it enables us
to defeat the perpetual and total perishing of experi-
ence as time passes. But if anything outside us
prompted us to devise the rule to conform to it we
would not be prescribing a rule for experience but con-
forming ourselves to it. As it stands then the rule
tells us one way of organizing experience. Once
suitable language is devised particular rules can be
formulated: "air is elastic", "iron is malleable",
and also particular cases, "the Kaaba is black", "the
Parthenon is crumbling."

I think Kant has no answer to the question we

have raised as to why this system of rules is adopted.
The clue (2) he cites is ineffective since the form
must be empty and void of any significance; it thus
cannot lead us to (3) or to anything else. On the
other hand, Kant has closed out any thing-itself as the
111
model to which the scheme must conform. This leaves
only (1) itself. But alternatives to (2) and (3)
to explain (1) are certainly conceivable: and other
philosophies testify to the fact. At the same time,
even allowing for alternatives, the Kantian system
does offer one way to account for (1).
The main contribution of this section is to under-
score and to advance the point made in Section 1 j
(just preceding 9), that there must be concepts of j
things and processes in order for there to be experi- i
;
ence. The manifold of intuitions must be held to-
gether, and for this there must not only be psychologi-
cal mechanisms of association but also concepts which
are rules for the selective unification of traits under
class names. Thus synthesis must be brought up to
the level of conceptualization. This is how necessity
makes its way into experience. What Kant calls "pure
concepts of experience" are higher order rules to the
effect that experience must be organized by discri-
minating (for example) inherents and continuants in
experience. Such a rule is imposed in order to keep
experience from crumbling or perishing at every moment.
Higher order rules are in turn put into effect by the
invention of actual sentences (2). In these, specific
inherents (e.g., elasticity) are expressed as predi-
cates, and subsistents (e.g., air) as subjects. The
result (1) is an asserted elementary fact (e.g., what
is asserted in'air is elastic.')

The order of priority according to Kant is (3),

then (2) , then (1) . (3) Having the higher order rule
(we organize experience in the system: Inherents-
Subsistents), (2) we devise a form of judgment (the
monadic sentence) (1) to express a fact: the category
determines the form of judgment and the judgment
determines the fact through the understanding's
unique function of synthesis. The order of analysis
is the reverse of this: (1) take note of an elementary
fact; (2) discriminate the form of the judgment
expressing the fact; (3) excogitate the categorial
rule being expressed by the form.

My criticism of this is that we arrive at (2)

from (1) only by first coming to understand (3) .
Logical or grammatical distinctions presuppose the
metaphysical distinctions. We would not in 'air is
elastic' devise the distinction between 'air' as the
subject and "elastic1 as the predicate unless we first
commanded the notions of subsistents and inherents:
112
that is, we call 'air' the subject because it signifies
the subsistent and 'elastic' the predicate because it
signifies an inherent or a property of the subsistent.
The revised order of analysis would be (1), then (3),
then (2).

But my criticism is stronger than that. I regard

(2) and (3) as hypothetical constructs to explain (1).
What is here cited by Kant as (2) and (3), that is,
the logical-grammatical form and the categorical
structure is one way in which to make philosophically
intelligible to ourselves what kind of "entity" a fact
(1) is. (For the present context only, we have en-
dorsed Kant's version of (2) and (3) and demurred only
at the order.) But there are other systems of philo-
sophical explanation. Kant believes that in (3) he
has truly laid bare the ultimate intellectual structure
of all rational beings. I submit that what he has
done is to base his view of this structure on the for-
tuitous structure of our language. But one may not
deny that his view does set forth one view in stimu-
lating fashion.

The revision of the order of analysis brings with

it not a revision of Kant's order of priority but calls
the latter itself into question. The revised order
of analysis, in my opinion, suffices.

We have mentioned Descartes previously and must

now recall him once more as we come to Screed II,
the "pure concepts of the understanding." In speaking
of his apprehension of the ball of wax and its several
qualities in virtually all of the sense-modalities,
Descartes had concluded in the Second Meditation that
"it is now manifest to me that...bodies are not
properly speaking known by the senses or by the faculty
of imagination, but by the understanding only, and...
they are not known from the fact that they are seen
or touched, but only because they are understood."
Kant does not agree that somehow, as the
Leibnizians thought, we grasp the ball of wax con-
fusedly through the senses and distinctly through
the intellect. He holds that if we speak of knowledge
both intellect and senses are active, the one devising
concepts and the other receiving sensible intuitions.
When we ask after the source of the intuitions we
learn that the senses are stirred into activity by
things themselves. But when we ask after the source
of our concepts we must look to the understanding.

113
 His approach then differs from his predecessors'
in that he holds knowledge to involve both the
understanding and intuition: there is no knowledge
that can come solely through the understanding. Nor
does he concede that there is confused knowledge
arising from the senses and clear and distinct know-
ledge from the understanding. But what he does concede
to Descartes (and to Locke who is somewhat more reluc-
tant about substance) is that knowledge about such a
thing as a ball of wax involves a notion of substance
and that this notion has not been and can never be
learned through the senses. The idea of a subsistent
in which passing properties, states, and events inhere
is a creation of the understanding. This same under-
standing which has devised the forms of language has
also introduced a transcendental content into its
representations by means of the synthetic unity of
the manifold in intuition -- transcendental because
they are not of empirical origin. The doctrine of
the categories is therefore to be understood as a new
answer or solution to an old question.

We have here mentioned only substance because it

may be taken as the prototypical category. With one
degree or another of success we can see how all the
categories must be of the same lineage.

We can thus learn many things from the senses in

a rather "primitive" sense of 'learn' but if we are to
speak of knowing anything about a world in which there
are comparatively stable entities like bodies and
planets that are part of one interacting system in
space and time, then we must resort to ideas
(Vorstellungen) that we have not learned from the sen-
ses in any sense of the term.

We must learn to create and to manipulate concepts;

but before we can do so, or as a presupposition of
doing so, we must possess the mental power, or more
simply, the knack of devising and using concepts.
This power or knack we have said is something like
being able to devise rules-] for devising rules2-
A rule, is not very felicitously named a 'pure concept'
if this suggests a class name. It is rather a functor
or instrument of the understanding. Only with the
aid of these functors are we able to arrest the cease-
less flow and perishing of momentary impressions.
The business of the category of substance is to say if
you grasp things that are changing, altering
(Vernderung: "othering"), then there must be
114

A
something that does not alter, for one of these cannot
be discerned without the other. Something must corres-
pond to time itself (the railway track) and something
else the momentary events in time (occurrences on the
train). For this we adopt the notion of a substance,
of a thing and its properties, and appropriate the
traditional name for it, despite the momentous change
the old notion has now undergone. Later in the
Critique Kant even speaks of categories in terms of
"fiction": the 'als ob' philosophy is of course de-
rived from the Critique. The fact that we speak
meaningfully in such terms as "violets are blue," and
"grass is green" shows, for Kant, that we have the
capacity for thinking in terms of occurrents and con-
tinuants. All that is now needed is to reflect upon
the different kinds of propositions or judgments and
to ask ourselves what kind of facts we are trying to
express with these various forms when we employ them
in speaking of the world we grasp in empirical intui-
tion. Such reflection leads us to identify the functors
that are at work bringing a synthesis and unity out
of a multiplicity of sense experiences. These are the
categories.

One may now say that Kant must address himself to

three issues: (1) whether there are categories or
pure concepts or functors of the understanding, rules
for devising rules that order our variegated intuitive
impressions; (2) what categories there are, the iden-
tification of them among our great store of abstract
representations; and (3) what reason there is to be-
lieve that these categories in particular do order
experience. The first question is not kept systemmati-
cally altogether distinct from the third which is the
main purpose of the Transcendental Deduction and the
Analytic of Principles to answer. As we have seen,
the second question is passed over quickly: Kant was
confident he could rely on the articulations of formal
logic.

In the sections which follow the presentation of

Screed II the reader would welcome a clear defense of
the adequacy of the list and also a definition of the
concepts themselves. It is precisely these aids to
the advancement of the doctrine of the categories
which Kant now specifically fails to offer. The table
of judgments is thought of as itself an adequate clue
to the identification of the categories as (1) pure
115
not empirical, (2) conceptual not intuitional, (3)
basic not derivative, and (4) presented in their
completeness (A64/B89).
Aristotle is praised for making an effort, even
if it fell short, in respect to (3) and (4). One may
here call to mind his list of both the categories and
the derivative concepts he identified as the post-
predicaments with their customary English designations.
(Categories l b 25 ff.)
Categories
Substance what
Quantity how large
Quality what sort of thing
Relation related to what
Place where
Time when
Position in what attitude
State (Condition) how circumstanced
Action what doing
Passion how passive

Post-Predicaments
Opposite
Prior
Simultaneous
Motion
Having
Here as in the matter of the definition of the
categories one wishes Kant had taken more time to
compare his categories with those of others. The list
of categories did not remain in the form in which
Aristotle left it. The Stoics, Plotinus, and Galen
developed extensive revisions of the list to which
Kant might well have adverted. He contents himself
with coordinating some of Aristotle's categories and
post-predicaments with his own twelve and referring
others (place, time, priority, simultaneity) to pure
intuition or to empirical thought (motion). Some
concepts (action, passion) are declared derivative.

With continued casualness Kant proceeds to offer

a selection of his own derivative notions, corres-
ponding to the post-predicaments. Force, action and
passion are placed under causality, and presence
(Gegenwart) and resistance under community. What is
not made clear is just what derivativeness consists in.

116
'!. Are derivative notions simply logical implicates, in
which case they would be as pure as the categories,
1
or are they "minglings" with empirical content? And
how are we to understand the latter?
A surprising turn is given to the notions coming-
to-be, ceasing-to-be, and change which are placed under
' modality: but one can detect nothing that suggests
possibility, necessity, or existence in them, these
being the three modes of modality.

One may again express regret at Kant's casualness

in devising this list of topics which he allowed to
determine all of the remainder of the Critique. He
added two new sections in B at this point but they
are devoted to other matters.

511
Little excuse can be found for the material added
to the Critique in B in 1 1 , 1 2. The present section
adds some interpretations of the list of categories but
they do not advance our understanding in the least, and
may in fact hinder it.

The first point Kant makes is to declare the first

two sets of categories to be "mathematical" in nature
and the remaining categories "dynamical." He had
already introduced this distinction in A (at A159/B198)
in application to the Principles. There is a point
to the designation "mathematical" for the categories
of quantity and the Axioms of Intuition, and to
"dynamical" for the categories of causality and commu-
nity and the corresponding Principles. But the net
interpretative value is even in these cases slight,
and the application to other categories and principles
is far-fetched.

The second point concerns the relation of the

third category in each set to the first two. Hegelians
may rejoice at this precedent for Hegel's dialectic
but here it is scarcely more than trivial. Kant has
been assuring us that the categories are all original
and not derivative, yet here he declares the third
category to "arise from" the union of the first two.
He assures us that this does not render them derivative
for the reason that the third requires a unique Actus
of the understanding distinct from what is needed for
the first two. Despite the effort to make this clear

117
by means of examples from the list of categories both
the problem (the origin of the third category) and
the solution (genesis from the first two) are thoroughly
artificial. It is nothing other than eating one's
cake and having it too.

The third point concerns a possible want of

clarity in the relation of the ninth category (commu-
nity) to the disjunctive judgment. Here the problem
is still confusing but far from artificial. What is
doubtful, as we have remarked earlier, is that the
idea of nature as a whole, even in Kant's quite
relative and "unmetaphysical" sense, is not easily
related to that of a logical sum (not Kant's phrase,
of course) , a union of disj uncts, though possibly one
might link it to that of a logical product or con-
junction of all the true propositions, remembering
the antinomies or paradoxes this notion may generate
(die Welt ist alles was der Fall ist). Kant empha-
tically takes the disjuncts to be exclusive in nature:
if one disjunct is true, all the others are false.
It is not easy to see how a system of exclusive dis-
juncts could constitute the whole of nature. But the
point Kant raises, one may readily concede, is specu-
latively stimulating.

12
The final section in the Clue, also added in B,
adds even less than 11 to the forward momentum of
the Critique. As if he thought he had to remain on
cordial terms with the very scholasticism he was so
effectively and irrevocably destroying, Kant casts
a glance over his shoulder at a distinction of the
Schools and tries to relate it to the present problem.
"Whatever is in being is one, true, and good," reads
an old maxim. Kant argues that these notions, which
are of course not empirical, are to be assimilated
respectively to the three categories of quantity:
unity, plurality and totality.

No ideas can exceed truth and goodness in im-

portance. Certainly the first deserves ample
treatment in an inquiry such as the Critique. It
receives little and the present section adds nothing
to our knowledge of it. The reason for introducing
it at this point derives partly from a lingering ob-
ligation Kant felt toward old scholastic classifica-
tions, but also from the belief that he was obliged

118
to treat all the basic transcendental terms.
We recall that transcendental notions have the
three essential characteristics of not being derived
from experience, but being applicable to experience,
and making experience possible. In edition B Kant
seems to have decided the omission of particularly so
important a non-empirical idea as truth in A might
appear to be an oversight; it seemed apparent to him
that this notion was certainly transcendental, and
that one would have great difficulty in carrying on
the business of science without it. Always over-
inclined to be attentive to architectonic details, he
manages to interpret the trio of notions as really
instances of the three categories of quantity. Thus
he can present them not as omissions from Screed A,
but as instances of categories already provided for.

In all genuine knowledge, he says, there is unity

of concept, truth of all that may be deduced from it,
and perfection or completeness of all that is deducible
from it. The third category again involves a recursion
to the first: it rests upon plurality regarded as
unity (looking to the previous categories of quantity).
Kant offers no analysis of any of the three notions but
then we must remember that he has not committed him-
self in the Critique to analyze concepts but to show
the place of a priori concepts in experience and in
science. The result of Kant's inquiry is nevertheless
one of artificiality. One may ask whether Kant would
have hit upon this way of assimilating the trio of
terms to the stock in Screed I if good had not readily
had a near synonym in perfection (Vollkommenheit)
in the ethical doctrines of the Leibniz-Wolff school
(see Kant's Critique of Judgment 15), and the word
Volkommenheit in turn, when re-literalized, did not
lend itself to the notion of that which has some ideal
fullness or totality of traits. (Reference should also
be made to the recurrence of the idea of a most perfect
being in Kant's consideration of the proofs for God's
existence later in the Critique. A583/B611 ff.)

There is of course no denying that even in this

somewhat superfluous section Kant's thoughts are
stimulating.

119
 Analytic of Concepts^
Chapter II
The Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding

We now approach a climax in the Critique. We are

to be shown the indispensability of the categories
identified in 10 for our knowledge of nature, of
a world of objects and natural processes. What thus
unfolds is the famous transcendental deduction of
the categories. It is evident that it cost Kant an
enormous amount of intellectual labor. The result is
scarcely satisfying to most of Kant's readers and
critics of the past two centuries. It is often regarded
as being a morass of confusion and a failure. It is
indeed a tangled account and it rests on some assump-
tions which are now likely to be thought unacceptable.
It also, however, presents one of the most important
analyses of human knowledge, of what enters into it
and of its scope and limits. Modern thought on the
subject is scarcely to be imagined without the
Critique: it is deeply woven into its fabric.

Section 1

13
The Principles of any Transcendental Deduction

The two unequal sections of this chapter are

designated by Kant "Principles of a Transcendental
Deduction in General" and, in A, "A Priori Grounds of
the Possibility of Experience." The latter is the
transcendental deduction itself in several subsections,
and the title is an accurate brief description of it.
The transcendental deductions of A and B (we shall
hereafter speak simply of "deductions" without the
qualifier) are ostensibly concerned only with the
categories, but as we shall show, one must not lose
sight of the principles, which are to follow. The
categories themselves are curiously not prominently
in evidence in the deductions: it is categories in
general that are being deduced. We shall first follow
fairly closely Kant's exposition of the nature and
need of the deduction and then offer interpretation
and criticism.

120

I
 The question Kant is asking concerns the source
and validity of a priori concepts which are not de-
rived from experience, but which have application to
experience and in fact govern experience or make it
possible. Concepts derived from experience raise no
problems about how they can apply to experience, and
concepts which are neither derived from nor apply to
experience (e.g., immortality) likewise present no
immediate problem. But the ideas enumerated in Screed
II are all such as to demand some special legitimation
if they are to be applicable to experience.

Hume had shown with irrefutable evidence that we

could never detect any impression of sensation that
corresponded to or supported our common sense con-
victions that one kind of event might be the cause of
another. We also speak confidently of things or
substances as perduring through time and undergoing
various states, but no impression ever abides in such
a manner as to afford us direct evidence of a
continuant. Similarly we speak of some states as
possible , necessary, or actual. None of these notions
could even be suggested to a being whose cognitive
apparatus comprised only the senses. Kant holds that
we simply cannot speak of experience or knowledge un-
less we command this array of concepts. We must not
forget that Kant is leaning heavily on the fact that
we speak as we do, that all the Western languages
readily lend themselves to being dissected into
subjects, modifiers, transitive verbs, and so on. On
the other hand the fact that they do so _i_s obviously
significant: what Kant did not know was what signifi-
cance it had.

There is considerable truth in Hume's explanation

or rather description of how the non-empirical concepts
(e.g., cause) that are so indispensable to knowledge
are in point of fact acquired, how we come to apply
what we have learned from past processes to the future,
or to believe that the physical world has an inde-
pendent and continuant existence, or to suppose our-
selves to be continuously in being. Hume's cognitive
psychology aims to give a plausible explanation of
these matters.

The question, however, is not only how we come

to make all of these extensions and extrapolations, how
we are induced to believe or why we are inclined to
expect their occurrence, but what will justify an

121
inference of the future from the past or present
or show that we can make no such inference. The
question is whether Kant in accepting Hume's descrip-
tive account offers more adequate reasons for our
trusting to causal inference, or to other functors
similar to causality. In the end, I think he has a
clearer notion of the indispensability of non-empirical
concepts than Hume and he tackles main issues more
persistently. The discussion in 13 leads us directly
from the place Hume had arrived at into the area in
which Kant now proposed to achieve a decisive solution.

Kant's view of the empirical deduction or, we

might say, the empiriogenesis of the categories is no
doubt the most important contribution of this subsec-
tion. In 14 we learn that it is only because of the ,
categories that we can speak of objects. In this y
section it is said that "objects can appear without j
any relation to the functions of the understanding,"
that is, to the categories. But I think there is no
contradiction between what Kant is saying here and
his general position. I believe he is at this point
saying only that the categories are not conditions
for the apprehension of intuitions. He can still
maintain that intuitions may in some sense be appre-
hended independent of the categories. He is not
saying that objects of experience may appear without
"any relation to the functions of the understanding,"
the categories. Apprehension of intuitions is one
;
thing, cognitive experience of objects is another.
Here as elsewhere Kant is maintaining his position
that both concepts and intuitions are necessary for
knowledge.
It is no doubt a rare kind of experience (in the
narrow sense) to apprehend mere empirical intuitions
by themselves but it is not impossible, nor incon-
sistent with Kant's basic standpoint, that knowledge
involves a full complement of components: pure and
empirical intuitions, pure and empirical concepts.
Empirical intuition alone, if such an experience could
transpire, might well be in such confusion as to
suggest no such regularity as is requisite for know-
ledge .

If this interpretation is correct, Kant's point

is simply to insist again on the absolute difference
between intuitions and concepts. Others might perhaps
insist that they are not separable. Kant however
maintains that it is only in knowledge that they are
inseparable. It is quite possible to think without
122
intuiting: we are told this both of things themselves
(in the Preface, Bxxvii) and of the transcendental
unity of apperception (Deduction, B 157 ff.) Must it
not also be possible in principle to intuit without
concepts, empirical or pure? This is what the diffi-
culty in the present section comes down to.

If we now attend to the apprehension of mere

intuition in the no doubt rare cases in which it may
appear, we shall see that nothing such as a pure
concept of the understanding is to be found in it.
But if it is not to be found in this quarter, there
can be no empirical deduction of the categories,
nothing that will, for example, reveal to us how or
why any A is followed by B "necessarily and in accord
with an absolutely universal rule" (A91/B124). In
the end, I believe Kant is not inconsistent in this
subsection with the position he is at such pains to
develop, both before and after. Saying that the
categories cannot be derived from experience (E-|,
intuition) clears the way for the Deduction, and this
has been the purpose of 13 from the start.

In all of this we must remember that Kant is not

disagreeing with Hume's diagnosis of the causal
situation: both of them agree that there is no empiri-
cal (intuitional) evidence for necessary connection.
Nor do they disagree when it comes to seeking a solu-
tion to the question how causal inferences can never-
theless be made. They differ over the kind of solution
to offer. Hume's is psychological, Kant's is trans-
cendental. For Hume, Kant's solution might seem
question-begging. For Kant, Hume's solution is irre-
levant. The clash of issues is obscured only by
Kant's style.

14
Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the
Categories
The present section is one of great consequence
and also comparatively clear. Kant draws attention
to it in the first preface (A xvii), because, he says,
it presents the essentials of what he calls the
obj ective deduction of the categories. The trans-
cendental deduction itself has "two sides": the
objective deduction seeks to expound the objective
validity of the pure concepts of the understanding,

123
while the subj ective deduction gives an account of
the pure understanding itself, its possibility and the
cognitive powers on which it rests. Of these two,
the objective deduction is declared the more important
sinceii lies closer to the main issue of the Critique
itself which is "to determine what understanding and
reason can know independent of all experience" (that
is, of all empirical intuition). If what is said in
the sequel on the subjective deduction is not alto-
gether convincing, Kant advises us to rely upon the
objective deduction. Since,he says, 14 states this ;|
in a nutshell, it is, of course, advisable to attend M
closely to it.

At the outset we are told that objects and re- :

presentations, the poles of all cognitive apprehensionj:
can be related to each other in either of two ways:
the object may determine the representation, or the
representation determine the object. Schematically
this would seem to distinguish empirical from a priori
knowledge. But the matter is more complex than that.
The result of the first (object determining represen-
tation, o > R) does not really add up to empirical
knowledge, but only to sensation. Merely having
sensations does not, at least for Kant, amount to
knowledge; it merely yields one of the ingredients of
knowledge. It should be noted that the formula
0 > R is a bit pat and premature, since Kant's whole
message in the Deduction is that an object is a
rather elaborate construction, and i~E Ts not at all
this construction which somehow produces the sensation.
What he needs to say, to be consistent with other
parts of the Critique, is simply that sensations do
occur or that their origin may possibly be ascribed
to things themselves. Hume's cautious observation
about this matter is judicious and apt, superior in
sagacity to those of both Locke and Kant. Impressions
of sensations, he says, arise "in the soul originally
from unknown causes" (Treatise I, I, II). I think
this would not, howeveT] be difficult for Kant
to accept.

In any event, the other side of the opening

alternatives is of more consequence for Kant's problem.
To repeat, the distinction Kant is making is not
between empirical and a priori knowledge: it is
more nearly between sensation on the one hand and
knowledge gained through experience or science on the
other. His point.now is that the latter is itself
complex and involves both intuition and concept.

124
 (There is an ambiguity here as to whether Kant is
now saying, as he often does quite generally, that
there must be both concepts and intuitions for there
to be knowledge, or whether he is saying that there
must be both formal or a priori intuitions as well as
a priori concepts of the understanding. Of these
two conditions for knowledge, the first is intuition:
it is referred to not just as a condition but as an
a priori condition. This may suggest that he is at
the moment thinking of space and time: "the first
condition, under which alone all objects can be
intuited, must in fact precede objects a priori in
respect of form." Fortunately, however, nothing hangs
on this ambiguity since it is the other condition, the
conceptual, which is decisive here. So without re-
solving this minor problem we turn back to the second
condition.)

The principle point of the section is now made:

certain a priori concepts must precede, as a priori
conditions ( a priori vorausgehen, als Bedingungen),
the thought of anything as an object. It is not e-
nough to allow only for the empirical intuitions that
we acquire by way of sensation if we are to explain
the nature of experience and the knowledge of the
world embodied in experience. Sub-rational beings
may be bombarded at every moment by just such intui-
tions but, even looking aside from their other obvious
limitations, they never develop the idea of their
world as a system of objects and processes: the idea
of an object is a coinage and manufacture of our own
(the rational paradigmatic self of course) and we
could never in all the reaches of time develop it
with the aid only of intuitions. This now is not the
concept of particular substances or processes (e.g.
tiger, horse, walking, burning) but the concept of an
object itself (or a process) or in general the con-
cept of objectivity. It is not yet the category of
substance that is being expounded, but what in more
recent terms we express by 'intersubjectivity' or
'communicability'. We must be able to account for
this because shareable objects, a shareable world
are what we experience (E2) and do not merely intuit
(E-j ) . Such a world we believe is a world that, at
least as appearance, enjoys an independent existence.

The danger of question-begging (Lewis's charge

again) is particularly evident at the end of the
first paragraph of 14 and it will remain throughout
the Deduction. Categories "relate necessarily and
125
a priori to objects of experience because only by
means of them may any sort of object of experience
be thought." The only remedy for this, I have
suggested, is to interpret the Deduction as diremptive
in nature.
At the end of the section, Kant returns to the
theme with which he opened this section, empirical
and transcendental deduction. Locke and Hume also
are now cited as having failed to see what they had
encountered in their studies, namely a priori concepts
of the understanding. One cannot, says Kant, be
content with the mere illustration (Kant's own term)
of such notions: a proof, a deduction must be provi-
ded. Kant presents in a few lines a shrewdly critical
account of both the great empiricists. Locke, he
says, attempted to derive the very concepts which
Kant is about to expound from experience, but he
failed, or as Kant says, proceeded "inconsequently."
Such notions simply involve what lies beyond exper-
ience: it is idle to seek their grounds there.

Hume, Kant thinks, saw or was on the verge of

seeing that these a priori notions, notably causality,
"had to have an a priori origin," that is, that they
obviously were of a different stripe from empirical
ideas. He found that event and cause had no necessary
or logical connection but nevertheless had a prima
facie "necessary connection" with one another in
experience, in the object (_im Gegenstnde) . It did
not occur to him to seek the source of this very
experience in the understanding itself, to make the
understanding itself, the "author" of experience.
Instead he turned toward a psychological description
of the experience and, Kant concedes, not only
carried this task successfully to its conclusion but
saw more clearly than any one else that the necessity
of the connection in question could never be learned
from experience, that one could never, as a matter
of custom, extend what one had learned from past
experience into the future. Both Locke and Hume,
Kant says, failed to see that in fact we do have a
priori knowledge in mathematics and in the general
science of nature and their empirical derivation of
the concepts in question wholly fails to account for
this fact, a point also made clear by Leibniz.
Hume is of course occasionally of a mind to circumvent
this result by simply denying that there is any such
knowledge; he was not altogether abhorrent of scepti-
cism regarding man's vaunted scientific knowledge.
126
Kant on the other hand seems to have considered such
a way out as little short of folly. we must remember
that Kant unlike Hume, was essentially a scientist
before he was anything else, even before he was a
philosopher. His contributions to science were sig-
nificant and he thought of it always in enthusiastic,
optimistic terms. The purpose of the Critique is to"
explain how knowledge is possible: its reality is
not brought into question.

Kant in the last paragraph but one of this section

(as amended in B) is scarcely unfair to Hume in saying
that he fell into scepticism. But his characterization
of the consequences of Locke's views as Schwrmerei
emotional extravagance, might well have grieved both
Locke and Hume. They thought of themselves as anything
but romantic philosophic adventurers, but far more
intemperate things have been said of the British
Empiricists since Kant sought to pinpoint the source
of their philosophic failures.

In the last paragraph Kant has in effect given

a general definition of the categories: they are
concepts of an object in general (Begriffe eines
Gegenstandes berhaupt) of objectivity as such.
This clarification is repeated in the Deduction: the
pure concept of the transcendental object provides
that which alone gives our concepts relation "to
an obi ect. that is objective reality." The purpose
of the Analytic as a whole is to show us what concepts
and principles must enter into or be in some manner
involved in experience if this is to be not only a
play of sensations but an account (such as culminates
in natural science) of a world objected to its
observers, shared by them in common, and intelligible
to them through concepts of particular things and
processes. Kant alludes briefly to the way in which
the concept of substance, as one of the categories,
works to contribute one aspect of objectivity. It is
regrettable that Kant did not devote more time to
the analysis and definition of the particular catego-
ries, even though one may respect the reasons he
specifically gave for not doing so in the Critique.

127
to
oo
Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding
(Edition A)
Section 2
On the A Priori Grounds of
the Possibility of Experience
We have now reached what is generally acknowledged
to be a climactic portion of the Critique. Its
structure and interpretation have been a source of
ceaseless controversy. Kemp Smith's Commentary was
completed in 1918 and carried on the study of the
text under considerable influence from others. The
result was termed the "patchwork theory" of the
Critique by Professor H.J. Paton. (I believe it was
he that coined this characterization in an address
to the Aristotelian Society in 1930, "Is the Trans-
cendental Deduction a Patchwork?") Paton of course
rejected the patchwork theory. On the whole, I am
going to follow his example, but a brief discussion
of the matter is in order. Only a very lengthy dis-
cussion could hope to deal with all of the issues
raised by these authors.

For our purposes we need to refer only to the

main outlines of the approaches of Kemp Smith and
Adickes.20 Each of them believes that an alternative
division is preferable to Kant's, or at least that
their researches dictate a division that reflects
better the order and manner of composition and thus
its content.

A division such as that of Kemp Smith, based

upon Vaihinger's, may have the virtue of putting like
with like, as indeed it does, but the question with
this and any other such division is whether it is in
any sense to be preferred to Kant's, whether it is
to be substituted for it, whether it makes the
Gedankengang any more convincing than the order in
which Kant left it. It is certainly possible, in
principle, by some such method as that of these able
scholars and philosophers to hope to clear up the
course of an author's thought by working over notes,
manuscripts, and letters. In this case, however,
there is very little of this sort to rely upon and
the main direction of the proposed revisions is
derived from "internal evidence." But what does this
mean? It means that the author's argument is being

129
understood in a certain way and is being revised in
certain ways. We are no longer learning that, for
example, something may have been written earlier and
forgotten later. We are being offered really quite
a new argument, that of the scholars and not of Kant,
when we are told that logically it proceeds from
(let us say) C to D to A to B, when Kant has proceeded
from A to B to C to D. I think this is defensible
only if one is clearly saying, in order for anyone in
general to deduce the categories he must proceed in
the order C D A B; Kant has not done so and his
effort fails. This is straightforward, and may be
correct. It is relevant to what is after all the
great issue of how we can explain to ourselves the
concepts here designated as categories. All this is
true. But it is irrelevant to the Critique. The
question here is, what is Kant's procedure in the
argument and does it succeed or fail?

Kant's argument, I am saying, must be allowed to

stand or fall as it is and in the order in which it J
is written. He presented it so and staked what was, "j
in 1781, already a considerable philosophical repu- .j
tation upon it. We are free to call it a failure, a
mess, or a botch, but we are not free to construct ,
some other argument and attribute it to him. We may '
construct an argument and say, if Kant had argued so
he would have succeeded in deducing the categories. j;
This is all we may do, in fairness to him and in i
loyalty to the philosophical ideal of the truth. It !
is in this spirit that we must approach the difficult .
questions of the Critique We must hold an author j
responsible for what he said and how he said it.
Kant expected to be judged in this manner. Had he
expected he would be judged as his modern critics
have judged him, he would have made available not ;
only a few lose Bltter but every Zettel too. ;

We now begin the exposition of that part of the

Deduction which is omitted in B. I am strongly
inclined, in this as in other comparable places in
the Critique, to prefer the formulation in A to that
in B. The want of order in the exposition in A is
really not remedied in B and new topics are there in-
troduced which are not altogether necessary to what
Kant prescribes as needed in a deduction. The present
introductory paragraphs continue on directly from
the preliminary exposition in 14 of the need of the
130
deduction. It is quite possible that the critics
are right in thinking that the last paragraph of 14
may relate to the opening of Section 3 below, judging
from the content. Yet, it may be placed here quite
properly because Kant wishes to sound an early note
regarding the role that each of the faculties plays
in the development of experience. The topic he has
been considering in 14 and which he continues to
discuss in the present section is that of possible
experience and the a priori conditions of the possi-
bility of experience. Even if the Critique were a
mosaic it is yet possible, making allowances for
hasty formulations, inadequate transitions, and
lapsus memoriae to find the central reason in each
element why it is placed where it is.

It is true that the exact division of synopsis

through sense, synthesis in imagination and unity
through apperception is not followed in the exposition
of the ensuing subsections, but it is not seriously
in conflict with them. Besides, in the paragraph
next preceding "Preliminary Reminder" he takes a
moment to indicate roughly the connection between the
earlier and the later form of threefold synthesis.
Moreover, while the earlier division is reaffirmed,
as the critics note, at the beginning of Section 3,
this need not at all mean that it is somehow a displaced
part of 3. It means merely that Kant, by strategic
repetition is concerned to tie together a complex
subject matter.

Kant is here saying that pure concepts of the

understanding must be presupposed if there is to be
experience not only in the narrow sense of intuitions
coming (and going) before our attention (E-j ) but
experience in the broad sense as continuant entities
that enter into processes and systems of connection
with one another (E2) -- a basic formula that appears
and reappears many times here and elsewhere in the
Critique. But how can a priori concepts (and the
emphasis is upon a priori) relate to objects? Are
they not removed from them altogether by their very
nature? The answer is, these particular concepts,
the categories, relate to them by virtue of the fact
that they spell out for us what it is for anything
to be an experience. There might be other concepts,
logical concepts, for example, which had no such
office. And we can, of course, spin out many other
concepts without reference to experience. We must now
confine our attention to just these categorial concepts

131
and see how they do make experience possible. This
is to ask just what the structure of experience is,
what enters into it. We are invited to proceed to
unpack experience.
As Kant has pointed out in the Preface (to A ) ,
the decisive thing is to see that the categories make
experience possible. Experience, to put it into the
form of a mild paradox, is not made possible by mere
experience. The solution to the paradox is immediately
apparent: what we mean by experience in the sense of
learning from it, applying, projecting, predicting
it, and so forth, is not the mere blips, flashes,
and pricks of sensation: it involves elements fetched
from some other source altogether.

What Kant now proposes to do is not only to spell

out the significance of the proposition that exper-
ience presupposes certain pure concepts and principles I
but also to explore the workings of all the faculties
of mind (and body in a sense) that enter into the
construction of experience. The first of these is
essentially the so-called objective deduction, the
second the subjective deduction of the categories.
The first is all-important. The second he hopes
will increase our understanding. unfortunately, the
two are mingled, if not confused, with almost, one
may say, untold philosophical suffering. An effort
must, therefore, be made to keep them distinct. They
are not, of course, unrelated: in fact, the most
important aspect of the whole analytic of concepts
is the point at which the weld between the two is
made. We shall draw particular attention to this.
Kant turns first to the subjective deduction, the
exposition of the role of the cognitive faculties in
the construction of experience.

preliminary Reminder

We shall now proceed to examine the Deduction in

the order in which Kant presents it and deliberately
avoid the use of hypotheses about order and manner
of composition so far as possible. We will be taking
Kant's word that this, the deduction as presented,
is the deduction. In the present paragraph he gives
us to understand that the principal statement of the
deduction is to be given in Section 3 following. The
subsections immediately preceding 3 are meant only to
"prepare the reader."

132
 In another context, it would be an interesting
question to ask exactly what deduction is. We shall
confine ourselves to saying that a necessary condition
for a deduction "to occur" is that someone clearly
.understands certain logical and other connections
I among certain facts or propositions, just as a certain
Jauditory discrimination of such things as melodic
I lines, harmonic contexts, and cadences is a necessary
!condition for a "performance" of a symphony. What will
"count toward (if not, count as) failure in the deduc-
tion will be want of intelligibility in what is being
said (where we can truly regard this as Kant's fault),
factual error, incompatibility with what is, or was
even in his day, known to be a truth of fact or of
theory, logical error, and so on. Many such errors
will, of course, more effectively dispose of the
deduction than will avoidance of them prove it to
have succeeded.

Although Kant proudly claims that no one has

previously even undertaken such an enterprise as the
deduction of the categories, let alone succeeded
in it, we seriously misunderstand what he is doing if
we do not make an effort to see how he is trying to
succeed at precisely that task at which others have
worked, notably Locke and Hume. As we have seen in
13, he is taking these two men to task for failure.
But this charge would be irrelevant unless they had
been engaged at the same task. If Locke, let us say,
is undertaking a "physiology (i.e. psychology) of the
understanding" (A ix), or if Hume succeeds in produ-
cing an accurate description of the psychology of our
acts of causal inferring, then failure can scarcely
be ascribed to them by Kant unless they think them-
selves to be at the same time undertaking to deduce
the pure concepts of the understanding, though under
a different name, of course. But it is obvious that
Locke is endeavoring to trace the workings of those
very ideas that Kant considers in the Transcendental
Logic, and even if we confine ourselves to Hume's
seven types of relations we are dealing with exactly
the same ideas that Kant is concerned with. From
Kant's standpoint they are not raising the right
questions about such ideas, with the result that at
most they merely contribute something to the "empirical
deduction" of such ideas (which we have discussed
earlier). He thinks they have misconceived the problem
and offered the wrong solution, because they did not
account for the necessity, strict universality, and
indispensability of certain ideas and principles.

133
The aim of the Deduction is to show the ground of
this necessity, not simply as in Hume's main account,
why a feeling of necessity attaches to certain beliefs.
Kant thinks that if we make inferences about matters
of fact, if we claim to have knowledge about the past
and the future, about the remote as well as the acces-
sible, if we claim to be able to learn from experience,
then speaking generally, there is a certain necessity
in knowledge. No empiriogenetic account will tell us
what it is. A new way must be found. This is what
the Deduction is about, and this it is what Kant can
claim some originality in conceiving and devising.

The next question, then, is where and how this

necessity actually manifests itself. It is astonishing
how little understanding there is of this matter. One
critic after another professes not to understand what
Kant meant by the necessity he thought he found, for
example, in synthetic a priori propositions. Profound
puzzlement is expressed because some sort of necessity
other than analytic is being projected,and all his
claims to finding any element of necessity in exper-
ience are rather summarily dismissed. We must first
see in general what the source of necessity is.
(A much more specific source of it will come to light
in the third subsection below.)

In the first place we must try to recapture a

feeling for the view of science and of knowledge that
prevailed from early times down to the end of the
eighteenth century. When Hume said something "amounts
to knowledge," he had in mind that which was certain
and demonstrable. Since he formulated no precise
view of the analytic-synthetic distinction, nor perhaps
even a clear equivalent of it, we cannot say that he
thought propositions that were known and demonstrable
were analytic. Of course, he offers many examples
of what w recognize as analytic propositions. It is
very likely that Hume would have arisen from his
dogmatic slumbers exactly like Kant if someone had
convinced him of the notion that in what he regarded
as known or demonstrable propositions the predicate
was simply contained in the subject. For it would
certainly have occurred to him that on this interpre-
tation they might all be truistic, trivial, or even
absurd, as he often characterizes analytic sentences,
and that surely knowledge must be something more or
other than this. The neat divisions of thought would
certainly hereby be at least upset even if not in as
great an upheaval as in the case of Kant after his

J
134
discovery of the synthetic a priori.
Hume makes his views on such matters explicit
in his tripartite distinction between knowledge, proof,
and probability (Treatise, I-III-XI). One should
observe the accord for certain practical purposes
between this and Kant's division:

1. Knowledge 4. Analytic A Priori

2. Proof 5. Synthetic A Priori
3. Probability 6. Synthetic A Posteriori
As we have seen, 1 is evidently covered by 4, even if
Hume was not clearly aware of this. Similarly 3 is
covered by 6. 2 and 3 are distinguished by Hume by
the fact that a matter may be said to be proved if no
contrary instances are known. Propositions are
probable depending upon the ratio of the favorable to
the total or possible cases. 2 therefore accords
approximately at least with Kant's empirical universa-
lity, though probably not with his strict universality
(see Introduction, B4). The synthetic a priori propo-
sition unlike 2 is said to be strictly universal.
But classifications 2 and 5 might have the same ex-
tension .

It should be noted, also, that no one prior to

the nineteenth century would be inclined to use the
term knowledge in such a weak sense as it now is,
where any bit and scrap of information is deemed to
be knowledge. Earlier ages were much more circumspect
and rigorous in this regard, and by comparison with
former conventions the term 'knowledge' (perhaps
equivalents in other languages too) is now considerably
corrupted.

It is therefore not in the least surprising or

anomalous or contrary to usage that Kant should have
regarded knowledge in terms of strict universality.
We must remember that he was a Wolffian philosopher
and scientist for years before he was the author of
the "Criticistic" philosophy. We may therefore take
a glance at an example of scientific explanation as
expounded in Christian Wolff's Cosmologia. Suppose
we inquire into the phenomenon of the seasons.
Virtually all races and peoples can describe for us
the differences of the seasons: the changes of tem-
perature, of the elevation of the sun, of the growth
and demise of vegetation, and so on. Peoples had
ascribed these phenomena to the birth and death of gods

135
and to other such causes. But with the grasp of the
motion of individual bodies in the solar system,
particularly sun, moon, and earth, and the dawn of
understanding on many other subjects the explanation
that satisfied all the relevant criteria could at
last be given. The revolution of the earth on its
axis, its orbit about the sun, the inclination of
the axis exposing now one, now another hemisphere to
the more direct radiation of the sun, and other factors
proved to be the invariable determinants of seasonal
change. As the young student learns one after another
of these facts and begins to put them together he
will be able to tell himself why the seasons are not
only so, but under these conditions, why they must be
so: cannot be otherwise. With this in order he can
now proceed to the explanation of many other cyclic
phenomena.

This, says Wolff, is a true explanation. It is

true "philosophical knowledge" as distinct from the
two other genera of it, mathematical and historical '. \
knowledge. It is a simple model of a scientific or |
philosophical explanation such as Kant himself helped ''(
devise in his theory of the origin of the earth. ;'
He dealt with such theories day in and out as a teachej:
ofscience. :

Kant is a man who respects both common sense and ;;

the hard-won insights of scientists and mathematicians,
but not the noisome doubts of "philosophical" sceptics.
His most deeply held tenet is this: science and
mathematics are the paradigm of knowledge; they are.
as a whole the explicandum to which philosophy must
devote the largest part of its effort; philosophical
thought which has the sceptical consequence that
science and knowledge may ever elude us is inherently
in error. After the first Critique Kant never veered
from this faith. What is surprising is that it is not
Kant the transcendental idealist but Hume the empiri-
cist who doubts that we shall ever arrive at what
truly "amounts to knowledge" in science. Hume in the
end has the academic mind, not Kant.

The issue is now formulated so: Is it conceivable

that one can devise the whole texture of scientific
explanation beginning and ending with sensation, with
propositions based wholly upon Anschauung? No. In
the Prolegomena the issue is put flatly so: what
science asserts about the universe is not typified in

136
 intuitive or sensate "stenographs" such as, "Here now
warm; there now bright," but in full causal assertions
such as, "The sun warms the stone," and ever more
j complex formulations of fact and theory.

Philosophy now steps in to ask what precisely

is the difference between these two? and, how do we
get from the first to the second? We do not, like
the"epistemological atomists" Locke and Hume proceed
in the futile hope that we can build up directly from
the first toward the second. Kant's considered pro-
cedure proceeds more nearly from the second to the
first. We "take apart" a paradigm of scientific fact
or theory like a watch: we try to see what must be
so if it is so. A belated effect of this can be seen
in the views of later positivists who thought Hume's
program could succeed only if it was dismantled and
reorganized with specific attention to language and
its analysis.

It is the use of the idea of necessity in the

context of science that now comes to light and that
Kant now undertakes to investigate. Once we see
what he thought this explicandum to be we shall be well
on our way to making sense of the arduous Deduction
ahead. We may now turn to this matter briefly.

Some of the most important things have already

been said about necessity in the Introduction. Others
will appear as we proceed through the Analytic. We
must first draw attention to what Kant says about
strict universality at B4. Although at this point he
has not yet introduced the synthetic a priori judg-
ment he is already expounding a notion which will
enter as a definiens into his exposition of this
judgment, that is, a rule, Regel. It is this that we
must understand in the very notion of synthetic a
priori propositions such as any of the Principles.
But what is a rule? It is that which permits no
exception to itself: dass gar keine Ausnahme als
mglich verstattet.

We may now ask whether a rule is anything more

than a kind of imperative? It remains to be seen
how different "imperatives" like this are from "shut
the door." What Kant means to say about the causal
principle, for example, is that come what may, re-
gardless of any number of adverse cases of apparent
acausality or contracausality, we will never under
any circumstances give it up. An utterance (to use as
137
neutral a term as possible) which is held to in this
manner is evidently of a singular character. Let us
quickly review some of the possible views of its
structure.
First, we may ask whether it is in fact an
imperative. Imperatives are to be accepted or not. fc
Before we can accept or reject a "causal imperative" !:
we must first formulate it as one. I suggest the .I
following as consistent with Kant: Never accept as
final a failure in seeking a conditioning cause of any
event. (I will not concern myself with the latter day
view that 'cause' is a relevant form of speech only
in reference to untoward or anomalous events.) Can
we turn aside such an imperative? If Kant had offered
this formulation his answer would be, not if you hope
to advance knowledge or to explain how we have achieved
the knowledge we have. It is true that unlike an
analytic a priori proposition such an imperative mani-
fests no "cognitive authority" on the face of it. But
Kant does not expect that it will. He does not offer
the causal principle, as self-evident: a "deduction"
of it is necessary and is formulated. We can see that
although the interpretation of the principle as an
imperative is not following a very adequate model, it
does bring out something of what is singular in it.
What we expect to gain from this interpretation must,
of course, rest on the leverage implicit in "if you
expect to advance knowledge or science." The question
would be, can we do without the principle to advance
it? Of course, this is a reasonable question.

Again, we may decide upon a milder form of the

imperative, couched not in terms of "thou shalt"
but "let us:" a resolution or some other "grammatical
constant" like this. The result would resemble the
foregoing: we must be prepared to assess the rewards
and penalties of following the resolution, or not.

Third, we may think of the principle in more

formal terms, yet still similar to the foregoing, as
a postulate. In Schlick's well-known essay on
causality in Naturwissenschaften,^1 this possibility
is surveyed, among others. The question of why the
principle, or the rule, as Kant says, is to be
followed is said to come down to appropriateness and
inappropriateness. Kant could not have foreseen that
quantum physics would one day teach us "that the
principle is bad, useless, impracticable within the
limits precisely laid down by the principle of
138
indeterminacy." The question whether, in fact, the
causal principle has suffered as grievously as Schlick
supposes is one that we cannot undertake to answer
here. The point is only that this is still another
way of interpreting it and of coming to terms with its
singularity and indispensability.

The possible pragmatistic implications of this

(third) interpretation which Schlick goes on to raise
need be no surprise to us. The interpretation of the
principle which Kant gives as he comes towards the
end of the Critique show that he was fairly explicitly
moving toward pragmatism, if not toward a kind of
fictionalist interpretation. Following the principle,
Kant is saying, is justified because if you do you
will succeed in arriving at true or verifiable laws
or generalizations.

All of this we must reserve for later considera-

tion. But it is of the utmost necessity that we keep
it in mind in the meantime so as to forestall objec-
tions to the idea of the synthetic a priori on rather
formal or formalistic grounds. Kant's views on this
subject are not confined to the Introduction or even
to the Transcendental Analytic, but extend throughout
the Critique. The issue is ostensibly the synthetic
a priori but the struggle is over the nature of the
causal principle (and other such principles). We
must now confine our interpretation of its structure
to the indicative or assertoric mood: it is in-
structive to see how far Kant goes towards imperative,
resolutive, postulative, or fictive interpretation.

The point, then, is to keep firmly in mind Kant's

conviction of the singular nature of the principles
in question, their presumptive certainty, their
indispensability to the advance of science , and their
need for a proof, defense, or "deduction." With this
we are at last prepared to consider this deduction
itself.

1. Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition

In order to articulate the system of human

knowledge, Kant undertakes to begin at the foundations.
Although the "structuralistic" standpoint of Locke
and Hume (especially the latter) is not so emphati-
cally evident, the very term 'synthesis' with which
Kant begins involves the notion of structuring
139
complexes from simpler, or even simplest, elements.
These elements like the more complex structures, are
called representations.22 At least at some hypothe-
tical "micro-level" we must suppose that there are
simple elements. "Each representation insofar as it
is contained in a single moment can be nothing but
absolute unity." Of course we< d not normally, if
ever, encounter such atomic representations in experi-
ence, but Kant firmly holds to the maxim that an ag-
gregate must consist of (what may be treated as) simple
parts, that a process of structuring (whether overt
or implicit) must intervene, and that analysis can
only follow previous synthesis.

We must first pause over the materials and mecha-

nism of synthesis or structuring. It is the same
process as Locke and Hume envisaged as taking us from
simple ideas or impressions to complex ideas or im-
pressions. The plain-spoken Locke sometimes refers to
it as "bundling." The bundles are modes (simple and
complex), substances, and relations. Kant is working
over the same territory. But what is largely over-
looked by all three is first the relative nonoccurrence,
the want of availability, of the individual elements
which enter into the structure, and second, the unob- I
served if not indeed unobservable character of the I
process of structuring. Thus, we do not consciously |
witness the constructing of such complex representa- ;
tions as concepts, or witness their coming into being, ;.
except perhaps on the rarest occasions at higher
reaches of science; nor do we apprehend the bits that
are being processed into wholes. Yet Kant firmly be-
lieves this must be allowed for. How else can we
obtain aggregates unless the components are "first run
through and held together"?

We must raise these disturbing questions both

here and in the further parts of the theory of the
categories. These functors of synthesis are pictured
as doing a certain work, but in fact we can never be
aware of the functioning process. It is all done be-
hind the scenes. We can only regard it as implicit
so long as we adhere to the maxim that concepts are
complexes and complexes are aggregates consisting of
simples. It should be said at once that there is an
alternative to what Locke, Hume, and Kant are doing in
the Gestaltist analysis of experience. Although the
atomist analysis seemed so self-evident to them, it
is really indefensible. Either the act or process of
structuring is overt or it is implicit. If it is

140
implicit, it rests on certain shaky assumptions, and
it is by definition inconfirmable or unobservable.
If it is presented as overt, it is plainly false that
we witness any such things in process of construction.
Like many other philosophical theses, the doctrine
therefore runs the danger of being either inconfirmable
or false.
To make this system work in any manner, we need
to make even more assumptions. We must now add an
agent to the process of structuring. Locke overlooked
this, Hume denied it. Only Kant clearly provides for
it. Having the agent we need also the locale in which
all this transpires, a subconscious, subterranean
area in which some Vulcan's hammer and anvil are busy.
The idea of an agent is a truly serious problem, and
we will accord it every respect and in the end vir-
tually concede it; the rest is more problematic. For
the moment we shall merely say that the structuring
process Kant describes calls for a paradigmatic self
as agent, something, someone, that is not to be iden-
tified as the familiar you or I and yet in some way
a psychically and intellectually active person. This
self (we shall call it the Self until we come to its
more proper identification) is what is "doing" all the
things in the described acts of synthesis.

We should also note another assumption. If we

ask how the Self can move and lay about itself in
such a free or spontaneous fashion we must remember
that Kant holds we are dealing only with representa-
tions, ultimately with appearances, not with things
themselves which might, of course, have ways of their
own and go their own ways. Kant is presenting a kind
of "logischer Aufbau der Welt." It is a world he
thinks we can structure as we wish (if the paradigm-
atic self were not in principle devoid of wishes and
every other affect).

These then are the presumptions that enter into

Kantian synthesis. We may now recount the unfolding
of synthesis at its first level. To do so we must
begin with a certain "aboriginal" example of synthesis.
As we have seen, Kant says that when we have a complex
before us, its parts must have been run through in
time (by the Self) and held together. Such a complex
he calls das Mannigfaltige which is simply the many-
fold, a complex, a multiplicity. The most basic or
aboriginal synthesis of a complex or manifold is one
in which we simply keep the parts together in one
141
context: we rescue each perishing "atomic" representa-
tion and maintain its life alongside that of another,
and another.
Kant later ascribes much of the work of synthesis
to imagination, as did Hume in an even more extensive
way before him, and what we have here already shows
the imagination at work. For what is imagining but
presenting (present-ing, where "present" has more than
a bit of temporal sense) us with something not present?
Thus every complex in every sense-modality (for this
is presumed) is a structured mosaic of parts the
maintenance of each one of which must be specifically
provided for, because of Kant's dogma that the Self
can attend to but one thing at a time but the speed
with which it works is, of course, sheerly miraculous.
It should be noted that Kant describes the synthesis ?
:
as going on in time, and in inner sense. Thus, he ;
seeks to keep the process from sinking into a timeless
abstraction. While this is praiseworthy, certain as-
pects of it, such as the speed at which it must be
accomplished, strain credulity. (His analysis suggests
an analogy with modern electronics, such as the scan-
ning mechanism working at incredible speed in the
television tube. We develop this further below.) This
aboriginal synthesis is the synthesis of apprehension,
and every act and object of ordinary Anschauung in-
volves such a synthesis, a complex series of operations
behind the scenes.

Kant adds at the end of this subsection that the

same kind of synthesis must be exercised in reference
to a priori representations. This is a puzzling ad-
dendum (a similar remark is added at the end of sub-
section 2, regarding another order of synthesis).
Kant does not make perfectly clear at this point
whether he means that space and time themselves or
merely figures in space, for example, triangles, circles
and the many other more complex forms we encounter in-
volve this aboriginal synthesis. Possibly, he may be
thinking of the "empirical deduction," the psycholo-
gical explanation of how we come to possess these
forms. The propriety of such an inquiry has just
been acknowledged in 13 so long as it is not presen-
ted _in. place of a transcendental deduction. It is
interesting to recall that while in the Aesthetic
space is said to be an infinite given (gegeben) mag-
nitude, infinites are regarded in the solution to the
antinomies as rather prescribed-as-a-task or to-be-
given (aufgegeben). If the latter is what is intended

142
here we see that space and time are syntheses dandae
(or construendae) rather than datae. "The synthesis
of the manifold parts of space through which we appre-
hend it is successive and thus takes place in time
and constitutes (enthlt) a series", A412/B439.

There is a missing guest at this banquet, and we

must call him to mind before his absence (or presence)
is even more insistently felt in the next synthesis:
his name is 'Memory'. As soon as we bring memory
to mind we see more plainly that Kant is undertaking
a review of all the faculties that enter into know-
ledge. In such a review, how can we neglect memory?
The point is that Kant is in effect giving us the
explicans of memory, or at least a bit of it, while
never mentioning the explicandum by name. It is ap-
parent that the first step in this, shall we say,
logischer (sometimes psychologischer) Aufbau must be
the rescue of perishing impressions, the very thing
Hume so sorely needed and never provided for. Thus
Kant is providing that every least manifold or complex
must involve a rescue, for in synthesis the Self can
scan but one bit at a time, though apparently with
incredible agility and speed. Theory is, of course,
far stranger than fact.

2. Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination

Analogy and imagery may enable us to get a clearer
idea of the point and purpose of Kant's "analysis of
synthesis." I shall apply it to what we have just
considered and then extend it to the synthesis in the
present section. Suppose that a directed beam of
light sweeps through 180 of a scene in front of us
that is otherwise dark. A Series of about a half-
dozen snapshots of the scene from #1 at the left to
#6 at the right would serve the same purpose. As we
sweep the scene, lighted patches replace one another.
The torch or source of light remembers nothing. When
#2 comes, #1 has perished irrevocably, and so on
through the series. If this were our plight in the
cognitive survey of the world, we would never have
risen to our present level of intelligence. Perhaps,
in some degree, subhuman species "think" like this.
In order to see the tree we must, in Kant's atomistic
system, "sweep" it from end to end and side to side
and preserve its "parts" as we go. A tree is an
aggregate. But for it to be an aggregate it must have
been aggregated. This is the first step, the

143
aboriginal synthesis.
We have already adverted to the television
picture tube in which an image is synthesized by a
rapid scanning of individual points on a surface.
Since it works at great speed, a meaningful image
results, although if we could hover long enough along
the way none would result, just as in the motion
picture film a single frame shows nothing of motion.

In the situation Kant is trying to describe it is

obviously difficult to develop explanations and
hypotheses about hidden processes of connecting and
synthesizing which we cannot remember carrying on or
being involved in. We do not directly witness any of
them nor can we even identify ourselves with the Self
that is involved in the synthesizing activities. Kant
is, however, deeply convinced that only this piece-
meal, atomistic account is faithful to the facts. Let
us help this account along as much as we can instead
of rejecting it as meaningless and impossible. It is
at worst really only rather incredible, but not other-
wise absurd.

Suppose we are attending a play in the theater.

From where we sit everything is highly organized. The
curtain goes up or down at fixed moments, and the I
actors are already beginning their scenes as the cur- |
tain goes up. An interesting scene opens up before ;,
us, an interior, a city street, a park. The scene F
runs on in an apparently foreordained manner, unless f
something very novel is being attempted. All the work, I
in any event, has already been done for us, for our I
{
pleasure or edification. We are enjoying the end
j
product without a glance at the process of production.
But a moment's reflection reminds us that every last :
detail has had to be put into place by someone, the
director, the prop mistress, the stage hands, and so
on. Costumes have been sewed and pinned, cheeks and
lips rouged, tables laid, and so on.

This is exactly where we are with the Kantian

synthesis. What we see from where we sit is what
Kant calls experience (E 2 ). We can only have theories
about what has gone on behind the scenes, we can never
go backstage to see for ourselves. But as Kant thinks,
it stands to reason that every bit of our complex
experience has been "put" there in some manner a
piece at a time, and put there by "someone." The job
of explaining all this, the deduction, is one of

144
analysis: we take the presented drama of experience
apart piece by piece. In this way we discover "how
experience is possible." The play we see is the
explicandum; the play which we tell ourselves the
company is producing, or has produced, piece by piece,
word by word, is the explicans.

With this image in mind, we can now observe the

scene even more closely to refine our observations and
to develop more reliable philosophical hypotheses of
how and why the tale of experience unfolds as it does.

The next ingredient of the explicans is largely

already implicit in the first synthesis. We saw
that even the least complex of representations, if at
all complex, necessitates the maintenance of being of
the components. We must now take the further step,
Kant thinks, to revive impressions if they have per-
ished. But how can this be done? What mechanism will
restore them, and what can assure us that later repre-
sentations are identical with earlier? In this sub-
section, the first of these questions is answered;
the other question is taken up in the next.

The second synthesis is concerned with the reap-

pearance of representations. The question is
fortunately not how reappearance is possible (even
now this has not been explained) but rather what
determines what reappears and what is left behind.
Kant, like his contemporaries, attributes this to
association. He does not go into the details of the
particular mechanisms of association but he could
have adopted at least some of Hume's views of the
matter: ideas tend to call up one another if they
are associated by resemblance, contiguity in time
or space, and perhaps cause and effect. (There
might also be other such bonds: Hume's contrariety,
for example, might be a bond of association.)

Regularities or concomitances are readily enough

found to occur in experience. Examples abound since
anything we have attached a name to is generally a
system of fairly invariant associated properties.
Remoter associations are often the most interesting.
The mining prospector who turns up a bit of ore of a
certain shade of red and who knows his trade thoroughly
instantly thinks of cinnabar and its heaviness and
potential yield of mercury and sulfur, and other
properties. He has developed a synthesis, an asso-
ciation of certain properties which another person,

145
unschooled in geology, has no notion of, and since he
knows what he is looking for or what kind of thing he
is likely to find and not to find,he makes fine dis-
criminations. So also, all of us have at our command
systems of syntheses that enable us to recognize
things. But before they can be recognized patterns
of synthesis must be developed, based reproductively
on the past and now brought to mind by the imagination.

We must try to confine this synthesis to the

psychological level, rather than extend it to the
understanding of concepts, for this is taken up in
3. (Kant has himself introduced the matter of regu-
larity.) We are to deal here with the reproductive
imagination, where representations recur because they
are associated by one or more of the bonds of asso-
ciation. It is a powerful and yet a very primitive
mental mechanism. Although efforts have been made to
"reduce" thought to this, it must in the end be dis-
tinguished from thought, as Kant himself suggests.
Thought is more than mere conditioning. We are not
in lockstep with past experience, our every explora-
tion in thought channeled along the grooves of
association. This we may suppose is the character of
the "thought" of simpler animal beings than ourselves.
Far from being determined in such a reproductive
lockstep we can exercise a choice and patterning of
thought by means of artfully produced concepts: these
depend on what Kant calls the productive imagination
-- but this is to get ahead of the story.

Kant also points out that although nature seems

to repeat itself in endless regularities we are here
concerned with what we make of all the raw material
of experience: it is we, at least we as paradigmatic
selves, that make our own selections, and build up the
world of appearances around us. No doubt we have to
be content with a good many orderings of the world
because of the language we talk with its limitless
mass of concepts that represent syntheses the race
and tribe and not we ourselves have worked out.
Language reflects, in any event, a world of appear-
ances not of things themselves: we (often the
tribal "we") have hammered and bent our concepts in
a way that often makes one tribe misunderstand another
altogether. But we can take or leave them just as
we can the concomitances nature offers. Association
is, of course, a sort of force of nature, but it is
of little significance unless we go on to make use
of it by conceptual means of our own devising.

146
 There are some puzzles in the subsection that may
be clarified as we proceed. What Kant seems to wish
to show us in this section is how association contri-
butes to the Aufbau of the world of Erscheinungen,
appearances.

In the first synthesis, we learn that perishing

impressions or representations must be saved, in the
second we learn something of how representations may
turn up from the past, and particularly how their
cohesion originates. But this still would not explain
experience fully. There is more that must be built
into our explicans to enable it to reflect the full
explicandum of experience. We are far from having
accounted for all the remarkable events on the "stage."
If we are to be able to make sense of them, we must
not only tie the data of experience together by
association and we must remember that under suitable
circumstances anything can be rather "glutinously"
associated with anything else -- but we must also see
what unites the associated data into persons, places,
processes, things. This takes us immediately to the
next topic.

3. Synthesis of Recognition in the Concept

With the present section, we reach the most
important stage of the deduction. Since it is also
an exposition of great difficulty, much ink has been
spilled over its meaning locally in the Critique and
also in the history of thought. This behooves us to
treat our opinions about it in a restrained and ten-
tative fashion. I shall continue with the plan of
according Kant's stated organization priority so far
as possible, on the simple ground that whatever for-
getfulness may have attacked him now and then,he could
scarcely have conceived the Critique without giving
some thought to whether the presented form of it
expressed his argument adequately. At the same time
some suggestions about the order and connection of
materials in this and following sections will be
accorded attention. I do not believe they alter the
fundamental argument, and they may help us to follow
it.

In the present section, we must make the idea of

concept central, even as Kant does in the title. In
order to rise above the problems of reference we shall
refer to the eleven paragraphs of the section by
147
number. (The paragraph break beginning, "Now also,
we are, etc." in Kemp Smith's translation, page 137,
is not present in the original.)
In subsection 2 we arrived at the result that
entities reappear, are reproduced. But mere intuition
cannot tell us this. When I return to light patch #1
after going on to #2 and #3, I must recognize it as
#1 if it is to have been reproduced. Thus reproduction
necessarily involves recognition. What now enters
into this act of recognition? I must seek to under-
stand this if I am to understand how my world is
structured. Its many-fold character is, as I see
everywhere, tied together I encounter the same
things and the same kinds of things; parts fit into
wholes. How is this possible? "It must have a unity
which only my consciousness can supply." When I
count a dozen eggs, even in the dark, I can and must
in imagination remember what I am doing, must "rescue"
#1 when I come to #2, exactly as with the patches of
light, and so on up to #12. What is the number of
these eggs so far as counting is concerned? "It is
nothing but the consciousness of the unity of this
synthe sis."

The upshot of paragraph 1 is thus to bring out

the constructed nature of the world before me, and |
its creator -- myself, or the paradigmatic self. '>
Adapting a term no longer used for other purposes,
we may say that the world is factured , constructed,
a near synonym to Nietzsche's term fingiren, which
he used for practically the same purpose in Will to
Power, though not in a favorable sense.

The first thing we must allow for in this fac-

turing of the world is the concept. As we learned at
the outset of the Metaphysical Deduction experience
is conceptualized and propositionalized from top to
bottom. As the very terms show, concepts imply an
act of consciousness to grasp or hold together
(zusammennehmen) the representations that come before
us (begreifen and concipere). Of course, we are
aware only of the outcome of assembling the bundles
or parcels rather than the actus of assembling.

Kant now digresses for some paragraphs in order

to explore what is meant by 'object'. This digression
runs from paragraph 3 through 6. He then resumes
discussing the role of consciousness in the facture
of the object. We shall follow the digression with

148
this in mind.
Part of what the digression in the end accom-
plishes is to ask and to answer the question whether
indeed this process of facturing must be posited in
order to account for the organized thing, Gegenstand,
that lies before us. Why, the question may run,
why make such a mystery of what is there before our
eyes? The object is organized by itself and is it
anything more than obscurantism to try to make some-
thing complex out of such an obvious fact? Such an
approach, Kant would say, is that of philosophically
lazy "empiricists" who are content with an "empirical
deduction." Nothing is that easy, Kant thinks. Nor
can we be content to look to the notion of object
of "common sense," for this we find to be virtually
nothing at all. What does common sense understand
by the object that corresponds to, what is the
"accusative" of, awareness? "A mere something, a
cipher, an X." Even things in themselves are powerless
to produce the ensuing result.

We cannot be content with the naive explanation

of how the object is* factured or organized for the
reason that there is an element of necessity in it.
It is a basic Kantian tenet that no such element can
be accounted for by attributing it to the receptive
(as against spontaneous) powers of the mind.

Kant now delivers a master stroke that combines

the rather diverse set of notions object-concept-
necessity. But how is this done? The answer is
elusive, but once we hit upon it we see that it does
the job and answers the question. In fact, we have
already had a hint of it in the all-important opening
pages of the metaphysical deduction. (A67/B92 ff.)
How can one impute necessity to a mere object
and what would be the purpose of it anyway? Kant's
point now develops out of what he has been saying
all along, that experience is judgment: having
experience of an object is not just having one's
sensibility rubbed or pricked a bit in a certain way
-- even a snail has that much awareness. Experience
is seeing and hearing things as such and such. In
effect Kant is saying that we never cease judging,
that words never fail us. It is our ceaseless appli-
cation of concepts in judgments to our awarenesses
that introduces necessity. We have explained this
earlier and may now repeat the essentials.

149
 Our development of concepts is a proceeding that
Kant characterizes as one of literally laying hold of,
"gripping" together (begreifen, so also con-cipere)
the more elementary representations of our experience.
Since the species of organic beings are stable, the
development of concepts of such species and of names
for them awaits only our becoming aware of the steady
recurrence of their distinct assortments of traits.
Outside the organic realm, the assembling of traits
may range from stability as great as that found in
the organic realm to comparatively total arbitrariness.
In neither case however, would Kant be tempted to any
sort of logical "realism", Platonic or other. Concepts
are instruments artfully devised to suit our purposes,
not to conform to transcendent models. Even concepts
that are based on no natural recurrences or altogether
contrary to them may have their uses.

Having devised the concept, we (that is, our

paradigmatic selves) have in effect stipulated what
traits must be present if a representation is to be
designated by the concept. This is the element of
necessity in the situation. Once I recognize (and we
must recall that recognition is the topic of the third
synthesis) a representation as a so and so I have by
the same token decided that the representation has
the requisite, the necessary defining traits.

The foregoing sets forth two of the three prin-

ciple pillars of the "objective deduction": concept
and necessity. The third, object, is now completely
intelligible from the first two. Knowledge, Kant
holds, is possible only if there are objective and
communicable representations not mere intuitions
local to this or that center of consciousness. There
is moreover something necessary in knowledge. Concepts
and the use of concepts have now been shown to have
such an element of necessity. Accordingly, when I
express myself employing conceptual language, I am in
a position to convey to all who understand, a knowledge
of facts, a knowledge about objects. Only when this
level is reached is there experience of a world whose
reality is shareable and shared. Only through a
rational being's command of concepts with which he can
order his more elementary representations is there
knowledge.

We may now see how these theses are developed.

Considering necessity somewhat further, we must not
suppose that Kant thinks the parts of objects are
150
necessarily related to one another. Kant never even
hints at saying that there is some spook of "necessary
connexion" that pervades the world, uniting its bits
and parts in time and space. He hews without fail
to Hume's line that bare matters of fact may not be
inferred from one another unless this is done with
a clear appeal to something like the causal principle
as proved in the Second Analogy. Hume, of course,
just as emphatically asserts that such inferences are
made and that they are "not only a true species of
reasoning, but the strongest of all others" (Treatise,
I-III-VII note). Kant's point is that to experience
is to name, to name is to judge, and to judge is to
infer. Experience is a tissue of inferences. This is
what Kant means by necessity in experience. When it
is put so, we see "empiricism" and "not going beyond
experience," that is, beyond sense impressions or
empirical intuitions, are but empty shibboleths.

The result, then, is that if we are speaking of

objects in a philosophically circumspect manner we
must think of them in terms of the concepts by which
we organize and facture them. A concept, however, is
nothing but a rule setting forth the properties a
thing must have to be named by a given name. Concepts
are entirely of our own devising. To be sure, lan-
guages tend to preserve only those that have proved
their usefulness and applicability, but we might have
preserved much more useless linguistic detritus in
language than in fact we have. (Mathematics is not
obliged to consider whether its constructions are use-
ful or interpretable.)

In paragraph 4 the key notions are united, but

one thing more is necessary. The object spoken of is
the product of the facture, the concept is the device
that organizes it and confers on it the kind of
necessity that a concept is capable of. But there must
still be something, some agent, that in some sense
does this, effects the facture. Concepts, we know, do
not grow on trees, but neither do they merely grow on
or in animals if they did we should long since have
established true communication with them. The one
thing that is needed is just that which Hume hoped to
do without in his account of both personal identity and
the continuance of the "external world." Kant believes
there must be a consciouness that is aware of what it
is doing. Otherwise there may be reproduction which
is not aware that anything is reproduced, nothing that
imagination has carried over from past to present --

151
and this is all the same as saying there is no repro-
duction, nothing in fact at all. There must be a
"unity of consciousness that precedes all data of
intuition and in relation to which alone there can be
representation of objects; this pure, original, in-
variant consciousness we shall now call transcendental
apperception" (9).

In the previous paragraph Kant has spoken with

emphasis of empirical apperception which is the
structuring that underlies the object on the merely
psychological level, essentially the first two syn-
theses -- a structuring, we repeat still another time,
we share with other animal beings. But now we are
no longer speaking only of conditioned responses,
laws of association, and propensities to behave but of
objects of experience which are articulated under
rules and concepts that have been shown to be neces-
sary. There must be a transcendental ground for all
necessity (7): transcendental because anything less
than this would simply be another item that entered
into association. What unites or synthesizes must
transcend what it unites or synthesizes.

The rule maker stands behind the rules or con-

cepts, the effect of which is to facture the object,
the world of objects. Only by presupposing the
numerical identity of a paradigmatic apperceiving
self have we a ground on which the necessity expressed
in empirical concepts rests. It is in fact one and
the same as we read in one of the key sentences in
the Deduction. Since we cannot attribute the unity
and necessity of objects to things themselves, to
some x unknown to us, "the unity which the object
makes necessary (compels us to recognize) can be
nothing other than the formal unity of consciousness
in the synthesis of the multiplicity of representa-
tions" (5). The unity of objects is the unity of
consciousness!

It should be noted in passing that this is a

sword that cuts both ways, or also an equation that
reads both ways: for Kant, the unity and continuity
of our world and the unity and continuity of apper-
ception are one and the same, and one may be inferred
from the other. Along with the present appeal to
the transcendental unity one must take also Kant's
proof of the existence of the external world in the
Refutation of Idealism (B275 ff.): "The mere, but
empirically determined consciousness of my own being
152
proves the existence of objects in space outside me."

The thing-itself is mentioned several times in

this exposition, but it is always, I think, spoken
of consistently with what Kant has said elsewhere.
In popular terms we think vaguely that ideas are veri-
dical when they "correspond" to an object "out there."
But when we examine the range of cognitive faculties
and functions we see that this amounts to little more
than a vague something (an X ) . The whole examination,
Kant wishes to show, reveals that our true objects,
the objects we speak of and have concepts for, that
we have knowledge about which we can share with others,
is a highly factured affair to whose fabrication or
facture not only the senses and the imagination but
also transcendental sources contribute.

Once this entire account is completed, Kant will

have shown that no significant claim of the common
sense view has been denied. Kant is_ the philosopher
of common sense and its stoutest defender against
the twin dangers of dogmatism and scepticism.
One more factor, no doubt the most important of
all for Kant, remains to be introduced. We have
surveyed the agent, the device, the product of synthe-
sis. In pursuing the mechanical metaphor of construc-
tion or facture Kant needs to take account of one
more thing: something one might describe as the plan
or plans upon which the devices, concepts, are devised.
We may think of these plans as rules for devising
rules, or as Kant says pure concepts of the under-
standing, the categories. It is soon apparent that
they are called concepts only because any abstraction
may be referred to by this term. They are certainly
not class or relation concepts (house, tiger, color,
singing, next to). What, in fact, are they?

Concepts such as those just mentioned are not

simply devised out of the blue but depend upon a certain
ultimate and no further analyzable way of looking at
the world. That is why they are categories, "highest
kinds." As we have seen, Kant has told us where, in
effect, he believes he has found them, in the forms
of language. But this does not really answer the
question whence we have them, because forms of language
are ultimately the categories themselves or else are
truly empty and void forms. We may therefore pursue
the categories by searching the forms, but we have
yet to discover why these forms are employed and not
153
others.
In a certain sense the concepts gas, temperature,
pressure, volume, or zebra, striped, hoofed, or sun,
moon, earth, gravitation, or matter, variant tempera-
ture, degree of incandescence and so on are possible
only because we are capable of the higher abstractions
thing and property, physical system, quantity, func-
tional determinant and determinables. We have of
course employed the first set of concepts long before
we thought of the latter. But Kant wants to show
that every intelligence, even the most pedestrian,
is capable of employing the first only because the
latter sets of functors are inherently characteristic
of all rational beings, and that the functors are
not learned or acquired as empirical intuitions may
be nor in any other way. Man is the concept-maker
but on what this power rests is, if not a mystery,
then perhaps explainable only in such terms as Kant
has resorted to in this so-called deduction of the
categories. This, in any event, is what he proposes.
In order to assert "roses are red, violets blue"
you must command the categories thing-property or
thing-state and others too.

He has then in this section brought us in the

last paragraph to the threshold of these concepts
of how to devise concepts or rules for devising rules:
thing and property, determinant and determinable,
system, possibility, existence, quantity, and others.
The point of the deduction is that without a command
of these we could not speak in such terms as we use
to convey information to one another about very humble
or very complex affairs or to devise explanations of
them.

I think it is now apparent why one might wish

that Kant had devoted more time to the particular
categories without diminishing his efforts to show
us why we would be other than rational beings if
we had no implicit powers such as those he named in
the categories and principles, for nothing might
better fortify the argument for the latter than a
consequent exposition of the former.

4. Preliminary Explanation of the Possibility

of the Categories as A Priori Knowledge
The present section reiterates some of the points
of the preceding though in sketchier fashion. It
154
introduces the categories, though mentioning only
causality specifically.
Beholding the drama of our experience, we are
aware of the continuity that makes it one experience,
our own. 'Experiences' in the plural can denote only
the discriminable perceptions in it which gain a
common unity in the whole through the concepts that
apply to their content, presumably as this has been
worked out in subsection 3.

In the second paragraph we are, however, informed

that if this unity were only that of empirical concepts,
we would still have something much less than exper-
ience . Without something more than this, our mass of
perceptions would not amount to true objects related
by general and necessary laws. It is now said that
what is needed to attain this end is the categories,
for these are the indispensable a priori conditions
for experience from the side of thought, just as space
and time are from that of intuition. Categories
are given the somewhat curious general characterization,
"basic concepts to think objects to appearances,"
Grundbegriffe, Obi ekte berhaupt zu den Erscheinungen
zu denken." As he explains presently, categories
transform the undetermined object of empirical intui-
tion into the experience of an object.

There is an anomaly in this. The way empirical

concepts have had to be understood until now is as
representations that are themselves made possible by
the categories. In our phrase for characterizing the
categories, "rules for making rules," the second
'rules' is the empirical judgments. Hence, on this
interpretation, if experience contains empirical con-
cepts it is <* fortiori informed by the categories.
In the second paragraph of 4, however, Kant speaks as
if experience could conceivably be organized by
empirical concepts without the categories, as if
experience came in various degrees of being "processed."
In 13, we saw that he seemed to envisage the possi-
bility that empirical intuitions might occur quite
alone in experience. Here he allows empirical concepts
to appear in independence of categories. But in doing
so he departs from his program of presenting exper-
ience as a tissue of both concepts and intuitions,
both pure and empirical. It should be apparent that
the empirical concept of a cat is that of a being
existing in time, that can undergo constant causal

155
alteration from within and without; thus causality
and substance and other categories have already served
as, shall we say, templets for it. For there to be
such a representation as "the black cat" there must
first be the notion of substance and attribute.
Adickes suggests that the first three paragraphs
constitute a distinct "deduction," the second. But
in fact the following material actually completes
the argument of this deduction, rather than beginning
all over again as his designation "third deduction"
for it implies.
;i
There follows the by now familiar argument that '!
without the apperception by a unitary Self, there i
would be no experience such as any rational being has
but "something less even than a dream, a mere blind
play of representations." Such a Self resorts to
certain functors of synthesis -- causality is specifi-
cally mentioned here. It devises the notion of
causality and employs it as a rule by which to unite
representations in time. Once again, Kant particularly
emphasizes the converse of this, that without the
unity conferred by such functors of synthesis no unity
of consciousness would be met with in the multiplicity
of perceptions.

The remainder of the subsection offers few

difficulties. Kant reiterates that it is utterly
futile to try to derive notions such as causality
from experience. A statement to the effect that one
kind of event is the cause of another introduces an
element of necessity which experience, as intuition
(E-|),will never manifest. When we ask for a cause
for a given event we ask what must have occurred to
produce this event, such that it might even have been
predicted in advance if a suitable system of theories
had been at command. Experience might enable us to
observe a sequence of events, but this would only lead
us to inquire whether there was anything more involved
in the situation, whether indeed a kind of affinity
was involved in the sequence. This term is, of course,
simply another way of saying that there is a law.
Eventually Kant will seek to show why we simply will
not "give up" the guiding principle that "everything
that happens, that is, begins to be, presupposes
something upon which it follows by a rule" (Second
Analogy, A189).

156
 It should be remembered that necessity as it
eventually gets to be defined in the Schematism and
in the Third Postulate of Empirical Thought is thought
of in terms such as those employed by the Stoic logi-
cians of antiquity: "The schema of necessity is
existence of an object at all times" (A145/B184). As
we have remarked before, Kant's view of necessity is
free of all abstruseness. What he is seeking in
causal laws is what is in the most unrestricted sense
invariant. The category of necessity in turn means
nothing more than that the universe, as appearance, is
pervasively determined.

This,then, is what is meant by the necessity of

causal laws. But we must also ask the very Kantian
question, how they are possible. "On my principles,"
says Kant, "this is readily understood. All possible
appearances being representations belong to the
totality of a possible self-consciousness." Such a
Self must be thought to maintain a numerical identity
and is apperceptive. The conditions, by nature a
priori, which it prescribes are the categories. A
prescription of any kind is a rule, and thus experience
must be regarded as rule-governed. Since we often
think of rules as by nature arbitrary, made at the
pleasure of the lawgiver, we of course ask whether the
principles the Critique is inquiring into are of this
sort. Kant emphatically says (A113) that the laws do
not rest on an empirical affinity in representations,
but vice versa: "a law is a rule that must be posited."
I do not think that this means more than what we
will learn as a result of subsequent definitions and
proofs. The possibility of laws as rules rests for
Kant on the fact that we are dealing wholly with re-
presentations, with factured appearance. He finds
no conceivable alternative to this, because the object
of experience (E2) contains an element of necessity
which can never be attributed to experience as empiri-
cal intuition (E-j). There is an inexorableness (a
Zwang) to the situation. Kant might say like Luther:
hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders The problem
must be solved with the materials of experience and
what it presupposes: no others will be invoked.

Kant is well aware of the paradoxical nature of

his view of laws as rules. He presents an excellent
defense of it both here and at the end of the following
section, beginning with what Adickes calls the sixth
deduction (middle of A125 ff.).

157
 Section 3

The Relation of the Understanding to Objects in

General, and the Possibility of Knowing These A Priori

At the end of the "Transition to the Transcendental

Deduction of the Categories" Kant ascribed the possi-
bility of experience to three faculties: sense, imagi-
nation, and apperception (A94). In similar terms he
now begins what is ostensibly the deduction of the of
the categories. (All that has preceded has been pre-
sented as merely the clue to the categories, or as a
preparation for the reader, A98.) In both instances
Kant wishes to distinguish the empirical from the a
priori employment of these faculties. We may think
of these first as they may function at a level below
that of rational beings: in a plausible sense repre-
sentations are sensed, reproduced, and organized even
at the animal level. But we cannot attribute experi-
ence to any being unless it is in command of concepts
that enable it to identify and to relate representa-
tions, and to organize them into objects and processes.
For this we must have not only an animate being behav-
ing in a certain manner, but a self that recognizes,
that seeks out and selects details in experience rele-
vant to its purposes, that learns from its experiences
and knows how to use the result to infer and predict
the future. If we sometimes think that certain sutk-
human beings, dogs and primates, manifest extraordi-
nary cleverness we simply affirm that in such cases
there appears to be behavior that needs a little more
than the laws of conditioning to explain. Or again,
if human beings sometimes disappoint us with their
want of intelligence it is because they have responded
to cues in a mechanical or animal fashion without
making selections and discriminations or applying them
carefully and without anticipating outcomes and using
the anticipations to determine their actions, and so
on. The overriding condition for behavior that is
basically informed by intelligence, as against mere [
conditioned response, is that there be an ongoing ;.
Self. It is an a priori, a transcendental condition
of there being any knowledge that there be identical,
continuant selves to which all representations that
constitute knowledge may be referred. There are no
ready-mades we find like shells on the seashore:

158
everything must first be fabricated, factured, or in
Kant's own term, synthesized by such beings, by Selves.

There are some obscurities in this deduction in

which the Kantian jargon sometimes threatens to over-
whelm us. We should, however, accord extra attention
to Kant's brief remarks on the productive synthesis
of the imagination. He emphasizes its special role in
the development of knowledge and experience. We have
observed (in subsection 2 of the previous section) the
role of the reproductive imagination. If our imagina-
tive powers (of present-ing what is past or absent)
extended only to this we would be, as said before,
in lockstep with previous representations, or with
whatever after-effects they may have left behind them.
No rational being, such as the subject here, confines
itself to this. A rat in a maze can be conditioned
to follow very complex cues. But its intelligence
is still based upon the reproductive imagination, no
matter how complex its discriminations are. But a
person who is trying to solve a problem, even let us
say, a comparatively simple problem of carpentry,
plumbing, or electricity will certainly fail unless
the productive imagination can develop or exhibit
an array of similarities, differences, cross-connections
substitutions, outside possibilities, good and poor
options, assured failures, and so on, none of which
the person may ever have encountered before. The
pragmatic bent in Kant's theory of knowledge represen-
ted by this view of imagination, however obscured
by the jargon, is quite modern and very greatly to his
credit.

The exposition in section 3 has so far gone over

in rather condensed fashion (though without repeating)
the material of subsections 1, 2, and 3 in section 2,
that is to say, it has expounded again what Kant has
called the Subjective Deduction. This is devoted
to assessing the contributions of the faculties to
our knowledge, rather than to the transcendental
account of what can render our experience or knowledge
objective. The categories proceed from the latter.
The present version of the deduction introduces these
in only a few words at A119. Whatever unity or con-
nection there is in experience is made possible only
by the Self's command of these functors of synthesis,
particularly subsistents and inherents, and causes
and effects.

159
 At about A120 the Deduction seems once more to
recommence with the words, "We shall now, beginning
from below with the empirical exhibit the necessary
interrelation of the understanding with appearances,
through the categories." The following paragraphs,
to the middle of A125, if read in full recollection
of the "first deduction" offer a fairly clear summary
of the argument.

This version of the deduction does not always

conform to the letter of the preceding, but its pro-
cedure and direction are in general the same with
them. Appearances, the objects of our knowledge,
are the product of the structuring and synthesis of
a multiplicity of elements. The principal agent of
the synthesis is the imagination,which can rescue
passing impressions and reinstate them to form an order
or series. The reproduction of these impressions or
representations must derive from something more than
a mere chance association of anything with anything
else. Their affinity, the ground of their association,J
is given by their necessary relation to one conscious- I
ness, or original apperception. They are always ;;
present to some such Self, or system of apperception, :
which intuitively owns them as "mine." This is ]
possible only because of the unity, the one-ness of ;V
this consciousness. Mein , we may say, entails ein. . j.
This relation to a centre is fundamental to all per- :
ception.^4

As in other deductions the imagination is

presented as mediating between the other two faculties
that are indispensable to experience or empirical
knowledge, namely sense and understanding. Fundamental
to the work of the understanding is the devising of
concepts, systems of rules (concepts) developed a
priori but significant only through relation to
sensible intuition. The imagination can perform this
mediating rule because its representations are con-
crete like those of intuition, and yet since it is
not immediately limited to sensation it is capable of
presenting even that which is past or absent. It is
not limited to dredging up mere replicas of past
intuition, but aids the understanding in summoning
up the presently inaccessible, creatively and
productively.

Kant points out in an important footnote the

decisive role that imagination plays even in

160
perception. He insists on this point because there
is really much more in perception than what meets the
eye, so to speak. The imagination is constantly aid-
ing the understanding which is ceaselessly supplying
conceptual interpretation, going beyond what is
sensed. Moreover, the senses by themselves, Kant
says here as elsewhere, are incapable by themselves
of synthesizing and thus generating complex represen-
tations. Only the imagination with its capacity to
roam selectively over what is not present is capable
of this, but only under the guidance of the under-
standing because it alone is capable of developing
plans: classifications, rules, and systems.

This rule making faculty is capable of devising

concepts of particular substances, properties, re-
lations, but even more significantly it supplies the
generic notions of substance, causality and other
functors of synthesis that make experience an in-
telligible whole. These notions can never be learned
from mere intuitions. Without them mental life would
be a mere phantasmagoria of disjointed sense impres-
sions and of chaotic imaginings scarcely distin-
guishable from them.

Knowledge is thus something far different from a

scroll of blotting paper that is affected by every
passing encounter. It depends rather upon a complex
interaction of several faculties, each with distinc-
tive powers and products. The object of knowledge
is as complex as a drama we watch in a theater. It
is not merely there, but every detail has a certain
origin and purpose and has been put into place by
the functioning of our faculties, which are like
players, directors, stage hands, wardrobe mistresses,
impresarios and so on. The categories are like the
drama itself which, with the help of the cast, holds
the evening together and is the ultimate reason for
our attending. It should be added that "we", at least
the paradigmatic we, have a hand in writing the play!

Thus we are led to the final version of the de-

duction which begins: "We ourselves introduce order
and regularity into the world of phenomena which we
call nature, nor could we discover them if we, or the
mind by its very nature, had not originally installed
them there." We are "ourselves" the authors of the
order and regularity: this the deduction has asserted
from the beginning. For the unity of nature which is
the subject matter of all experience and all science
161
is a necessary one (in the sense explained several
times over). Such a unity can only be established
a priori, that is, it must already be present in the
original cognitive sources of the mind {in den
ursprnglichen Erkenntnisquellen unseres Gemts).
The "Copernican Revolution" which appeared some
years later in the Preface to B is of course already
being proclaimed in Kant's proposal to reinterpret
the laws of nature as rules. Particular laws, such as
those of mechanics, are regarded as only particular
determinations of higher ones (nur besondere Bestim-
mungen noch hherer Gesetze). Neither here nor later,
however, does Kant ever come to grips with the prob-
lem of the limit at which in proceeding from higher to
lower determinations, we pass from synthetic a priori
to synthetic a posteriori propositions. It is quite
clear that when Kant says, as he does here, that the
understanding is the lawgiver of nature he is refer-
ring only to the causal principle, not to one or
another causal law. Of course, he says, what are
only "empirical laws cannot trace their origin to the
pure understanding." But if they are only "special
determinations of the pure laws of the understanding"
are we to take him to intend the absurdity that syn-
thetic a posteriori propositions are only special
cases of synthetic a priori propositions?

I believe we can explain this only by saying that

Kant must not have had the three-fold analysis of
propositions in mind when he composed the close of
the Deduction. The Introduction to the Critique, in
which the analysis most prominently appears, is no
doubt of late composition (as dickes and others
maintain). But if Kant is not thinking of subsuming
a priori under a posteriori synthetic propositions
how does he wish the phrase 'particular determination'
besondere Bestimmung, to be understood? In the
Analytic of Principles he frequently speaks vaguely :
of how the Principles "lie at the foundations" of
knowledge (zum Grunde liegen). Are they premises
that must appear somewhere in every scientific
venture? Surely, being a consequence of a premise
is not the same as being a "particular determination."

I raise these questions because we must, as early

as possible, begin to ask what use precisely we are
to make of the pure concepts of the understanding,
assuming that these have been deduced. So far we have
really only had very general assertions about this
162
matter: that they are "indispensable" to knowledge,
that they must "precede" it, that we would have little
more than an association of ideas rather than knowledge
without them. But such generalities are so far of
little help in trying to arrive at a view of the logi-
cal architecture of science which Kant was so greatly
concerned about. We shall return to these questions
again in exploring the Deduction in B and in the
Analytic of Principles.

Summary Representation
of the Correctness of this Deduction
of the Pure Concepts of the understanding
and of its being the Only Possible Deduction
The purpose of the addendum is given in the title.
The categories are necessary for us to have anything
we call experience or knowledge. Without them mental
life would simply be that of Shakespeare's cat which
"can look at a king" but which has no categories such
as might enable it to know that it has seen one.

Whence, then, are the categories derived? They

cannot be learned from things themselves or they would
be merely empirical. Are they then, generated somehow
out of ourselves (aus uns selbst)? Not this either,
says Kant, although this is what we may have expected
him to say. We do not manufacture the world around
us (as in some caricatures of idealism we are said to
do), but rather the organization of our representations
into something objective and systematic is the Self's
handiwork.

To return to Locke's plain image, it is the

bundle, not the sticks, that is the Self's creation.
'Object' is a formal concept for Kant, and such form
or organization can derive only from the self as "the
unity of consciousness." The categories are the Self's
devices for supplying this form. "Pure concepts of
the understanding are possible a priori and indeed in-
dispensable in relation to experience because our
knowledge is oriented toward nothing but appearances
whose very possibility is rooted in ourselves, whose
relatedness and unity (in the representation of an
object) are to be encountered only in ourselves. Such
concepts, moreover, are prior to all experience and,
in respect of form, make it possible" (A130). This
sums up the deduction and its purpose.

163
Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding
(Edition B)
Section 2
The Transcendental Deduction
of the Pure Concepts of Understanding

15 On the Possibility of Combining in General

We come now to one of the two portions of the
Critique which were altogether redrafted in the second
edition. (The other is the sections on the Paralogisms
of Pure Reason.) Section 2 has been rewritten and
receives a new title.
One may easily acquaint himself with some of
Kant's reasons for thinking he ought to improve the
exposition of the deduction in the second edition by
consulting his correspondence, now rendered into
English by Professor Zweig. I am not certain that
the rewritten deduction is an improvement on the first
version. It is perhaps less labored, but it also takes
certain things for granted that were more fully elabo-
rated in the earlier edition. The second deduction is
much briefer than the first if we accept the view that
it extends only from 15 to 20, with a recapitula-
tion in 21. It has been suggested that in 22 to
25 the dialectic makes a premature appearance and
that these subsections were inserted at a later date.
I think this is less applicable to the latter portion
of 24 (after the second paragraph) and 25, which
should be considered in connection with 16. The
purpose of 26 ff. is, he says, to show that the
categories are laws of nature. Certainly the main
thrust of the deduction is now confined to 15-2O
(or 21). One should notice the effect of the
formulation of the deduction in the Prolegomena (which
appeared in the interim between the two editions) in
section 19. This trend of thought did not appear
in A at all. 20 is a succinct statement of the
deduction in one paragraph. Besides this, if any one
notion is given more extended or emphatic treatment in
the deduction in B than in A,it is perhaps the notion
of the I, the self considered as an epistemological
presupposition. (Explained on p.72)

165
 Kant begins with the familiar thought that the
matter of our representations derives from sense
receptivity, but its form, that is the order, the
relatedness, the manner of apprehending them must
stem from an altogether different source, being the
work of a spontaneous act. All combining, or synthesis,
is here presented as owing to the understanding,
whether it is exercised upon a multiplicity of concepts
or of intuitions. (The latter may be, he says,
"sensuous or non-sensuous", but since a non-sensuous
intuition may very well fall to the side of "intellec-
tual intuition" which human minds do not command, one
editor has suggested that Kant really means by the
phrase, empirical or non-empirical.) We learn imme-
diately that an obi ect is not anything given, or "pre-
structured", but is the product of such synthesis.
Parts, as the product of analysis, are possible only jj
as divisions of a previously synthesized whole. }.\

This raises the question we have considered \

earlier: when, where, how, and indeed whether such a j: \
process of "facturing" objects has taken place. Kant (
says this combining is an indispensable act, "whether
we are conscious of it or not." But of course we are
not conscious of it and should not, I think, identify
any known mental or intellectual operation with this
act. And if we are not conscious of it, the confidence
with which Kant speaks of its occurring certainly
needs to be fortified. Somehow, it simply "stands to
reason" for Kant. Or should one simply regard it as
one of the axioms on which the Critical philosophy
rests and agree to exempt it from proof? In any case,
we do well to reflect constantly on the source and
consequence of this decisive principle.
Continuing with the characterization or the meta-
phor of synthesis as a kind of mechanical process of
putting pieces together, Kant points out that the
process involves not only the parts , the multiplicity
or manifold of intuitions, and the act of combining
them, but also a purpose or end that guides the act,
that is, the resulting unity. The prime example of
such a finished result or product is, we recall, a
judgment, the characteristic work of the understanding.
Kant is saying that the process of combining is not
a mere process of growth as a mechanistic biologist
may conceive the assimilation of substances in organ-
isms: it is the work of some agent who sets out to
accomplish a certain end. It must therefore not be
thought of as a kind of byproduct of the act of

166
synthesis: synthesis presupposes unity and makes
no sense unless we suppose that unity in the multi-
plicity is what it sets out to achieve. The nature
of the unity is not disclosed until the next sub-
section, although the footnote makes it clear that
the power of consciousness to synthesize is what is
meant.
i Kant adds that the unity spoken of is not the
I category of unity (the first category). It is clear
'that it is not, since first, all the categories are
5 the product of the instruments of synthesis, and
second, because the unity spoken of is nothing other
I than the transcendental unity of apperception itself.
iIf we ask precisely what the category of unity is or
does, granting that it is not what is the subject of
discussion here, we must look elsewhere. And in fact
Jwe have more than a little difficulty in finding an
answer to this question.

167
 16
Of the Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception
We are thus led directly to the source of the
unity that has just been identified in the total pro-
cess of synthesis. Kant now sets out to identify this
source and to show the indispensable role it plays in
the total economy of scientific knowledge. As in the
deduction in A there is far less said about categories
in what is ostensibly a deduction of them than we
would expect. Only in 19 does the necessity of a
priori functors appear, and only in 20 are we given
a succinct statement of their indispensability. Kant
here concentrates upon the need to recognize the agent
of apperception in knowledge.

Taken as a whole, 16 offers an answer to Hume's

view of the self and of its place in our knowing even
the commonest things, such as recognizing one's
hat or shoes from one day to the next. It does not so
much controvert the first of these (Hume's self) as in
effect grant the whole structure of personal identity
that Hume sees the imagination as constructing (this
Kant calls empirical apperception, here and elsewhere)
while showing that the self so constructed is useless
to account for common knowledge unless the self is
seen also in a much more responsible role as a trans-
cendental unity.

I think what Kant is saying comes down to three

main points: (1) that an identical self must be
present if there is to be knowledge; (2) that although
what we are empirically acquainted with as ourselves
or my. experiences may be the deed or work of such a
self, the merely empirically determined self cannot
serve to account for knowledge; (3) the self that can
account for knowledge must be set forth in a trans-
cendental manner. When we add to this that the cate-
gories are the instruments or functors by which this
"transcendental self" works, we have the rudiments of
the deduction.

It should be said first that Kant has some three

distinct notions of the self. 27 These are probably
not numerically different. Perhaps they differ in
the way in which three monotheists may disagree about
God, in fact, may even zealously make war upon one
another. If you and I agree there is only one God

168
must not yours and mine be numerically identical? I
think this depends on whether there is some solid
core to the notion Hod on which we both agree. Other-
wise I may regard him as a Great Rabbit and you as a
Great Antelope, let us say. But I think most reli-
gious Jehads in the past have arisen over differing
conceptions of God, although the existence of God in
some core sense is agreed upon. If I am not mistaken,
Kant's views of the self are like this.

The three notions of the self are these: (1)

the empirical self, the object of introspection,
largely a creation of associative mechanisms, and the
subject matter of empirical psychology: (2) the
epistemoloqical presupposition , the transcendental
unity of apperception, to be explained in detail
later; (3) the immortal soul, the object of religious
concern and a fixture of classical theology.

Kant's view of the empirical self is not

essentially different from the view Hume has of the
self as a product of the imagination (Treatise, I-IV-
VI). It is the object of study of introspective
psychology and indeed any psychology, introspective
or not, ought to be able to answer the question what
our notion of the self is, even if the self is thought
an illusion. It is compatible with what Kant says
to regard Hume's account as not particularly mistaken
but that this is only one side of the self, the side
it presents to our view, so to speak, and that this
side would not at all exist if there were not more to
the self than this.

When we now follow up this image of foreside and

rearside of the self we may come to the conclusion (a)
that in fact we are directly acquainted with the two
sides, the inmost self being an object of intuitive
certainty, or that such a self is inferrible with
equal certainty, and (b) that quite a number of proper-
ties are readily observable in it. This view is that
of the self as the soul , a cornerstone of much reli-
gious belief. In the Paralogisms, Kant sets forth
what properties are generally attributed to such a
self, or soul: simplicity, substantiality, immor-
tality, identity, and so on. Whatever other reasons
there may be for believing in the existence of such
an entity, he regards it as neither empirically con-
firmable, nor logically inferrible from experience,
nor a probable hypothesis of psychology or other
science, nor a notion indispensable for carrying on

169
such science, as a category is. it is, being an
Idea, at most a notion that has a regulative, but
never a constitutive use.
Of these three notions of the self, Kant essen-
tially agrees with what the first affirms so to
speak, but he rejects what, in Hume's hands, it denies;
and he regards the third as lost in a tangle of uncon-
firmable statements. But he does not deny that
empirical operations are attributable to the self or
that the self may be, for all we know, simple, immor-
tal, substantial, and so forth. What he wants to
affirm is the three statements presented above which
state that a continuant self, not empirically deter-
minable, must be presupposed if we are to account for
the indubitable fact that we have knowledge. In other
words he supports the second as well as the first
view of the self.

Let us return to our analogy of the beam of light

moving in the dark. Unless an observer somehow
preserves the image at A as he moves to B, C, and D he
will not have seen, let us say, a house, a train, a
street. We might say that he had seen only what was
at A, let us say, a locomotive, and then have lost
this altogether. (On strict Kantian grounds he could
not even have seen a locomotive under those restricted
conditions since seeing something so would involve
a considerable "synthesis".) This we might briefly
think of simply as consciousness of something, as
against apperception, but this is only a rough approx-
imation.

Kant's point is that a street, a house, a train,

if it is large enough, or a continent, if it is seen
from a spacecraft has a certain unity and this is
possible only if glimpses of it are remembered, pre-
served, and reviewed by one reviewer. This "reviewer"
Kant calls the "I think" he might have said, the
cogito. (We must remember that his interests are
epistemological, not ontological, like those of
Descartes.) The anomalous name serves to warn us that
we can say virtually nothing about this reviewer.
Kant is aware that what is said of it must be
absolutely minimal without however being nothing
not an easy requirement.

We must take the present section in conjunction

with 24 and 25 to try to make clear to ourselves
what Kant means by the "I think." (In those sections

170
 he also renews his thoughts about inner sense; this
goes back to the Aesthetic.) We learn that we must
distinguish between the subject as appearance and
j the subject as it is in itself. He then, in 25,
i speaks of our knowledge of the self in exactly the
;! same manner as in the Preface to B (at B xxvi) he
; spoke of things themselves: we can think them, but
we cannot know them, because knowing requires both
concepts and intuitions. Hence this self is so far
only a logical possibility. What makes it more than
merely that is that it proves to be indispensable to
knowledge. (Many logical possibilities remain in
their characteristic limbo since they- are of no use
to us, and are merely logically innocuous.) What we
do not have is any intuition of the self. Kant could
endorse Hume's honest confession: "When I enter most
intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble
on some particular perception or other, of heat or
cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
I never catch myself at any time without a perception,
and never can observe anything but the perception"
(Treatise, I-IV-VI). So far so good, Kant would say.
The rub comes when one notices one's equally un-
shakeable convictions that what is being perceived
and recognized with heat, cold, light, and shade
is the continuant objects of everyday life. If these
convictions are not mere illusions and Kant does
not allow that any sceptic has ever given us good
reason to think so -- then we must be prepared to
assert the reality of the conditions necessary for
this, and the first of these is a unity of appercep-
tion. Of this unity I can claim no knowledge, I
merely think it. I cannot attribute any material pro-
perties to it. The most I can say of it is that
it exists "as an intelligence which is aware of itself
solely as a capacity for combining" what comes before
it (B 158).

The problem is to say as little as possible about

this new version of the coaito and yet to say enough.
I think Kant proceeds with the utmost caution in
this matter, carefully discriminating between what we
know directly or immediately and where we go beyond
this. We know directly, have a simple unshakeable
intuitive conviction ('intuitive' not in Kant's
technical sense but as meaning immediate) that these
and these and these are all my_ experiences. I say so
not because I recognize some little apple called 'I'
that reappears here, for I may be mistaken about any
such identity. I must stick to what I'm sure of.
171
I'm sure I'm suffering a severe headache, that this
looks like the pen I lost two weeks ago, that I'm
hearing my son's voice, and so on. I am sure -- the
mere conviction of certainty is enough of what is
mine, mein. Now, says Kant, there is only one way
to account for this, and it cannot be by means of
something which merely (in Hume's words) "induces me
to believe" that these are my representations -- for
then I have one feeling of certainty to account for by
means of another induced feeling of certainty, and so
on. The only way to account for mein is through ein,
one or unity. "The multiplicity of representations in
a given intuition would not all of them be my repre-
sentations, if they did not all belong to one self-
consciousness" (B 132). If not ein, then not mein:
ein is the necessary condition for mein, the only way
to account for it. Moreover the two must be absolutely
distinct: the explicans cannot be simply one experience
among other experiences, for it is that which is
needed in order to explain experience. Since we are
not merely devising an empirically inaccessible entity
as an hypothesis to explain a fact, the explanation
earns the characterization transcendental, and thus
we have a transcendental unity of apperception to
designate the traits and powers of the self considered
as an epistemological presupposition.

I think we may still have questions to raise

about this way of accounting for the unity of exper- >'
ience, for that is what it is, but one must remember '\
what Kant is trying to do. His main purpose is not :|
to give a comprehensive account of the self. Nor is
what he is saying a rejection or correction of Hume's ;
account of how in principle the idea of the (empirical)
self is constructed. Kant can in principle accept
Hume's account of the development of the empirical
self. What he cannot accept is Hume's failure to
allow for the second view of the self, his failure to
explain how there can be knowledge if the continuity
of the physical world is only one of association, but
an association that is not done or witnessed by any
one agent.

As we have seen in the previous deduction and

also in the Aesthetic, Kant is careful to provide
both for the empirical facts of the matter in hand
and what we may call the cognitive requirements.
Under the empirical facts, he allows fully for our
inner experience, introspection, the development of
empirical self-awareness and continuity,

172
association, and so on. The concept of the self, as
much as space, time, or the regularity of events,
deserves what he called an explanation of possession,
how we come by such a concept (A85/B117). But it is
equally necessary to answer questions about all of
these notions that go far beyond the empirical explan-
ation of their presence, to allow, in other words, for
the cognitive requirements or the claims that they
make. And in order to provide for them we must resort
to another mode of confirmation because the claims are
not empirically confirmable, nor are they analytically
true, nor highly probable generalizations. But since
they are absolutely indispensable for knowledge, and
since it is absurd to suppose that we never have know-
ledge, we are entitled to affirm or confirm these
claims. This is what he means by a transcendental
procedure. The continuant self is thus what may be
called a transcendental entity. It is, as already
explained, one, or a unity, and its characteristic
function is the review or apperception of what we are
at particular passing moments conscious of. It is
not derived or derivative from experience, nor de-
pendent upon it: precisely the reverse is true. Hence
it is original, and in a similar vein, Kant speaks of
it as a priori. When we sum up all these properties
we see the different functions performed by such a
self: original, synthesizing, unifying, apperceiving,
transcendental, a priori. The name for this self is
as accurate as it is awkward: the transcendental
unity of apperception. It also appears under slightly
varying titles, emphasizing other functions.

Tnere remains a troublesome question which may be

raised but scarcely answered, and it touches not only
this but all the other key parts of the Critique.
The question is how we are to construe the key terms
in the characterization of the transcendental unity.
'Transcendental' is no problem, of course, since it
refers only to the mode of deriving the notion. But
how shall we understand 'unity', or 'continuity', and
'apperception'? This is like asking about the use
of 'cause' in connection with things themselves. If
we think of the terms as analogical or metaphorical
we will have difficulty in assimilating the construc-
tion and the decoding of the analogy or metaphor to
more familiar cases of these. We must at all costs
avoid giving the appearance of solving a problem
merely by offering a new name for it. The problem is
not only Kant's, but is already vigorously evident in
Neo-Platonism and medieval "negative theology" with

173
their effort to characterize a being that is in
principle beyond observation. Moreover, Kant must
heed his self-imposed restriction that nothing more
than 'I think' can be attributed to the self. In the
Paralogisms he remarks that in Rational Psychology we
have an alleged "science built solely on one propo-
sition, 'I think1." Of course his point is phrased
as a warning to theologians, but he emphatically does
regard this as all we can attribute to the self. The
question is of course, whether even this is too much
to attribute to it and whether the other predicates
'unity', 'continuity' and so on are not in fact much
too much as well.

I shall not undertake to answer this question so

long as we keep it in mind as we go. We must ponder
carefully Kant's own way of dealing with the matter --
I do not at all wish to suggest that he was unaware of
the problem or that he avoided it. We must consider j;
such remarks as that the proposition ('I think1) "is I
of course not an experience but only the form of i
apperception" (A 354) ; "it is only the formal condition,!
the logical unity of every thought" (A 398); the 'I'
in "I think' is not "an empirical representation ...
it is purely intellectual" (B 423 n . ) . Adickes thinks
there is no way of avoiding the charge that there is
simply an irremediable contradiction at hand in this
situation: Kant is "attributing existence to the
self, and thus applying the category of existence to
it, whereas his whole system, consistently carried
through,forbids it" (Adickes1 edition, p. 332 n . ) .
This problem has turned up before: the use (or misuse)
of categorial terms in application to transcendental
entities.

I think we will not falsify Kant's meaning if we

present the relationship between the empirical (Em)
and the epistemological self (Ep) in the following
terms. The order of acquaintance (or discovery) is
from Em to Ep, that is, what I am first acquainted
with is a "bundle of perceptions" (to be brief about
it) which I find to be resembling, connected, and
regard as all mine. (This is the order Kant recog-
nizes in what he spoke of earlier as the "empirical
deduction" or "explanation of possession" (A85/B117
ff.). I cannot of course infer Ep_ from Em, although
that is what the theological approach to the matter
seems to sanction, but I am undoubtedly "induced to
believe" (again Hume's phraseology is apt) in E.
because of the way I find E_m. Kant's point is that

174
proceeding in this direction is invalid if it is
brought forward as explanation. We must, he argues,
proceed contrariwise. Only on condition of E_p_ can
I explain how all my experiences are intuitively my
own. The order of explanation is what is decisive.
In it we proceed from Ej3 to Ein and this is what the
Critique means to offer us here. We are not of course
directly aware of Eja as we are of .Em. I am, Kant says,
"aware of an identical self in view of (in reference
to, by virtue of, jji ansehung des) the multiplicity of
representations given in an intuition, because I call
them all nry_ representations that collectively make up
one intuition." He then adds the explanation that
this is to say that I am conscious a priori of a
necessary synthesis, dass ich mir einer notwendigen
Synthesis a. priori bewusst bin. I take this to say
that the ground of the unification of elements is an
a priori condition: nothing of this sort is ever to
be found in empirical consciousness. "Being conscious
a priori of" is perhaps easy to misinterpret: there
is not another consciousness that lurks in the back-
ground while the empirical occupies the foreground;
rather, there is and must be a ground of the latter.
To proceed to establish the reality of anything in
this way is what Kant means by the "transcendental"
method.

17
The Fundamental Principle of the Synthetic Unity
of Apperception is the Supreme Principle
of all Employment of the Understanding

The cogito which has been established by reference

to subjective intuitive continuity of experience is
now to be shown as the condition not only of inner
experience but of objects. What is an object? "An
object is that in whose concept the multiplicity of
a given intuition is united." An object or an object-
ive process is discrete and continuous. Moreover, it
is "a something", which is to say that it falls under
some concept or concepts. To say that it is something,
K, for example, is to say that it has all the traits
anything must have to be named by 'K'. To find a K
in experience then means we have found something which
affords us all the intuitions covered by the defining
traits of K. But concepts do not lie about like
pebbles on the beach; the selection of traits they
represent is an artfully constructed mosaic. The

175
world and what is in it are not pre-structured,
according to Kant, but factured. Since being an object,
having the continuity and stability of an object (no
matter how momentary), is not just "being there",
being a thing itself, and since its order or structure
is acquired from some source other than itself, we
must now ask after this source. An object is an
assemblage (Vereinigung) of representations and such
a synthesis can only be produced by a unitary conscious-,
ness. This consciousness, which is Ep, the synthetic |
unity of apperception, is the source of all synthesis. \
This brings us to one of the cornerstones of the I
deduction, the principle that the unity of objects and ;
thus the possibility of objectivity in knowledge, is
one and the same as the unity of consciousness. Since
what we mean by knowledge is by its very nature ob-
jective, this consciousness proves to be responsible :
for objective knowledge.

Kant adds that the foregoing act of synthesis

must be presupposed only for beings like ourselves, or
in particular, for beings whose intuitions are ordered
in space and time. In such beings two sources are
active in the generation of knowledge, intuition and
understanding, and one of these cannot do the work or
produce the result of the other. The concepts of the
understanding, we recall, are empty without reference
to intuitions, and intuitions are blind without con-
cepts. But in beings in whom knowledge did not depend
upon sense organs, divine beings no doubt, beings
whose very understandings or intellects were intuitive,
the work that is distinct in us would be accomplished
without distinct tasks being carried on by under-
standing and by intuition. Kant frequently touches
on this theme because he wishes his theory to be of
completely general scope, so that once intellect and
intuition are treated of in a truly generic manner
specific applications may then be made to beings of
certain particular sorts. Man's intellect is thus not
treated of as that of man as such but of a being of a
certain general description.

18
What Objective Unity of Self-Consciousness Is
The present sub-section introduces nothing new but
repeats and emphasizes succinctly the points that have
been made in the two previous sections. Kant again

176
contrasts what he has variously referred to as subject-
ive unity or empirical unity of consciousness or
empirical apperception with the transcendental or ob-
jective unity, or transcendental apperception. The
latter, the 'I think1, is what is fundamental, accom-
plishing essentially the same result in every person.
The former differs from person to person. Whereas all
those who speak the same language will for that reason
use the same criteria in the application of concepts,
they will nevertheless have differing, perhaps idio-
syncratic mental associations and imagery in turning
them over in their minds. Kant repeats that subjective
unity depends upon objective unity, that it is the
ground of it and even derived from it (abgeleitet).
This holds also of the framework of objective time:
subjective time may lag for me but not for you, whereas
we all have a conception of objective time with a
steady and equal flow.

In this as in former presentations of the same

matter Kant offers nothing that helps us to understand
better the crucial terms and turnings of the argument.
Among these one must certainly be concerned about the
meaning to be given to the way in which the objective
unity can serve as the ground of the subjective or
permit it to be derived, or what one is to conceive
the nature of the former to be when all we can say of
it is that it is the 'I think', and even this may be
saying too much. Taken strictly the present subsection
does not answer the question it addresses itself to,
what is the objective unity of self-consciousness? but
only declares it to be the ground of the subjective,
the source from which the latter derives.

19
The Logical Form of all Judgments Consists
in the Objective Unity of the Apperception
of the Concepts Contained Therein

I take this somewhat baffling title to mean that

judging, being a process of synthesis, as Kant has
said earlier, is possible only because it is the effort
of an apperceiving being. What then is the nature of
the relating in judgment?

Kant begins by a kind of warning that we must not

suppose this is a merely logical matter for in fact
logicians have either neglected to ask what precisely
177
the relation is that is being expressed in judgment
or confined it to the relation of a subject to a
predicate which obtains in the categorical but not in
hypothetical or disjunctive judgments. As he reminds
us in a footnote, these are quite distinct; the latter
two cannot be reduced to the first. (One may well re-
view what he has said in 9, to which he refers us,
but also to the all-important brief subsection on
judgment which immediately precedes 9.)

The section shows the development of Kant's views

on the nature of judgment and of the nature and need
of a deduction of the categories as he saw these
matters when he wrote the Prolegomena (published in
1783, two years after A ) . The essential point Kant
makes there is to point out the distinction between
judgments of perception (JJL) and judgments of exper-
ience (Jj2) , a distinction that is essentially the same
as that of twentieth century philosophy of perception
between sense-datum or basic propositions (Protokoll-
stze ) and physical object propositions. Kant is
aware that jJP's are not truly judgments like the JE's.
The same fact is re-discovered in the later investi-
gation since the JP_ or protocol must simply inform
us of conjunction of sense data, without any real !?
attribution. In Kant, the JP uses the form of judg- .'';,
ment ("when I lift a body, I feel the pressure of its |
weight") , though at most one seems almost forced to !(
utter jerky phrases such as, "here, now a body-feel; *
there, now a heavy-feel," or something on this order
unless one believes one can venture something closer
to a standard sentence, perhaps beginning, "I feel ..."
or "It appears to me that ..." In some such manner
Kant wants to inform us that there is a difference
between the full, objective synthesis that is evidenced
in jJ_E and the mere subjective association of impres-
sions that we may try to record in Jj?. In the Prole-
gomena we learn that the difference between a JJ3
such as, "The body is heavy" or "The sun warms the
stone," and the corresponding JP_ is precisely that the
JE involves the additional functors of the categories.
When I say that the stone is warm or the sun is hot I
am not merely associating two impressions, but saying
there is a continuant, perduring substance that for
a time, or even a moment, has some property or is in
some state or condition. And when I say the sun warms
the stone I am also saying that there is a causal
relation between one substance, or an event in one
substance, and another.

178
 The present exposition, as compared with that of
the Prologomena. does not yet mention categories
either in general or in particular: it merely affirms
that there is a difference between the synthesis
recorded, or asserted, in full judgment and in mere
subjective association. Kant's point then is that
what the logicians neglected to mention is precisely
the subject matter of the deduction. They failed
to explain what a judgment really was, offering only,
according to Kant, the suggestion that it was "the
representation of a relation between concepts." It is
the categories that must be recognized as making true
judgment, JE. something more than a verbal sign for
an association of impressions, or however we choose
to understand JT. Accordingly, Kant is now ready to
present the categories, and this is done in the follow-
ing sub-section and the remaining discussion of Section
2.

The actual theoretical content of 19 is by now

familiar. We distinguish between the reproductive and
the productive imagination, between the understanding
itself, the subjective unity of representations and
the objective, between empirical and original (a
priori) apperception, between connection through
association and objectively valid relations. The ex-
amples discussed are meant to help us understand
that there must be differences between these pairs.
We now ask what they are.

20
All Sensate Intuitions are Subject to the Categories
as Conditions under which alone they in their
Multiplicity can enter into a Single Consciousness
This section presents in five sentences an
extraordinarily condensed version of the Transcendental
Deduction itself. As such, every phrase is signifi-
cant. Actually everything that appears here has
appeared before except that the place of the categories
in the general scheme of the deduction in B has not
yet been made clear up to this point. Kant is, I
think, much more certain of himself in this third
deduction of the- categories (counting the Prolegomena)
and he is accordingly briefer and less repetitious,
and he knows better where each part of the argument
fits. I shall attempt merely a paraphrase of 20:
but of course nothing is really better than simply

179
concentrating on the original especially since it is
brief.

Unity of apperception is the necessary condition

for the connectedness of the multiplicity among our
representations. That mechanism that the mind, or in
particular, the understanding, employs to effect con-
nection under such apperception is judgment. Whatever
is judged is expressed by one or another of the forms
of judgment and subject to one or another of the
logical functions of the understanding. The categories
are nothing but these functions which present the con-
tent of the judgment under thing or substance and pro-
perty or state, cause and effect, determining and
determined members of a systematic whole, and so on.
Hence everything in experience is subject to the
categories.

Presented in slightly amplified form we may put

the present version of the deduction as follows:

(1) Only when we presuppose a unitary apperception

have we a ground supporting the apparent
connectedness of the subject's experience.
I
(2) This apperceptive capacity effects its opera- I
tions through the synthesizing device of ?.
concepts whose only use is to appear as
predicates of judgments.
(3) Since the whole of experience is subject to
judging, it is necessarily subject to the ;
logical functions of judgments.

(4) These functions are the categories, which

confer a determining order on our intuitions.

(5) accordingly, since all experience is subject

to original apperception, it is subject to
the categories.

The whole purpose of the deduction is to justify the

claim to the objectivity (necessity, in Kant's terms)
of the results arrived at in science, or in experience
generally, to justify the claim to knowledge, in other
words. If there is knowledge (and Kant believes there"
i s ) , we must in advance grant certain propositions
which are neither analytically true, nor empirically
confirmable, nor capable of being established in any
other manner. But to put the matter thus as one of

180
granting propositions, rather than acknowledging that
certain concepts or functors (the categories) are in
effect or in operation in knowledge, is to get ahead
of the story, going beyong the analytic of concepts
(categories) to the analytic of principles. One of
the difficult, and perhaps unresolvable problems of
the Critique that lies ahead of us is to try to see
why both these regimens must be gone through.

21

Supplementary Remark
The content of this section is somewhat puzzling
in both form and substance. It surprises us by saying
that what has gone before has now made a beginning
of the deduction of the categories, while in fact all
the essentials of it are now before us. The first
paragraph is difficult in phraseology. It draws a
comparison between the synthesis in empirical intuition
as a whole and the synthesis within a given intuition
that has just been explained. Categories are the ins-
truments of synthesis of the understanding by means
of which the multiplicity in a given intuition has
been shown to belong to one self-consciousness. The
point is now generalized to show that categories per-
form in the same manner in respect to all objects. In
this way, says Kant, the fully general intent of the
deduction will be revealed.

The application of the categories is restricted

to empirical intuition. What is excluded is of course
intellectual intuition which minds such as ours do
not command. Kant adds that the ultimate reason why
this restriction should hold admits of no further
explanation. Whether it does or not is perhaps not
as interesting as the comparison he makes between
this situation and the parallel inexplicability why
there are just so many functions of judgment, from
which we derive the categories, or just so many forms
of intuition, namely, space and time, and no others.
With this Kant underscores his particular choice of
categories as set forth in the Metaphysical Deduction.
But it also permits what one might in our times call
a "Kantian revisionist" position: namely if, as is
apparent, the list of functions of judgment must be
drastically revised in accordance with modern logic,
the list of categories must itself be revised. We
have, of course, reviewed aspects of this at length

181
earlier in presenting the metaphysical deduction.

2 2

The Only Use of the Category as Contributing

to Knowledge of Things is its Application
to Objects of Experience

Sections 22- 24 (first part) reiterate the

familiar stipulation that intuitions are an indispen-
sable component in knowledge and that categories
unsupported by corresponding intuitions (the term is
Kant's own, korrespondieren) cannot yield knowledge.
If we emphasize the negative aspect of this, the con-
sequences of the absence of intuitions, the Dialectic
is in some measure anticipated. Of course, displaying
the limits of the proper use of the categories is
actually a proper part of the exposition of the cate-
gories themselves.

The first section ( 22) develops the familiar

theme that there must be empirical intuitions if there
is to be empirical knowledge; categories without in-
tuitional reference cannot afford knowledge. The
second says that non-sensible intuitions will not meet
the demand for intuitional reference. The third opens
a discussion, further developed in the Schematism,
of the manner in which the imagination serves to relate
the understanding and sensibility.

First, concepts and intuitions are necessary for .,

knowledge (Erkenntnis). Failing the intuitions, we ||
may often find it needful to think out the logical f(
!
possibility of something, but this can furnish no S
knowledge of it or about it. Knowledge involves pure ;,
and empirical intuitions and pure and empirical con- '
cepts, and none of the four components may be missing.
The familiar demand for empirical intuitions is now
extended also to mathematics. Relying on pure intui-
tion one may have a species of mathematical knowledge
of the mere form of objects. But this is not knowledge
in the full sense of the term unless also empirical
representations are at hand. Of course mathematical
knowledge in this sense is severely restricted to
applied mathematics or it is being equated with a
kind of mathematical physics. This is only momentarily
surprising. Pure mathematics is provided for but the
main point of the argument is to drive home the point
that there can be "knowledge of things (Kant's italics)

:
182
only insofar as these can be taken to be objects of
possible experience." Here experience is emphatically
intuitional experience, E-| .

2 3

This section has no formal title but is a con-

tinuation of the preceding line of thought. The
categories have reference only to objects of intuition.
This excludes reference to things themselves but it
also raises the question as to the scope of the term
1
intuition. '

The requisite intuition, says Kant with emphasis,

must be "our sensate and empirical intuition," for
this alone can lend the concepts of the understanding
sense and significance (Sinn und B e d e u t u n g ) . The
notion of non-sensible intuition now reappears as on
several previous occasions. The difficulty with this,
says Kant, is that one cannot affirm anything positive
of it: one can only define or characterize it by
staying that it is not extended in space and that its
duration is not temporal, that rio. change is to be
encountered in it> and so on. And even if one could
identify such a species of intuition how could any
category apply to it? For as we shall see in the
Schematism and later, the categories are not to be
defined or analyzed without reference to our way of
experiencing time.

One query should be raised as something to be

kept in mind in the study of the present sections and
of the Schematism. In each of the sections ( 22-24)
Kant uses the term 'corresponding' (korrespondieren)
in speaking of the relation between intuition and
concept. What precisely does he intend with this
term? Hume would say that impressions and ideas can
resemble one another closely, but this way is obviously
not open to Kant, considering the distance he has
placed between intuitions and concepts. We must ask
whether Kant has adequately explained himself when he
takes up the question of the link between them in the
Schematism. In the immediately following section he
considers the role of imagination as an intermediary
in this situation.

183
 2 4

The Application of the Categories to Objects

of Sense in General

The title of this subsection refers principally

to the first three paragraphs after which a pause is
indicated in the text and Kant takes up a discussion
of inner sense. No doubt from the very beginning
Kant has had in mind the question of the interrelation
of the aesthetic and logical elements of knowledge,
intuitions and concepts, since he regards both of
them as absolutely necessary to knowledge.

How can categories, which are in and of themselves

mere abstract and intellectual forms of thought, relate
to intuitions and thus objects of appearance, objects
of experience? In one sense, the question is as old
as Plato's thoughts on participation ( vie9eia ) ,
although Kant does not concern himself with that view
of the problem. The problem is of course a character-
istically Platonic, and Neo-Platonic, problem and
recurs in the Incarnation question in Christian theo-
logy: how can the Logos "become flesh and dwell among
us?" Something must "humanize" it. So also something
must enable us to see the category as relating itself
to or organizing a manifold of sensible intuition.
Kant's terms for the "third thing," the 'schema',
that effects this is not employed in the present sub- ~
section; the schema is the product of the imagination,
and this is presented as mediating between intellect
and sense: imagination represents its object in an
intuitive, auschauend, fashion, but what it represents
is not itself present. One may well say that a very
large part of intelligence is nothing but imagination
and capacity to imagine. How then in thinking with and
through abstract categories do we reach the ground of
sense? What is needed is a capacity for schematic,
figurative thought, a synthesis speciosa, as Kant says,
that is, thought in "well-appearing", "presentable"
form.

The Aesthetic has in fact already expounded what

is essential here. "The understanding, being spon-
taneous, can determine inner sense because there is
in us a certain form of sensate intuition a priori"
(B150). The a priori forms of intuition of course are
space and time: it is time that is decisive here,
the more pervasive of the forms, for as we saw in the
184
 Aesthetic, "time is simply the form of inner sense"
and "the formal condition a priori of all appearance
whatsoever" (A33/B49 ff.) Thus the pure understanding,
or the transcendental unity of apperception, does
not organize mere "raw" intuitions, which are in them-
selves, as we know, blind and, we might add,
intractable: it is the fact that they can appear in
the framework of time and its modi that enables them
to be related to the categories, which are the instru-
ments of the understanding. This is gone into in
detail later (A138/B177 ff.).

As we have implied earlier, Kant here attributes

the synthesis speciosa, or figurative synthesis, to
I the imagination. In fact, he has here allowed the
1 lines among his "faculties" to fade. For the figura-
> tive synthesis is also associated with a priori
5 intuition, and being synthesis, with understanding.
; The latter association is underlined by the re-
appearance of the notion of productive imagination,
] which was discussed twice in the first deduction.
; The present section cannot I think, be regarded as an
effective exposition of its topic. The Schematism,
difficult as it is, will improve upon it.

Appended to the foregoing section is a discussion

of inner sense which was taken up for the first time
in B in 6 and in the General Remarks appended to
the Aesthetic. The discussion is relevant to the
distinction which we find Kant to have followed through-
out the Deduction between the self as a presupposition
of knowledge, the transcendental unity of apperception,
and the self as the object of study of introspective
psychology. The former is the active source of unity
but is in no way an object of awareness: there are
no intuitions of it and of course, without intuitions
there can be no object of knowledge. The consequences
of the error of presuming that we know the self as
if we had intuitions of it are expounded in the Para-
logisms of Pure Reason. The "self itself" is a kind
of thing in itself of which we know nothing. What
we know of ourselves is confined to inner sense in
which intuitions are ordered only in time but not as
objects or substances. Being subject to inner sense
means only that a manifold is subject to inner aware-
ness. The connection of the parts of the manifold is
altogether owing to the understanding and the

185
imagination .
Kant now draws a parallel between the ontological
character of things we think of as organized and ordered
in space and those which as mental are not located in
space but in consciousness. First, as the former have
been shown to be appearances, that is, multiple ele-
ments synthesized under the form of space, so also is
mental content known but not as evidence of anything
in itself. The object of introspection is what we
think of as "ourselves" or perhaps as "our selves."
It is not a thing in itself but may bear the same re-
lation to this as a ground ,as physical substances and
processes do to things in themselves.

Kant formulates this as a distinction between the

I that thinks and the I that intuits itself, or also
the I as an intelligence and thinking subject and I
as an object thought. The very form of words here is
difficult. Kant speaks of "the I that thinks", das
Ich, der ich denke, which if it is his actual intent
may be seeking to say something such as in English
might be put as "that I which is he that thinks." I
believe this is actually more plausible than Vaihinger's
emendation das Ich, das denkt, which is our first
phrase above, "the I that thinks." Kant was well
aware that conventional language was an obstacle to
what he was trying to say: it must be respected but
not reverenced. What he appears to be saying here is
that if we admit that we know objects only insofar as
we are externally affected, we must also admit of
inner sense that through it we intuit ourselves only
insofar as we are inwardly affected by ourselves:
that is, so far as concerns inner intuition, we know
our own subject only as appearance but not as what
it is in itself. The ultimate subject is as plausible . ,:
or as problematic an existent as objects in themselves <|
whose being we in some sense concede, but which we ;I
cannot speak of in the language of experience and
science, in terms of the categories and forms of
intuition, as substances or processes, existing in
time and space, in causal relation to one another in
a physical system of nature, etc. As Kant later shows,
both the notion of such a subject and of such an object
can be cured of the misuse they have suffered at the
hands of theologians and metaphysicians and can be
made to serve a necessary regulative purpose only if
we carefully distinguish their "mood" of speaking from
the language which is constitutive of science. The
arguments in defense of this procedure are called

186
"transcendental"; extending the use of transcenden-
tally determined notions beyond all reference to
experience is characterized, if not quite condemned,
as "transcendent."
Kant adds an interesting footnote to this section
about the influence of the understanding, ultimately
of our original selves, upon inner sense. This self
is of course a spontaneous power. It thinks what it
sees fit to think whereas the self as inner sense is
by its nature simply whatever results from this and
whatever my history, as experienced, has been. It is
apparent, says Kant, that among the determinants of
what turns up in inner sense (though not the only de-
terminant, since it is also subject to the contingencies
of intuitions themselves) none is more powerful than
the self itself. His example is attention, Aufmerk-
samkeit . What transpires in inner sense is affected
by what the self chooses to think, to attend to. It
has the power to draw attention to this or that and
to exclude other things. Of course what then passes
consciously before me is all in inner sense since
everything that is mentally before me is of course in
inner sense and can be nowhere else. But inner sense
is essentially passive; it is not some kind of auto-
nomous power.

25
The present section continues the account of self-
awareness and the nature and status of inner sense.
What Kant is saying, as he said in the earlier deduc-
tion, is that there is an original, fundamental, and
continuant self. The basis on which this is affirmed
is not empirical, for this self is not the object of
awareness, but awareness itself. Nor is the affir-
mation analytically true; it can only be established
through the transcendental method. The very fact
that I call experiences my own entitles me to affirm
an a priori consciousness, an "I think." But I must
not suppose that I can affirm more than this. I am
not entitled to say that there is aji I, if this means
there is a mental substance here, a ghost in the
machine. Nor can I affirm the many things meta-
physicians, particularly Kant's own predecessors both
British and Continental, say of what is referred to
here as 'I' or 'I think'. all I am aware of is that
I am, Kant maintains.

187
 The original self, if we may venture to speak of
it so, does not itself "put in an appearance", to
borrow this convenient vernacular phrase. For what
appears is here as everywhere else a phenomenon, and
it is just this which requires an original self. This
is not merely to invent a hypothesis of a sort to ex-
plain phenomena and then declare arbitrarily that there
is no alternative to it. Kant's point is that any
alternative either negates the phenomenal facts or
merely reaffirms the same necessity of an original
self; and this is what he means by a transcendental
necessity. Hume's account, as we have shown, does not
rid us of this necessity. It offers an account such
as Kant calls an empirical deduction or an explanation
of possession of the self, showing the genesis of my
notion of the self. But once I truly have this notion
and see that in fact it has been operative all along,
I see that there can be no knowledge without it. Hume's
candid confession that he could never catch himself or
his self in introspection merely underscores a pecu-
liarity of it, but this is no evidence against its
reality.

Kant's point in this section is that I have at

best a conception of the self, but I have no intuition
of it. A mere conception would, however, be of no
more use to me than a concept of a civilization of
rational centipedes if there were no need for thinking
it. Transcendental notions such as this together with ['
the instruments by which it accomplishes its work, f
the categories, are conceptions which, we recall, are s
not derived from experience, but apply to experience
in order to make it possible. Empirical representa-
tions on the other hand are derived from experience,
and metaphysical notions are not prerequisites of
experience. This exhausts the possibilities.

The original self is thus limited in its function.

We witness its work every moment but we can say nothing
of its character. Its work is synthesis, Verbindung,
and is carried on subject to the special condition
that the elements synthesized are subject to the con-
dition of inner sense, to the relations of time in
which they stand. These conditions are entirely
distinct from those of the understanding. What I
therefore know of myself, as against what I think , is
subject to a basic condition of all appearing, time,
and if I therefore say that I know myself, I must add,
as I appear, not as I am in myself.

188
 2 6

The Transcendental Deduction of the Universally

Possible Use in Experience of
Pure Concepts of Understanding

In Kant's repetitious manner, and as what may seem

an anticlimax, we encounter still another deduction of
the categories. In B this has succinctly been put in
20. In A it appeared several times over. The pre-
sent formulation is fairly concise, and the content is
the same. (Even here there are two distinct formu-
lations, the first beginning at the head of 26 and
the second in the latter part of 26 at B164.) I do
not suggest that the several formulations are otiose.
On the contrary, they lend the Critique reality. A
great builder has been engaged on a task of monumental
proportions: brushes, chisels and crumpled sketches
are still lying about, and the scaffolding is still in
place.

j Once again, we can interpret the work of the

I Critique in an analytical or in Kant's more explicitly
] transcendental manner. What are the ingredients of
; experience? First, empirical intuitions which con-
, stitute the matter of it; second, the form, the powers
and functors that cannot be supplied by intuition,
namely the forms of outer and inner sensate intuition,
space and time, and the synthetic unity of the multi-
plicity of intuitions in one original consciousness by
means of the categories. Or, to speak in transcen-
dental terms, certain a priori representations univer-
' sally apply to experience and make it possible.

One could consider in both ways the two concrete

examples Kant presents here. The multiplicity of parts
that make up a co-existent spatial, physical complex,
such as a house, can be an object of experience only
because the parts are apperceived or synthesized under
the several categories. In the representation of a
house, as an object of experience, I think far more
than a congeries of sights or feels, though perhaps
that is how a house may appear to a passing deer or
sparrow. When I analyze my experience I find a good
deal that I simply cannot account for as empirical
1
intuition.

;
Similarly I may observe the freezing of water,
noting the behavior of the thermometer, the order of
states of the fluid, and vary systematically all
189
attendant conditions. In analyzing the physical
account or theory of this process I find myself com-
pelled to resort to notions, such as causality, which
are under no conceivable circumstances visible to the
eye or hand or ear. Moreover, I go on from any one
such "event" of freezing water and assume that I have
"learned something" from it and extend it to other
events.

Categories, says Kant, are concepts through which

we prescribe laws to nature. How? Here Kant makes
a distinction between laws of nature of the most gen-
eral sort, which alone are meant, and special laws of
nature. (This may perhaps be equated with the differ-
ence between synthetic laws, known a priori, and those
known a posteriori.) By categories we must here think
not of mere concepts as named by distinct terms such
as 'substance' and 'causality', but principles such as
those formulated under the Analogies of Experience in
the next large division of the Critique. Kant here
leaves important matters indeterminate. Special laws
are said to be derived (abgeleitet) from general laws;
they are said to stand under, to be subject to them
(stehen unter). They are also said to need empirical
determination: they cannot be fully determined only
by reference to the categories.
There may be an inconsistency here that is fate- I
ful in its consequences. For if Kant cannot specify i
how causal laws are related to the causal principle,
the Critique may be in danger of terminating in con-
tradiction. The whole momentum of the argument dic-
tates the conclusion that all laws are a priori, which,
however, Kant's fundamental good sense and his skill
as a natural scientist prevent him from drawing.

Before endorsing this conclusion one should await

further results of the length to which in our time
or in the future the formalization of physics may be
carried for this must affect our view of the possible
a priori character or the a priori aspects of science.
It is not likely, however, to issue in support of
the view of the propositions of science as both syn-
thetic and a priori.
While the actual articulation of Kant's philosophy
of science is left unclear he is definitely of the
opinion that basic general laws, such as Newton's three
laws of motion, are not to be learned from experience,
that they are indispensable to the economy of
190
experience and science, and that they are to be
derived, proved, or as he says, shown to be possible,
only by the transcendental method. This program can
be carried out only because the objects to which these
laws or categories apply are appearances rather than
things themselves. These, being only representations
are subject to the synthesizing faculty. This subjects
nature, as comprehensive of all appearances (der
Tnhsgriff aller Frsnhai mingen) , to the categories.

2 7

Outcome of this Deduction

of the Concepts of understanding

The approach of the last section (that is, the

first two paragraphs) is like that of 14 which
appears almost at the very beginning of the Transcen-
dental Deduction. There Kant had said that there are
just two ways in which synthetic representations and
their objects may be related to one another: either
the object will make the representation p o s s i b l e ,
or the reverse. In the present section he states that
"there are only two ways in which we can conceive of
a necessary agreement of experience with concepts of
its objects", and then repeats the alternatives. By
the phrase "necessary agreement" Kant means of course
that it is already known that the a priori concepts
are necessary to experience. The question then is as
to their origin, whether it be from experience or from
another source. Here as there, the first alternative
is ruled out. Only the second is possible: a priori
concepts are the products or original fixtures of
our cognitive faculties. The whole point escapes
being question-begging only if we emphasize the phrase
'synthetic representations'. If representations were
analytic, this would itself explain their necessity.
Kant's point is of course that although they are
synthetic, they are not derived from experience: hence
we can explain their necessity and their indispensa-
bility only if they are conditions for any experience
whatsoever.

This of course is the basic issue of the whole

deduction: How are synthetic judgments possible a
priori? Because they are the necessary conditions for
any and all experience,and there is no alternative
manner of explanation that accounts for and can do
justice to experience.
191
 This applies more stictly to the principles which
are to be considered next in the Analytic rather than
to the transcendental concepts, the categories. The
question, which Kant has told us is the basic one which
the Critique addresses itself to, is formulated mainly
with the principles in mind. It is never altogether
clear why both concepts and principles are expounded,
rather than just the principles. Kant himself told us
at the outset of the deduction that "the only use the
understanding can make of these concepts is to judge
by means of them" (A68/B93), though perhaps he was at
the moment thinking more specifically of material or
empirical concepts. I think we must regard the Analy-
tic of of Principles as even more decisive than the
Transcendental Deduction in assessing the Critique,
particularly since specific reference to the categories
is so sparse in what is ostensibly the deduction of the
categories. Thus, precisely what it is that we need,
under causality for example, as an a priori condition
for experience is only made clear to us when we come
to the proof of the principle of causality in the
Second Analogy. In this light the Analytic of Concepts
has of course thoroughly prepared the ground for the
real work of the Critique, which is considered next.
In fact, the greatest part of this extraordinary labor
is now done. The proof of the principles is not nearly
as arduous

Before leaving the deduction Kant wishes to I

dissociate his view from one which he regards as quite f
retrograde. It is often said that Kant was in effect ;
only rehabilitating rationalism in the face of the
murderous criticism of Hume. That such an interpreta-
tion was conceivable to Kant is shown by his defense
of the present approach.

The counter-proposal that Kant here rejects is

that there may be a middle ground between the alterna-
tives discussed above: either experience makes con-
cepts possible, or vice versa. Although this appears
almost as an after-thought, it is really a question of
so serious a nature that it touches on the very founda-
tions of the Critical philosophy. We can give it only
an inadequate glance in this exposition. The problem
is that Kant has given all too brief and inadequate an
answer to why his own standpoint should not be identi-
fied precisely with the one he is here rejecting.

It may first be said that Kant may have been over-

zealous in distancing his standpoint from that of
192
certain of his predecessors, just as he may have been
with regard to Berkeley whose views are in so many ways
identical with his own but from whom he took great care
to dissociate himself (v. B214 ff.)- If this is so,
one might merely say that he need not have repudiated
his kinships with the innatism, as we may call it, of
the rationalist "school." On this view, Kant's views
are innatistic thoughout unless of course the arguments-
in the present paragraph persuade us that they are not
to be so understood.

But I do not think Kant here offers any reason to

revise the impression he has given us from the start.
At the end of the deduction in A he was emphatic about
the categories being "in us", "original cognitive
powers of mind;" "we ourselves introduce order and
regularity" into nature. Elsewhere he even says these
forms are "in our brain"! In the present section,
however, he argues that the categories are not "self-
thought first principles" (the phrase is left unex-
plained) , not "subjective disposition of thought im-
planted in our very existence by the Creator in precise
accordance with the laws of nature." They are not a
"preformation system of pure reason," by which he is
undoubtedly suggesting Leibniz's pre-established har-
mony. But it is difficult to see much difference
between these and his own formulations of the way in
which the categories belong "to us." What other way
1 is there to express his thought, than to say that they
'are native to us, implanted in us? He argues that if
'we think of the categories, for example, causality,
1
in this manner they will lose their necessity, for
they will have only an "arbitrary subjective inborn
necessity." The categories will then only signify that
we are so consitituted that we cannot think in any
other manner.

I think there is only one defense of Kant that is

possible. No doubt he wanted to guard his view against
the interpretation that the categories are some sort of
psychological mechanisms like instincts, but he ought
to have been at greater pains to show exactly why they
may not be so regarded. The burden was on him. This
could no doubt have been done. But if this was his
intent he went too far in repudiating the rationalist
interpretation of the categories. It was, moreover,
unnecessary. What Leibniz had said was that all cog-
nitive functioning, both what passes as empirical and
as conceptual, was innate and expressed the inner
nature of the monads. Kant's point should be that the

: 193
categories are innate, but empirical intuitions are not.
There was no need to repudiate "innatism" at this point
and thus throw the whole point of the habitat of the
categories into doubt.

The only interpretation that would seem to explain

Kant's train of throught is that he intends to say that
the categories are not psychological mechanisms. But
scarcely any reasons are offered for this that do not
at the same time call into question the power of the
categories in shaping our conception of nature.

Brief Formulation of this Deduction

The deduction issues finally in one difficult sen-

tence that seems to hope to say at once all that has
gone before. We may compare Kant's formulation with
the paraphrase "The task of the deduction is to show
how the determination of appearances in space and time
can succeed only by means of the categories and how
this determination proceeds on the basis of the prin-
ciple of the original synthetic unity of apperception;
this principle is oriented toward space and time, that i:
is, applied to space and time." (Adickes1 edition, p. \
165 n.) It is, however, doubtful whether this para- '
phrase or most direct translations are of much help to
us. But if one has understood Kant reasonably well up
to this point one may also see through the jargon well
enough to what is intended. In any event the critical
questions are not decided by such concise formulae: a
summary interpretation of the significance of the deduc-
tion can be undertaken only upon detailed consideration
of the Analytic of Concepts.

The final note concerns the numbering () which

has been in effect in B since the beginning of the
Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts. Together they
expound the basic concepts of the system (space, time,
the categories) in accordance with the general framework
of a logic, which it was thought, had to cover the three
topics of concepts, judgments (now to be expounded in
the Analytic of Principles), and inferences (to be
expounded in the Dialectic). The use (Gebrauch) of
these concepts will now be made evident in the
Principles.

194
 Transcendental Logic

Book II

Analytic of Principles

What Kant has to say in the two brief sections at

the outset of Book II has little bearing upon the
problems he undertakes to solve in it. The distinction
between judgment and understanding would be sound enough
in a general philosophy of mind but it throws no light
on what ought really to be Kant's concern: how and why
we must proceed from transcendental, concepts to trans-
cendental judgments.

It should be recalled that in the all-important

section at the outset of the Analytic (just prior to9)
Kant gave a rather different account of judgment and
understanding: they are not, as here, sharply distinct
faculties. "All operations of the understanding can be
reduced to (the term is zurckfuhren) judgments, so that
the understanding can be represented as a faculty of
judging" (A69/B94). In the present sections he is con-
cerned to show the differences between three faculties,
understanding, judgment, and reason.

Taking these in reverse order, the Transcendental

Dialectic considers the inferences of pure reason. In
it we learn the consequence of the intellect circumven-
ting the necessity to support concepts (Ideas) with
intuitions, namely, pseudo-science in the fields of
psychology, cosmology, and theology.
Second, the forthcoming division, the Analytic of
Principles, would seem to belong to judgment and the
previous Analytic, that of Concepts, and perhaps the
Aesthetic, to understanding. But this is not Kant's
intent at all. The Principles are of course proposi-
tions and thus judgments, but not at all in the sense
expounded in the present Introduction, where the mean-
ing attached to "judgment" is that of accurately apply-
ing general rules and theory to specific instances, a
capacity many learned persons woefully lack. The
Principles discussed in the forthcoming Analytic are
something else. They are of maximum generality and any-
thing but applications to specific instances. The only

195
application in this sense in the sections ahead is the
Schematism, but it is not concerned with propositions:
it is presented as the problem of classifying and sub-
suming particulars or intermediate classes under higher
classes. In the old logic this was not a problem of
judgment at all.

Third, in the present division of things, we can

assign the previous Analytic of Concepts to understand-
ing only in the sense that the concern of the analytic
is with concepts of understanding. It began as we saw
with judgment. But the understanding is only incident-
ally and certainly not exclusively a faculty for
concepts. Rather it is above all a faculty of princi-
ples, from general principles which are most responsible
for science as a whole, like the principle of causality,
to the most specific laws, theories, and hypotheses.
The understanding is therefore more relevant to the
forthcoming Analytic of Principles. Thus the triple ;
distinction Kant introduces is interesting but has
little relevance, or is even counter-relevant, to I
divisions already made and yet to be made. Kant is
more nearly right when he says in the fourth paragraph:
that the understanding and judgment have their canon
of objectivity valid use in the transcendental logic,
but since this includes the Dialectic (which involves
a functional misuse of the two faculties) the applica-
tion is only to the Transcendental Analytic.

196
 Introduction
Concerning Transcendental Judgment in General

At the very end of the preceding Deduction, Kant

said that the ensuing section would proceed from the
deduction of the elementary concepts (the categories)
to their actual employment. This might suggest the
use that, let us say a physicist, an engineer, a seam-
stress, or any other practical person might make of
them. In fact, however, it comes down to proceeding
from the categories, such as substance, or causality,
to the principles of substance and causality, as set
forth in the analogies. Yet for these we do not need
a doctrine of how to proceed when subsuming particular
under general, or applying a general law of science to
a particular problem of technology and these are what
Kant seems to be preparing us for in the present sub-
section .

i The only sense in which a general rule is made

| specific here is that there can be no particular laws
| of nature as the content of theoretical physics unless
! certain very general concepts and principles are pre-
: supposed: the Analytic then purports to convince us of
jthis fact in general and also of the particular concepts
and principles it names and formulates. Apart from the
Schematism the problem of "specification" is not gone
into in the Analytic of Principles, contrary to what
Kant says in the concluding paragraphs of this Intro-
duction. No principle applies itself, but if it is
.properly formulated it does specify what it applies to,
and nothing more can be asked of it. In this sense,
the ensuing Principles are sufficiently specified and
-j spe cif ic .

We might conclude with the study of the first two

chapters of the Analytic of Principles. The third chap-
ter, on Phenomena and Noumena, is already a part of the
Dialectic and would properly serve as a kind of intro-
duction to it. It is interesting to note that in the
last paragraph of the present introduction Kant speaks
of the Transcendental Doctrine of Judgment (for which
'Analytic of Principles' is an alternative designation)
as having two chapters, though in fact it has three.
This brings us to the end of the Postulates of Empirical
Thought and thus tacitly acknowledges that Chapter III
' (on Phenomena and Noumena) is on a different topic. I
include the appendix to the chapter, on the Amphiboly
of the Concepts of Reflection at the end.

197
 Chapter I

The Schematism of
the Pure Concepts of the Understanding

The title, which introduces this all important

division of the Critique, is of course dictated mainly
by architectonic considerations: judgments as against
concepts are to be considered; the proposition "every
event has a cause" as against the concept of causality,
whatever that difference may be said to be. The divi-
sion is more appropriately designated by its content
and this is given in the subtitle. Analytic of Princi-
ples. But as soon as we make our way through the first
chapter we find that its subject matter is essentially
concepts rather than judgments. The latter, the trans-
cendental principles, are taken up only in Chapter II,
one of the largest in the Critique and the culmination
of the whole category problem.

The Schematism has always fascinated Kantians,

both professional and amateur. What meaning is to be
given to its brief, deceptively lucid content? If it
had been omitted would the critical philosophy have
been any different? How does its presence affect our
view of the rest of the Critique? Many more questions
about it have been discussed. Once again, although
Kant's reason for introducing the topic may seem to us
obscure and inadequate, it is, like all topics in the
Critique, of first importance and worth discussing.
When we gain an understanding of it we see that it
does and must throw light on the rest of it. There are
in fact two or three pages in the Schematism that are
absolutely indispensable for the understanding of it.
Much has been written on the subject but I shall proceed
to ignore all of it and offer an interpretation that
should at least stimulate the re-reading of the Schema-
tism even if it is not accepted.

To the extent that the Schematism is not a unitary

discussion of a single problem the chapter may be in-
terpreted as addressing itself to three loosely related
problems: (1) the subsumption problem; (2) the problem
of the definition of the categories; (3) the deduction
problem. We shall take these up in turn.

(1) The subsumption problem is both general and

198
specific. In the first sense, it is of course a matter
of interest as to how we are to understand the notions
of set-membership and set-inclusion, but this should be
of no immediate concern in the Critique since it has
other issues before it. Kant, I think, is never in-
clined to be a Platonist any more than he is a sceptic.
He has simply too much common sense, gesunder Men-
schenverstand (a Platonist would say, indeed too much).
The problem of "forms" or "ideas" is of no interest to
him. He is as far from Plato as Hume is: one can go
no farther. It would therefore be curious if Kant had
decided to go into these questions for their own sake.
He has not. He takes up the subsumption problem because
he is interested in how the pure concepts of the under-
standing apply to appearances or intuitions. This of
course relates also in turn to the other two problems
of the Schematism.

But the relevance of this may also be contested.

The reason is that since the pure concepts or categories
are not class-concepts at all, they do not raise any
questions about subsumption. Kant's discussion of the
categories has been sketchy so far but sufficiently
clear to show us that they are concepts only by courtesy,
for want of a better name. No thing, no class of things,
no relation, no class of relations in any familiar
sense (as up-down, brother of, rotation, etc., are
relations) is named by 'causality1, 'reality',
'possibility'. They may be provisionally called
'functors of synthesis' but it is best to await the
exposition of the Analytic of Principles to say con-
clusively what they are. For these reasons then sub-
sumption seems irrelevant both in a general and in a
specific interpretation of the so-called "pure con-
cepts . "

But another approach offers itself. It is that

Kant used the subsumption problem only as a way of
leading into an analogous problem about the categories.
When we explore this I think we see that the issue
about relating the concept of the circle and a material
disc-shaped object such as a dinner plate is a fig-
urative way of raising this problem. This leads quite
readily to both the second and the third problem which
we loosely distinguished above. The point is the sub-
sumption problem leads to that of the application of
the categories and this in turn to the idea of deduc-
tion such as has just been carried out in the Analytic.

199
 If we read the second paragraph even casually we
see that what Kant is interested in the the application
(Anwendung) or the exemplification of the categories in
Appearance. It occurs to him that what is needed here
is a "doctrine of judgment" because, as shown in the
preceding Introduction, judgment is the faculty for
making applications. It is of course obvious, though
not to Kant, that the Principles in the ensuing Chapter
II are not applications in that sense at all. It is
also apparent that what in this chapter makes applica-
tion possible, namely time, is not a judgment. So
once again Kant has come across an important matter
for what seems to be a faulty reason. Let us take up
the application question.

The general problem arises from the absolute

generality of the products of intellect and the abso-
lute particularity of phenomena. Science brings these
together. The paradigm of this is to be found in the j
first great "breakthrough" beyond the traditional ' I"
Platonist version of the problem: Descartes' inventions
or discovery of analytic geometry. The issue had been i
that of ue6e5ia, the participation of the particular ;
in the universal. Aristotle had dealt successfully
with any and all versions of the "third man" solution.
The "relation" of universal and particular, which was
unlike any other relation man was able to conceive of
remained a mystery. It could be solved, some said,
only by Plato's metaphysics. Others held it to be not
really elusive, but illusory. The Christian metaphysic
early found Platonism a perfect vehicle for its thought.
What was the relation of the second (and the third, too)
person in the Trinity to the first and how should we
think of his Incarnation? How could God, the summit of
reality and perfection, appear as man? Without seeking
or pretending to offer an answer to these sublime ques-
tions, Descartes asked how one could relate the abstract
idea of a circle, straight line, cylinder, sphere, and
indeed any and every conceivable figure to a particular
instance? The result he found in the algebraic pre-
sentation of these figures. Thus:

Straight Line ax + by = 0
Circle (x-h) 2 + (y-k) 2 = 1

2
Ellipse
a

200
 Hyperbola = 1
a
Parabola y = etc.
By giving x and y spatial interpretations on a system
of coordinates one could present them visually in just
that concreteness that was possessed by a table edge, a
plate or wheel, and so on. Thus, the concrete form of
a parabola appears to illustrate, embody, or "incarnate"
the intel- lectual al-
gebraic notion,
v = x2 . that is,
V= f(x), where x
assumes plus or
minus values and
y is a function
thereof. It was
apparent in time that
any and every shape
whatever, _ X even the
worst scribble ,
either had a corresponding algebraic function or one
could be approximated more and more closely, if one took
sufficient trouble to do so. Similarly, with the inven-
tion of the calculus one could produce an expression for
any volume.

One may now observe how one has proceeded not only
from the perfect "Platonic circle" fixed in intellectual
imagination to a particular disc or wheel, but also in
the reverse direction because the algebraic formular
has served as a rule to enable us to construct a circle.
In this way a concept becomes not merely a vague fix-
ture of thought but in the term which Kant taught us to
use about concepts, a rule. Kant's language is perhaps
a bit awkward since he talks about "some third thing"
that must intervene between the concept and the object;
even as early as Aristotle we were warned of danger if
this was taken literally. The motion is not particu-
larly improved by Kant's requirement that this third
thing be both intellectual and sensible, still less by
Kant's attributing both of these properties to what he
accepts as the third thing, namely time.
What now is the outcome of Kant's presentation of the
subsumption problem as a kind of three-cornered figure
with the abstract, the concrete and a mediant at the
apex between them? It is, I believe, that it
enables Kant first, to identify a key aspect of the

201
categories, namely time, second, to establish a connec-
tion between the Aesthtic and the Analytic and beyond
this, third, to develop the main portion of his
philosophy of science, in which we see how and why
physical science is something other than mathematics,
because in fact the physical world is for us not only
a system of concepts but also of empirical intuitions.
Thus mathematics may present us with what is true
eternally and in all possible worlds, but physical
science, appropriating what it needs of the language
and technique of mathematics, is directed toward a
world in space, but even more significantly, in time.
It is man's picture of the world in time that Kant has
undertaken to explore to its foundations. With this
we can now discard the literal implications of the
subsumptions metaphor with its third man difficulties.
The point is Kant has implemented the view of concepts
and causal laws as rules that has been presented in
the Deductions and given us some notion how in practice
this is to be understood. A concept, we may paraphrase
him as saying, is a rule according to which the imagina-
tion can delineate a figure without being confined to
the reproduction of a particular figure which experi-
ence has previously afforded me.

We may observe that still another aspect of what \

Kant has under review in the Schematism is precisely ,
the question of "abstract ideas," which Berkeley first
raised in the Introduction to his Principles; Hume en-
dorsed Berkeley's solution in his Treatise Kant's
whole presentation in the Aesthetic, as we have already
seen, is a virtual rejection of their narrow "imagistic"
view of this matter. What Kant means by pure or formal
intuition is a defense of what they are trying to
repudiate. He is saying to them that it is not true
that we are somehow limited in our mental powers to
having visual, auditory and other impressions or ideas
in present or previous experience and the various
impressions and images involved in words. We can
conjure up and operate intellectually (and successfully)
with infinite space and time, which they were unwilling
to allow; with breadthless lines, depthless planes, and
so on. The mind, in its capacity as productive imagina-
tion is able to do all those things which they may have
been quite right in saying ordinary intuition cannot do,
and such imagination is absolutely essential to carry
on the intellectual operations of science. His point
is that we are not, as the British philosophers seem
to maintain, in lockstep with experience, confined

202
only to reproductive imagination in what transcends
the impressions of the moment.

In all of this, Kant breathes the air of the

nineteenth and even the twentieth century: more
knowledgeable in both science and mathematics and not
so suspicious of them as Berkeley and Hume often are.
At the same time there is no trace of the immobile
universe of eternal forms and paradigms of the Plato-
nists. What we have as objects of intellect are con-
cepts and these are meaningful to us only in so far as
we are capable of giving interpretations and applica-
tions to them. For this capacity to deal with abstrac-
tions in a meaningful way Kant appropriates the term
schema. His answer to the British standpoint is that
of course no image could be adequate to the "pure
concept" of a triangle. But it is schemata, not
images of objects with which we think. And a schema
is the concept treated as a rule by which it is possible
to synthesize or delineate a determinate particular.
What is needed then, Kant is saying is not so much a
repudiation of pure Platonic forms, nor restriction of
thought to imagistic particulars, as a new understand-
ing of what a concept is in relation to particulars.
Not a high heaven far removed from lowly earth, as
if we had to choose between them,but a new interpre-
tation of the means by which the soaring eye, so to
speak, comprehends the earth. We have comprehended
a subject when we are intellectually able to construct
it; to do so we need a rule; what we call a concept is
such a rule.

One wishes that Kant had not thought it a "dry

and longwinded dissection" to explain schemata to us
in detail and to show how they are developed and used
(A142/B181).

(2) The problem of the definition of the categories

now has a background against which we may reasonably
hope for an elucidation, if not a solution. It is
evident that the categories are not simple class no-
tions, such as dog and triangle or even the number
five, which Kant uses as examples of such notions. But
if one is to explain what is meant by 'causality1,
'substance', 'reality1, 'necessity' and other such
notions, we must present them as related in some manner
to intuition and imagination. This Kant undertakes to
do for nearly every categorical term, but in greater
brevity than one might wish. If we ask for definitions

203
of the categories there are just three places to look
in the Critique: in the Metaphysical Deduction (or
Clue), in the Schematism, and in the Analytic of Prin-
ciples. We must, however, remember that Kant has told
us several times that he does not intend to offer an
analysis of each of them in the Critique : he is oblig-
ing himself only to offer a critique of pure reason,
not a system of pure reason. The latter will perhaps
come later. (Only the Metaphysical Foundations appear-
ed.) We must therefore be content in the Schematism
and elsewhere. If we collect what Kant has said re-
garding the four general classes of categories and
the particular categories under each we can gain a
fairly clear view of Kant's definitions somewhat more
systematically:

204
 Schematism: Definitions of Categories

Quantity: Generation or synthesis of time itself in

the successive apprehension of the object (Time-
Series ) .

Unity: [The pure schema of magnitude is

\ number, i.e., the successive add-
Plurality: ition of homogeneous units (p.183) .
Extensive magnitude involve suc-
Totality: cessive synthesis (in time) by the
productive imagination (A163/B204 . ]

Quality: Synthesis of sensation or perception with

the representation of time or the filling of time
(Time-Content) .

Reality: Correspondence to sensation in

general. A being in time. Filled
time .

Negation: Not being in time. Empty time (as

a limit).

Limitation: (Not Defined)

Relation: Connection of representations with one

another at all times according to a rule of
time-determination (Time-order).

Substance (Inherence-Subsistence):
Permanence of the real in time.

Causality: The real upon which, whenever

posited, something else follows by
rule. Succession in time.

Community: Reciprocal causality of substance:

simultaneity of reals.

205

i
Modality: Time itself as the correlate of the deter-
mination whether and how an object belongs to
time (Scope of time).

Possibility: Existence at any time. Agreement

of a synthesis with the conditions
of time in general.
Existence (Actuality):
Existence in some determinate time.
Necessity: Existence at all times. (This
echoes views first stated by the
Stoic logicians,- see Mates, Stoic
Logic, University of California
Press, 1973).

(Space: The pure image of all magnitudes

for outer sense.)
(Time: The pure image of all objects of
the senses in general.)

206
 I have perhaps taken some liberty in speaking of
these formulae as definitions of the categories. It
will no doubt be granted that if not definitions in
every sense of the term (the term 'definition' itself
is not readily defined), they do certainly specify
some very necessary and central traits of the cate-
gories .

It must of course be noted that time plays the

central role in this presentation of the categories,
and thus time is clearly seen to occupy the place it
has had from the very beginning in the Critique. The
place of time in the scientific world-view that Kant
promulgates makes him appear to be a good bit of a
Heraclitean. He saw clearer than any of his predeces-
sors, even Leibniz, what must be treated as fixed and
true in all possible worlds, and what is regular only
in conforming to or illustrating laws. He did not see
these fixities and regularities as being somehow onto-
logical or objective principles JLII things and processes,
but as rules by which we assessed the transformations
of things. Kant accepts change in all direction. The
world is open-ended, infinite,problematic. It is use-
less to yearn for fixed points and lines of reference.
The foundations that religions had stood firmly upon
are regarded as useful, regulative ideas and ideals,
if we know how to treat them sagaciously, otherwise
they are meaningless. Despite the apparent rigidity
of his moral system, he is an existentialist and
nothing marks this better than his acceptance of time
as the framework of the phenomenal world, more funda-
mental even than space.

As we can see from the condensed formulae of the

Schematism presented here, time is inherently involved
in the definition of each of the categories. The
four classes of these are presented as based respective-
ly on the series, the content, the order, and the scope
of time. The intent of this classification must now be
explained.

Experience, we recall, inherently involves more

than momentary intuitions. The categories are the
instruments by which the self manages to transcend
what is momentary and perishing. The first aspect of
the synthesis is mere perdurance in time as a set
of distinguishable moments in a series. The moments
must be thought of not only as discrete and passing
but a_s a series, a multiplicity, das Mannigfaltige.

207
(We recall to mind the first Synthesis in the transcen-
dental deduction.) This involves the notion quantity,
the first of the four classes of categories.

Second, we must observe that these instants or

moments are not empty. Each moment is filled, quali-
tied, has content, and we know how to distinguish one
from the other. This also involves a transcendence or
synthesis because if each occurrent perished irrevoca-
bly we could say nothing of it, for to say something of
it is to distinguish it from another occurrent along-
side which, as it were, it can be laid and with which
it can be compared. This involves the notion of
quality, the second group of categories.

Third, the connection of occurrents, or appear-

ances involves the order in which they may stand. Four
possibilities are to be distinguished. For example,
one and the same appearance may turn up at two or more
moments. This requires notions beyond mere perishing
intuitions to establish. Identity, or the permanent,
which is what is involved, goes beyond the momentary.
We can readily see that if we think of this example as
that of the same occurrent at different moments, there
will be altogether four possibilities.28 ye can have: |
!

(1) Same occurrent at different moments. !

(2) Different occurrents at different moments,

(3) Different occurrents at same moment,

(4) Same occurrent at same moment.

Our capacity to think these signifies our command of yet
other notions that go beyond empirical intuition. These
are the categories of order in time. We may diagram
them as follows.
(1)

A A A
A A

208
 (2) A ._. B ._. C __. D

(3) >

(4)

The fourth possibility is inherent in each of the

others, so that the notion of the self-identical occur-
rent has no distinct category. The others present for
us the notions of permanence or duration (Beharrlich-
keit) , succession and simultaneity. In each case we
see a power of synthesis at work moving in three dif-
ferent directions. When we ask what these three syn-
theses are or what "makes them possible", we find that
they are the notion of thing-property (or -state),
causal connection, and causally interrelated system.
These are the categories of relation: substance,
causality, and community.

Fourth, the question of the extent of the synthe-

sis is taken up under the scope of time. Here we com-
mand the notions of an occurrent at any time in the
series, but not further specified; of occurrence at
some definite time or times or stretch of time in the
series; and of occurrence at any, all, and every time
in the series. These define the categories of modality:
possibility, actuality, and necessity. None of them can
be derived from mere intuition. Kant sums them up as
follows:

If the occurrent occurs at some time

or other, it is possible.
If the occurrent occurs at some definite
time, it is actual
If the occurrent never fails to occur,
its existence is necessary

It must be conceded that Kant's derivation of the

categories is ingenious. I suggest that it also amounts
effectively to a definition of the categories, or as
much of a definition as they receive. The further
specification of them, or at least some of them is to

209

be found in the forthcoming Analytic. The present

derivation may therefore be kept in mind as we explore
the Principles, particularly the Analogies of Experi-

Finally, it should be remarked that just as the

question of definition as it touches the categories
must be left elastic, so also must that of deduction.
That is to say, any such derivation as Kant provides
in the Schematism may also be regarded as a kind of
deduction, and in this instance, a deduction of par-
ticular categories. All that is needed is an exposi-
tion of the notion of experience itself: once we have
this, we can see that the categories as defined or ana-
lyzed are absolutely necessary to experience and there-
fore make it possible. This brings us to the third
approach to the interpretation of the Schematism.

(3) The deduction problem as it arises in the

Schematism makes itself felt mainly at the end of the
section. The categories, Kant repeats, apply to sen-
sate intuition and to nothing else. They are phenomenal
in their very definition. He makes still another foray
into definition of them, but breaks off after working
out a few phrases in Latin:

Phenomenal quantity is number ;'f

Phenomenal reality is sensation. i.

Phenomenal substance is constancy and dur-

ability.

Phenomenal necessity is everlastingness.

(These are approximations to his terms.) Thus a fur-

ther ray of light is shed on the first class of cate-
gories (of quantity), and on the fourth (or perhaps
better the eleventh), the seventh, and the twelfth
categories. "Schematizing" the categories means giving
them the kind of definition hinted at in these phrases
or in the more explicit phrasings of our previous expo-
sition. If we now ask what a category may be apart from
its schema, we find of course that it is, so far as
experience is concerned, nothing at all, or if this is
too drastic, it is a mere expression of a unity which
can only be significant in actual experience.

As happens so often in the Critique, a causal ex-

210
planatory remark opens up still another avenue of prob-
lems and interpretations, for Kant now introduces the
phrase 'unschematized category' without explaining its
relation to what has gone before. What he actually
says leads one to think that he means by the phrase
merely any one of the twelve logical "functions of
judgment" which we have collectively referred to as
Screed I. They are, he says now, "mere functions of
the understanding for concepts without representing
any objects." He also says, a moment before, that they
have "only the logical significance of a mere unity of
representations which have neither a reference to any
object nor apart from this any significance" (A147/B186).
Substance, in unschematizedform is thus simply the no-
tion of a subject which is in no sense also a possible
predicate. This suggests two questions: (1) What one
can mean by a mere form or function in this connection
and (2) what significance it can have to speak of this
as an unschematized category.

We have already gone into the first question when

Screed I appeared in the Metaphysical Deduction. Kant
hopes to arrive at the a priori fixtures of mind by an
analysis of language. But what does 'language' mean?
If it is stripped bare altogether of all semantic
function, there remain only inscriptive or audible
marks--these can scarcely be analyzed for anything
except their physical or aesthetic properties. If on
the other hand some semantic function is left to them
we do not know where to draw the line between this and
their categorical content or function. The upshot is
not that Kant's approach is wrong, but that a mere
elaborate analytical apparatus than Kant devised would
have to be brought to bear in order to excogitate such
a content or function.

The second question may come down to asking whether

it is a contradictio in adj ecto for Kant to speak of a
category as unschematized. If what he has presented us
with in the "time table" is the categories as schematiz-
ed it is hard to see how they can be significant apart
from this. This question then is perhaps much the same
as the first. If so, one must, I think, identify the
unschematized categories with the forms in Screed I.
This is probably what Kant did intend, although opinions
are often at variance with this interpretation. It is
possibly therefore only a mild inconsistency to speak
of a category as being unschematized.

211
 I would now venture the opinion that although the
process is still fragmentary and incomplete, the only
deduction of the categories, as against the principles,
that appears in the Critique appears in the Schematism.
Only here has attention been given to specific categor-
ies, showing why and how they help constitute experience
and make it possible. The importance of the Schematism
is that it represents the completion of the task of the
deduction, as Kant leaves it. This offers something of
a revision of Kant's apparent view that schematization
was something in addition to deduction. But I think
a careful reading of the section shows that no true
further operation is involved here. For all its ambi-
guities, the section provides some necessary ingredients
in the solution of the critical problem. Its brevity
is nearly as regrettable as its obscurity, it is a rare
occasion in the Critique where one feels that the Abbs'
Terrasson's remark quoted by Kant in the Preface (Axix)
may well be applied: "Many a book would be shorter,
if it were not so short."

212
 Chapter II

System of All Principles of Pure understanding

At length Kant has arrived at the point where he

can address himself to a summary answer to the basic
question of the Critique enunciated in the Introduction,
and often put out of sight since then: How are synthetic
judgments possible a priori? Only now do we gain sig-
nificant acquaintance with the judgments or propositions
whose "possibility" we are to determine. It is apparent
that we have arrived at the all important movement in
this philosophic sonata. Here "the past is prologue"
for reasons that we have expressed as we have gone
along and that may be stated once more.

The clue to the principles is of course the table

of categories, although the connection is often tenuous.
The transition from one to the other is characterized
by Kant as simply one of employing in judgments the a
priori concepts of the understanding that have been
expounded and deduced. This continues the rather me-
chanistic metaphor he has employed from the outset:
parts, mechanisms, functors have been prepared and are
now to be installed in a larger machine. It is under-
standable enough that a clarification of concepts may
well be advisable in preparation for the exposition of
judgments or propositions. But if the deduction is
more than this, one may well ask what one needs to do
twice over with concepts such as causality, substance,
or existence, particularly when the first account is not
simply a definition of these terms but a "deduction".

Or looking back over the deduction, should we think

of it as having reference to no categories in particular?
It is difficult to see how we could find such an opera-
tion meaningful unless we knew what categories we were
deducing or legitimizing and what their function was to
be. Kant has been particularly vague on these two scores
throughout the transcendental deduction. we have as yet
been told very little what it is for a category to apply
specifically to experience or to intuitions (cf. 22-24).

What appears to be at stake here is whether the

213
role of the categories by themselves, and their deduc-
tion, is truly functional in the Critique or only con-
tributory to the principal matter, the Principles.
In favor of the latter interpretation is the fact that,
let us say, causality tout court is simply a word, a
fragment of a judgment, and without significance apart
from use in judgment. Moreover, one can scarcely speak
of causality or any mere concept by itself as any sort
of a priori knowledge such as Kant has been in quest
of, although 'every event has a cause' may very well be,
and indeed is, according to Kant. What purpose then
has the labored account of the categories served?

I am inclined to think that Kant was wedded to the

idea of a logical model for the Critique and thus self-
obliged to provide distinct accounts of conceptions,
judgments, and reasonings. If we say that this was
actually not necessary, we must distinguish between
the logical necessity of the subject matters of the
Critique to one another, and the material necessity
of having some sort of framework for the problem of the
Critique to arise in Kant's mind at all. The latter
may have been a real necessity. The former is debat-
able and we cannot escape the need to consider it merely
out of loyalty to Kant's memory as a philosopher of
prodigious powers. We shall not.make this an actual
topic of investigation but we may recur to it in the
exposition of the Principles.

It is evident that in terms of the program of in-

vestigation so clearly set forth in the Introduction,
the main questions of the Critique are directly con-
fronted only in the Analytic of Principles, and all
else must be treated as either contributory or deri-
vative in relation to it. What is the a priori know-
ledge on which experience and the whole natural science
rests? In essence, though perhaps not altogether ex-
clusively, it is the propositions demonstrated in the
Analytic of Principles. Certainly it cannot be any
proposition we please in which the term 'causality'
appears but precisely the proposition that events are
related causally in the manner expounded in the Second
Analogy. The deduction so far has been preparatory in
nature and some of it will be repeated. What Kant has
done in the deduction is to show that there must be a
priori knowledge, but he has not shown us what it is.
This is only now to be revealed in detail.

We shall interpret the foregoing deduction as a

214
purported proof that experience and scientific know-
ledge are possible only if we have a priori knowledge
of a certain sort on whose basis alone we can suppose
such knowledge to be objective, that this in turn rests
on the presumption of a transcendental unity of con-
sciousness, and that the objectivity of knowledge which
this consciousness commands is effected by means of
certain concepts whose identity may be learned from the
logical form of judgments. But we have really no way
to gauge their power or scope until we see what a
priori truths or principles we actually are in command
of with them. Having identified the key concepts we
should now readily be able to determine the principles.
And if we can offer proofs of them, the principal task
of the Critique will have been completed.

This then is the program that Kant now undertakes:

the categories are our guide to the principles, and
they should lead us to the totality of them; we must
undertake proofs of them; this itself will tell us how
those synthetic judgments on which experience rests
are possible a priori.

215
 Section 1
The Highest Principle of All Analytic Judgments

Before turning to synthetic judgments which, if

a priori, are Kant's main concern, he turns to his
classification of all propositions into analytic and
synthetic to set forth the basic principle decisive of
the truth of judgments in each class. Reference to
analytic propositions may appear unnecessary since Kant
has made it altogether clear that the principles now
to be presented are classic instances of the synthetic
a priori. But he has a very good reason for adverting
to them once more, namely, to show that reference to
time enables us to determine a crucial difference be-
tween analytic and synthetic a priori propositions.

As we have pointed out before, Kant's basic view

of logic is entirely compatible with modern thought
on the subject even though his particular logical
doctrines are limited by the low horizon and moribund
state of the subject in his day. He is careful to
expunge every trace of psychological interpretation in
the subject and with this goes a clear recognition
that all time-determined considerations are out of
place in it.

The supreme principle of analytic judgments, he

supposes, is the principle of contradiction. Thus,
presumably if logic were to be formalized, one of its
axioms would be the principle.-

It is impossible that something should

simultaneously be and not be.

'Simultaneously' is zugleich and of course can also

be read 'at once' or 'at one and the same time.'
Kant's point is that reference to time is not only
alien to logic but confuses a logical truth with a
proposition about what may or may not be true about the
material state of things. Thus, it is altogether pos-
sible in speaking of material, historical fact to find
both 'A is B' and 'A is not B' to be true, for at one
A may be B, let us say white, and at a subsequent

216
moment be not B, that is not white, but say yellow or
blue. Logic has no interest in such purely material
generalizations nor should its fundamental principles
be put in these terms. The principles of contradiction
should take the form:

It is false that B is not B

in which there is no reference to time. In this form,
the highest principle of all analytical judgments is
itself analytical.

Kant also considers, as he did in the Introduction

to the Transcendental Logic, the general question of a
criterion of truth in order to take up the next section
the proof of Transcendental Principles. The principle
of contradiction serves as a negative criterion of truth
because any proposition which is self-contradictory is
false. It can be decisive of the truth of a proposition
in the positive sense only when a proposition is already
known to be analytic. But Kant offers as a criterion
of analyticity only the vague rule that the predicate
of an analytic judgment is contained in the subject. If
we can apply this rule without reference to the principle
contradiction on the latter may serve as a positive
criterion of truth. If not, the question of truth
has been begged.

The more important result of the section is that

of the exclusion of time from the consideration of the
truth of analytical propositions. As we have seen in
the Schematism, and as will be particularly evident in
the Analogies, time is of central importance for syn-
thetic a priori judgments.

217
 Section 2
The Highest Principle of all Synthetic Judgments

The supreme principle is stated in the last para-

graph as follows: Every object stands under the nec-
essary conditions of the synthetic unity of the mani-
fold of intuition in a possible experience. It of
course condenses the deduction once again, perhaps
finally, into a formula that catches some of the
essentials. 'Stands under 1 , steht unter, is of course
not very lucid: one must reflect how much has been
said that bears upon this "stands under" or "is subject
to." We may attempt a gloss or excursus on the origi-
nal in somewhat the following terms. What we apprehend
as objects and processes in experience is to be account-
ed for not only by empirical intuitions but also by
certain necessary conceptual conditions that organize
them and give them unity. When we explore these we
find them to be creations of pure understanding: (1)
empirical concepts, which are in essence rules; and
(2) rules for devising rules, which are characterized
as categories or, less accurately "pure concepts" of
the understanding. The unity they lend to experience
must be traced back still further to a transcendental
unity of apperception which "employs" them as its
"instruments." Without such unity, experience, if one
could call it that would be no more than a "rhapsody
of perceptions."

This then is the by now familiar train of argument

that presents the categories by what I have called the
diremptive method, analytically tracing or tracking
down the components of experience. But we can and
must also put the matter in the so-called transcendental
manner. Beginning with the fact that we have knowledge,
that science is knowledge, we find that such knowledge
is possible only if certain propositions are true a
priori. Among these propositions are particularly
those which we are about to consider under the Analytic
of Principles. Once we make the analytic-synthetic
distinction we see that they present us with the problem
that although synthetic, they are known to be true a
priori: we will, according to Kant, under no conceivable
circumstances give them up. Having therefore no usual
way to account for their high probability as empirical

218
generalizations to which no exception is ever found, we
are compelled to undertake a summary review of the
foundations of all knowledge, of the understanding and
indeed of the intellect or pure reason in general. As
we narrow the problem we find this to be the problem
of transcendental logic.

After what may have appeared to be numerous

digressions, and we may add, ceaseless repetitions
Kant has now returned finally and firmly to the task
of accounting for how there can be synthetic propo-
sitions known a priori. Taking them specifically, one
by one, all that has gone before must now be clearly
kept in mind. With the demonstration of the key prin-
ples we shall have answered the basic problem of the
Critique.

The remainder of the story, the Dialectic, gives

us perhaps an even broader view of matters by review-
ing the pathology of pure reason, just as the study
of ill health or of the growth of cancerous tissue
may reveal to us much about organic function that we
might not learn from normal or healthy organisms.
Kant, however, does not simply deplore and dismiss
these pathological conditions as aberrations as his
fellow positivists have done. He demonstrates his
ascendency over all of them by discovering a unique
sweetness in these uses of adversity.

219
 Section 3

Systematic Representation of all Synthetic

Principles of Pure Understanding

It is of course Kant's aim to identifiy and to

demonstrate certain principles which make knowledge
possible. Among these principles we find in the
Second Analogy a proposition which would generally be
regarded as setting forth the Uniformity of Nature, or
a Principle of Sufficient Reason or of Causation, or
perhaps a principle to justify induction. Whether
this is accurate or not, one can at least say that if
anyone were to demonstrate such a principle the ques-
tion of the status of scientific laws or of the justi-
fication of induction would be profoundly affected and
certain age-old problems would by the same token be
solved. We are in no position to go into these ques-
tions in the present context, either to ask after the
current situation with regard to the demonstration of
any such principles, or to judge Kant's success or
failure in this. Our purpose is simply to help to gain
a clear understanding of his views on the matter, which
everyone recognizes as being of prime'significance.
It is by now evident that much more acquaintance with
specific laws of nature had to be gained than was avail-
able to Kant and that much more reflection on the meth-
ods of inductive and deductive sciences was necessary
before one could hope to see what fundamental princi-
ples underlay the sciences and what their logical re-
lation to the total economy of science was. Kant's
work is a milestone of momentous progress in thought
about these problems, but we must not expect either
a perfect formulation of the principles, or a rigorous
proof of them, or a perfect articulation of their lo-
gical status in a scientific knowledge as a whole. Only
doctrinaire "Kantians" will balk at this or those who
do not agree that the solution of philosophical problems
is a gradual affair to which many hands must contribute.

We must therefore keep constantly before us the

question whether the principles Kant now formulates
do play the role in knowledge which he says they do.
I think this must raise grave doubts in our minds on

220
 his formulation of the principles themselves and of their
logical relation to the rest of the edifice of scienti-
fic knowledge, above and below. These will engage us
.; fairly constantly as we proceed through the Analytic.

\ The second point is touched on directly in the

! present introduction to Section 3. Kant repeats the
( oft-reiterated point regarding the relation of the
; Principles to the structure of knowledge that without
such principles there can be no knowledge, and that
"laws of nature stand under (are subject to) higher
principles of the understanding and simply apply them
to specific phenonmena. They supply the concept which
contains the condition and, as it were, an exponent to
a general rule, which experience furnishes the parti-
cular case that falls under the rule." (The term 'expo-
nent is not further explained.) The question now is
what precisely we are to understand to be the logic of
' the withoutwhichnot that characterizes the principles?
. Is it explained by the matter we have quoted? Is a
particular law or generalization simply a particular
instance of the principles Kant has formulated? No one
who has followed the efforts of Mill, Keynes, Russell,
Reichenbach, and von Wright can suppose that Kant has
done much more than point a very determined finger in
a certain direction for a solution. I think we must
say that we cannot leave matters simply where he left
them, but neither can we ignore his approach to it.
This is the spirit in which we shall take up the
Principles.

It may be said that not all of the principles Kant

formulates raise all the arduous problems that the
Principle of Causality does (the Second Analogy). This
is probably true. In most of the remaining cases Kant
certainly ferrets out certain propositions which under-
lie science in the sense that if we confidently carry
such and such cognitive operations, then we must be
convinced that such and such principles hold. It re-
mains to be seen whether this underlying is more than
merely having certain things in^mind.

Kant himself points out that there may be several

orders or levels of generality among principles. He is
not, for example, concerned in the following discussion
with the axioms of various mathematical sciences. No
mathematician disputes that axioms underlie the subject.
What Kant is concerned about is something more fundamen-
tal, as we shall see in a few moments under the Axioms

221
of Intuition. It should also be said that it is rather
specifically natural science that is the issue here
and not mathematics, although the lines are not always
perfectly distinct.

Kant's final point is to prepare us for a sub-

classification among the Principles which appeared only
in B. (It is made first in reference to the Screed of
the categories in 11, a section which was wholly
added in B.) This is the characterization of the
categories and principles of quantity and quality as
mathematical, and of those of relation and modality as
dynamical. It is possible that these do not deserve
much attention although they are not quite trivial
either. Kant of course does not mean that the princi-J
pies are concerned with mathematics or with dynamics 'I
in the narrow sense of the terms. I

At B110 Kant spoke of the first pair of classes of

categories as being "directed toward pure and empirical
objects of intuition" and the second pair "toward the
existence of these objects either in relation to one
another or to the understanding." This is made only
slightly clear in the present context. The mathema-
tical principles which affirm that intuitions are
extensive and intensive magnitudes, seem to Kant more
intuitively certain than the dynamical (Kant's term is
here explicitly intuitiven, and not as in most occur-
rences of the term in translation derived from his
own Latin for Anschauung). If the analogies say that
(a) although there is no intuitional evidence for it,
there is always something permanent in experience, (b)
from any existent we can always infer another existent
as its cause, and (c) all existents exert mutual in-
fluences on one another, then I think Kant is quite
right in detecting a distinctly weaker degree of in-
tuitive certainty in them than in the Axioms of In-
uition. The case is, however, unconvincing in reference
to the Anticipations of Perception and the Postulates
of Empirical Thought. Kant reverts to the point several
more times in the Critique.

We have at length arrived at a most important turn

in the Critique. The Principles which are ostensibly
"derived from" the categories are now introduced. Much
more attention has been devoted over the decades to the
deduction of the categories. I wish to suggest that the
Principles, at least the Analogies and the Postulates,
are inherently more important and more lucid.

222
 Axioms of Intuition
A: Principle of the pure understanding: All
appearances are, in respect to intuition,
extensive magnitudes.
B: Their principle is: All intuitions are
extensive magnitudes.

Proof

Before we examine the argument, let us ask what

we have been led to expect of a principle based upon
the categories of Quantity. First, all of the princi-
ples have been declared to be synthetic and a priori.
There is therefore no procedure for proof or verifica-
tion such as we may employ if a proposition is thought
to be analytic or a posteriori. Kant has in any event
not said what these procedures would be.

Although the principles are already declared to be

synthetic and a priori, I think we must not take this
for granted. Rather, we should regard them as being
proposed to serve as a priori principles and then assess
the available means of proof and the particular proofs
Kant has supplied. Since the analyticity-syntheticity
of a proposition is always in some degree indeterminate,
if not worse, for propositions in an unformalized system,
it is safer to suppose the principles to be synthetic
than analytic. The first general principle, for example,
unless it is to be regarded as a definition of intuition,
has none of the self-evidence which we generally expect
of an analytic proposition in a natural language. It
should be equally apparent that it is not a generaliza-
tion about experience, learned from experience, and
capable of being falsified by some future experience.
So much may be said of the principle formally. We
should keep rather more distinct than Kant does the
principle "all appearances are extensive magnitudes"
from the axioms of geometry he talks about in the
course of the discussion. We shall concentrate not on
these but the general principle.

We ask next about the matter or content of the

general principle. In this case the principle bears
no relation to the categories besides the use of the

223
term 'quantity1. In the table of judgments (Screed I ) ,
Kant has classified propositions as to quantity under
universal, particular and singular. How can this have
any mathematical signficance, such as the principle
evidently has? When the subject term of a proposition
is "quantified" by 'all' and 'some' it is certainly not
quantified in any mathematical sense. 'None' of course,
quantifies, if 'all' and 'some' do, but Kant places this
under the categories of quality, as negation.

The principle speaks of the applicability of con-

cepts of magnitude and quantity, arithmetical and
geometrical concepts, to appearances; the forms of judg-
ment and the categories of quantity have reference only
to logical quantification. The matter, however, is
really not very serious. No great consequence depends
on the "derivation" of the principle from some particu-
lar class of categories. The categories should suggest
the principles but no greater relevance is necessary.
In this light we can see that Kant has discussed mathe-
matics sufficiently in previous parts of the Critique J
to justify his asking about the use of mathematics in ;
natural science. This is, in fact, exactly what the {
Axiom addresses itself to. It affirms that the concept*
of quantity or magnitude is applicable to the intuitions
to which natural science attends. Kant then offers
support for the general principle.

All of the categories and principles are part of

the formal apparatus that is brought to bear upon what
is given in intution. They must bear some seal of legi-
timation, for although they apply to experience they are
not derived from experience. It is evident that it re-
requires more than empirical intuition to devise the
notion of quantity. Synthesis and, as we saw in the
Deduction in A, several levels of it are necessary.
The principle now sets this forth explicitly. We need
an a priori principle to apply mathematical notions
to experience. We cannot learn from intuition what we
apply to it, and we cannot learn from it that all in-
tuitions are susceptible to mathematical techniques.
The proof of this runs of course to the effect that
without possessing some such principle a priori scien-
tific knowledge is impossible.But since there is such
knowledge, it is reasonable to posit the principle.

What is of course necessary to carry out this

proof is to show that empirical intuitions are capable
of mathematical treatment. For this we must begin with
the proof already offered in the Aesthetic that space

224
and time are a priori forms of intuition. Space is for
Kant a system of an infinite number of homogeneous
volumes. (He does not subscribe to the identity of
indiscernibles.) Everything in space is likewise sub-
ject to the same condition. A planet, a house, or a
trunk occupies so many exactly equal and homogeneous
cubic feet or centimeters of space. Citing this number
expresses is magnitude. But this we do not learn from
intuition. It is w_e who decide that these twelve things
are merely so many quantitatively identical members of
some class or other; we do not prove this by reference
to empirical intuition.

We can do the same thing with time, for moments

and intervals of time are also qualitatively indiscern-
ible. Leaving this specimen in brine for one hour and
that one in alcohol is one and the same so far as time
is concerned.

Once we have legitimized our use of the concepts

of spatial and temporal magnitude we have two corner-
stones of physical science. The two together enable
us to develop the ideas of velocity and acceleration.
If we can now add the notion of mass or matter we have
the fundamental dimensions of the science of mechanics.
(Kant proceeds to this task in the next principle.)

Kant has thus affirmed a principle on which science

itself rests. Without it our intellectual apparatus
would sink to a level such as we can only surmise may
be possessed by lower animal beings. It is a trans-
cendental principle underlying the mathematics of
appearance, or as we may say, of applied mathematics
and mathematical physics. With it pure mathematics can
find interpretation in the world of empirical intuition.
The synthesis of spaces and times, makes possible both
the apprehension of intuition and every outer experience,
and thus our comprehension of objects.
I think we should show some concern, particularly
in the final paragraph of this section, whether Kant
does not carry this principle too far. "This trans-
cendental principle of mathematics," he says, "greatly
enlarges our a priori knowledge. For it alone gives
pure mathematics in its full precision, its applicabil-
ity to objects of experience. What geometry says of
pure intuitions is undeniably true also of empirical
intuition." But can we really endorse this? Do we
know, or dare we think that everything demonstrable
in pure mathematics is bound also to be exemplified

225
in experience? Surely not.
In order for there to be science we must be able
to measure and to count. As Kant sees matters, the
conditions that make it possible for us to measure or
count are not present in empirical intuition. Only when
we see them as subject to space and time which are a
priori forms of intuition are we able to explain this
for then the object and processes of appearance are
seen as having measurable extension in space or time.

But we must not forget that we are limited here

by the nature of empirical intuition no less than by
the conceptual apparatus employed. Space, for example,
as a pure intuition is no doubt infinitely divisible.
But this cannot entail that an object of appearance is
so divisible. In other words we are always using the
notions of pure mathematics at our own risk. The fact
that there are six people in this room does not entail
that there are twelve half-people in it, twenty-four
quarter-people, etc. Kant's principle enables us to
count persons or objects but this is subject to numer-
ous "enabling conditions", as we might call them.
There are, in other words, also other conditions than
those prescribed by the axiom. One question which we
will not be able to devote time to is the completeness
to which Kant aspires in the a priori concepts and
principles underlying science. Of course this is a
current problem too.

226
 Anticipations of Perception
A: The principle which anticipates all perceptions as
such reads as follows: In all appearances, the
sensation and the real which corresponds to it in
the object (realitas phenomenon, phenomenal reality)
has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree.

B: Its principle is: In all appearances, the real

that is an object of sensation has an intensive
magnitude, that is, a degree.
Proof
The principle is reformulated in B in part no
doubt because of the ungrammatical structure of it in
A (a plural subject with a singular verb). But even
when we correct this, the original sentence does not
lay the emphasis where Kant seems to want it in B, on
the notion of the variable intensive magnitude of
reality rather than on the intensity of sensation. Of
course there is no doubt that sensations are capable of
variable intensity; this is plain fact. What Kant is
concerned about is rather to attribute intensity or
intensiveness to reality.

Kant is speaking entirely in terms of a notion of

reality that is serviceable to science, not to trans-
cendent metaphysics. It is in fact his theory of mat-
ter that is being presented in this section. The prin-
ciple of the anticipations, like all the others,
affirms a synthetic proposition that must be treated as
known a priori, as a presupposition of natural science.
Again like all the others, it is a part of the meta-
physics of science: it is not known as confirmable
by scientific methods or instruments, but science pre-
supposes such a principle or some alternative to it.
The issue eventually is, should we understand the
physically real in terms of atomism, which assumes only
physical bodies and the void they inhabit, or should we
suppose nature is a plenum and a continuum that is more
intensely or densely filled in some places than in
others. The opinion of physicists has varied on this
question. The idea of the plenum, particularly in the

227
form of the ether, enjoyed a potent revival in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It be-
gan to lose ground with the Michelson-Morley experiment
in the late eighties which failed to confirm the veloc-
ity of the earth through the ether and eventually led
to the abandonment of the idea of the ether itself. The
notion may however, recur because the alternative
involves "action at a distance." A fully successful
"unified field theory" would be likely to decide the
matter, but this has apparently not yet been realized.

Before propounding a "dynamic theory of matter" as

a possible alternative to atomism Kant must first show
how we can interpret the data of experience conformably
to such a theory. He does not put this forward dog-
matically but as what he finds workable alternative.
The first principle Kant affirms here and elsewhere,
precisely as we would expect from a natural scientist
and in repudiation of rationalism, is that we must re-
gard perception, sensation, as the origin and founda-
tion of knowledge, even though we seem occasionally to
find reasons to "doubt" our senses. In the end the
question whether we can or cannot use this as a founda-
tion is not something that can be proved or disproved
in experience. Thus, the Principle of Existence, cor-
responding to the eleventh category specifying exis-
tence in terms of perception is a synthetic and a
priori proposition, a principle unproved b_y science but
necessary to it. Of course we learn how to crosscheck
the deliverances of the senses. They may sometimes
seem to deceive us, but how could we possibly dispense
with them and have anything other than mathematical,
logical, deductive but not natural science?

Given this, we must now observe some of the pro-

perties of sense. The data of each sense-modality ap-
pear to be entirely unique but they also have some
resemblance to one another. For example, the data of
vision, touch, pain and temperature are or appear to be
extended in space. Those of smell and taste have per-
haps something less of this trait. Most of the data
are also extended in time. As we learned in the pre-
vious section all intuitions are extensive magnitudes.

In the present section Kant reminds us that all

data of sensation also have a dimension of intensity
Under each of the classifications just mentioned we
can observe data as being fainter or stronger. A given
tone of a given pitch as a given intensity, which we

228
call its loudness or softness and the loudness can be
increased or diminished by appropriate means. A color
can be fainter or more prominent. Virtually the only
variation possible in temperature, besides its extensity,
is intensity. Tastes, smells, pains, electric shock,
and kinaesthetic sensations are similarly capable of
intensity.

Kant's point now is that as sensation indicates

the real, or as he says in the Second Postulate of
Empirical Thought, since "what is bound up with the
material conditions of experience, that is, with sen-
sation, is actual," so we must suppose that the degree
or intensity of sensations is indicative of the degree
of actuality or reality. Of course we have learned by
observation that intensity is correlated, but not iden-
tical with, the measure of the physical equivalents of
sensation: frequencies of the vibrations of sound or
color mediums, heights of columns of mercury, the speed
of motions of molecules, etc. But the present principle
goes beyond this.

What Kant does is to offer an interpretation of

the data of sense. What we apprehend in sensation as
real may be regarded as filling a space or time to a
certain degree. Between this and the absence of the
phenomenon is a continuum in space or time of limitless
degrees, from zero or non-being up to the intensity
possessed by any given sensation. Such a sensation can
be considered a synthesis that is, as it were, built up
of component intensities. This is independent of its
extensity, its extent in space and time. In this way
Kant pursues still another application of this view of
the construction of reality by synthesis.

But Kant also has the purpose of offering a differ-

ent notion of matter from that of neo-atomism which had
reasserted itself and was eventually to proceed to a
virtual confirmation in the twentieth century. In his
day, the question was still far more of a speculative
question than it now is. Even so, the matter is even
now not altogether closed: empty space poses some stub-
born questions about the transmission of light, energy,
and force. Kant's point is that we can never empirically
confirm the existence of empty time or space. "The
complete want of reality in sensate intuition cannot be
perceived nor can it be inferred from any given appear-
ance." Kant boldly suggests that space and time are
never empty. His suggestion that it is filled evinces a

229
radical empiricism that affirms the truth of sensation
as against the view of Descartes, Locke and later nat-
ural scientists that the real is an impenetrable, physi-
cal but unobservable stuff that is everywhere uniform
and varies only in its distribution in a void of space
and time. Since such a void is inherently inconfirm-
able, the opposite hypothesis, says Kant, is much more
reasonable, less "metaphysical," and more faithful to
that intuition which must be for us the touchstone of
reality: space and time are everywhere filled, but
what fills them varies in intensiveness, not only in
extensiveness or quantity, and this intensiveness is
the measure of reality. Our sense data themselves pro-
vide us with an intuitive understanding of the dimen-
sions of reality.

Kant affirms this, in characteristic fashion, as

a transcendental theory. He is astonished that science
should lean so far in the other direction, toward what
in his day at least was still a metaphysical supposi-
tion. (As we have said, in our day the supposition of
particles appears to have become virtual fact though
even now confirmable still only in its consequences.)
Whether this chracterization ("metaphysical") is de-
served or not, Kant regards his own view as an at least
equally plausible hypothesis and one that something can
and must be said in advance of, in anticipation of, ex-
perience, something a priori. We affirm either meta-
physical atomism or the alternative to it.

I think it must be said that until all the out-

standing problems of cosmology are solved, Kant's view
must remain in some greater or lesser degree a live
option. This section shows how keenly aware Kant was
of the inexorable dualistic difficulties that remain
for the philosophy of physics and psychology in the
standpoint which was affirmed by Locke and which is
still in our time so largely taken for granted. Kant's
interpretation, even if it is not thought to be demon-
strated, draws attention to one of the basic presupposi-
tions of science. The popular alternative to it is not
obvious, not empirically confirmable, and not the sole
imaginable explanatory possibility. Kant characterizes
his own alternative to it as a synthetic proposition,
a priori in intent. If this holds, the same is true
of all forms of atomism. This is the challenge of
Kant's theory.

230
 Analogies of Experience
A: The general principle of the analogies is: All
appearances are in respect of existence subject
a priori to rules that determine their relation
to one another in time.
B: The principle of the analogies is: Experience is
possible only through the representation of a
necessary connection of perceptions.
Proof
The Analogies comprise the most important pages
in the Critique. They tie together all that has gone
before in the Aesthetic and the Analytic of Concepts
and evolve principles regarding the key concepts of
substance and causality that determine experience.
Accordingly they deserve the most careful study.
The Principles are rather uneven both in their
content and structure. We have been led to expect
them to develop on the lines of the categories. The
first three categories are developed from the logical
notion of the quantity of a proposition, while the
Axioms of Intuition are concerned with mathematical
quantity, something very different. Kant says that
"their principle is: all intuitions are extensive
magnitudes." This whole statement cannot be the axioms,
since it is but one principle. If we look for axioms
in the plural there is only the rather vague discussion
in the third and fourth paragraph which does not seem
to be integrated with the stated principle at the head
of the section. Finally there is no principle corres-
ponding to each category.
In the Anticipations, Kant again begins the A
formulation with "the principle . . . is as follows."
This leads us to expect the actual anticipations to
be found elsewhere. But if so, they are never formu-
lated: we learn only that in experience we are con-
stantly anticipating perceptions. The formulation in
B suggests that i^t is the principle itself, that "the
real . . . has a degree." But then again this is one
principle not many: why does Kant speak of anticipa-
tions, in the plural? Finally, although reality and
negation are explicitly discussed, we are left to our

231
surmises about a possible principle of limitation, the
sixth category. Since Kant was so explicitly concerned
to offer a rigorous deprivation of a priori concepts
and principles, the loose organizations of these topics
is not easily explained.
In the Analogies, we have principles that strictly
correspond to the categories (seventh, eighth, and
ninth). No doubt because of the weightiness of the
subject matter Kant now adds an extra principle govern-
ing all three and serving as an introduction to them.
I suggest that this principle is closely related to the
twelfth category: the key term in it (in B) is neces-
sary , the subject of the final Postulate of Empirical
Thought. The reason is that what Kant means by 'ne-
cessity' in the Postulates is simply that the universe
is pervasively conformable to natural law. This is,
of course, exactly what the Analogies maintain.

In the instance of the Postulates, finally, Kant

has a principle for each category, but unlike the pre-
sent set, no general principle for all three. I think
Kant must himself have been somewhat uneasy about the
architectonic he himself invented: he is certainly
indifferent to it when it suits his thought. At other
times he refers to it confidently as virtually dicta-
ting and necessitating certain results.

The Analogies are no doubt the best expounded of

all the Principles, as befits their importance. They
also, I think, exhaustively divide their subject matter,
which is the "necessary connection of perceptions." We
may first review the principle of division.
As we have learned in the Schematism and elsewhere,
the key difference between purely logical and meta-
physical notions (in the sense of metaphysics or phi-
losophy of science) is time. Time is the most perva-
sive feature of all experience, inner and outer. It
may or may not be a feature of the world independent
of experience, the world as a thing itself: but what
we are concerned with here is experience alone.

We have distinguished between two senses of 'ex-

perience1. It may mean either (E-|) the multiplicity
or manifold of empirical intuitions without regard to
their order or character, or (E2) the live tissue of
events and occurrences with its temporal and spatial
dimensions, organized by memory and anticipation, in
short, the world "we know our way around in." Human

^32
experience may begin with the former but much must be
added from elsewhere for it to eventuate in the latter.
There must first of all be the comprehensive systems
of space and time, beyond the turmoil of phenomena,
Gewhl der Erscheinugen. Again there must be notions
or functions that connect one event with another. The
mind has or develops the powers to effect this result.
Kant's broad analytic approach begins with experience
in sense E2 and tries to either unpack its every con-
tent or reconstruct it out of its elements so that we
have eventually a complete philosophical grasp of it
we may select either of these images to characterize
the operation.

The need for categories arose from Kant's doctrine

that experience is relating, that the relata are dis-
crete, perishing elements, and that the relating pro-
cess involves time. As we have seen, Kant begins at
the fundamental level with an atomism of intuitional
elements. He then undertakes to show not only how this
process of relating proceeds but how its outcome can
inject necessity into experience, can account for the
necessity he believes inheres in experience in the
broad sense of the term ( E 2 ) .

If one begins with such elements the construction

of any complex or manifold involves taking one or two
or more elements in some fundamental relationship to
one another and repeating the operation. The elements,
or micro-events as we may call them, must be distinct
and it must be possible for them to occur with one an-
other or apart from one another in time.

There will then be four possible ways of relating

them :

(1) Not concomitant Not different (Identical)

(2) Not concomitant Different (Not identical)

(3) Concomitant Different (Not identical)

(4) Concomitant Not different (Identical)

We may diagram the alternative ways of relating

as follows:

(1) v. sup. 2 08

(2)

233
 (3) v. sup. 2 09

(4)

Here the dimension of time runs from left to right; from

A to B, and so on.

(1) The first case is that of two (provisionally

distinguished) elements which are qualitatively iden-
tical but not concomitant. what answers to this? It
can only be that of something that is permanent, that
abides, and presents itself twice (or more t i m e s ) . One
and the same thing that reappears must, to that extent,
be thought permanent. The question of how we can ex-
plain such a possibility , how we "realize" such a no-
tion, involves schematizing and categorizing. This takes
us beyond the mere modus of time that we know as per-
manence .

(2) The second case is that of two elements that

turn out to be neither concomitant nor identical. In
this case one of them must precede while the other
follows: they are related by the relation of succession.
But how can we decide between the two? As in the pre-
vious case, we must bring in other notions if we are to
say anything about this, one way or the other. If we
say, first this one occurs and only then that one, we
have introduced a new factor into the situation. What
this is remains to be seen.

(3) The third case is that of two or more different

contents which are, however, concomitant. In this in-
stance we take note of the fact that a differentiation
has been made within the same moment of time: two events
are simultaneous. In E-| we are in a position to grasp
no more than one element in one moment; every moment is
unity. But in the E2 of the present case more than this
is asserted. A synthesis unlike both (1) and (2) must
have occurred: in the former case we had an identical
and in the latter a non-concomitant event; here we
have non-identical and concomitant events. In order to
provide for this kind of synthesis we need still another
new concept or functor.

(4) Suppose finally that we are thinking of two

(provisionally distinguished) contents or elements
which are in fact found identical and concomitant. What
we have is of course a distinction without a difference.

234
Every content may be thought to conform to this way of
looking at it. Here we need no new concept or functor
because in fact we have not gone beyond the immediate
moment in any way.

The result is that we are in need of devising or

discovering three conepts or mechanisms that enable us
to explain how in E2 these three syntheses are effected;
each of them transcends the immediate given E-|. These
three relations between discrete contents in time are
distinguished by Kant as permanence (duration, conti-
nuity), succession, and simultaneity (Beharrlichkeit,
Folge, and Zugleichsein). The question then is, in view
of the fact that in E.. we have only perishing impres-
sions, how do we arrive at a command of time in E 2 in
terms of the permanence and succession and simultaneity
of events? The answer is, that we (the paradigmatic
we) devise the notions of substance, causality and re-
ciprocity , or as we may also express them: thing and
property, necessary connections of events, and nature
as a systematic whole. The three together comprise the
notion of the lawlike character, of the complete de-
termination of events: occurrents related to con-
tinuants, related to their determining conditions, and
reciprocally related to the whole in which they occur.
Not only science, but experience itself (E2) is a com-
prehension of the what and why of things, and
science is but an extension and refinement of experi-
ence. Without these three functors in full operation,
our experience would be little better than that of
molluscs. Man's greatest invention by far is -- ex-
perience! Kant's point is that contrary to what the
empiricists had to say, experience is not where they
said it was, right under our noses, ready to be dis-
covered .

The mathematical-dynamical distinction which re-

appears here need not engage us long. Once again Kant
in effect offers us not very good reasons for doing
something that is in itself immensely valuable. He
proceeds sometimes like the Evangelists who felt they
had to cite ancient prophecies as being fulfilled in
every act of the Savior, as if these needed extrin-
sic corroboration of their power.

235
 First Analogy
A: Principle of Permanence: All appearance contain
the permanent (substance) as the object itself and
the transitory as the determination of it, that is,
as the manner in which the object exists.
B: Principle of the Permanence of Substance: In all
alteration of appearances, substance remains and
the quantum thereof in nature neither increases
nor diminishes.

Proof
We may first observe the difference between the
principle as formulated in A and B. In A the phrasing
is oriented toward metaphysics. It makes the point
that in experience we must have the notions of the
continuant and the occurrent, the inherent and the sub-
sistent. In B Kant clearly has in mind one of the laws
of motion formulated by Newton in the Principia.

The presentation of the laws at the head of the

Principia as unproved axioms is undoubtedly the model
for Kant's formulation of all the Analogies. The
clue to this is already given in the Introduction (B17,
added in the second edition) where Kant speaks of nat-
ural science, or physics, as containing a priori judg-
ments as principles. He explicitly cites the third
law of motion and the so-called principle of the con-
servation of matter. In the section on mechanics in :
the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
he cites the same as the third and first laws of
mechanics. He then adds regarding the first law,
"from general metaphysics we may draw the principle
that in all alterations of nature no substance comes
into or goes out of existence, and here we merely ex-
express what substance is in matter" (was in der Materie
die Substanz sei); regarding the third law he says,
"from general metaphysics we must draw the principle
that all external effect in the world is reciprocal."
The second law of mechanics is formulated as "every
change in matter has an external cause" , and more spe-
cifically, "every body remains in its conditioning
rest or motion and of the same velocity unless it is
compelled to change this state by an external cause."
He then adds as in the other two cases, "from general
metaphysics we may draw the principle that all change
has a cause; here we intend to show only that every

236
change in matter must have an external cause."
It seems reasonable to assert therefore that the
Analogies are based upon the Newtonian laws, formulated
in more general terms, as befitting the science of na-
ture in general.

Kant is not invoking or appealing to metaphysics

in a Rationalist or Cartesian sense. In speaking of
substance and causality, as we shall see, Kant is in-
deed formulating the metaphysics or the philosophy of
science, but only in the sense of presenting the con-
cepts and presuppositions of science. His notion of
substance is virtually devoid of the metaphysical over-
tones of the "substratum" that Descartes and Locke in-
voked and that Berkeley discussed, particularly in the
Hylas-Philonous dialogues. 'Substance' and 'causality'
defined in such and such a way, Kant is saying, are
simply indefeasible parts of the vocabulary of nat-
ural science. So far as Kant presents an analysis of
causality in a narrow sense, we shall not find it too
different in essentials from Hume's account, but he
has much to say of this topic that Hume neglected to
say because he was more concerned about the precarious
condition in which Hume had left the problem of know-
ledge .

Kant's intention is to prove that experience pre-

supposes the existence of something permanent. Such
an existent is not apparent in E-j which is a mere
coming and going of representations, but we are cer-
tainly convinced of it in E2- As in all other areas
in which this problem arises for Kant, if a claim in
E2 cannot be made good in E 1 , we must seek elsewhere;
we cannot ignore the claim, as Hume often does, or
proposes to do.
What is the character of the chaos of representa-
tions in E1? It is not even one of a succession of
representations: if it were felt or found to be suc-
cessive it would already be ordered and we would have
no problem with it. But representations in our actual
experience, in Eg, are found to be successive or co-
existent. What then makes this possible, since it
cannot be E1? There must, says Kant, be something per-
manent if there is anything successive. Permanence and
succession are correlative notions, meaningless with-
out one another.

237
 Where then is the permanent? If we scrutinize
E-|, so far as this is possible, we find nothing that
answers to it. All the representations perish, and
even this is saying too much, for in order to be found
to perish they must be identifiable as having previously
existed. E-) simply cannot and does not afford us a
substance or substratum of any sort. To E-|, even if
we close our eyes to the anomalies of what we are say-
ing, we see now the piece of coal, and now some ashes,
tar, smoke, and gas, if we collect them: at most so
far as E 1 knows, this has merely replaced that; it is
incompetent to declare one identical with the other.
But as Kant points out, unless we know this there can
be no experience at all, let alone a science such as
chemistry, in Kant's later years on the verge of a
fabulous development.
At this point the suggestion may come to us that
of course the successive occurrents are existent in
time. Do we not think of time as like the permanent,
pre-existing track on which the train runs with many
events occurring in it, the crew working, diners
dining, and so on? Time itself must be the permanent j
in which passing events transpire.
The difficulty with this is that time in and of
itself, time as a summed up, funded series cannot be
perceived at all. Another permanent must be sought
and found. What is needed is in fact the reality of
time, but at best we will have to be content with some-
thing that will serve as a kind of symbol or embodiment
of this notion for us. The only thing that can body
forth the notion of the whole time series is that of a
substance and its states or properties. The latter
come and go, the former remains: a state, property,
or event is o_f something. Kant's point is that we
are now looking upon the discrete "blips" or "repre-
sentations" of E-| as such states, properties, and
events , etc .
Three proofs, all essentially the same, are offer-
ed at the outset of this section. The first paragraph,
added in B, contains the first, the second contains two
more. There follow concrete illustrations and explana-
tions .

What makes Kant's deduction interesting is that

it assimilates the apparently metaphysical problem to
the physical problem. He is pointing out that

238
fundamentally physics has no evidence of a permanent
matter that remains throughout physical and chemical
transformation. The problem is not one that scientists
can afford to shrug off as important only to wooly-
headed metaphysicians. unless you take this question
seriously, Kant is saying, your science is like history,
merely "a fable agreed upon." It is perhaps too much
to say that Kant has disposed of the question, but he
has certainly set it in an altogether new light. The
word, 'substance1, is redolent of all metaphysics back
to Aristotle, but the direction of thought is alto-
gether new. It is not surprising that Kant offended
or at least stirred up the philosophers far more than he
did the scientists. The philosophers could readily
say that his 'substance' was altogether a misnomer.
Not so, says Kant, I am helping it to catch up with the
times which are not those of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus
Magnus but of Lavoisier. (And soon, Dalton.)

Kant is anxious also to maintain the continuity of

his doctrine of substance in line with the traditional
use of the notion. But he believes that no one has ever
really succeeded in proving what needs to be in previ-
ous attempts, nor to observe carefully the necessary
restriction of the notion to possible experience. It
is particularly the latter point that differentiates
his use of it from that of the a priorists before him.
Kant is not saying over again what was said before him
of material and mental substance. He has made of sub-
stance an extremely workaday notion, a necessity of
experience and natural science.

This can perhaps best be shown by keeping distinct

his views on substance and the other matters likely to
be associated with it. We must distinguish between (1)
the object of awareness, (a) both that of Ej , the mo-
mentary sense data or empirical intuitions, and (b) of
E2 the organized, named, and described object of ex-
perience in the broad sense, (2) substance and the
correlative notions of attribute, state, event and,
(3) things in themselves. Untold confusion is the re-
sult of mingling these notions which Kant has in prac-
tice resolutely sought to keep distinct. We must be
careful not to confuse (la) and (lb), as already noted.
It is best also to make certain that (lb) is regarded
as the whole object of experience,whereas (2) is really
an ingredient in (lb) as in another sense (la) is. The
most important aspect of (lb) that which makes it what
it is, among other things, is (2). Without this

239
function we are again on pre-human psychic and epistem-
ic level. It is equally important to distinguish (lb),
(2) and (3). Kant has begun to offer reasons for dis-
tinguishing (lb) and (3) almost on the first pages of
the Critique In view of the derivation and the discus-
sion of his notion of substance in this analogy we must
also carefully distinguish (2) and (3).

Kant might have been better advised to approp-

riate some other term than 'substance.' Metaphysicians
are a tenacious lot: they do not ride loose in the sad-
dle over names and words: if one speaks of substance,
only Aristotle's view of it may be thought decisive and
every other way of reading their term thought to be in
error. Kant's notion of substance departs markedly
from the tradition. It is not really "metaphysicial"
but wholly in the service of natural science. It is
not the transcendentally real but a function of the
empirically real,to use Kant's phraseology. Yet he
took pains to try to reconcile his view of substance
with the older one. The term 'substance', and 'ac-
cident' as well, must not be left to perish.

The discussion of alteration at the end of the

section forms the starting point for the Second Anal-
ogy. It is worth remarking that Vernderung makes
Kant's point about substance and its states or attri-
butes more obvious than 'change' does in English. In
order to bring out the point one might coin the term
'othering' as a translation of Vernderung. Then in the
formula below at B233 we would read, "All change (suc-
cession) appearances is but othering." That is, in
change what alters persists and only its state changes,
becomes other.
The conservation principle which Kant affirms
remains as a cornerstone of science. It is not that
it is never assailed but that the burden of proof is
always on any alternative to it. If a student finds
the products of oxidation, radiation or combustion to
differ qualitatively from the originals of the experi-
ment, he does not immediately announce that the princ-
iple has been disconfirmed. He is advised to check his
apparatus and his calculations more carefully. Crea-
tion, annihilation, and even transmutation of substan-
ces are not readily accepted as characterizations of
natural process. Although developments of this sort
are now realizable, the day to day faith of science is
rooted in the conservation principles. Exceptions will
prove to be truly extraordinary events.
;
240
 This is after all what Kant is driving at in
speaking of synthetic a priori principles. We can
scarcely even tolerate the thought of their falsity,
yet they are not confirmed in experiment, since they
are among the presuppositions of experiment, and they
are not merely analytically true or true by definition.
We simply will not give them up. If we do, or if we
must, science has gone through a veritable convulsion.

241
 B
Second Analogy

A: Principle of Production. Everything that

happens begins to be, presupposes something
upon which it follows according to a rule.
B: Principle of Succession according to the
Law of Causality. All alterations occur
in accord with the law of the connection
of cause and effect.
Proof
This should properly be the most important
section in the entire Critique because it finally
presents and presumes to prove the most important
synthetic a priori proposition of all, the causal
principle, or, in effect, the Principle of Sufficient
Reason (PSR) and because more than any other part of
the Critique it is committed to making finally clear to
us where the element of necessity in knowledge that
Kant has. pursued from the beginning is to be located.

Kant's argument for this all-important Princ-

iple is not very rigorous or concise. Even though one
may not agree with the "stratification" theories of
various Kant scholars, one may yet concede that there
is repetition several times over of the main proof of
the analogy. For the sake of convenience we may divide
the text as Adickes does into some six proofs solely
for the purpose of acknowledging these repetitions.
His division runs as follows (in Edition B ) : 29
Paragraph
Recapitulation of the
First Analogy 1
First Proof 2

Second Proof 3-6

Third Proof (Recapitulation
of previous proof) 7-10
Fourth Proof (Recapitulation 11-12
of the Second Proof
Fifth Proof 16-18
242
 Sixth Proof(Recapitulation
of the Second Proof) 19-20
Predictables of Causality 19-20
On Alteration 21-28
On this view, the first proof may be regarded simply as
a condensed version which Kant added in B. The second
proof is the basic proof of A and the most decisive,
since much of it reappears in the later proofs. These
offer much that is redundant. We shall not emphasize
all the proofs equally.
We shall omit discussion of the two supplement-
ary topics in paragraphs 19-28. The first of these
relates the notions of causality and substance to one
another. Substances, Kant says, must manifest them-
selves through action, while the ultimate source of
force and action involved in causal functioning must
lie in substances themselves. (The latter is of course
a basic Leibnizian thesis.) The second argues that all
alteration in causal processes must be continuous.
Neither topic is necessary to the exposition of the
analogy itself.

The proofs are much less transcendental than

we might expect, that is, less emphasis is placed on
the need to presume a basic causal principle if we are
to explain the possibility of knowledge and rather more
on the analysis of the notions that enter into our
grasp of the occurrence, succession, or production of
events. In our terms we may say the approach is rather
more explicitly diremptive or analytical than transcen-
dental .

We must recall the four ways in which we can

relate events or entities solely in respect to their
sameness-difference and their occurrence in time. In
the present case we ask what basic notion must govern
our relating events or entities that are different and
that occur at different times (not identical and not
concomitant). Between these events, we need to estab-
lish a connection, taking them two at a time in an
ordered couple so that one must precede, the other fol-
low (since they occur at different times). There must,
that is to say, be succession. This connection and
succession can be realized only if the occurrence of
one of them becomes a condition of the occurrence of
the other. We presently see that this relation is one
of causation. Hence to establish connection between

243
what are not identical and not concomitant events we
need to supply the idea of causality. This idea can
never be gained from sense-impressions or intuitions
alone but must be supplied by the paradigmatic self,
that is transcendentally. We must now see what enters
into this idea.
It should be added that although the foregoing has
the appearance of merely relating one local particular
event to another such event what is ultimately of im-
portance is the relating of kinds of events: relating
not just one event to another event but one kind of
event, a cause, to another kind, an effect. For ex-
ample, the application of heat to a rod and the expan-
sion of the rod. This involves generalization and
theory. Kant, however, speaks of little more than par-
ticular events and these of a familiar and simple kind.

First Proof (Paragraph 2 ) . We begin again with

experience in the full sense (E2 ) and the problem is
to offer a kind of reconstruction which will exhibit
what enters into this. In the First Analogy we were
interested only in what enters into the notion of the
persistence or permanence in time of some given ex-
istent. Now we are asking about connections which dif-
ferent existents have in time. We are not confronted
with only one existent which has different properties
at different times but with many and differing exist-
ents that may be connected and may recur.' All such
conditions may be reduced to concatenations of order-
ed couples in which one member is always accompanied
(preceded or followed) by the other.
(
When we now examine what we believe to be such a
causal couple in experience (E2) and seek to explain
why one always preceded or follows the other we find
that attention to mere perceptual aspects (Ei) reveals
something, but not enough. So far as this aspect is
concerned the couple which we find to have occurred in
the order A-y B might just as conceivably have occurred
as B-- A, or A or B might have occurred independently,
or with C or D or E. Of course A and B are together:
this was apparent at the outset. For that we need only
to suppose that there is a capacity to revive or main-
tain A in being in some sense, so that one can speak of
a couple. This involves imagination which Kant de-
scribed earlier as "the capacity to represent an object
without its being present in intuition" (B151). Power-
ful as this faculty is, it would at most only summon
up A.

244
when B, or B when A, was present. It does not unite
them to one another in any but a contingent manner: and
if contingencies had been different anything whatever
might have accompanied A and B, Thus neither exper-
ience (E-,) nor imagination (in this largely reproduc-
tive sense) explains the couple. Something else is
involved. Only when A is identified as cause and B as
effect have we an ordered causal couple of existents.
We have not yet explained what it means to declare A
and B to be cause and effect: this Kant explains as
he goes into more detail in the second proof.

fierond Proof (Paragraphs 3-6) The second proof

offers some welcome examples to help us to interpret
its necessarily abstract account of causality. But the
first paragraph offers more problems than mere abstract-
ness. The trend of thought seems to be the following.

A firm tenet of Kant's which we first encoun-

tered in the deductions is that fundamental apprehen-
sion (Ei) is always successive and that it is always of
one representation at a time. Kant never explains
what one representation would be. Locke and Hume at
least made some attempt to explain what a simple impres-
sion or idea was from which complex ones were built
up. Kant unfortunately maintained that synthesis had
to proceed piecemeal, but if we try to visualize such
an operation we can only bring to mind the fabulous
processes in television tubes and computers. Even
if credible, this removes the whole of E^ to a sub-
experiential level. What we call objects of appearance
or phenomenal processes are of course the end products
(E2) of this process. We do not, cannot, witness the
synthesizing process. (We have remarked earlier what
a problem this poses: if the process cannot be wit-
nessed what reason have we for believing it to have
occurred?) Let us, however, grant the reality of the
synthesizing process and of its atomic ingredients or
raw materials.

The question Kant now raises is, although the

synthesis is always successive so far as our represen-
tations are concerned, how do we know that this is
really what happens "in the object"? May not the
synthesis which testifies to the effort of the imagin-
ation, be a tissue of fantasy? Could not processes
that really ran M-v N->- 0-> P be represented as P-- N->- 0-> M
by the imagination? Assuredly this could happen,
says Kant. But before we ask how we can avoid failing
victim to this error or deceit we must ask what we mean
by 'object' or 'objectivity'.
245
 There are really only two possibilities : things
themselves and appearances. Kant has made himself
clear on the former possibility from the very beginning.
No graver error can be made by metaphysicians than
transcendental realism, which means locating objectiv-
ity in things themselves. Kant holds that 'real1 and
'object' and the rest of the vocabulary of experience
refer solely to appearances. These are structures in
space and time of both empirical and a priori elements.
The question above then is, what is it about appear-
ances that establishes their reality and objectivity
so that we are not deceived when, for example, our
experience convinces us that some process runs M-> N-*
0-> P ? This is of course where the functor of caus-
ality enters in and here we may profit by the concrete
examples Kant has devised.

Let us set aside thorny questions about levels

of synthesis mentioned earlier, which, if pressed hard,
make it very difficult to offer a realistic interpre-
tation of Kant's analysis. Kant now employs examples
of a house and a ship, the successive glimpses of
which are matters of appearance. But the argument re-
ally needs examples that are worked up from the "micro-
levels" of synthesis that Kant is thinking of elsewhere.
I think there is no remedy for this: it is a basic
fracture or geologic fault that runs through the
systems of Locke, Hume, and Kant.

Suppose then that we have successive glimpses

(or sense data, or empirical intuitions) which,
merely to identify them, we say are "of a house".
All we really need to surmise is that these glimpses
suggest a house. They run in an order m,n,o,p and may
also be labelled 'foundation1, 'first story', 'second
story', and 'roof1. The question is whether the series
m,n,o,p reveals a causal series M-* N-- 0-y P where M is
cause of N, N of 0, etc. Of course in this case we
will say,no.

It will immediately be said that the procedure

begs the question since we already know that situation
is not like the baseball player's hitting a ball, where
we have :

m approach of a ball of a certain mass and

shape, moving at a certain speed,
n the batter's swing of a bat of a certain
mass and shape, moving at a certain speed,

246
 o contact of bat and ball in some specific
manner,

p specific motion of the ball towards the

field.
But although the example does invite this rejoinder, I
think it does not invalidate Kant's point. When he
presently comes to tell us what precisely must enter
into a situation besides m,n,o, and p to yield M-- N->- 0-+
P, I think we see that Kant has made an effort to ex-
plain the differences between the house and a common
causal process, as in the baseball situation. (It
should be said that our example is only very crude,
since of course more than M is involved in causing N,
and other factors must also be taken into account. But
I think this does not hurt the comparison).

In Kant's second example we have a ship moving

downstream. He describes it as follows (I abbreviate) :
"i see a ship moving downstream. My perception
of its position farther down follows upon the
perception of its position farther up in the
course of the river; it is impossible that in
the apprehension of this appearance the ship
should first be perceived farther down and after
that farther up. Thus the order in the succes-
sion of perception is here determined and the
second position is fixed by this. In the example
of the house my apprehension could begin at the
top and end at the botton, or vice versa; and
also move indifferently to the right or to the
left. "

I think we have to flesh out Kant's ship example some-

what. It would be even more apt of the camera had been
invented in 1781. Suppose we have a series of snap-
shots in which the wake of the ship is clearly visible.
As we see the ship move from right to left in two
frames, A and B, in that time order, we also have in
view a pine tree on the other side: over the bow of
the ship in A, over the stern in B. At the same time
we see the wake of the ship at the right, both in A and
in B. If we show the two pictures to a friend and ask
which came first he will say, A. The ship moving from
right to left, as we see from the wake; this is further
confirmed by the points occupied as we see from the pos-
ition of the pine tree in the picture. If someone now
asks, but how do you know that this must be the sequence,

247
Kant would answer, because a wake is never produced
ahead of a ship if it is going forward, nor do riparian
objects appear to move from bow to stern if the ship is
moving astern. This means that A has preceded B because
A is a causal condition of B.
Let us take another example. A motion picture
camera has caught the action of the knockout blow in a
boxing match. One boxer strikes the other a massive
blow: he staggers and collapses. Afterward for some
reason all the frames of the film have been detached
from one another and scrambled. The problem is to
reassemble them to depict a convincing sequence of
events. It should not be difficult to do this. Very
closely resembling frames will be placed in series next
to one another. Finally, the sequence will be made to
run in one direction or other. Why will we reject as
running backwards the sequence that shows the vanquish-
ed boxer rising from the canvas and regaining his vigor
as the victor's fist retreats from his body, and so on?
Because, we say, this is not a plausible causal sequence
of events. Boxers do not rise in this way, but rather,
in the reverse sequence; this is how they fall. This
must precede that because, of these two, this one must
be considered the cause of that one. Kant's point is f
similarly that causality is a condition of succession. J

We recall our problem to begin with was this. If *,

we have representations m, n, o, p, how do we know that
the real, the phenomenal order must be M->- N-> 0-- P, or
any other? The answer lies in showing that M causally
conditions N, N conditions 0, etc. In ordinary exper-
ience the dates of corresponding representations m, n,
o, p are more or less established by association but
if necessary we can and do cite causal reasons for say-
ing that a process really ran from M through N to 0 and
P. In court the prosecutor asks us about the details
of an accident or altercation. We have given him a
coherent consecutive account when we can say what led
from one event to another. Even associations can be
misleading. In themselves they can be established in-
differently in any order. A person who knows nothing
of the slow speed of sound or of projectiles as com-
pared with that of light may build up very erroneous
opinions about the causal interrelation of events.

The distinction between representation and objec-

tive processes brings with it the need to distinguish
between succession in one and in the other. Ob-

248
jective succession cannot be inferred from subjective
succession,for imagination, as an instance of the latter,
is capable of presenting what is not now present in any
order whatsoever. Subjective succession, says Kant,
must on the contrary be derived from objective succes-
sion, meaning we must test the subjective by the objec-
tive succession. The latter is embodied in a rule
stating that the succession cannot occur otherwise than
in a given manner.

We are certainly impatient by this time to know

what this rule is that will enable us to decide between
cases of apparent and real succession or causality.
When Kant at last offers us something of an analysis
of causality it is done altogether too hastily and
casually, giving the excuse that the matter is well
enough understood by philosophers. But in view of the
tremors sent up by Hume's analysis this is scarcely
justified. Even Hume was in the end convinced that he
had to distinguish mere association from causality and
conceded that "since 'tis possible for all objects to
become causes or effects to each other, it may be proper
to fix some general rules, by which we may know when
they really are so" (Treatise, I-III-XV) . This he
then proceeded to do, offering some eight rules
(among them priority, continuity, constant conjunction,
a kind of method of agreement, of difference, and of
concomitant variations, to use Mill's phrases). Kant's
analysis is not incompatible with Hume's nor does it
go beyond it in any "metaphysical" sense: it is simply
more casual, less careful.

I think it will be universally agreed that nei-

ther Hume's, Kant's, nor Mill's rules are in themselves
decisive of the question of causal conditioning. If
anything, it is known that no rules can be given to
decide the question as it is usually formulated: a more
comprehensive theory of scientific inference is what is
needed. But this result would probably never have been
arrived at without prior investigations such as just
these three.
Third Proof (Paragraphs 7-10) The analysis of
causality which is now urgently needed is not forth-
coming until virtually the last proof. Paragraph 7 once
again repeats that mere subjective succession proves
nothing about real or objective succession: a rule of
some sort must be given.

249
 Without mentioning Hume by name, Kant now undoubted!'
edly refers to him in saying that the prevailing view
is inadequate because it formulates only an empirical
rule of succession which, he thinks, would have "no
universality or necessity," being founded only "on
induction." But, as with space and time, we can derive
clear notions from experience "only because we ourselves
have put them into experience." A rule is necessary.
Nothing new is offered in this proof.

Fourth Proof (Paragraphs 11-12) In this proof

Kant makes a first effort at formulating his own "rules
by which to judge of cause and effect" as follows:

(l)The irreversibility of cause and event (the

event does not occur prior to the cause).

(2) The sufficiency of the cause to the event

(produces it without exception and neces-
sarily) .

What Kant says is "first I cannot reverse the

order, setting the outcome before what it follows;
second, if the prior condition is positied, this
determinate event follows without exception and neces- |
sarily." The second amounts in current terminology t
to making a cause a sufficient condition of an event '
which is its effect. Kant is, like Hume, saying that
what is cited as a cause, or rather as the cause, of
an event is always followed by that event (an event of
that sort). The first part of Kant's rule follows from
the second: if B must follow A, A must precede B.
Since this will generally be accepted in all views of
causal relation, Kant must be attaching a greater
emphasis to the necessity of the connection, but he
has not located or identified it. Since nothing further
is said at this point, we must leave the matter by
saying that Kant is still only at the point where Hume
begins: the mystery of "necessary connexion", as every-
one knows, is what initiated Hume's inquiry. Kant cer-
tainly offers nothing new at this point.

Fifth Proof (Paragraphs 13-15) These three par-

agraphs are hardly a proof. What they contribute is the
notion of universal causal determination and, for the
first time, the Leibnizian phrase, 'principle of suf-
ficient reason', Satz vom zureichenden Grunde, which
essentially repeats the Principle of the analogy. The
point is formulated with the first antinomy plainly in
the mind. All events are in the time series.
250
A cross-section of the universe at a given time (what
is described in a "state description," in Carnap ' s
phrase) is determined by all that has occurred in the
past. "The appearances of past time determine all
existence (j edes Dasein) following time." With this
Kant simply affirms his basic adherence to determinism
for the world of appearance.
It is apparent,.. both here and in the antinomies,
that all three parties, the dogmatists, the empiricists
(as Kant sees them),and Kant himself subscribe without
reservation to what with Kant himself we may now call
the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). It should,
however, be pointed out that it may not mean exactly
the same to all these three. Kants1 empiricists (the
side of the antithesis in the antinomies) are meta-
physicians in an important sense, unlike Hume. Both
sides to the antinomy controversy apply the PSR to
things themselves, says Kant, whereas his own point,
made repeatedly is that such a principle is valid
only for, and is in fact in part definitive of,"pos-
sible experience."

Sixth Proof (Paragraphs 16-18) This proof begins

with a recapitulation of the points made in earlier
proofs. Imagination or fancy may order representations
in any way it pleases. What then distinguishes a real
or objective sequence from one produced by fancy? Only
the subjection of appearances to a rule can guarantee
their objectivity or their place in possible experience.
The rule, which is of course no other than that enun-
ciated by the Second Analogy itself or the PSR, is here
called the Axiom of the Causal Relation.
Finally and fortunately, an example enables us
to throw a little more light on what Kant means by
causal determination. In the discussions of the
Fourth and Fifth Proofs Kant has emphasized the time
sequence and irreversibility in time as definitive of
the causal relation. Kant now re-formulates and gener-
alizes this point without, as he hopes, altering it.
It is not, he says, the lapse (Ablauf) of time but its
order (Ordnung) that is decisive. That is, a cause
may in fact be contemporaneous with its effect: this
is in fact necessary in all causal action, as Kant
points out. "In the moment in which the effect first
arises it is always contemporaneous with the causality
of the cause." The warmth of a room and the heat of
a stove are contemporaneous. But our way of determin-
ing causal sequence may involve before and after:
251
first this, and only then, that. Later, citing two
more examples, he says succession in time is the only
empirical criterion of the production of an effect
through the causality of the cause. In reality it is
the order of events that is decisive, but for the ob-
server this may mean a lapse of time.

When we now examine this order of causal events

we discover that what it involves is the necessity of
the cause to the effect: "If the cause had ceased to
be a moment earlier, the effect would not have arisen."
This is his main point. In all the cases Kant has dis-
cussed he has emphasized that by 'necessity' he means
that the cause truly suffices to produce the effect,
that it is the sufficient condition of it. In this
passage he apparently regards it also as a necessary
condition.

Unfortunately Kant does not carry this point

through. An understanding of necessary and sufficient
conditions is essential to the solution of the nature
of causality. But Kant does not examine thoroughly
any of his causal examples. At this point he breaks
off the needed analysis with the plea that "since I
do not wish to clutter up my critical plan, which looks
solely towards the sources (Quellen) of synthetic a
priori knowledge, with fine analyses which only contrib-
ute to the clarification but not to the extension of
concepts, I shall leave their detailed exposition
(Errterung) to a future system of pure reason"
(emphasis mine). Such an analysis is in any event al-
ready supplied in existing textbooks, he says. It is ;
evidently Kant's view that the particular analysis of ^
the causal relation has no bearing on the problem of
the Analogy and of the Critique itself, otherwise he
would certainly have undertaken a study of it in this ';
very place. What interpretation then must be
placed on this?

The outcome I believe is that Kant ought to be

content with any such analysis of causality as would
be provided by, let us say, Hume's rules (Treatise I-
III-XV) or at least that such an analysis would be
compatible with the outcome of the Critique.

We may also ask what one might find on the sub-

ject in the textbooks Kant refers us to. At first
one will be disappointed to find causal propositions
treated as if they were anlytic. For example, in
252
Wolff's Cosmologia Generalis (1731) we learn that "in a
determinate proposition there is a connection(nexus) e
between the predicate and its subject." The first
example he gives is that a triangle has three angles.
Then he says, "similarly, 'the hot stone warms' (rad-
iates warmth) is a determinate proposition. Heat is
contained in the notion of the subject: through this
we learn why the stone can warm: the reason is that
there is a power of warming in it" (Cosmologia General-
is #19). This may seem disappointing but there is
little else in Wolff that improves upon it. Speaking
specifically of cause and effect (causa et causatum),
he says, "Between the materials of a house itself there
is a connection such that without them the house it-
self would not exist; ...in the same way, if there
were no architect there would be no house" (C.G#16).
Wolff is unaware of the difficulties his views of
causal connection raise. Examples such as the last
one do add the idea of a necessary condition to it,
but no effort is made to analyze it.

Kant failed to see that a particular and detailed

analysis of causality was needed. He thought it enough
to insist that Hume's analysis was insufficient because
it had neglected to explain the element of necessity
in causality. But in Kant's account the only way in
which necessity is finally brought in, is as a necessary
condition. This is entirely compatible with other
accounts of causality. If Kant ignored the import of
the important section on rules in Hume he is no more
to be blamed than others to this day who ignore the
attempt it represents and look only to the psychological
account of the mental act of causal inferring that is
presented earlier in Book I, Part III. Hume made it
clear that there was not only a psychology but also
what he himself called the logic of causation. This is
present already in the section immediately preceding
the rules in Section XV. It is true that neither this
account, nor Mill's, answers the crucial questions
definitively, simply because they can be answered if at
all, only in a comprehensive account of the nature of
scientific theory such as has been undertaken by philo-
sophers such as Carnap, Hempel, Braithwaite, Popper, von
Wright, and others.

I do not think we can endorse Kant's program

here and elsewhere in the Critique of totally segre-
gating the critical and the analytical tasks. Here he
spells out his reasons for this once again: "Since I
do not wish to mix my critical undertaking, which con-

253
cerns solely the sources of synthetic a priori know-
ledge, with analyses which only clarify but do not en-
large our concepts, I leave all such expositions to a
future system of pure reason. Indeed such analysis is
already to be copiously encountered in existing text-
books" (A204/B249). But as the study particularly of
this analogy shows, it is not really possible to estab-
lish a conclusive transcendental argument for the Prin-
ciple in question without a truly detailed exposition
of the causal necessity, causal inference, and causal
laws the Principle is supposed to support. One cannot
deplore too much the fact that Kant himself never got
around to composing any but a small portion of the qrand
"system of pure reason" he contemplated.

Kant contents himself with casually taking up a

few examples without studying them in any detail:
water rising in a glass, a ball impressing itself on a
pillow, a room being heated with a stove, and so on.
He does not address himself to the manner in which
causal laws are formulated, confirmed, and invoked for
the purpose of explanation. Even in the simple exam-
ples he considers his explanations are expressed in an
extremely loose manner. In the end he identifies no
single element or relation in causality beyond those
found by Hume: "Sequence in time," he says, "is the
only empirical criterion of the effect in relation to
the causality of the cause that precedes it" (A203/
B249). This oversimplifies even Hume's account. Hence
his claim to have advanced beyond Hume's account must
be carefully specified or qualified. It is true that
he makes a stronger case than Hume does for a general
causal principle, the PSR, but he fails to show exactly
what role it plays in the whole economy of natural
science. If the PSR is a kind of grand axiom for
science, he does not show us what it means for particu-
lar laws to be subject to it, or to be inferred or es-
tablished with its aid, although he makes the interest-
ing suggestion that it is a kind of prudent advice for ,
the scientist to follow in order to discover laws. :

The general result of the analogy is the same as

that of the third Postulate of Empirical Thought, name-
ly that the world that is revealed to outer and to inner
sense and studied by the scientist is regular, predict-
able, law-governed, determined. In the end, Hume and
Kant are determinists in the same sense and degree.
Where Kant may claim the greatest originality is in his
arguments for the indispensability of a causal prin-
ciple and in his approach to its demonstration by a

254
transcendental argument. Here he advances beyond Hume
in originality. His bold insistence that we must reach
beyond what is only superficially manifest in exper-
ience, while at the same time rejecting every obscur-
antist and occultist liberty that might be taken with
this, evinces philosophic imagination of the highest
order.

Without more detailed study of the procedures of

science neither Hume or Kant could have advanced the
understanding of such matters as causality much further
than they did. The next needed step was first of all
the extension of the use of the scientific method into
more and more areas of reality and also more elaborate-
ly constructed and interrelated theories: all this was
to develop with a dizzying increase of momentum through-
out the nineteenth century. What we can best learn
from both of them is their place in the gradual develop-
ment of the understanding of theory construction. The
microscopic study of the nature of the "causal bond"
had to give way to the study of explanation, of the
nature of hypothesis and theories and their confirma-
tion, and of much else besides in mathematics, logic,
and the philosophy of science.

255
 c
Third analogy

A: Axiom of community: All substances to the

extent that they are simultaneous, are in
thoroughgoing community with one another,
that is, they exercise reciprocal action.
B: Axiom of contemporaneity in accordance with
the law of reciprocal action or mutual rel-
ation : All substances to the extent that
they can be perceived simultaneously are
in thoroughgoing reciprocal relation to one
another.

Proof

There are some four proofs of this principle,

the first being added in B. Numbering the para-
graphs in B we have the first proof in paragraph 1,
and the others beginning in the second, fifth, and
sixth paragraphs. The proofs are all similar in
content.
We recall that the third modus of time is that ...
of co-existence or simultaneity. In the other two j!
modi we had first, one and the same thing related to '
itself at different times, and second, different but '
related things existing at different times. Now we
must consider different but related things existing
at the same time. In all cases we must go beyond the
given of E]_, experience as empirical intuition, in
order to find anything that realizes these possibil-
ities. If we are to have one and the same thing rel-
ated to itself at different times we must invoke or
introduce the notion of a permanent thing and the
notion that answers to that of the subsistent and the
inherent. In order to say that two different things
or events at different times are united by some rel-
ation that is more than one of casual concomitance in
perceptions we must introduce the notion of causality.
As we have seen, if Kant had carried through his analy-
sis he might have said that this relation is estab-
lished if and only if two events are such that one is
the neeessary and the sufficient condition of the other.

256
This is the nearest I think we can come to his oft-
repeated notion of causality as a "necessary rel-
ation" .
In the third modus of time we must now see what
is needed for experience, E2, to grasp different but
related things existing at the same time, that is,
simultaneously. What Kant has to say on this matter
holds up very well in view of the theory of relativity,
which is very much concerned with how events can be
found simultaneous. Let us see what conceptual res-
ources are needed in order to declare events to
be simultaneous.

We recall that Kant thinks that at the basic

level the mind can grasp only one "blip" at a time and
that if we grasp more than that there has already been
an act of synthesis: anything that takes us beyond
"here-now-this" already involves something more than
is furnished by sensation. It must then be furnished
by the mind itself, that is, it must be, as he says,
a priori. If I am now connecting two or more dif-
ferent things or events this involves the notion of
a system that embraces them.

For example, I look at a large house or build-

ing, Kant's example in the previous section. I
scan it from top to bottom and bottom to top, perhaps
several times. I cannot detect any change from one
glance at the roof to another glance at it. It
seems the same house. Of course if the glances are
forty years apart I will almost certainly not have this
conviction at all. I must take the system of time for
granted. But this has no effect on the present sit-
uation: similarity and difference are what really
count here. And when I find it a matter of indif-
ference whether I now see A and now B, or now B
and now A, I say that A and B are contemporaneous.
(Of course if I can see both A and B at once there is
no problem for us, that is, although there is for
Kant unfortunately, because, we remember, he believes
we can grasp only one element at a time.) But now we
must dig deeper into this experience (E2). What makes
this situation of "successional indifference" possible,
Kant asks.

At this point someone may say, the situation is

really quite simple. Ignoring relativity problems
such as those raised by the finite velocity of light,
simultaneous events simply coincide in their dates. We
257
may suppose a kind of universal clock which ticks on
through an untold number of events: these may be
pegged to coincide with a simple tick or with a series
of successive ticks. Very good, says Kant, that _ij3 the
picture we have of time. Unfortunately this system of
ticks and tocks must itself be built up and held to-
gether. Time may be pictured like a railroad track
from Chicago to New York, but we are never the inhabi-
tants along the way who can see a long stretch of
track and wave at the passing train: we are on the
train and can only infer or construct the reality of
the permanent track which we cannot see. Kant puts
this point very forcefully several times in the anal-
ogies: "time itself cannot be perceived" (B219,B255,
B257,etc). In order to have a notion of time as a one
dimensional system which can be pictured by the series
of real numbers, we need an a priori aid. This Kant
has already developed in the notion of a permanent
substance, which is also fundamental to the notion of
causation, as we saw in the final paragraphs of the
Second Analogy. It is just as necessary in order to
affirm the possibility of distinct but simultaneous
event s.

The First Analogy considers what is involved in

affirming one continuant, the second with one sequent
or ordered couple, the third with a system of things in
continuous interaction. The first two are not suf-
ficient by themselves to display all the a priori ele-
ments that enter into E 2 : we must have also the notion
of nature as a whole in which everything bears on
everything else.

A famous physicist once said, when we scratch

our ears we shake all the stars. This is undoubt-
edly an exaggeration but contains a truth. A scien-
tist is alert to causal influence (the term is used by
Kant himself, Einfluss) everywhere, in every direction
of time and space. Hence he is interested not only in
the fact that the earth exerts an attraction on the
moon, but the moon on the earth, as we see in the tides.
He may then go on to try to determine how the effect
on the earth's tides is determined by moon's force as
determined by the earth. This can be carried still
further. Since all such comparatively large bodies
exert influence on each other reciprocally we can real
ily see that determining the amount in each case be-
comes rather startlingly complex. We have a feedback
problem on our hands, and not only here but in other
causal situations as well.
258
 Thus what Kant is saying is that the scientist
interests himself not just in isolated causal order-
ed couples but in the mutual interaction of all of
nature. Now, nothing in sensation or perception re-
veals this to us, any more than it reveals the con-
servation of matter or causal connection. It is an a
priori idea of the (paradigmatic) mind's own construc-
tion. Close study of nature reveals the complexity
of mutual relations between substances. We do not
observe these directly in perception but they are con-
stantly assumed and confirmed. In physics the equal-
ity and complementarity of action and reaction is set
forth at the outset in the third of the three laws of
motion.

As in the previous analogy we must distinguish

between the order of perceptions and the order of
reality. (And we must be particularly careful not to
equate the latter with any order attributable to things
in themselves.) In the instance of causal order we
find that in themselves perceptual glimpses or snap-
shots do not reveal what their objective time order
is: either one may have preceded, or followed. Only
if and when we in effect, establish a rule, when we
establish one occurence as the cause of another, as
its necessary and sufficient condition, have we
finally established a real order between them and
offered a reliable explanation of a phenomenon.

Kant therefore holds that perceptual order is

no infallible guide for any determination of real
order. What has to be established is the necessity of
one occurrence to another. Of course for all pract-
ical purposes the order of perception is a reliable
guide. But we need only reflect on the lapse of time
in the visual and auditory registry of an event to
see that it must be understood in connection with other
processes. We may misinterpret the auditory and visual
order when we see and hear a bat hit a ball a hundred
meters in the distance. Or we may err in judging pre-
cedence and simultaneity in observing events on cosmic
bodies. What is needed, Kant is saying, is a grasp
of the presence or absence of determinations.

Suppose we have two events, A and B. They may

be related as follows:
I A determines B

II. B determines A
259
 III. A and B are mutual determinants
IV. A and B are wholly independent
We cannot tell from mere perception, from, let us say,
isolated frames of a motion picture sequence* whether
one or another of these cases obtains. If I obtains,
we must consistently find B to occur when A occurs.
(As Kant has said in the case of the ball on the pillow,
the order, not the lapse of time is decisive.) If II
obtains, we have the same situation, with A and B
exchanging places. If III obtains, A determines B only
if B determines A in some corresponding manner. If IV
obtains, no determination between A and B can be de-
tected. In this case we cannot say whether A really
precedes B, or B really preceded A, or A and B are
really simultaneous. If Kant is right, this sit-
uation cannot prevail. But I think it would be harm-
less revision of his system to say rather, if IV
prevails A and B are in two different universes -- if
this is meaningful.

Kant has thus sought to show that our belief

in the reality of the world begins with perception but
it does not arise from it, that is, it has components
which cannot be ascribed to or learned from percep-
tion, "whether there may be any knowledge indepen-
dent of experience (that is, E^) and all impressions
of the senses." His answer is, there not only may be, |
there must be. This in no way "downgrades" perception |
but shows how,with the aid of a priori functors,per- '
ception, far from being qualified and compromised, is
in the end far stronger then Hume's. In one of those
passages in the vein of despair that appear towards the
end of Book I in the Treatise Hume says: "I begun
this subject with premising, that we ought to have an
implicit faith in our senses, and that this would be
the conclusion, I shou'd draw from the whole of my
reasoning. But to be ingenuous, I feel myself at
present of a quite contrary sentiment, and am inclin'd
to repose no faith at all in my senses" (I-IV-II). It
is doubtful if Hume later regains his confidence in
the senses. What is necessary to knowledge, Kant is
saying, is perception "properly instructed." We must
allow due weight to both factors when Kant says, "Ex-
perience does indeed teach us that something is thus
or so only it does not teach us that it cannot be
otherwise." Experience here is E^, and what is needed I
beyond experience in this sense, cannot of course be

260
learned from it. This is the import of these all-impor-
tant portions of the Critique, the Analogies of Exper-
ience .
A closing section sums up the point of the anal-
logies, the need for them, and the inadequacy of other
derivations. They could not have been demonstrated
"from mere concepts", says Kant. The point is the same
as that repeatedly made by Hume, that relations of mat-
ters of fact particularly of identity (corresponding to
Kant's first analogy) and of causality (corresponding
to the second) are not demonstrable, that is, logic-
ally necessary. "One cannot infer one object and its
existence from any other object and its existence by
means of mere concepts, no matter how one analyzes
them." But there is an alternative, and that is, if we
can show the very conditions on which the possibility
of these very objects as such depends. As we saw much
earlier this possibility is rooted in acts of synthesis
by "the synthetic unity of the apperception of all
appearances" and the functors through which such syn-
thesis is effected. Lacking the categories as the
clue, indispensable principles such as the principle
of sufficient reason have never previously proved to
be capable of demonstration. This lack, Kant believes,
has now been made good.

261
 Postulates of Empirical Thought

1. Whatever agrees with the formal conditions

of experience (that is, conditions of intui-
tion and of concepts) is possible.
2. Whatever conforms to the material conditions
of experience (that is, sensation) is
actual.

3. Whatever conforms to the actual in accord-

ance with the general conditions of exper-
ience is, or exists as, necessary.

We now encounter three notions which have al-

ready been woven into the fabric of the Analytic up
to this point. In the second paragraph of the section
Kant says that the three principles are merely defin-
itions Erklrungen). It would no doubt be an awkward
afterthought if only now, at the end of the exposition,
Kant were to define the terms he had been using. A
more serious question would be how we are to reconcile
the definitional character of the principles with the
synthetic and a priori character that Kant attributed
to all of the principles of the Analytic at the outset.
But it is undoubtedly more important to try to see
beyond the character that is here being casually at-
tributed to the principles.

The first paragraph makes the point that the

final three categorial notions do not add any further
determination of objects but only specify a relation
to the cognitive faculty. Although Kant seems to for-
get that the preceding notions did not themselves
really add determinations, either, in the present
instance another implication is really more signifi-
cant. In the refutation of the ontological argument
Kant will emphatically pursue the point that a notion
such as existence does not help to determine, that is,
add a quality or property to, an object. Essentially
this point had of course been made by Hume previously
in the Treatise (I-II-VI) in the section "Of Existence
and External Existence." One will agree that necessity
and possibility add such a determination even less.

262
One should, however, ask whether by comparision, real-
ity, the fourth category adds it. Kant does not clear
up these questions for us.

Possibility. Turning to the first principle,

'formal conditions' alludes to several types of pos-
sibility: logical possibility, conformity to the gen-
eral conditions of space and time, and the categories.
As soon as Kant begins to discuss possibility it is
evident that there is a basic ambiguity attaching to
its placement among the categories, amounting to what
in later days has come to be known as a "category mis-
take." The categories themselves specify the limits
of possibility and are restricted to possible exper-
ience. Yet now we find a specific category named
possibility. It cannot be both a qualification of all
the categories and one among them, at one and the same
time. Again the charge that the notion turns up here
solely for architectonic reasons must occur to us. It
is best simply to ignore these structural consider-
ations and consider what Kant's thoughts are on three
obviously important subjects.

In the sense in which Kant is referring to

several distinct kinds of possibility we shall have
first of all logical possibility. Conformity to
logical principles is of course a necessary but not
a sufficient condition of truth. It is only a canon
of truth (A58/B82 ff., A150/B189 ff.). In order to set
forth not merely the form of thought, Kant says in the
present second paragraph, but the possibility, actual-
ity, and necessity of things, only experience itself
suffices, or in the case of mathematics, an intuition
that enables us in some manner to construct the object
or figure. Experience as such must conform to the cat-
egories, whereby Kant means essentially those of rel-
ation: the ideas of substance, causality, and community
through which alone we can have the notion of a world
of permanent, successive, and simultaneous things and
processes.

To reinforce the point, Kant alludes to notions

which will illustrate impossible, fictitious notions
that violate the categories. Examples are a permanent
substance that is present in space without filling it,
or something between matter and mind, or a power of
prophesying and of intuiting the future (not merely
of inferring it), or a power of telepathic communi-
cation. These are neither derived from nor confirm-
263
able in experience, nor are they conditions of exper-
ience. Hence they are null concepts.
Kant considers also something of the other side
of the formal conditions of experience, namely the pure
intuitions, particularly space. He reiterates the
point that we cannot exclude a space enclosed only by
two straight lines on the ground that this would be
self-contradictory. We cannot pronounce it impossible
solely on the ground of the concepts involved. The
impossibility, he says, rests rather on the possibility
of the intuitive construction of such figures. Spatial
intuition is a formal condition of experience.

It is evident that nothing new emerges in the

discussion of possibility. The puzzle is the obscure
reasons which dictated to Kant the necessity of
repeating already thoroughly expounded material as if
it were new, to complete the structure of system of
principles.

Actuality. In this subsection, unlike the other

two, we have, I believe, not only new material but
something of first importance in the structure of the
Critique: the doctrine what we may trust perception
to reveal the real to us. We have already noted that
Kant concedes all three of these principles may be
only definitions (Erklrungen der Begriffe). One may,
however, make so bold as to take issue with Kant over
this and hold him rather more strictly to his character-
ization of the principles as synthetic and a priori,
at at least not merely as verbal definitions. The
point is that Kant needs somewhere to affirm explicitly
what appears only incidentally in the Anticipations
of Perception: that the real is the object of sen-
sation or perception. A glance backward at the two
versions of that principle will make this plain.

Kant makes the point repeatedly that sensation

or perception reveals to us the real. It is not of
course altogether sufficient by itself: sensation is
subject to misinterpretation, but Kant never stirs from
the doctrine that it is the beginning of all knowledge
even if not its exclusive source. So we read in the
discussion of the antinomies that "everything is real
(actual) which stands in connection with a perception
in accordance with the laws of empirical advance."
(alles ist wirklich, was mit einer Wahrnehmung nach
Gesetzen des empirischen Fortgangs in Einem Kontext
stehet A493/B521). I think it would be difficult to
264
exaggerate the importance of this as a principle on
which experience and science rests. What Kant is say-
ing is that with proper safeguards we can and must
trust experience, that is, Ei, sensation, perception,
empirical intuition. This will be widely, if not uni-
versally, granted. What is even more important is that
science itself cannot demonstrate any such principle:
it assumes or presupposes it. We cannot appeal to per-
ception to prove that we can trust perception, nor to
experience in some similar sense to prove that exper-
ience reveals to us at least the raw material of
reality. There is in fact, Kant should say no conceiv-
able proof of the principle along any familiar lines.
It is not itself an empirical truth: it is a pillar
underneath all empirical truth. The version of the
principle presented in the antinomies is not an
analytic truth: the contradictory of this principle is
not self-contradictory. In the end, what Kant holds is,
as we have often noted before, that we simply will
not give it up under any circumstances. The Leibniz-
ians or other rationalists may refuse to acknowledge
this. Kant's answer is simply, they are wrong: with-
out this there is no knowledge.

It is equally apparent, I think, that such a

principle is not merely a definition, at least in
Kant's scheme. In that form it simply will not accom-
plish what is needed: what is real cannot be a matter
of mere fiat. Hence we must strengthen what Kant says
at the outset of this section regarding the definition-
al character of the Postulates.

Proceeding now to the substantial matter of the

subsection we see that Kant proceeds directly from the
formal conditions (logical consistency, space, time,
the categories) in the first postulate to the material
conditions: perception, empirical concepts, general-
izations, and laws we have been able to develop through
perception. The two therefore make explicit what has
been set forth from the beginning as the framework of
experience: pure and empirical intuitions and pure
and empirical concepts, together with resulting general-
izations, hypotheses, and theories. The very slight
development Kant accords the principle offers little
opportunity to see its consequences. He describes
briefly what we can infer from our perceptions when we
see iron filings move in the presence of a magnet,
namely "a magnetic matter that pervades all bodies."
Such a magnetic matter, perhaps what we nowadays call
a magnetic field, is of course not itself an object of
265
perception,but he believes this is owing only to the
limited nature of our sense organs in this sense-modal-
ity. If they were more refined, he thinks we would be
able to perceive it as we now see the motion of the
iron. Suggestions of this sort are of course better
judged in terms of their full development in theories
of science such as logical empiricism in our own cen-
tury. The direction in which Kant's hand is pointing
is unmistakable.

266
 Refutation of Idealism

Kant had already undertaken a refutation of

idealism in the first edition under the fourth paral-
ogism. This section was completely revised in the
second edition and an explicit refutation was attached
to the second Postulate of Empirical Thought, that
of actuality. It was emphatic if not slightly emotion-
al in tone and appeared in response to the criticism of
the standpoint of the Critique from certain reviewers
or commentators on the first edition. Kant wished to
distance himself from Berkeley's idealism. Since Kant's
time it has generally been thought that his response
was ill-conceived and rested on a mistaken view of
Berkeley's views, possibly because of inadequate
acquaintance with Berkeley's writings. (Kant knew
little English, but there were French editions of
certain works available to him, and he could have
read Berkeley's De Motu.)

The question of the appropriateness of Kant's

response has recently been re-opened by Professor Henry
Allison in an article defending Kant's response in the
Critique and elsewhere.^ The issues are too complex to
be gone into here, and the historical question is
not directly relevant to the validity of the argument.
It should, however, be said that the prevalent view
has been that Kant should have recognized an ally
rather than an adversary in Berkeley. For if Kant
could call himself an empirical realist Berkeley could
do so as well. Is there a significant difference
between Berkeley's view that objects are constructions
of ideas and Kant's view of them as appearances?

Kant was convinced that on Berkeley's view,

and not on his own, "things in space are merely imag-
inary entities." He determined to put an end once and
for all to the philosophical scandal that even then
no proof of existence of the external world had been
produced. He proceeded therefore to offer such a proof
and at the same time to refute those who either called
the existence of the world problematic or dogmatically
denied it.

267
 Theorem

The purely empirically determined consciousness of my own

being proves the existence of objects in space outside me.

Proof

Kant argues that I am aware of the passage of

events in time in my experience. Time, if so grasped,
involves its various modi, particularly that of perm-
anence. If now I am aware of change or alteration
there must correspondingly be something permanent, as
we saw in the analogies. Moreover, the permanent
and the transitory must of course be distinct: they
are necessarily related but different. If one then
is "in me" the other must be "outside me." Since
indeed I have experience of the transitory, I can infer
the permanent by a kind of modus ponens. Thus the
data of my own consciousness awareness prove the
existence of a permanent real distinct from myself,
and thereby the external world is demonstrated.

268
 We should if possible interpret this argument
in harmony with the foregoing parts of the Critique
and then try to see what kind of "object" is in fact
demonstrated. I believe Kant is here not talking
about things in themselves nor undertaking to prove
that there are things in themselves. What he has
done is to apply the distinction between these and
appearances and has shown rather by the use he has
made of the distinction that it has some truth or sig-
nificance to it. He has tried to show what problems it
helps us to solve, what errors it helps us to avoid.
It would be curious, in a way, if only now in a second
edition a proof for the existence of things in them-
selves occurred to Kant. Moreover, things in themsel-
ves are necessities of thought rather than objects of
knowledge,and this would comport ill with what pur-
ported to prove their existence. We can think them,
but we cannot know them, have Erkenntnis of them.
(See Preface to B,xxvi.) For these reasons a proof
of an external world, in the sense of a proof of things
in themselves, would not appear to be consistent with
what has gone before.

One should study carefully the footnote in the

Preface to B (page Bxl) in which Kant speaks still
another time of the proof of the external world and
the refutation of idealism. He there amends the word-
ing in the above Proof, though not materially, and
remarks what a scandal to philosophy it is not to
have up till then come forth with a proof of "the
existence of things outside us." He is very emphatic
that what he has proved is the existence of things
"distinct from our representations." If that is so,
they may very well also be other than appearances.
Hence, may he not be intending to prove the existence
of things themselves? But Kant never, I think, specif-
ically says that he means things in themselves when
he is speaking of "things outside ourselves;" if he
had meant things in themselves, would he not somewhere
have flatly said so?

The proof as amplified in the Preface takes still

another turn when Kant explores further the relation of
outer sense to inner sense. What I think he is saying
there is simply that outer sense itself, once this can
be made out, is itself "in relation to something out-
side me." The reason is that outer sense is not merely
the presence of a multiplicity of representations be-
fore me but is possible only through the organizing
power of the Self, that is, the transcendental unity,
269
the source of all experience, and thus of what is rel-
iably objective.
The only outcome I can see is that Kant is
throughout the Critique, in A and in B, in the Ref-
utation and in the Prefaces, affirming the reality of
appearances; in the Refutation he is specifically
demonstrating the reality of appearances, not things
in themselves. He is saying I am in first and last
place a realist, an empirical realist; experience as
a structure to which representations deriving from
perception and thought contribute reveals a real
world, the only world there is. As we have seen in the
Anticipations of Perception and again in this second
postulate, Kant is a zealous defender of the reliabil-
ity of perception, when it is carefully scrutinized.
He is not a representative realist, a realist for whom
a real world is "problematic." Appearances do not
represent things themselves: they are numerically
identical with things themselves but speaking of them
as appearances reminds us that there is much about
reality we do not know. Our powers are limited and
others are conceivable.

We shall assume that the proof is directed

toward the affirmation of appearances. It will be
said that the result is question-begging: of course
appearances are proved by our awareness of ourselves;
self-awareness has been shown to be equivalent to an
awareness of an objective world in the deductions,
one being necessary to the other. Perhaps it is
better to say that Kant merely for polemical purposes
here casts his exposition in the form of a proof,
whereas all that he is really doing is affirming and
expounding once again the ground of his realism. If
realism means that the mind is directly aware of real-
ity, Kant is a radical realist.

It should be said finally, that both the trans-

itory and the permanent in the Proof above are equally
part of the world of appearance. This is evident par-
ticularly from the first analogy. The permanent is
not a substratum which we "infer": permanent thing-
transitory state is a correlative concept, transcen-
dental in origin, and indispensable in the descrip-
tion of the world of experience and science. With
this we can, I think, finally and conclusively identify
the external world that is demonstrated in this Proof
with the total world of appearance, realitas phenomenon.

270
 Note 1. Kant counters the claims of those who
think that all we can be aware of is some kind of inner
experience and that from it we infer a real world be-
yond. On Kant's view, the natures of objects in their
construction is such that we are in no sense making
any such "problematic inferences." We are directly
aware of what is real. The "outer" is not inferred
from the "inner." The situation is more nearly the
opposite: from there being organized, continuant
objects and processes we can trace our way back to the
subject, and these two are necessary to one another.
As Kant says with obvious relish, the game played by
idealism can be turned against it. The epistemologies
that have preceded him have simply been too simple
and naive to realize the complexities of the problem.

There is an interesting paradigm case argument

in the footnote to Note 1 that even our contemporaries
would have difficulty in improving upon. it demands
to know the meaningfulness of the "inner-outer" dis-
tinction if, like the subjectivists, we suppress the
validity of outer sense. Kant restores 'outer' to
its proper common sense use after the misuse of it
(and of the term 'inner' as well) by subjective ideal-
ism. As elsewhere, Kant is steadfast in his defense
of common sense.

Note 2. Kant further underscores the primacy of

outer experience by saying that all time relationships,
such as permanence and change are dependent upon it.
There is nothing in inner experience from which it
might be derived.

Note 3. A most important consideration bearing

upon the main thesis of the second postulate, which is
after all the subject matter here, is presented in
this note. We have learned that perception is the
material mark of the real and that the degree of its
intensity is the degree of its reality (v. Anticipa-
tions) . But how can we resolve our lingering queries
about the reliability of perception and establish its
summary difference from illusions which we might be
unable to distinguish from veridical perceptions? No
real rule is expounded here except "coherence with
the criteria of all actual experience" (Zusammenhang
mit den Kriterien aller wirklichen Erfahrung). In
an ordinary way of speaking, "intuitive representation
of things" sometimes prove erroneous. The only test
is the corroboration afforded by the cross-relations of

271
theories and hypotheses of science and experience gen-
erally, and their repeated confirmation in empirical
intuition. Kant's standpoint is throughout that of
the scientist at work developing and demonstrating
hypotheses. To the sceptic he turns a deaf ear: he
does not find him even mildly interesting.

With the return to the question of the reliabil-

ity of perception Kant brings to a close the discussion
of the second postulate. It is apparent that no
principle is more important than this one. If there
is one thing the scientist is confident about it is the
empirical evidence of perception. Kant is not concern-
ed to call this confidence into question but to say
that it is a cornerstone of science which is, however,
not within the powers of science to prove. Only a
transcendental demonstration is possible.

Necessity. If we had puzzled over what meaning

Kant from the beginning attached to the term necessity
and awaited the outcome of the present section to learn
what it is, our response might be either one of dis-
appointment that no very "strong" definition of it now
emerges, or perhaps of relief at the modesty and good
sense of it. All that is surprising about it is that
Kant made such a point of declaring defective just
those approaches to the matter, such as Hume's, and as
we have seen, Berkeley's, which in the end are most
compatible with it. One cannot feel that Kant had as
firm a grasp of Hume's views as his repeated repud-
iations of them would seem to justify. Even very great
minds often fail in this respect. The reason is, I
think, that if they had a supremely fair and judicious
view of all other standpoints they would never under-
take to state one of their own. In any event, for us,
the consonance of Hume and Kant in so many respects
should be a cause for rejoicing rather than chagrin.

Hume in "Of Liberty and Necessity," (Treatise,

II-III-I) which takes the analysis of Book I of the
Treatise for granted, affirmed universal determinism.
"Tis universally acknowledg'd," he said, "that the op-
erations of external body are necessary, and that in
the communication of their motion, in their attraction,
and mutual cohesion, there are not the least traces
of indifference or liberty... The actions of matter
are to be regarded as instances of necessary actions."
Later in the same section he says, "necessity makes
an essential part of causation." Kant never managed

272
to be more emphatic than this about necessity. Yet
there is not the slightest doubt that even in these
passages, necessity essentially meant, for Hume, uni-
formity and predictability.

What then do we here find Kant saying of neces-

sity? "Necessity concerns only the relations of ap-
pearances in accord with the dynamic law of causality
and the consequent possibility of an inference from
one existent ( a cause) to another (an effect). Every-
thing that occurs is hypothetically necessary: this is
a principle which subjects all alteration in the world
to a law, in other words, a rule of necessary existence,
without which there would be no nature at all." The
necessity Kant has been speaking of is universal deter-
minism. It is only the source from which he derives
it that differentiates his standpoint from that of
Hume .

Kant proceeds to articulate determinism into

several distinct guiding principles which come down
to saying that nature leaves no gaps, vacuums, excep-
tions, or leaps in the series of appearances and that
nothing happens blindly but is always in principle
explicable and intelligible. Only so is the unity of
experience possible. (The four Latin formulae he cites
may be condensed to read, in mundo nondantur hiatus,
saItus,casus, et fatum.)

273
 General Note to the System of the Principles

The subject of the categorial principles should

terminiate with the identification of all of them and
the demonstration that they hold and are indispensable
for all experience. Kant, in the sequel to the Postu-
lates, adds nothing to the proof of them that has
not appeared previously. The final principle, neces-
sity, sums up the exposition by enunciating universal
determinism which of course refers more specially to
the content of the Analogies. It is almost superfluous
to add, as Kant does, that the categorial principles
are "not themselves knowledge but merely forms of
thought by means of which knowledge may be developed
from given intuitions."

The necessity of reference to intuitions if there

is to be knowledge, is made even more specific in this
brief appendix, added in the second edition, by the
requirement that these be outer intuitions. Only in the
presence of these is it possible to demonstrate the
reality of a substance, and only when there is motion
is it possible to speak of causality and of the rel-
ation of substances in a community. Kant here seems
to make spatial or outer intuition rather more of a
touchstone of reality than he has done elsewhere, where
time has received far greater emphasis. We recall the
decisive role he has given to "the existence of objects
in space outside us" in the Refutation of Idealism
just concluded. Possibly he wishes to correct the
"subjectivist" impression the first edition had made
upon some of his readers. (Of course the whole Refut- \
ation must be taken in conjunction with the first and ';
the revised version of the Paralogisms. A refutation 1
had appeared under the fourth paralogism in A. It
also occupied Kant's further attention in the Prole-
gomena and elsewhere. In all of these passages he empha-
sized "external existence".) He asks that we keep these
matters in mind when we come to the question of self-
knowledge in the Paralogisms, where we must see what
can be determined about our inner nature without the
aid of empirical or outer intuition.

Kant himself best sums up the massive effort of

the Analytic, now virtually concluded, in the last
paragraph:

274
All principles of pure understanding are
nothing other than a priori principles of
the possibility of experience; all syn-
thetic a priori propositions relate in
fact only to experience and indeed the
possibility of these propositions rests
wholly upon this relation.

275
 Chapter III
On the Ground of the Distinction of Objects
in General into Phenomena and Noumena

The discussion in the present chapter may be con-

sidered as transitional from the Analytic to the Dia-
lectic but already looking more in the latter direction.
The distinction between appearances (phenomena) and
things themselves (although these are not the only
things that come to be called noumena) is fundamental
to the Aesthetic and the Analytic. The Dialectic will
show us what serious errors are made when the distinc-
tion is ignored or defied. The first question is, how
in general the fateful errors are made. Then we can
see how they are made in three specific areas, the study
of mind or soul, the scientific investigation of the
world of nature, and speculation on divine existence.
The question is whether we can meaningfully speak of
things outside or beyond sensibility or sensuous intui-
tion. It is not so simple that one could say one must
never speak of such things lest we fall into nonsense
and absurdity, as the more dogmatic positivists main-
tain. As everywhere, Kant finds things are never as
simple as that.

He begins with a romantic metaphor of an island of

truth set in a vast sea of ignorance and confusion.
Having now explored the island over which we have do-
minion, we should be clear as to what it is we possess
and by what title we hold it before we venture out into
an ocean that may be filled with fogbanks of illusion.
We should also ask whether we should be content just to
remain on the island. Some of this has implicitly been
answered in the foregoing pages, but a clear summary is
advisable before we proceed to the Dialectic.

We have seen that what the understanding produces

of itself, its concepts and its principles, can be ap-
plied only in and to experience, which remains the key
source of truth, but also how far it extends and where
it ends, what its limits are and what lies outside them.
We are bound to reach beyond this because we are not
only interested in what is true: there may also be a
great deal more that we desire to know. Who knows where
that question may lead us if it is pursued? Also, to
know under what title we possess the land of truth, one
must not only be acquainted with it but also with the
surrounding terrain, in order to recognize where the

276
boundaries lie.

The issue of this comes down to how we use our

concepts, to what we apply them. We may begin by dis-
tinguishing two uses of a concept, particularly the
pure concepts of the understanding. In the transcen-
dental use of a concept, the concept is applied to any-
thing whatever, to things in general, or as such,
the empirical use of a concept, it is limited in appli-
cation to objects of possible experience and thus to
intuition, particularly to what exists in time.

The latter defines meaning in special sense, em-

pirical meaning. The use of a concept in the first
manner is from the standpoint of the second, illegiti-
mate, and thus meaningless, though Kant grants that one
can still accord it meaning. Bedeutung, in a special
sense (A 248). Meaningfulness here extends not only to
pure concpets, the categories, but also to the prin-
ciples of pure understanding.

The transcendental use of a concpet means appli-

cation to things in general, and it is well to pause
over the phrase, 'things in general', which is Dinge
berhaupt 'In general' is so colorless as to attract
almost no attention in English. berhaupt, on the
other hand, is of first importance almost anywhere Kant
uses it. Here, as elsewhere, it is particularly linked
with 'transcendental'. That is, the transcendental use
of a term is that use in which no limitation is thought
necessary to be made in it, the limitation to sensibil-
ity, in intuition. What is not so limited may then be
applicable even to things in themselves.

Kant is here following a strict empiricist line of

thought regarding the nature of concepts and their
meaning, including of course the categories. He now
proceeds through the Screed of the categories to show
what their empirical use involves. It is, in a word,
reference to time. Exactly as in the Schematism, they
must be seen in relation to possible experience, which
always and necessarily involves time. If this refer-
ence is omitted, they become nothing more than "logical
functions of judgment," or what was earlier referred to
as "categories without schemata".

Time is the measure of reality and the key to

the empirical use of the categories. The empirical

277
use of the idea of magnitude, the categories of
quantity,is the successive repetition in time of a unit
until the limits of the object are reached and measured;
of reality and negation, stretches of time which are
filled or empty of intuited content; of substance,
permanence in time if I abstract from reference
to time, substance is merely the notion of something
that is, in a given context at least, to be designated
as a subject, not as a predicate. Time is essential to
the notion of causality. It involves the notion of two
events whose occurence is governed by a rule enabling
us in some sense to infer one from the other. That
gives meaning to these and the other categories (commu-
nity and the categories of modality): not their mere
formal character but their function in terms of time.
The categories then, apart from time, and thus intu-
ition, have no empirical meaning. These paragraphs
have some of Kant's most important thoughts on the
criterion of significance.

It remains to be seen what must be said of con-

cepts when they are used transcendentally, applying
them to things in general, without regard to the manner
in which we may intuit them. Kant distinguishes the ob-
jects involved in the two uses, empirical and transcen-
dental, as phenomena and noumena. The latter are ob-
jects only of the understanding, unrestricted by time
and empirical intuition. If they have any significance
(since they have no empirical meaning) they would seem
to have to be related to some other sort of intuition,
non-sensuous intuition, for no one would suppose that
what were objects of mere thought or understanding
apart from some sort of intuition would possess any
reality.

Pursuing this possibility further, there appears

to loom the possibility of dividing the world into two:
a Sinneswelt and a Verstandeswelt, (mundus sensibilis
and mundus intelligibilis). One of these would seem to
be the world as it appears in sensuous intuition and
the other the world as an object of non-sensuous intu-
ition or of the understanding. The latter would pre-
sume to reveal to us an absolutely objective reality
(schlechthin objektive Realitt) beyond the limitations
of sense. Kant returns to this presumed world again
towards the end of the chapter (A 255ff) .

The foregoing division of the world into the

sensible and the intelligible, or the world as it

278
appears and the world as it is, enjoyed a vogue among
the rationalist philosophers, but it is entirely repud-
iated by Kant. He regards it as failing to assign
proper and meaningful roles to sensibility and the under-
standing. We should be careful not to confuse the divi-
sion phenomena and noumena with that of mundus sensi-
bilis and the mundus intelligibilis of the rationalists.
The world that is to be comprehended "as it really is"
is not an object of understanding or intellect alone,
but is itself the world of phenomena. This comprehen-
sion can be realized by the understanding only in
cooperation with intuition. Noumena are ideas which
can serve a useful (regulative) purpose as necessities
of thought, but they can never be known, that is ap-
prehended as appearances, through understanding and
intuition. The pretense to knowing them through the
instrument of pure reason is what generates the illu-
sions of the dialectic.

The understanding in the framework Kant sup-

plies for it has none of these pretensions to reveal-
ing singlehandedly the world as it really is, nor does
it in the framework require anything further besides
sensuous intuition. The understanding in and of itself,
of course, refers all our representations to a transcen-
dental object which is, however, a mere x, a thing in
itself, which is a correlate to the synthetic unity of
apperception, and may be thought of as a noumenon.
That is the nature of the understanding, of cognitive
thought. Das Denken ist die Handlung-, gegebene Anschau-
ung auf einen Gegenstand zu beziehen: "Thought is the
operation of referring given intuitions to an object"
(A 247). But his use of a noumenal and transcendental
idea is defensible and necessary as a limiting case
only, and not a claim to knowledge: we are merely al-
lowing for the fact that what appears so and so in
experience may be quite other apart from experience, as
a thing in itself. Of the latter, we know nothing of
course, but the mere fact that we know nothing of it
is not the same as knowing that it does exist. Our
acquaintance with it is inherently negative.

These ideas are now summed up in the idea of a

negative noumenon and a positive noumenon. The phrase-
ology is somewhat clearer in B, in which the passage is
re-written, but not the exposition. We can make a re-
stricted use of the notion of things in themselves with-
out being acquainted with them directly: this is the
altogether defensible and useful notion of the neg-
ative noumenon, for example, things in themselves,
279
things which are necessary to our thought but about
which we cannot and do not claim to know anything.
A positive noumenon is also in some sense thinkable,
but unlike the foregoing, it is not a necessary and
useful fixture in explaining the cognitive trans-
action. It presumes, moreover, to meet the require-
ment of reference to intuition by positing a non-
sensuous intuition. We do not know, of course, that
sense-intuition is the only kind there is, but what
non-sensuous intuition is, almost literally no one
could know, except God. We are confined,by the cir-
cumstances of our being,to sense intuition.

Thus the positive noumenon is an affirmation of

an object of non-sensuous intuition. The negative
noumenon disclaims knowledge of anything not sup-
ported by sense-intuition and in particular disclaims
having access to non-sensuous intuition without deny-
ing its existence or possibility.
It is evident what use may and may not be made of
the notion of positive noumena. They are problematic
in the sense that, we have no knowledge of any form
of intuition but our own, but have also no knowledge
of the impossibility of non-sensuous intuition. We
are in no position to speak of them is assertoric
fashion. For us, the notion of the negative noumen-
on is the only one we can make use of. It is a limit-
ing case,showing us how far our knowledge can proceed.
We must retain the notion of things themselves as
noumena in this sense: the understanding is thus re-
stricted by our form of sensibility. By designating
noumena, we refrain from thinking of all objects in
general as appearances. It is safest to think of the
negative noumenon simply as an "unknown something."
The distinction of appearances and things in them-
selves, phenomena and noumena, has now been worked out
in detail by Kant. He often expresses the nature of
the Dialectic as a defiance of this distinction, though
it can be characterized in other ways as well. He will
now address himself to the penalties paid for allowing
pure reason, or in general, the intellect, to proceed
to solve the problems it assigns itself without asking
itself whether these are truly cognitive problems--
problems whose subject matter is accessible to in-
tuition. By overlooking this, it emerges with pseudo-
solutions to impossible questions. Rational psychol-
ogy, cosmology and theology suppose themselves quali-
fied to bear the name 'science' in the same sense as
280
the natural sciences, but offer us unconfirmable trans-
cendent asseverations about the simplicity or immortal-
ity of the soul, or the existence of the first cause,
or a most perfect being. We must examine carefully
what genuine knowledge demands and what its limits are,
recognize the point at which we transcend or step
beyond them, and seek to comprehend what use may and
may not be made of whatever transcendent results we
arrive at. These are to be the tasks of the Dialectic.

The exposition of the entire Deduction is now

complete. Even with all its shortcomings, the work
is bound to endure. It is a monument of analytic
thought that amply repays work and study.

281
00
to
 Appendix
The Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection Through the
Interchange of the Empirical Use of the
Understanding with the Transcendental Use

I. Introduction

The curious and archaic title may easily tempt one

to pass this section by altogether, particularly when
it involves very real difficulties in the way of under-
standing. In fact, however, like nearly every other
part of Critique, it repays determined effort to com-
prehend the issues and the line of argument, and the
reward is not just a better understanding of Kant and
his reasons for repudiating Leibniz, but a better com-
prehension of, perennial philosophical issues and meth-
ods. Kant is not only aware of the countless problems
his critical method stirs up, but he is also conscious
of philosophical discourse itself, his own first of
all, of course. Nothing shows this so well as the
present section, and from it we can learn some lessons
that have current application and significance.

One of the ways in which philosophy can partic-

ularly benefit numerous other intellectual enterprises
is to study carefully the different kinds of asser-
tions that are made in them and to bring to light the
appropriate criteria for appraising them. The study of
judgments of value is a particularly good example.
The criteria for deciding which, or which kinds, of
judgments deserve our belief or other support have
been under study by philosophers for a long time. We
need to know whether these are confirmable like reports
of feelings, or statements of facts, or generalizations
about them, or like none of these.

It is apparent that questions such as these are

raised also about purely cognitive matters. We make
statements about the past, about the future, both the
fairly accessible and the remote and essentially in-
accessible. Appropriate methods are devised by re-
searchers themselves to confirm them and these in turn
are studied by philosophers to see what is involved in
283
such confirmation. Besides these, there are many even
more familiar philosophical studies of the nature of
science, mathematics, religious discourse and other
subjects, each one disclosing very different types of
discourse and demanding unique methods of appraisal
and confirmation. (We may think of the differences
among assertions about real or imaginary numbers,
nuclear particles, the existence of God.)

What emerges here is the fact that in all cases

one must begin by deciding what is the appropriate
cognitive approach in each such enterprise. We do
not suppose that mathematical propositions are to be
confirmed by perception, nor do we expect mathematics
to be appropriately called upon in matters that call
for close perceptual inspection. In most cases, we are
quite ready with what we think is an appropriate assign-
ment of the task, to perception, to mathematical anal-
ysis, to empirical generalization, to other appropriate
areas. In ethical matters, as we know, the greater
part of the issues debated for a long time have con-
cerned the question whether ethical questions are a
matter of taste, or of intuition, or of some kind of
empirical discovery, or of self-evidence, or of nec-
essary truths. In all matters there is no way to
avoid deciding what is the appropriate general area in
which a science lies and which of our cognitive cap-
acities will be called on to decide its questions and
carry on its work.

Now this is exactly what Kant is concerned with

in the section on Amphiboly. The latter term is used
by Kant to designate a misassignment of a given task:
submitting to the decision of the senses that which is
essentially a conceptual matter, or vice versa. Kant
has explored this in detail.

It can be said in general that dialectical issues

are under consideration in the Critique wherever
Kant detects and discusses a serious neglect of the
distinction of appearances from things themselves in
the philosophical efforts of others. The same is true
whenever concepts and intuitions, understanding and
sensibility fail to contribute equally to the pursuit V
of knowledge; or where either of them is permitted to |;
claim the entire field of knowledge. In this sense, *
the Amphiboly is not an appendix to the analytic but
rather an introduction or appendix to the dialectic.

284
 What is particularly under consideration in the
Amphiboly is the adverse consequences of Leibniz's
proceeding in the directions just mentioned. Although
Kant is often thought to have set out to rescue what
he could of rationalism in the face of Hume's attack,
this should only be asserted after due allowance is
made for the masterful attack which Kant himself
mounts in this difficult section against Leibniz. It
should never be forgotten that Kant's insistence on
the real distinction of concept and intuition, under-
standing and sensibility cannot be reconciled with
Leibniz's view, for Leibniz thought this not a real
distinction: intuition and everything that could be
regarded as phenomenal he regarded as but a confused
form of thought or concept. This has consequences
which are altogether unacceptable to Kant who thinks
that natural science, not mathematics, is the ideal
of knowledge.

Kant's use of the term 'amphiboly' to designate

certain intellectual errors has little to do with the
fallacy of this name in the classical logic. As he
used the term there is an interchange, Verwechselung,
the mistaken replacement of one thing by another (one
recalls Little Buttercup's mixing up the two babies);
the objects of intuition distinct from the understand-
ing. In Locke, the objects of understanding, whose
pedigree is traceable to sense or intuition, the op-
posite error is committed. "Leibniz intellectualized
appearances, just as Locke sensualized the concepts of
understanding, according to his system of Noogony."
(A 271/B 327).

What now are the concepts of "reflection", a term

that has not appeared previously in the Critique? The
German equivalent, berlegung, also appears. Either
of them can be used loosely like the English 'reflect-
ion', thinking over, turning over in one's mind.
Kant here gives it a very specific sense; it also plays
a role in the third Critique.
The first, broad distinction that is made in order
to specify the term 'reflection' is between Untersuch-
ung and berlegung. An Untersuchung is simply verifi-
cation , an examination in which one looks toward
whether a statement is true or not. One might also
call this a confirmation (or verification) procedure.
An berlegung, on the other hand, might be called a
transcendental assignment or destination, that is, a
285
destining, a decision to assign a concept or a judge-
ment in the area of the understanding or to that of
sensibility. Kant warns that although statements do
not always need a verification procedure, every state-
ment in principle must have a transcendental assign-
ment, to understanding or to sensibility. I believe
this may not always be an exclusive assignment but
simply means that we must consider whether the repre-
sentation belongs to one or the other or to both of .
these faculties.

Kant's point regarding verification is well taken.

We do not demand a verification procedure for every
proposition. For if a proposition is immediately
certain (e.g., between two points only one straight
line may be drawn), there is no other more precise
token of its truth that must be sought than what it al-
ready expresses. Most propositions do demand more
in the way of verification. But it is a serious mis-
take to subject a proposition of sense to conceptual
treatment or a conceptual proposition to empirical
treatment.
Specifying the term 'reflection' somewhat further,
Kant explains reflection as a "condition of mind"
(Zustand des Gemts) in which we make an effort to
find out the subjective conditions under which we can
arrive at concepts: the consciousness of the relation
of given representations to the different sources of
knowledge. We must ask to which cognitive faculty
the representations in a given judgement belongs or
from which they arise, whether the senses or the under-
standing, and whether the relating or comparing of
representations (for example, subject and predicate,
or other relata) in a judgement is thought of as
occurring in the understanding or in the senses.

The next development is not so clear. Deriving

some of his points from the treatment of truth in
Locke's Essay but also reflecting the fourfold system
of categories, Kant reduces to four the relations
between concepts in a proposition :

1. Identity (Einerleiheit) and Difference.

2. Agreement (Einstimmung) and Incompatibility.
3. Inner and Outer.
4. Determinable and Determinate(or Matter and Form)
286
The correct specification of these relations depends
upon transcendental reflection, what we have called
their transcendental assignment to understanding or
to sensibility. But before he explains this, he sug-
gests that there may actually be two kinds of reflec-
tion, logical and transcendental. We have given an
outline of the second. What is the first?

Kant makes his oft-reiterated point that logic

abstracts from all content, is perfectly formal and
general. Yet he seems to think that we could make
som,e sort of determination about a proposition in
respect to the four distinctions just listed while
totally abstracting from all agreement and incompat-
ibility, identity and difference, of concepts if they
were indeed "formal" and "empty". It would seem
that logical and transcendental reflection could dif-
fer only if conceivably we might find, for example,
that the concepts of a proposition were in agreement
from the standpoint of logical,but were incompatible
from that of transcendental reflection. But Kant of-
fers no examples. We shall have to pursue the ques-
tion of reflection wholly in reference to transcen-
dental reflection. (Kant refers again to logical
reflection below, A 279/B 335.)

It is argument that can be treated wholly indepen-

dent of content since the validity of argument dep-
ends wholly on form and order of sentences, provided,
however, that we have come to some decision as to what
is form as distinct from content in sentences.

What has appeared so far, then, is essentially

the distinction between conformation procedure and
transcendental distination. In regard to the first,
what we are said to be doing when we inquire after
the truth of a proposition is deciding as to the
identity and difference, agreement and incompatibility
(and so on) of the concepts involved.

In respect to mortality, all men resemble one

another, and this we express in the universal propos-
ition, All men are mortal. Specific differences with-
in a class lead us to say some men are healthy, and
perhaps some are not, that is, lead us to the partic-
ular proposition. An invariable agreement or concom-
itance between having scales and being a fish, or
having feathers and being a bird, yields correspond-
ing affirmative propositions, and between feathers
and fish, scales and birds, negative ones. At this
287
point, Kant unfortunately says simply "et cetera".
But it is not clear how we are to think of 'inner' and
'outer' in relation to the verification of proposi-
tions, or matter and form, or determinable and deter-
minate. Kant appears to be leaning on the fourfold
classification of forms of judgment and of categories
but no clear application is made. The application
Kant makes to transcendental destination or reflection
is, however, unambiguous, if this is compatible with
the inherent difficulty of his exposition.

What Kant has said so far, as well as the appli-

cation he will make of it, comes down then to this.
Not all propositions or thoughts need a confirmation
or verification procedure, but all need a transcen-
dental destination, that is, a determination of the
cognitive faculty (the understanding or intuition) in
or by which the relata of the proposition are con-
nected or compared: because, unless we determine the
faculty in which this occurs, we cannot determine the
relation of the relata correctly. Correct transcen-
dental destination is necessary to determine the
correct relationship of the relata in thoughts and
propositions. What he will now say is that Leibniz
made a faulty destination of the objects of knowledge,
putting under the understanding what should be under
sensibility, and that he decided each of the four
issues mistakenly. He has intellectualized all exper-
ience .

II. The Amphibolies

1. Identity and Difference. In order to present

the first example of amphiboly, let us use the term
'objective' approximately as Kant does 'representation'
or as here, Gegenstand, object.If we now assign to the
understanding an objective which appears and reappears,
let us say, six times, it is really one and the same,
not six. A zoologist who takes up the study of the
horse and recurs to it repeatedly has one objective
before him, not many. If he makes distinctions among
breeds or varieties, then each of these is one objec-
tive designated by a particular name or concept.
But a groom in a stable may have little interest in
abstract zoological matters: he is charged with the
care of six horses, all individually distinct. They
are for the groom first of all objectives of sensi-
bility, of intuition. The six animals are, in six

288
different places, numerically distinct. The horse of
the zoologist is of no interest to him compared with
these six horses. Appearances and intuitions can be
even "more particular" than this. I can open and
close my eyes twice having as my objective six horses,
and have a dozen glimpses, which are also intuitions
or appearances.
Kant points out the error inherent in Leibniz's
regarding objectives such as the groom's six horses,
as intelligibilia, as objects of the pure understand-
ing, not as sensibilia. True, he designates them as
phenomena because they are "confused" objectives, but,
in fact, no real distinction is permitted between con-
cepts and intuition: intuitions are objectives whose
concepts are confused.

Leibniz did not recognize anything as a true at-

tribute of any objective except what was part of its
concept. Accordingly if two drops of water had the
same concept, they were identical. He did not rec-
ognize space and time as more than phenomenal (but
not phenomenal in Kant's sense) because he regarded
two spaces, each of some given size,as inherently not
discernibly different. Hence, they can make no dif-
ference to the drops of water when they are attributed
to them as their "place". There is for him only one
faculty in which cognitive apprehension takes place,
the understanding and all sensible properties are but
confused aspects of concepts since they are aspects of
monads of a less than perfect order.

Kant simply refuses to go along with the amalgam

of. concept and phenomenon (or intuition) in Leibniz.
They are two irreducibly different classes of attributes
which we employ to speak of objectives. Far from al-
lowing that even in principle, say from God's stand-
point, every true statement about an objective is a
priori, he resolutely affirms that whatever pertains
to objectives as given in intuition in space and time
is a posteriori (except, of course, statements about
space and time themselves, as explained in the
Aesthetic). What can be said of objectives a priori
is the general presuppositions of science, as presen-
ted in the Analytic. From Kant's point of view even
though Leibniz makes concessions to bring his view
into harmony with common sense in allowing a distinc-
tion between concepts and phenomena, though it is
merely one between distinct and confused conception;
289
and in treating space and time as phenomena] that is,
Erscheinungen, which in this case, Kant would say,
is indeed Schein, that is, illusion, he still does
not do justice to experience. Leibniz has intellect-
ualized experience, reduced intuition to confusion and
illusion, replaced intuitions by concepts, and asked
us to accept a miracle (pre-established harmony) in
place of communication. In every way, Kant proves
to be the defender of common sense, of common idiom:
we d_o_ know something, we are acquainted with a real
world in space and time, we d communicate information
to one another, we live in a world of real contingency
and not just in one that appears to be so though it is
all necessitated and predictable in the mind of God.
Kant refused to a priorize about the world: his a
priori is simply the basic rules of science. He re-
fuses to accept the notion that for any and every leaf
that falls from a tree I can, without consulting any
observation whatever, predict that no one will ever
find another leaf that totally resembles this one.
His point is: Nothing whatsoever can be said signif-
icantly about the world without the support of intuit-
tion.

All of the difference between these two points of

view comes down, for Kant,to a surreptitious substitu-
tion ('subreption' is the term Kant sometimes uses,
that is, 'surreptition') between concept and intuition,
intuition and understanding. In Leibniz, there are
really only intelligibiiia and only apparent sensibilia,
only the intellect is involved in knowledge and thus
in science; the world of the senses is that of things
in themselves confusedly revealed. All of this still
breathes the air of the dead past, of medieval and
Aristotelian metaphysics. Kant is lifting the curtain
on the world as revealed in science. The pure inter-
lect has been dethroned in favor of a co-regency with
empirical observation. There is no way to go back to
the perfect logicized, mathematized world of the ra-
tionalists though Kant makes an adequate place for
perfectly formal logic, a respect in which he is far
in advance of Locke and Hume.

2. Agreement and Incompatibility. Here Kant is

speaking of the nature of opposition. Logical in-
compatibility is the contradiction of one proposition
by another which is its precise negation. In this
sense, any two or more propositions are compatible,
can be true together, asserted in conjunction with

290
one another, if they do not contradict one another.
But this tells us something only about concepts, as-
sertions, propositions. If with Leibniz we make no
real distinction between thought and intuition and
make intuition into a confused form of thought, real-
ity is represented only through pure understandina
says Kant. We can then conceive of no incompatibil-
ity between realities for all truths or realities
are compatible, can be true together, so long as they
do not contradict one another. Contradiction is the
only incompatibility that is here allowed. But, says
Kant, the real in actual appearance does conflict;
for example, forces can be in opposition to one another
in a straight line.

Pleasures and pains may oppose one another. This

point is by no means as well taken as the former.
There is, in fact, little to be gained by insisting
on the common sense notion of conflict, as between
forces or inclinations for these are perfectly adequate-
Xy described by reference to the mass and motion of
bodies moving in given directions. (There also seems
to be nothing in what Leibniz says that would make
vector addition impossible.) A collision is only
a set of motions that may have a certain special in-
terest for us. It does not seem that such facts as
these have the consequences Kant speaks of: a con-
fusion in Leibniz's system arising from an intellect-
ualization of the object of appearance and making it
impossible for him to recognize palpable facts such as
opposition of forces.

3. Inner and Outer. In this subsection Kant pre-

sents another well-known aspect of Leibniz's philos-
ophy which again concerns the intellectualization of
reality at the expense of what is truly and distinctly
intuition. What do we mean by inner? In general, that
is inner which never reveals itself and is never detect-
able by anything other than itself. The inmost of some
person may be defined as that which one cannot know
about a person without being that person. Phenomenal
substances are quite different from this. Their inner
and outer being are one and the same. Their being is
exhausted in the relations they have to other things:
each of them is a complex (Inbegriff) of such relations.
Substances in space are known only through their powers,
their exertions, their pushes and pulls.

All of this, however derives from the fact that

these are objects in space, apprehended through
291
intuition. But according to Leibniz, intuition is
only illusory and everything is apprehended only
through the understanding, distinctly, albeit some-
times confusedly. If there is no real intuition of
outward things affording some knowledge of the prop-
erties of things, there remains only inner sense.
Things must then reveal properties of thought or what
is analogous to thought since this is the essence of
inner, as against outer, activity. This occurs with
Leibniz ' s intellectualization of the cognitive facul-
ties. All substances are noumena rather than phen-
omena, and their being is only inner rather than
physical or spatial. Having only powers of inner
representation, they are monads. Kant's objections
are amplified in the section that follows ("Comment
on the Amphiboly").

4. Matter and Form. The intellectualization of

the world has still another serious consequence: a
reversal of the formal and material aspects of exper-
ience. Here Kant hopes to set matters straight from
the "pan-logism" of Leibniz. Kant already employs
the classical concepts of matter and form in a
unique way: pure and empirical concepts, and pure
intuitions fall to the side of form, empirical intui-
tions to those of matter.
In this section, our attention .is first drawn to
older, more scholastic or Aristotelian uses of these
notions. Matter is the determinable, the to-be-deter-
mined; form is the determining or determinant. In the
older logic, the general is the matter, the specific
difference is the form. Thus, the form makes something
specific of the general, which is a kind of raw mater-
ial. In a judgment the mere concepts, in and by
themselves, are mere matter for which form must be sup-
plied by the actual assertion which links concepts by
the copula and other logical particles. In general,
parts are matter and only the structural relation of
them gives form. Limitless reality is the matter of
all possibility ; the limitation of it to distinguish
one thing from another is form.

It is characteristic of the understanding to put

matter before form in the sense that it exercises it-
self upon it and specifies it. Accordingly, in Leib-
niz the substance, the monad, comes first and is the
source of its determinations (actions, properties,
relation). Thus, space and time are but relations of
substances. (Kant expounds his own rival views of
292
space and time in 8 in the Aesthetic, in B ) .
That, in fact, is how things would have to be if
space and time were determinations (properties, rela-
tions) of things themselves. But, in fact, the re-
verse is the case: sensate intuitions are determined
by the forms of intuition. We do not grasp a ready-
made, pre-existing world of things in themselves which
is at all levels (whether the higher logical or lower
intuitional levels) a world apprehended by the under-
standing. Space and time, instead of being determin-
ations arising out of substances, precede the matter
of appearances, sensations, as their form, and make
appearances possible. The world we perceive is not
a finished datum, something given, presented to us
but rather a dandum, something to be given, on which
the categories and pure intuitions impress their form.

Thus, according to Kant, Leibniz's error lies in

the scope of the operations of thought, extending it-
self over all experience. On the contrary, says Kant,
we must totally and really distinguish intuition and
thought. We must accord priority to the forms of
intuition, space and time, over the matter of exper-
ience, empirical intuition. The consequence of not
doing so would, of course, be that the explanation of
the synthetic and a priori character of the proposi-
tions of mathematics, the burden of the Aesthetic, would
have to be abandoned, and there would be consequences
also elsewhere if the distinction between appearances
and things themselves were not recognized. It is
these larger consequences which are ultimately to
concern to Kant in the Amphiboly.

III. Comment on the Amphiboly of the Concepts of

Reflection
Drawing on a comparison with Aristotle's doctrine
of topoi, Kant begins these amplifying comments by
characterizing as transcendental topics, the operation
we referred to above as transcendental destination.
(Topics is made plural in analogy with mathematics,
physics, and so on, though it is topic in Kant.) The
assignment of concepts to sensibility or to the under-
standing (which would be designated its transcendental
place, or topos) is then the task of transcendental
topics. Care in following this procedure will pre-
vent those vacuous efforts whose consequences have
already been shown. Without careful consideration of

293
the place of concepts or objectives, only a very un-
certain use will be made of them, and what may appear
to be synthetic principles will turn up which critical
reason cannot acknowledge.

Kant now re-states the criticism of Leibniz, ampli-

fying the account here and there. (It is repeated
still another time below.)

1) Leibniz compared the objects of the senses in

respect to their identity and difference only in the
understanding. Since he did not consider them as
objects in intuition, fully distinct from understanding,
he extended to objects of the senses his principle of
the identity of indiscernibles, which really applies
only to concepts. If I consider a drop of water solely
from the standpoint of concepts, I cannot distinguish
it from any other drop if it is truly coextensive with
its concept. But if I take seriously the fact that it
is a sensible object, that it and its concept are not
one and the same, and that, in general, the objects of
the senses are not just confused concepts, I must ad-
mit that it has its place not only in the understanding,
but in sensate intuition, in space. An object which
occupies place b_ can resemble fully and perfectly
another object in place a_. The difference of place
makes the distinctiveness of objects not only possible
but necessary. Leibniz's law of indescernibility is
not a law of nature: it is only an analytical rule of
the comparison of things through mere concepts. Thus,
by making a mistaken assignment or destination to rep-
resentations (or objectives, as we called t h e m ) , by
assigning to the understanding what belongs in intui-
tion, Leibniz was compelled to make false assertions
about the identity and difference of these represen-
tations. The faulty assignment is an example of
amphiboly.

2) The second erroneous consequence of Leibniz's

intellectualization of experience concerns agreement
and incompatibility. So long as we restrict oppos-
ition to logical contradiction, and interpret all the
data of experience as being conceptual in nature,
whether distinctly or confusedly, there can be no
conflict between realities: all true assertions are
compatible with one another. But Kant thinks that
restricting opposition to logical contradiction elim-
inates the possibility of the manifestation of oppos-
ing mechanical forces. Real opposition, he says,

294
"occurs whenever A - B = 0, that is, where one reality
totally cancels the effectiveness of another, something
which the conflicts and contrary workings of nature
ceaselessly exhibit to us1.' He says that mechanics even
formalizes this in a priori rules which allow for the
opposition of directed forces. Of this, he says, the
(Leibnizian) transcendental concept of reality knows
nothing. But all that Kant has in mind here is probably
the law of the addition of vectors. It is not obvious
that Leibniz would wish to or would have to repudiate
this.

Kant's application of the amphiboly to Leibnizian

doctrine of the illusory nature of evil is perhaps more
convincing. He holds that here a real conflict, between
good and evil, is only seemingly eliminated by Leibniz
because appearances are not taken seriously as distinct
from things in themselves. Evil is presented in analogy
to phenomenal space and time, as the consequence of
but a confused and limited view of things just as per-
ception is but a confused form of thought.

3) The third conflict between Leibniz's philosophy

and the more empirical view which Kant defends turns on
the question of inner and outer. We begin again with
the fact that Kant demands a transcendental assignment
or, in fact, re-assignment of objectives not as in
Leibniz, wholly to the understanding, as things in
themselves, but as the situation demands, some to the
understanding, others to intuition. For Leibniz the
outer is merely apparent: All reality is essentially
inner. There only appear to be external relations,
determination and causation from without as if it
affected each substance. There is, in fact, nothing
either external or composite. The real is to begin
with the simple and indivisible, the monad. Since the
monads do not affect, touch, or move one another, their
activity is wholly inner, a condition which is wholly
one of representing (Zustand der Vorstellungen). As a
consequence, their apparent communication can only be
regarded as one of manifesting complementarity or in
concert by a pre-established harmony, since it cannot
derive from physical influence. The alternative would
be to have the harmony derive from a constant divine
re-adjustment of one substance to another (systema
assistentiae). Leibniz chooses a perfect pre-establish-
ment that is possible only with a life that is wholly
one of ideas (at higher and lower levels of clarity);
with anything subject to contingent external influ-
ences this would scarcely be thinkable.

295
 Kant's point is to suggest (he does not say) that
all of this, although vastly impressive, is just as in-
credible as it sounds, and he refuses to say, credo
quia incredibile. The mistake derives from a faulty as-
signment. We must recognize the ultimate difference
of concepts and intuitions, of intuition and under-
standing, and of appearances and things in themselves.
A faulty assignment will lead us to try to believe that
all experience is inner, that there is no real commun-
ication .

Although Kant's own account makes appearances vir-

cually inner, he would remind us that he is merely
not claiming to know things in themselves, and that
he never either obscures the distinction between intui-
tion and understanding, between concepts and intui-
tions, or accepts either Hume's sensualism or Leibniz's
conceptualism as universal formulas for the mind or
experience. He never regards intuitions as projections
of ourselves. He merely claims that whatever the
character of what they reveal to us may be, apart from
experience, it is an analytic truth that we are in no
position to say what it is.

4) The fourth error which Kant wishes to expose is

Leibniz's view of space and time. Kant takes everything
for granted here, offering only the merest suggestion
of what Leibniz actually said about these topics. But
his approach is like the previous. Leibniz has, in
effect, either made the wrong decision in the transcen-
dental assignment of space and time, or he has proced-
ed wholly without submitting the question of their
destination to transcendental reflection. Things are
intelligible substances for Leibniz (substantiae
noumena), space is a certain order in the community of
substances, and time is the dynamic consequence of their
states. Space and time are at once thought to be both
merely confused (inner) states of the substances
(monads) and also self-subsistent entities that are
prior to things. He has tried to see them both as ap-
pearances and as things in themselves. But space and
time are not things in themselves or even confused
aspects of them. Even if we would say something sig-
nificant (that is, in the form of synthetic proposi-
tions) of things in themselves, it could not be applied
to appearances. Space and time are not aspect or
relations of things themselves but are formal deter-
minations of appearances. We have no knowledge of
things themselves. Space and time have thus been
erroneously assigned by Leibniz.

296
 Kant makes no effort to continue the program he
worked out for the four areas of reflective amphiboly.
The fourth concerned matter and form. Instead, he con-
siders the amphiboly involved in faulty reflection on
the transcendental place of physical matter. Here
again, the doctrine Kant has in mind is that of regard-
ing matter as a substratum into whose inmost nature we
cannot penetrate with the mere powers of our senses.
This is the approach of certain metaphysicians --
Leibniz may not be meant. Kant here not only strikes
some well-directed blows against these but also antici-
pates and, in effect, attacks our own turn of the cen-
tury "intuitionists" (not in Kant's sense) such as
Bergson, whose philosophy represents a strong reaction
against nineteenth century materialism and positivism.
The burden of this reaction is that intellect can never
offer anything but the general or formal account of the
physical world. Science uses an ever finer sieve of
relations through which however this knowledge inevi-
tably slips. Bergson1s Introduction to Metaphysics
sets forth as the end which the philosopher should
seek with the aid not of scientific method, classifi-
cation, generalization and theory (though these are
conceded to have value of a certain sort) but ,of intui-
tion, an intuitive penetration of the mystery of being.

Kant is always a sworn enemy of anything that

smacks of mystagoguery since it represents a misunder-
standing of both science and metaphysics. Science will
continue to examine the inner aspects of nature (in the
only sense that has any meaning for us) and no one can
know in advance how far this can or cannot proceed.
Had he lived to witness the triumphs of science in the
next two centuries, he would have seen how deep the
penetration would prove to be.

It is nonsense, Kant thinks, to suppose science

somehow "doesn't carry us far enough". The complaint
that we cannot penetrate the inmost nature of things
is unfair and unreasonable because it demands the im-
possible, namely that we should grasp with the pure
understanding what escapes the senses. Intuitionists
want to apprehend cognitively, even to intuit things
(this fits Bergson literally), without senses. They
presume to find in man a cognitive faculty which is not
only in degree but absolutely different from mere fin-
ite powers, and to ask us to be not human beings but
beings of which we cannot even know whether they are

297
possible, let alone know how they are constituted.
Transcendental questions, touching the so-called
inner nature of things, are not even in principle an-
swerable, and the last thing Kant wants is to have his
thing in itself interpreted as an inmost mystery of
nature which we may with some unique, strenuous effort
come to behold. We can answer them neither by deeper
and deeper scientific investigation, even if the depths
of nature were laid bare to us, nor by other means.
They are, in effect, nonsensical. "We can understand
only that which involves something that corresponds to
our words in intuition" (A 277/B333). Even if there is
some kind of unity that underlies and connects the
world of the senses, it is not something we shall be
able to unravel. We are limited in our knowledge to
our intuition and indeed are limited to this even in
our acquaintance with ourselves.

The conclusion Kant draws is that these errors are

owing to a faulty assignment of matters of cognitive
decision, treating as things in themselves those which
can only belong among appearances, or the reverse.

IV. (Supplement 1)
The want of transcendental reflection, or a mis-
taken use of it, misled a great philosopher, Leibniz,
says Kant, into constructing a system of intellectual
knowledge which undertakes to determine its objects
without the cooperation of sense. For this reason, if
for no other, it is worth inquiring after the source
of amphiboly in it. (This section may be condensed
since it repeats much of what has gone before.)

We can say, whatever agrees with or conflicts with

a concept in general also agrees with or conflicts with
a particular comprised under the concept (dictum de
omni et nullo). But we cannot say, whatever is not
contained in a concept is not contained in a particular
comprised under it, because in fact, particulars in-
herently contain in themselves more than is contained
in their concept. But Leibniz's system is built on <
this. We may illustrate this as follows. ;

298
 a) Leibniz takes propositions about substances in
intension. '

In 'S is P', P is a notion

comprised in S, which em-
braces it. (Whatever holds
of S, the concept in gener-
al, holds also of any P
comprised under it.) P is
contained in S.

b) Kant wants to take propositions about sub-

stances in extension.

In ' S is P' , P is a set of

objectives in whose mem-
bership S falls. (We can-
not say, what does not
hold of S does not hold of
P . ) The S's are among the
P ' s.

Leibniz's interpretation universalized, leads

directly to a notion which underlies the Principle of
the Identity of Indiscernibles: if in the concept of a
thing in general a certain discrimination is not to be
encountered, neither will it be encountered in any of
those things themselves. It follows that all things are
altogether alike (einerlei, numero eadem) if they are
not distinguished from one another (in respect to qual-
ity and quantity) in concept. This ignores the fact
that in a concept of a thing, we ignore the conditions
of the experience of it.

Three of the four amphibolous results in faulty

transcendental reflection are gone over again in the
fourth paragraph in this subsection. (This is the third
time Kant has gone through it. The first began in
A 263/B 318, the second in A 271/B 3 2 7 ) . Kant has
argued that in mere concepts of things, much is ab-
stracted from, and thus left to one side, in what is
present in actual intuition. The philosopher, he says,
is in such a hurry to draw a total to the nature of
things that he omits what can be found only by the la-
borious pursuit of experience, through intuition. He now
repeats what he regards as the consequences of this.

299
 1) One cubic foot can be repeated over and over
again. But two cubic feet or two objects in space
each two cubic feet in volume, are distinguishable
by their place: this is not contained in their con-
cept. It is space itself, which is a condition for
appearance in addition to concepts. Both must be pre-
sent .

2) Two concepts are identical if not logically

incompatible, contradictory of one another. This can-
not be literally said of objects in appearances: it
conflicts with and cannot be reconciled with the fact
that there are true opposites in experience, accord-
ing to Kant; for example, opposing forces annihilate
one another, set one another at zero.

3) The third example is, of course, the inner

and the outer. Here Kant adds little that is new to
this question beyond what he has already said. Treat-
ing appearances as if they were objects of the intel-
lect rather than of both thought and intuition, they
can only be thought to be wholly inner, the model of
thought being inner representation. As a result, sub-
stances can only be thought to be monads which have
a wholly intellectual existence ranging from the most
rudimentary to the most exalted type. There is no
real distinction between intuition and thought for
the first is only a confused form of the second. With
this, however, the system cannot do justice to our
experience without distortion and unintelligibility,
as already noted above.

In the remainder of the section, Kant goes over

many by now familiar topics, some already considered,
such as the role of categories and intuition in
experience, the error in ignoring the distinction be-
tween appearances and things in themselves, the limit-
ing or regulative role of things themselves or noumena,
and the cautious, essentially negative manner in which
we must speak of these.

He repeats that the greatest temptation to be

avoided lies in taking concepts without intuitions,
thought without perception, logical form without con-
tent, as if this could reveal to us something that
can exist in itself as a transcendent, noumenal object.
Any scheme which, like Leibniz's, universalizes the con-
ceptual, allowing intuitions or phenomena only a place i
as degenerate forms of this, has misused concepts and

300
displaced them from their inherent direction and pur-
pose. This, the topics of the amphiboly are already a
part of the transcendental dialectic which follows
after the second supplement.

V. (Supplement 2)
As an appendix to an appendix, Kant adds a brief
note regarding the idea of negation which it is worth-
while to have although it scarcely adds anything es-
sential to the Critique. He thinks it necessary to
round out the system of the Transcendental Analytic,
which is now finally concluded.

"The highest concept with which one is accustomed

to initiate transcendental philosophy," he says, "is
that of the possible, and the impossible." If we are
surprised by this, since the Critique has really had
no peers or predecessors, we must recall that he is
still formally "working inside the system" (to borrow
a useful current political phrase). This can be seen
by a glance at what he envisages of philosophy and
metaphysics as a whole in the penultimate section
of the Critique, the Architectonic of Pure Reason,
A 832/ B 860ff: he is determined to clean out the
Augean stable, not to burn it down.

If now the possible and impossible occupy the

whole terrain itself, we must ask what the terrain it-
self is that is exhausted in this division. This he
identifies as that of an object in general, or as such
(Gegenstand berhaupt). The categories refer inherent-
ly to objects in general, that is, to any and all ob-
jects, but not to particular objects. They can refer
to something in particular only when there are avail-
able intuitions which of course are nothing in general
but are absolutely particular. For such reasons, Kant
thinks he must follow the general pattern of the
screed of categories (Screed II)to spell out the partic-
ular negations of each of the classes of categories.
We might call these the "counter-categories." It
should be remembered that negation here only has to do
with the categories. The argument seems somewhat arti-
ficial, but it is nevertheless ingenious and well des-
erves the page Kant devotes to it. Neither here nor
of course anywhere else in Kant is there the kind of
pious mystification about nothing that Hegel unfortun-
ately originated and that the existentialists have
suffered from as an occupational disease. He simply
301
thinks we had best devote some thought to the different
kinds of negations we utter. in a more congenial place,
Kant might well have said more about it since it de-
serves thoroughgoing study.

1) Turning first to the categories of quantity

which are built on judgements involving the particles
all, many and one (or as we would say, universal and
existential quantification, and sentences about indi-
viduals) , Kant asks what is excluded by or opposed
by judgment of this sort. Opposed to them would be
the judgment in terms of keines (none, or none at a l l ) ,
that is, a category to which no specifiable intuition
corresponds. Such an "entity" (and, in fact, it proves
not surprisingly to be but a thought-entity, a Gedan-
kending) will be, for example, a noumenon. Such a
thing cannot be reckoned among possibilities, exper-
ience being what it is ( the emphasis is important)
but which also cannot be declared to be flatly an
impossibility. It is that kind of possibility and im'
possibility. It is, as Kant says, an ens rationis, an
empty concept without an object. These qualifications
are of the utmost importance in the sequel in the Ideal
of Pure Reason, where Kant allows and insists upon the
usefulness of such a notion in the total economy of
thought and practice.

2) The classes of the categories of Quality and of

Modality already seem to have negative categories: the
fifth category, Negation, and the complement to the
tenth category, Impossibility. (Perhaps this is only a
minor anomaly, since of course Kant often follows his
own threefold and fourfold divisions very loosely. )
What we have here is simply the notion that some pred-
icate or other has been denied of a subject without
specification of what is present in place of it. So I
can say, the rose was not red, there was no light in
the corner, the house was not warm, and leave matters
at that. These are a kind of privative sentence (cf.
the term deprivation). We seem to have said something
with each of them though we have really only denied
something,, and we may even convey information with
such sentences, but only because of the inferences
people are bound to make, the physical world being
what it is. Thus, if I sayl the house is not warm, you
will probably infer that it is cool, cold, chilly, un-
comfortable, lukewarmish, or what not, though I have
not asserted any of these. This Kant calls the empty
object of a concept; that is, the concept is, for ex-
ample, warm or red and there is no object for it, no

302
corresponding physical state. There are also predi-
cates which are explicitly of a privative sort: Kant
cites cold and shadow. This form of negation he calls
nil privativum.

3) In the third case, Kant confines himself to the

category of substance and the example is somewhat less
convincing than the others. What have we before us
when we have the other necessities of reality but not
substance? It would be a thing that has formal char-
acteristics such as extension in space or in time but
is not truly an object that is being intuited. Dream
objects would be like this, though we also seem to
lend credence at the time to their being substances.
In any event, imaginary objects are like this. Kant
says that here we have an empty intuition without an
object, an ens imaginarium.

4) In the fourth class, the example and the re-

marks are quite clear, but some questions must be
raised about this particular form of negation. Kant
describes it as one of simple self-contradiction, a
concept incompatible with itself. Kant should have
noted that what the tenth category covers is not logi-
cal contradiction,for the categories have nothing to do
with logic (except that self-consistency must of course
be m a i n t a i n e d ) . The example Kant gives, however, is
almost consistent with the test of the Critique : it
is impossible to draw a closed rectilinear figure
with two sides only. If we concede to Kant that the
propositions of geometry are synthetic and a p r i o r i ,
this sort of figure will have to be excluded as some-
thing other than a logical impossibility. But then we
recall that mathematics is not under the sway of the
categories as are natural science and psychology, yet
Kant has said at the outset that these negations fol-
low the order and direction of the categories; and it
is evident that categorial impossibility is what is
really called for here (see Postulates of Empirical
Thought, A 219/B 266 to A 2 2 4 / 2 7 1 ) . Kant should have
produced a more appropriate example. But if he had
produced an example of something that negated the
proper use of the categories (interpreting the present
sense of negation as the opposite of the tenth
c a t e g o r y ) , would it also be an example of nihil neg-
ativum, an "empty object without a concept," as he
says here? I am strongly inclined to doubt it. That
it would be an Unding, as he less formally character-
izes it, may be accepted without much argument.

303
 Kant declares 1) and 4) to be empty concepts where-
as 2) and 3) are vacuous or absent data for concepts.
The purpose of his remark is uncertain although its
point is well taken. Negation, he says, no doubt mean-
ing 2 ) , and the mere form of intuition, meaning 3 ) , are,
without something real, no objects. Perhaps he wishes
to say that dark or shadow or cold have significance
only because certain positive co-relatives are signifi-
cant, for example, light or warm.

304
1: 7 In 1787 a reviewer of B took note of a contra-
diction between the last sentence of I and the second
sentence of the second paragraph of II. Replying to this
in an essay on the use of teleological principles in
philosophy (1788), Kant maintains that the term 'pure'
is used in different senses in these two passages. "In
the first passage I said that those a priori modes of
knowledge (Erkenntnisse) are pure which have no admix-
ture of anything empirical", and he used as an example
of a mixed judgment, "every alteration has a cause."
In the second passage, "I mentioned this very proposi-
tion as an example of pure a priori knowledge, that is,
one which does not depend upon anything empirical."
Kant concedes he might have avoided misunderstanding
"through using an example...'whatever happens has a
cause.1 Here there is no admixture of anything empiri-
cal." He says that in the Critique he is concerned
only with the second of these. The latter proposition
is the thesis of the Second Analogy (see Transcendental
Analytic) where it reads in A: Everything that occurs
(begins to be) presupposes something upon which it fol-
lows in accordance with a rule. In B, on the other
hand, Kant has actually returned to the version which
involves the concept of alteration: All alterations oc-
cur in accordance with the law of the connection of
cause and effect. (For further discussion of Kant's
use of the terms 'a priori' and 'pure' see Kemp Smith's
Commentary, p. 53-56 The essay of Kant referred to
is "ber den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der
Philosophie", 1788.)

2: 14 Kant more properly uses 'a priori1 as an adverb:

How are synthetic judgments possible a priori? I have
generally but not invariably followed the current con-
vention. The convention in fact rests on a fundamental
mis-reading of Kant. It is no more grammatical change
to go from adverb to adjective here. As an adverb, Kant
emphasizes that we judge in an a priori manner: the
mental or intellectual act of judging is what is adverb-
ially qualified. The current convention makes it appear
that the "a priority" is an adjectival property of some
entity called a judgment which is then always equated
with proposition of sentence. Hence I follow the con-
vention reluctantly in speaking of Kant. Kant some-
times, but rarely, says Satz (sentence) instead of
Urteil (judgment).

3= 15 It should be observed that both sections V and

VI make their appearance only in B and that nearly the
whole of the first three paragraphs in V appeared in

305
almost identical form in the Prolegomena. Thus it ap-
pears to represent Kant's considered thought on the
subject.

4: 29 The subsection symbol appears for the first

time in Edition B.

5: 30 At the outset of this section we read that "that

kind of intuition which relates to the object only
through sensation is empirical" (A20/B34) while in the
Conclusions of 3 he says that colors, tones and heat
"are only sensations and not intuitions." Since the
inclusion of sensations under intuition is again re-
peated in B (Transcendental Deduction) we may presume
this to be his more considered opinion (B 147).

6: 3 2 Kant presents a formal system of definition of.

all the things he is speaking of as "representations"
only when he introduces the last of these, idea. The
list includes, among others, sensation, intuition, con-
cept, category, and notion. It appears at A319/B376.

7: 36 At this point an explanation is necessary to set

an important textual matter straight. In A the Meta-
physical and Transcendental Expositions, Errterungen,
are not separated. What is essential to the latter is
found in argument 3 for space and also in argument 3
for time. In B, Kant separated out the matter of the
Metaphysical from that of the Transcendental Expositions
in both the space and the time section. The material
of argument 3 (the Transcendental Exposition) for space
was now shifted to 3, the previous argument 4 now re-
appeared as 3, and previous argument 5 was rephrased
and reappeared as 4. But in the time section, a dif-
ferent revision occurred. The five arguments previous-
ly presented as I, II, III, IV, and V, now appeared
merely renumbered as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. But argument
III, that is, what amounts to the Transcendental Expo-
sition of time, remained as 3, instead of being taken
over wholly into 5, as had been done under space.
Despite this, an explicit Transcendental Exposition
also appears, as 5. Editions and translations usually
show the changes quite explicitly, but the reader may
easily be confused at first.

8= 3 6 For another textual point I may refer the reader

to what Kant says at the paragraph beginning just after
mark A89 (middle of B121) about the purpose of arguments
in the Aesthetic.
9= 42 cf. Preface to B, xxii n.
306
10= 51 George Boas, "The Acceptance of Time", Univer-
sity of California Publications in Philosophy, Volume
16, no. 12.

11: 56 Albert Einstein, Relativity, the Special and

General Theory, tr. by R. W. Lawson, New York, Henry
Holt and Company, 1921. p. 32.

12: 56 Op. cit. p. 36

13= 58 As anticipated in 4 (3) .

14: 71 We can perhaps best explain this phrase, which

turns up on some important occasions in the Critique,
by trying to realize what Berkeley and other theolo-
gians had tried to say when they attributed to God a
direct knowledge of the physical world without having
to rely upon a sensorium. If in imagining something
remote from me in time and space I could now have it
before me but without stimulus to my sensory apparatus
or if in the very act of imagining something I realized
it, I should be having an intellectual intuition of it.
Perhaps telepathy, if established as real and not ex-
plicable by physical means, would furnish a further
example. Our own intuitions sensate or formal, Kant
is saying, are not like this.

15: 95 In B Kant here resumes the numbering of sub-

sections in this manner. The preceding 8 is found
towards the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic. The
series continues through the Transcendental Deduction
to 27, where it terminates. Kant may have wished
to suggest or to underscore further a certain unity
or continuity running through the Aesthetic and the
Analytic of Concepts; possibly that these two together
set forth the first part of the threefold transcendent-
al doctrine of concepts, judgments, and inferences.

16: 9 8 Of course we are thinking of the analogous

implicative formula or sentence for Barbara rather
than an inference in accordance with Barbara.

17:114 A rulei is category or a categorial principle.

A rule2 is typically an empirical concept or an em-
pirical generalization.
18:12 0 it is well to pause at this point to get a few
textual matters clearly in order. First there are com-
paratively minor matters of titles and numberings of
chapters and sections. It is well, I think, to follow

307
Kemp Smith, who cites Michaelis, in revising the head-
ing of the chapter that now begins so that it reads
"Analytic of Concepts" rather than "Transcendental
Analytic," which appears in the original editions:
what Kant now presents is not the second chapter of
the latter (which is divided first into Books and only
then into chapters) but rather the second chapter under
the "Analytic of Concepts." The first chapter, just
concluded is the Clue, or Leitfaden.

The numbering that continues in the next sub-

section as 13 is added only in B and continues through-
out the Deduction in B up to 27. The text of 13 is
otherwise the same in both editions. 14 is slightly
enlarged by some three paragraphs at the end which re-
place the paragraph closing this section in A.
As everyone knows, the actual deduction is to-
tally recast in B, that is, what Kant calls Section 2
under Chapter II. Following the example of Kemp Smith
and others, we first consider the version of Section 2
in A and then proceed to the restatement in B. At the
end we then come to the second grand division of the
Transcendental Analytic, the Analytic of Principles.

Since we have not quite arrived at the revisions

of B, we shall delay further comments regarding the
two editions until we come to the deduction proper,
section 2 in A and 15 in B.

19:12 7 The paragraph that closes 14 in A may well be

taken up at the beginning of Section 3.
20:129 Adickes supposed that the deduction set forth
in Section 2 and Section 3 amounted really to some six
distinct deductions. Numerous cross connections are
proposed and suggestions are made as to how bits and
pieces may have been moved from one of these "deduc-
tions" to another. His division is as follows.
I. First Deduction: A98 to the middle of Alll,
at the beginning of subsection 4, "Pre-
liminary Explanation," etc. This deduc-
tion comprises the threefold synthesis.
II. Second Deduction: The first three para-
graphs only of subsection 4.
III. Third Deduction: The remaining paragraphs
of subsection 4.
IV. Fourth Deduction: Beginning of Section 3,
almost to A120 where a paragraph begins
with the words "We will now, starting from
308
 below" etc. (Kemp Smith's translation).
V. Fifth Deduction: Beginning at about A120 and
running to the middle of A125.
VI. Sixth Deduction: The last deduction begins
at the paragraph just preceding A126 and
runs to the "Summary Representation."
We may follow Adickes' division for certain pur-
poses, perhaps other than those that led him to propose
it. That is, one does have a certain sense of Kant's
having a go at the deduction several times over. He
confessed having had great difficulty with the deduc-
tion. Repetition in the Critique is often explicit.
When we compare the titles and subject matters of Sec-
tion 2 and Section 3 we do not detect much of a dif-
ference between them. Both the sections are concerned
with the same material except for the fact that the
imagination has a more prominent place in the second.

Kemp Smith proposes several different "stages"

as the way to define and delimit the course of the ar-
gument. His division is four-fold.
I. First Stage: That of the transcendental
object without co-operation of the cate-
gories: A104-110; A84-92 (B116-124). That
is, most of subsection 3 in Section 2, and
all of 13.
II. Second Stage: That of the categories with-
out co-operation of the productive imagina-
tion: A92-94 (5 14 as originally presented
in A) ; A95-97 (introductory paragraphs in
Section 2 ) ; A110-114 (all of subsection 4 ) .
III. Third Stage: That of the productive imagi-
nation, without mention of the threefold
synthesis: all of Section 3 in various
subordinate stages: A94-95 (last two para-
graphs of 14 in A ) ; A76-79 (first five
paragraphs of 10).
IV. Fourth Stage: That of the threefold trans-
cendental synthesis: A98-104 ("Preliminary
Reminder" and Subsections 1, 2, and first
two paragraphs of 3 ) ; A97-98 (two paragraphs
next preceding Preliminary Remark).

21:138 Moritz Schlick, "Die Kausalitt in der gegenwr-

tigen Physik," Naturwissenschaften, Bd. 19, 19 31.
22:140 i may remark again that if we wish to learn what
Kant formally intended by his terminology we should

309
examine the table of the dichotomous divisions that are
comprised under representation1 in the introductory dis-
cussion of the Transcendental Dialectic, A319/B376.

23=159 The designations 'objective deduction1 and 'sub-

jective deduction' are introduced by Kant in the Preface
to A, at A xvii.

24=160 This is further developed in B in 16.

25=165 Zweig, Arnulf, editor and translator, Immanuel
Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799, Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1967.

26=167 This we have previously spoken of also as the

Self.
27=168 These were sketched out earlier, p. 93.

28=208 Discussed in further detail below, p. 319 ff. v.

also K. Aschenbrenner, "The Derivation and Completeness
of the Analogies of Experience," Akten des 4. Interna-
tionalen Kant-Kongresses, Mainz, 1974. W. De Gruyter,
Berlin, New York.

29=2 42 It will be convenient to number the paragraphs

in this section from 1 to 28 for handier reference than
is afforded by the usual numbering. We follow the text
of B which adds paragraphs 1 and 2 but is otherwise
identical with A.

30=251 A rather difficult textual question arises here.

The first edition reads "Der grosste Teil der wirkenden
Ursache in der Natur ist mit ihren Wirkungen zugleich,
und die Zeitfolge der letzteren wird nur dadurch veran-
lasst, dass die Ursache ihre ganze Wirkung nicht in
einem Augenblick verrichten kann. Aber in dem Augen-
blicke, da sie zuerst entsteht, ist sie mit der Kausa-
litt ihrer Ursache jederzeit zugleich," etc. Rosen-
kranz thought that Ursache in the first line should read
Ursachen, and accordingly that der grosste Theil meant
"the majority of cases.' Kemp Smith and even Max Muel-
ler follow this. Grland, however, in Cassirer's edi-
tion lets Ursache stand, as I believe it should. If
it stands, the result is that Kant's meaning is clearly
this: the larger part of the effective causal action
of a cause on its effect is contemporaneous with its
effect, and not the great majority of efficient causes,
etc. What Kant means is that cause and its effect
overlap. Only after the cause begins to act is there
a noticeable change, which from then on we regard as
310
the effect; the cause may also continue to act. To
read the passage as the translators do is to attri-
bute to Kant the inconsistency of saying in one sen-
tence that in most cases causes are contemporary with
effects and in the very next that in the moment in
which they arise effects are invariably (jederzeit)
contemporaneous with their causes.

31:267 "Kant's Critique of Berkeley", Journal of the

History of Philosophy, Vol. XI, no. I, January 1973.
32:274 This subsection added in Edition B.
33:276 This metaphor, it may be remarked, may be of
more than incidental interest if with Karl Groos-we
see in it a possible evidence that Kant had some ac-
quaintance with Hume's Treatise (cf. "Hat Kant Humes
Treatise Gelesen?" Kantstudien, 5: 177-181, 1901.

Hume uses the same metaphor for a not dissimilar pur-

pose (Treatise, Book I, part IV, Section VII) and it
may have lodged itself in Kant's thought to emerge at
this appropriate moment. The point is, Kant is thought
to have known very little English but of course Hume is
everywhere present in his thoughts in writing the
Critique. Only the Enquiry Concerning Human Under-
standing was available in a German translation to Kant
and it has only certain of the fundamentals of Hume's
philosophy of mind, though by no means all. If on the
other hand, he had somehow a knowledge of Hume's Trea-
tise we would have to take this into account in apprais-
ing his response to Hume in the Critique. Quite often
he seems to misunderstand Hume's purpose or meaning, or
to ignore the most salient aspects of the argument.
Kant's relation to Hume is in fact in most ways rather
baffling. Of course, no one should overestimate what
may be a mere coincidence in stylistic detail, that is,
the ocean metaphor, nor does Groos. It just may, how-
ever, be relevant.

311
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lated by Norman Kemp Smith, London, Macmillan and
Company.

Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799: 1967,

Edited and translated by Arnulf Zweig, University
of Chicago Press.

Adickes, Erich: 1887, Kants Systematik als System-

bildender Factor, Berlin, Mayer & Muller.

Bennett, Jonathan: 1966, Kant's Analytic. Cambridge,

at the University Press.

Paton, H.J.: 1936, Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, 2

vols. New York, The Macmillan Company.

Smith, Norman Kemp: 1962, A Commentary to Kant's

"Critique of Pure Reason." New York, Humanities
Pre s s.

Strawson, P.F.: 1962, The Bounds of Sense, An Essay on

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. London, Methuen
and Co.

Vaihinger, Hans: 1881, 1892, Commentar zu Kants Kritik

der Reinen Vernunft, 2 vols. Stuttgart, W. Spemann;
Union Deutscher Verlagsgesellschaft.

312
Berkeley, George: 1948 et seq., The Works of George
Berkeley, Edited by A.A. Luce and T.E. Jessop.
London, Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.

Descartes, Rene: 1912, The Philosophical Works of

Descartes, rendered into English by Haldane and
Ross, 2 vols. Cambridge, at the University Press.
Hume, David: 1888 et seq., A Treatise of Human Nature,
Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford University
Press.

Leibniz, G.W.: 1908, The Philosophical Works of

Leibnitz, translated by G.M. Duncan. New York,
Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor.
Locke, John: 1967, An Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing , Edited by John W. Yolton. Everyman's
Library, London, J.M. Dent & Sons.

313
 INDEX OF NAMES

Adickes, E., 129, 156-57, 194, 242

Aebi, Magdalena, 95
Albertus, Magnus, 239
Allison, Henry, 267
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 239
Aristotle, 81, 106, 116, 292-293

Baumgarten, A. G., Preface

Bergson, Henri, 297
Berkeley, George Bishop, 47-48, 64, 193, 262
Boas, George, 51
Braithwaite, R. B., 253
Browning, R., 3
Carnap, R., 251, 253
Cassirer, E., 251 Note 30

Dalton, John, 239

Descartes, R., 7, 49, 68, 113

Einstein, Albert, 56

Fichte, J. G., Preface

Frede, Michael and L. Krger, 104
Galen, 116
Grland, A., 251 Note 30
Groos, Karl, 2 76
Hegel, G. W. F., Preface, 51, 75, 117
Hume, David, Preface, 3, 21, 23, 47, 54, 60, 79, 121-
122, 126-127, 135, 137, 140, 168,
171, 246, 249, 253-254, 260, 262,
272, 285
James, William, 61

Kant, I., Critique of Judgment, 119

Kant and the Romantic Agony, Preface
Keynes, J. M., 221

Lavoisier, Antoine L., 239

Leibniz, G. W., Preface, 25, 49, 66-67, 119, 126, 207,
250, 283 et seq. to end of
section on the Amphiboly

314
Locke, John, 4, 7, 67, 126-127, 137, 140-141, 163,
285, 290
Marx, Karl, 51
Mates, Benson, 206
Michelson-Morley Experiment, 228
Mill, J. S., 221, 249, 253
Mueller, Max, 251 Note 30
Newton, Sir I., 59, 236
Nietzsche, F., 148

Paton, H. , 129
Plato and Platonism, 51, 68, 81, 184
Plotinus, 116
Popper, Sir Karl, 253
Prolegomena, 16, 53, 99, 100, 136, 178

Reichenbach, H., 221

Rosenkranz, Karl, 251 Note 30
Russell, B., Preface, 71, 221

Scheffer, H. M., 103

Schlick, M., 138
Smith, N. K., 7 Note 7, 10, 53, 55, 129, 129 Note 20,
251 Note 30
St. Ansein, 27
Stoics, 116
Strawson, P. F., 73

Vaihinger, H., 129

von Wright, H., 221, 253
Whitehead and Russell, 103
Wittgenstein, L., Preface, 103, 54
Wolff, C , Preface, 25, 66, 68, 119, 135 f, 253

315
 TOPICAL INDEX

Action at a distance, 228

Aesthetic, transcendental, 29-74
Affections, intuitions rest on, 88
Affinity of representations, 160
Amphiboly of the concepts of reflection, 283-304
Analogies of experience, 231-261
Analytic and synthetic, definition of, 9
Analytic Propositions, various interpretations, 10 ff
Analytic of concepts, 86 ff
Analytic of principles, 195 ff
Analytic, transcendental, 83 ff
Anticipations of perception, 227-230
Axioms of intuition, 223-226

Canon and organon, 22, 81

Clue to the discovery of pure concepts of
the understanding, 87-119
Empirical apperception, 152
Empirical realism, and transcendental
idealism, TIER, 64 ff
Enlightenment, the, Preface
Ether, the, 228
Euclid, Theorem, 17

Functions, concepts rest on, 88

Geometry and space, 44
German Idealism, Preface

Highest principle of all analytic judgments, 216-217

Highest principle of all synthetic judgments, 218-219

Inaugural Dissertation of 1770, 46

Incarnation in Christian theology, 184
Inner sense, and time, 60
"I think", not an object known, 187

Judgments of experience, judgments of

perception, 99, 178

Logic, general and formal, 76-77, 79

Logic, transcendental, 75 ff

316
Medieval negative theology, 173
Metaphysical deduction of the categories, 87-119, 26
Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science,
23, 59, 84, 236
Need for critique of pure reason, 42
Negation, nothing, 301-304
Neo-Platonism, 173, 184

Objective deduction, 123, 132

Paradigm case argument, 271
Paradigmatic self, 17 and passim
Permanence, 236 ff
Phenomena and noumena, grounds of the
distinction into, 276-281
Postulates of empirical thought, 262-273
Pre-established harmony, 288 ff
Productive synthesis, 159
Productive imagination, 185
Pure and empirical knowledge, difference between, 3

Refutation of idealism, 267-272

Rules, 18
Rules for devising rules, categories as, 111, 114
Schematism, 198
Screed I, of the categories, 96
Screed II, of the table of judgments, 96
Space, metaphysical and transcendental
expositions, 35-48
Species of logic, 76
State description, 251
Subjective deduction, 124, 132
Synthesis, of apprehension in intuition, 139-143
" , of reproduction in imagination, 143-147
" , of recognition in concepts, 147-154
Synthetic a priori contained in science, 14
Three notions of Self, 169
Time, metaphysical and transcendental
expositions, 51-59
Transcendental deduction of the categories,
in A, 129-163
in B, 165-194, 26
Transcendental ideality and empirical
reality (of space), 49, 65
Transcendental logic, 78-79, 82

317
Unified field theory, 228
Unity of apperception, transcendental, 147-181,
168-169, 231 ff