Kant and the transcendental answer to frailty June 11, 2008

There are two different ways in which transcendental can be understood. On the one hand, we can claim the transcendentiality is the transcendent; something which exists outside the sphere of all possible cognitions – something not able to be given in empirical consciousness. On the other, the transcendental is that which lies at the ground of another thing, something without which it cannot be thought, given, or experienced. This type of the transcendent is what Kant is approaching in the Critique of Pure Reason – that without which we could not have the experiences – the phenomenal experiences – which we have. So when he speaks of a “transcendental unity of apperception,” it is clear why this is synonymous with a “primitive” unity. The unity of our manifold is a unity of possibilities, not of the content given through sense, but of a unity of the formal conditions of the sense of all objects. So, when he speaks of the transcendent, Kant is more grounded than would appear. For although the manifold can be considered as a “virtual” space, the conditions of it are the borders, boundaries, and delimitations, beyond which nothing can occur to us. The identification of an a priori action or faculty is then a concept which we synthesize from a series, disparate parts, and unity transcendentally – the unity is extant beforehand. We don’t unify it, but its unity is a necessary precondition. We identify it in unity.

This allows him to write, for instance, that:

It is by means of the transcendental unity of apperception that all the manifold given in an intuition is united into a conception of the object. On this account it is called objective, and must be distinguished from the subjective unity of consciousness, which is a determination of the internal sense, by means of which the said manifold in intuition is given emiprically to be so united.

The internal sense is, of course, Time. By means of conjoining different events occurring in time, which means affecting these events by our filtration of them – in order to be understood – , we make, of our will and volition, our imagination, a determinate representation of ourselves to ourselves. But his representation of ourselves differs from the transcendental unity of apperception, for my empirical perceiving of myself differs from the foundation of this possible cognition. This foundation, contrary to the empirical, the phenomenal world of sense, is:

“the pure form of intuition in time, merely as an intuition, which contains a given manifold, is subject to the original unity of consciousness, and that solely by means of the necessary relation of the manifold in intuition to the I think, consequently by means of the pure synthesis of the understanding, which lies a priori at the foundation of all empirical synthesis.

It’s interesting, in this sense, that Kant disparages the analysis of concepts as “empirical.” In fact, his rationalist roots, which up until now were expressed only in the form of these transcendental arguments, takes on a dogmatic stance. The determinations made “in concreto” are subject to error – “One person connects the notion conveyed in a word with one thing, another with another thing…[and that which] is given by experience [is not] necessarily and universally valid.” Similarly, these empirical effects of consciousness, effects of error, are listed elsewhere as memories, misrepresentations, illusions of judgments. But most importantly, I think, is that our living-in-the-world is the source of error, while only its possibility is the source of absolutely true concepts. It appears to be a kind of Platonic inversion – there are no longer transcendent forms, but transcendental foundations, and these grounds are purer than the life they make possible.

Kantian apperception June 10, 2008

Of the Possibility of a Conjunction of the Manifold Representations given by Sense

Kant begins Section II of the Transcendental Deduction with an overview of the faculty of representation, as constituted by the information and activity given by (or contributed by) intuition and understanding. I may have this wrong, but it’s the most I can understanding at the present.

First, we have the concept of conjunction, which is the process of synthesizing the manifold in intuition. By this, Kant appears to say that we conjoin, which is an interesting choice of word, the undetermined datum given to us by our senses. But this conjunction isn’t an activity of sensibility, nor is it an activity, spontaneously occurring, in intuition. No: it is an activity of the faculty of representation, an activity which precedes the occurence of representations in the mind, which occurs by the understanding. In essence, Kant is arguing that the datum of our sensibility are not, in any way, synthesized as given. They are disparate, like Locke’s simple ideas, and as such are merely successions, series, and repetitions, of particular types of affections. To form a concept, or a representation, of a singular object, of the form of an object, or of a unity of data, is an activity contributed by the mind, not by intuition, which merely provides the manifold content for our representations.

Kant calls this action synthesis, and it should be noted that it, as an activity, is never passive. This is an important aspect of the transcendental conditions for cognition for Kant, because the concept of synthesizing the manifold in intuition must be attributed to an active, thinking, conceptualizing, subject. This is why he writes that “we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves.” So of all the concepts we have of our cognition, conjunction is the only one which cannot arise from affection, from sensibility, but on the contrary must be that spontaneous act which the subject does. We are not talking here of a cognition, you or I, breaking apart an already-formed concept into its component parts; we are talking about the subject’s activity of forming a unity of data into a representation which can then be analyzed. Hence this conjunction is synthesis, not analysis.

We are able to form from this two different concepts of conjunction, one of which is the above:

1. The concept of the manifold and its synthesis

2. The concept of the representation of the synthetical unity of the manifold.

The second concept, of the synthesizing of unity of the manifold in intuition, isn’t something which, as Kant points out, arises from the application of a judgment to these different concepts. The unity “a priori precedes all conceptions of conjunction, [and] is not the category of unity.” This is because Kant is looking for the synthetical unity of the manifold in someplace other than the concepts of the pure understanding, which are based on the logical forms of judgment, or those forms of the activity of the mind; and so “the category of unity pressuposed conjunction,” and cannot be used as a foundation for the concept of the pure understanding. He says: “we must therefore look still higher for this unity, in that, namely, which contains the ground of the unity of diverse concepts in judgments, the ground, consequently, of the possibility of the existence of the understanding, even in regard its logical use.” This ground of the understanding’s existence is the transcendental unity of apperception.

Of the Originally Synthetical Unity of Apperception

This section of the Deduction is the crux of Kant’s argument, and consequently the fulcrum of his entire system’s success or failure. It is here that Kant attempts to prove that the concepts of the pure understanding (the categories) apply a priori to the entirety of experience. He begins by writing:

The I think must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing. That representation which can be given previously to all thought, is called intuition. All the diversity or manifold content of intuition, has, therefore, a necessary relation to the I think, in the subject in which this diversity is found.”

There are several important points to note here. The first is that the I think is the concept of the action which the I think does; that is, when Kant is discussing the spontaneous act of the understanding’s unifying the content of intuition, he is discussing the transcendental conditions, but discussing them in a way in which they are represented to us. Therefore, the I think is both the transcendental condition of the possibility of all acts of thought, and the representation to me of this process. This is why, later, he will say that the statement “These representations given in intuition, belong all of them to me,” is the same as “I unite all these representations in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unity them.” The second important point is that the I think accompanies all representations, while at the same time being the condition of the subject’s possession of these same representation (the possibility of thought). That is, it supplies the missing component of the intuition as sense – that which makes the sense cogitable and, moreover, mine. The third point is that, while intuitions are prior to thought, the constitution of a thought, or cognition, is also dependent upon an original intuition; and the having of an intuition is always accompanied by the I think, or the representation to myself of my possession, or reception, of these intuitions.

The I think, like many of the terms Kant uses in this section, is a rather vague concept. Likewise with the concepts of conjunction, synthesis, and several others. He appears to use the terms more loosely than previously, and gives several complimentary definitions of the same thing. But in a general sense, it would appear that we can say the I think is merely the consciousness of a representation, or the determination of an affection. It would also appear to be transcendental, or a priori, that is, prior to all experience, and the conditions of it (as stated). So when we say, along with Descartes’ cogito, that I know I exist because I think, Kant would reply that I think, because, and as the possibility, of conscious existence. Existence is given. How is another question. This is why his deduction is transcendental.

So, it is important to remember that this act is spontaneous. By spontaneity, Kant means that it is an impulse, that it proceeds naturally, that it is directed towards action internally, but most of all that it is an activity. While its etymology implies freedom of will (from the Latin sponte), this isn’t explicitly the case in Kant. On the contrary, it is an act characteristic of the will, but moreover a mechanical type of process, a mechanism latent within the brain, which is awoken and accompanies all experience: “That it to say,” Kant writes, “it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility. I call it pure apperception, in order to distinguish it from empirical; or primitive apperception, because it is a self-consciousness which, while it gives birth to the representation I think, must necessarily be capable of accompanying all our representations.” To accompany our representations implies that it coordinates and corresponds to them in time. It is logically connected, temporally connected, and therefore joined with them. This primitive, pure act of the understanding is the basis of all thought, and by conjoining representations together, submitting them to the categories, and rendering them cogitable, is the most important aspect of the entire philosophy.

Suppose, however, that the I think is less than a unity. Suppose it is a series in repetition over time. In a sense it is – always and continually reaffirming itself. So one I think could be thought to be different from another. But Kant repeatedly stresses that all thinking is mine. That is, we all have possession of our representations, and thus the transcendental unity of apperception (of the I think) is found, since transcendentally, at the foundations of all our affirmations of empirical thought. That is, we cannot think our thoughts if they were not ours, but we do think thoughts, and we have the concept of their being-ours. The manifold is always determined as mine. This is why Kant says that the I think is a unity and always the same. It is always the same affirmation of self. So, therefore, the unity of all acts of this apperception is found transcendentally in a “primitive,” or a priori, apperception – in its capacity and action. For, “the manifold representations which are given in an intuition would not all of them be my representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness, that is, as my representations, they must conform to the condition under which alone they can exist altogether in a common self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not all without exception belong to me.”

Synthetical Unity: Why?

This is why the unity of apperception is synthetical. Like above, we could suppose that all the subject’s representations, accompanied by the thought of myself thinking them, are merely disparate. But that is not enough to constitute the unity of the subject, as Kant perceives it. In order to have a unified subjectivity, we must identity a conjunction of the different affirmations of the I think. Not thinking of an object, and then another, and then another, can produce the unity of the subject. So “only in so far as I conjoin” representations together, that is, I synthesize different affirmations of thinking objects together, can my subjectivity affirm itself as wholly unified in myself. Where is the epistemic status of some disparate, disjointed, affirmation of a representation, if it is not unified in my consciousness with another representation? Nowhere. So where do the pure concepts of the understanding fit in, at this point? They are those concepts which, not being derived from experience, are allow representations to be combined in consciousness by virtue of themselves. They are original and a priori – hence pure concepts. They are those concepts which constitute all primitive acts of conjunction in apperception, therefore producing unity.

Hopefully I’m at least partially right on some of these things. This is a challenging section of the text.

Note on Apperception / working through June 10, 2008

I’m reading the Transcendental Deduction in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and realized that I didn’t have an exact grasp on the concept of apperception in a specific way, only in a general sense, and more specifically as Kant uses it rather synonymously to self-consciousness. I’m not sure I’m right on this, but it helps me think it through.

Kant uses apperception to denote, roughly, the concept of consciousness. At times, he will use the term consciousness as a loose synonym for cognition or the unity of all acts of thought; or merely the being-aware of the subject of itself; the projection of the subject outside itself (or outside the immediate content of its empirical intuitions, abstracting from them in a synthesizing act the immediate contents of its intuitions); or the transcendental unity of the subject. This last definition – of transcendental unity – is what Kant defines as apperception, or more correctly, the “Transcendental Unity of Apperception.” The term denotes, more so than consciousness, which could signify a thing, a substance, the homunculus cozying up inside our heads; a state, or an action, of the Ego [das Ich, or "the I"]. This is particularly appropriate, because this transcendental apperception is always spontaneous; it is always acting upon a representation, which is, by the understanding, determined and conjoined by the synthesis of intuitions and concepts. This synthesis (conceptualization) is always accompanied by the I think, which is always the same, and always necessarily an act of possession by the subject, who has an awareness of his or her understanding’s operations – thus they have the same affirmation of the I think over and over again. This is what Kant means when he writes:

“The I think must accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought; in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least be, in relation to me, nothing. That representation which can be given previously to all thought, is called intuition. All the diversity of the manifold content of intuition, has, therefore, a necessary relation to the I think, in the subject in which this diversity is found. But this representation, I think, is an act of spontaneity; that is to say, it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility…It is in all acts of consciousness one and the same, and unaccompanied by it, no representation can exist for me. The unity of this apperception…[indicates] the possibility of a priori cognition in general.”

It’s interesting, then, since Kant is discussing apperception transcendentally, that it must always possess, not just similitude or resemblance to itself in all its action, but sameness. We could think of it like a mechanism, this I think, which always, situated at some transcendental space within our heads, grasps in the same motion at a whole series of objects passing by it. If it wants to pick up an apple, or a pen, or a phone, or a book, the movements of its fingers, the tense of the muscles in its palm, always operate in the same manner. This is because its hand grasps at representations, which are different from objects, but which are the content, resulting from a determination, or synthesis, of a manifold given in intuition. That is, it is a re-presentation, or a constitution, of the object by the subject, the object itself being the thing-in-itself.

It’s almost a terrifying thought. Not so much that we are constituted by this unity of apperception, but the fact that, in Kant, it’s motion never changes. It’s important to note that the unity of apperception is the foundation of my Ego, of my calling myself me – and so we are transitioned from the possibility of affirming ourselves in differing ways. We are never allowed the possibility of affirming myself as not me, because of apperception’s greed.

Transiency and Dissimulation in Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeeping” June 9, 2008

Housekeeping, more than any other work I’ve read recently, brims with Derridean themes, from its tropic structure, to the particulars of the metaphors, to the characters and their actions themselves. Not in the sense that it begs for deconstruction, but that it appears to be a novel format for presenting the same themes Derrida does in Of Grammatology, especially as they relate to the constitution, dissimulation, and breaking-apart of sexuality and presence, albeit in relationships and memory.

This is rather hastily written, overly-verbose, and could probably be reduced to the space of four paragraphs. But it’s a break from Kant. Thank God.

Transiency

Transiency derives from the Latin transire, meaning to pass or disappear with time, to be passing over a site, a place, to be ephemeral, to be absent in a succession of presences; and is formed by coupling the present participle of transire ­- transiens – with the suffix ence, denoting further the possession or state-of-being transient. Transiency denotes the possession of an unpossessable and ungraspable quality, the being a thing which is never fully present to an onlooker, and perhaps even disguised and hidden from its owner.

So, to retrogress from transiency as a disseminating, symbolic notion, into a quantified concept (as many analysis of Robinson’s Housekeeping attempt), terminating at the junctures between Sylvie’s sense of self and Lucille’s (the Social’s) sense of Sylvie – that is, where her unstable, dynamic personality meets Lucille’s observation of homelessness, of transiency as a social mark of instability and unkemptness (where Lucille then intersects the larger, social world, with its “notions of piety and good breeding, and…a desire, a determination, to kep me [Ruth], so to speak, safely within doors” (183)] is to sever transiency from its textual possibility of performing a redemptive function in the novel, as it does for Ruth. Georges Poulet, after examining the phenomenology of the consciousness of the author present to the reader, asks: “What is this subject left standing in isolation after every examination of a literary work?” Standing: like Sylvie through Ruth. Is it abstraction and form, or text and structure? But if the former, the form is disintegrating at its edges and drifting like ash. Or, perhaps, something “exposed in its ineffability and in its fundamental indeterminacy…[a mind haunting the reader by its] transcendence of mind” (72) (after the experience of a totality constituted by an experience of its disparate, discreet, composite pieces)? But even Poulet’s author reaches this boundary at the point of the subject’s comprehending the totality of the works of the author; and likewise, is a trace of the presence of the author, of the subject, of a commanding intention, which is merely of greater magnitude.

This is, I think, the role of transiency in Robinson’s portrayal of Sylvie as a transient. Not to insert a sociological critique of critics of homelessness, or portray the transient’s “lighter side,” but to expose, in a radical form, by pursuing the subject of the self to its most extreme territories (to see from the inside the trace of the outside), the transiency latent within Ruth, Lucille, even the townswomen, residing in these outermost regions, and thereby exposing the more subtle dissimulation of transiency into their respective personalities as the precondition of their personhood (as Lucille’s entrance into society; as Ruth’s acceptance of transiency).

Dissimulation

First, transiency is described, in a culminating passage, as “Cain [becoming] his children and their children and theirs, through a thousand generations, and all of them…[remembering] that there had been a second creation, that the earth ran with blood and sang with sorrow” (193). Since “Cain himself was a creator, in the image of the creator” through his murder of Abel. This violent creation driving (mechanizing) time irrupts in Sylvie’s character as the “force behind the movement of time,” – “a mourning that will not be comforted” (192) – that which composes the effervescent presence of every character. As such, the mimicry of “every gesture” “a hundred, or a thousand times,” of “that shock…[spending] itself in waves” – which is God’s laws, the unknown ramifications of the originary act – is both the source of a godlessness in the loss of God’s presence; and the streaming of “blood” and “sorrow” through the earth (193).

That this transiency – a primordial transiency – is constitutive of experience in general implies, or functions as an analogy for, the experience of loss as the transiency of remembered acts moving through Ruth’s consciousness, since “[memory] is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it’ (194), “[but] every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself…[as] the perished, whose lack we always feel, [who] will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long” (195). This explains the notion that transiency is the primary structure, to Ruth, of living and presence. The palpitation of presence [Sylvie could, "it seemed to me," "remain transient here" and hence "not have to leave" (103); conversely, Sylvie "did not wish to remember me. She much preferred my simple, ordinary presence" (195)] as the threat (or being) of absence and the promise of presence’s return [Ruth says: "She [Lucille] would have remained untransfigured. We would never have known that her calm was as slight as the skin on water…We would have known nothing of the nature and reach of her sorrow if she had come back” (198)]: the “body [retaining] the formality of posture on learns when one sleeps on park benches” (138); the movement into a “current that made us sidle a little toward the center of the lake” (149); all these are marks of transiencies and shiftings of presence which mark the eliding of absence into a presence, and the presence constituted by the absence; the very threat of movement requiring a posture continually attenuated to movement.

First Division of Transcendental Analytic (Book I, Chapter 2, Section I) June 9, 2008

Book I: Analytic of Concepts

Chapter2, Section I

Of the Principles of a Transcendental Deduction in General

I. This section is otherwise entitled the Transcendental Deduction. Kant here stresses the necessity of a deduction of the concept of cause transcendentally, not from induction, since the empirical inference of causation only, as Hume proved, “[collects] from phenomena a law…that usually happens, but the element of necessity is not found in it.” So Kant concludes that the concept of cause must either have a priori foundations in the understanding, or be necessarily faulty.

a. Transcendental Deduction: an explanation of the manner in which concepts can apply a priori to objects [contra empirical deduction, or from experience and reflection].

i. Purpose: to show that the concepts of the understanding [categories] are a priori conditions of the possibility of all experience.

ii. Necessary to prove that “conceptions, which make up…cognition…are destined for pure use a priori, independent of all experience.”

1. Note: the purpose of the transcendental deduction doesn’t conflict with, but compliments, the reasons for its necessity. The categories describe thought as it exists a priori in the mind, and also, therefore, by opening up the intelligibility of phenomena to cognition, the conditions for the possibility of having experience. Note too, that Kant’s transition from judgments to categories implied that all reality is cogitated “propositionally,” or the relations between signs [representations] is the same as the relations between subjects and predicates in all propositions.

II. Recapitulation/Addendum:

a. What Kant calls a physiological explanation from experience (e.g., Locke) cannot be sufficient, since one cannot derive the a priori necessity of pure concepts from it, but only our possession of the concepts.

b. Geometry, as a pure a priori science, extends to external sensation in use [cognition of space]. Since the pure form of external sense is space, all “geometrical cognition” possesses immediate evidence (as pure a priori intuition is its foundation), and the objects of these cognitions (in form) are given a priori in the cognition itself.

i. Not so with pure conceptions (likewise of space), since they affirm predicates of objects in pure thought a priori, and therefore cannot appeal to intuition or sensibility (i.e., they are not presented with objects a priori in intuition).

c. The categories do not represent the conditions of objects given in intuition, and so it isn’t of immediate necessity that objects conform to them; nor that the understanding contain a priori the conditions of these objects

ii. I.e., Kant wishes to show how “the subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity,” and become conditions of the possibility of all cognition of objects.

Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories

III. Synthetic representation [synthesizing of a manifold of representations] and its objects can correspond and relate necessarily to each other in these ways:

a. Intuition: object makes representation possible

i. An empirical relation. A priori representation impossible since the object given sensibly, i.e., there is a causal connection through intuition; but the foundation for these a posteriori determinations of objects is given a priori in the mind (transcendental aesthetic).

b. Conception: representation makes object possible.

i. The representation alone doesn’t produce the existence of the object. The representation here determines the object a priori in cognition, relying on the a priori faculty of understanding. Only by means of representation, which determines according to the pure concepts of the understanding, can we cogitate the object.

IV. Given this (III), Kant asks: “Whether there do not exist a priori in the mind conceptions of understanding [categories, which determine the object in cognition], as conditions under which alone something, if not intuited [i.e., is not directly intuited, but exists in the mind as a representation of an object], is yet thought as an object?” -> Since this well be so:

a. All empirical cognition of objects conform to these concepts [categories], since if they are not presupposed, nothing can be an object of experience.

b. Conceptions of objects lie as a priori conditions at the foundation of all empirical cognition [union of intuition and sensation].

V. Categories: concepts of an object in general [abstracted from particular determinations], by means of which its intuition is contemplated as determined in relation to one of the logical functions of judgment.

a. The empirical intuition (the phenomena) is always contemplated as a subject, never as a predicate.

First Division of Transcendental Analytic (Book I, Chapter 1) June 7, 2008

Book I: Analytic of Concepts

Chapter I

I. General Introduction

a. to analyze the whole of our a priori knowledge into the elements of pure cognition of the understanding (i.e., the transcendental analytic):

i. (1) the conceptions (of analysis) must be pure, not empirical; (2) they must not be derivative or complex, but fundamental; (3) that they belong to understanding, not intuition; (4) that we be able to exhaust a table of these conceptions of the pure understanding.

ii. The completeness of transcendental analytic (totality of a priori cognition) only given by the whole of an integrated table (of conceptions and relations).

II. Introduction to Analytic of Concepts: by “Analytic of Concepts” Kant understands the “dissection” (analysis) of the faculty of the understanding, in order to investigate the possibility of conceptions a priori (as origins or in pure relations), by “looking for them” in the understanding as their “birthplace,” and analyzing the pure [non-sensuous] use of the understanding.

a. The conceptions of the understanding arise pure and unmixed as an absolute unity, and may therefore be connected (related) according to an idea.

Transcendental Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Conceptions of the Understanding

III. Section I. – Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General

a. The cognition of every (act of) understanding is a cognition of conceptions, not of intuitions. Proof: since the understanding is a non-sensuous faculty of cognition; and independent of sensibility we have no intuition; and besides conceptions there is no other faculty of cognition; then the understanding cognizes conceptions.

b. All conceptions depend upon functions (as intuitions depend upon affections)

i. Function: “the unity of the act of arranging diverse representations under one common representation.”

1. Conceptions based on spontaneity of thought; sensuous intuitions on receptivity of impressions.

2. The understanding cannot do anything with conceptions other than judge by means of them.

ii. Judgment: the mediate form of cognition of an object; the representation of a representation.

1. Explanation: no representation, except of intuition, relates immediately to an object, only another representation (as an intuition or conception).

2. In all judgments there is a concept which applies to, and is valid for, many other conceptions; and comprehends a series or complex [manifold] of representations, the last being immediately connected to an object by intuition.

3. All judgments are functions of unity in (of) our representations. Therefore, we can reduce all acts of understanding to judgments, such that understanding is the faculty of judgment

iii. All the functions of the understanding can be discovered when the functions of unity in judgments are exhausted.

1. Proof: (1) thought is cognition by means of conceptions; (2) conceptions, as predicates of possible judgments, relate to the representations of an indeterminate object; (3) all conceptions which contain representations under them are predicates to possible judgments

2. Note: Kant defines reality as explicitly linguistic, or at least of possible propositional form; that is, expressing logical relationships which are knowable. Certain conceptions could therefore be “higher” (or more polysemic) signifiers, under which unity a judgment (act of understanding) can occur.

IV. Section II. – Of the Logical Function of the Understanding in Judgments

a. Abstracted from all content of a judgment, so only the “intellectual form” exists, the function of thought in a judgment can be outlined as:

b. Notes on the Table of Judgments:

i. The modality (IV) in judgments contributes nothing to the content of a judgment, but concerns only the value of the copula in relationship to thought. Modal statements can be obviously false but necessary for cognition in general, especially in their application to practical reasoning. In Assertorical statements, we regard the affirmation or negation of the statement as true; in Apodictical ones, as necessary; and in Problematical ones, as merely possible.

ii. All relations of thought to judgments are: (1) of the predicate to subject (two concepts); (2) of the premise to its consequence (two judgments); (3) of parts to themselves or to a whole (relations of judgments).

V. Section III. – Of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding, or Categories

a. Transcendental Logic has at its disposal the manifold content of a priori sensibility, given by transcendental aesthetic (which gives matter to pure conceptions of the understanding), without which transcendental logic would have no content.

i. Synthesis: the process of joining representations together and understanding what is manifold in them in one cognition. Synthesis is prior to knowledge and is not analysis.

1. The synthesis of a manifold (diversity) is antecedent to the production of (a) cognition; since synthesis is the elements of cognition united into a single content.

2. We are seldom conscious of the synthesis of representations

3. Pure Synthesis: the manifold of representations in synthesis given a priori (e.g., time and space). Gives us the pure concepts of the understanding (that which rests upon a basis of a priori synthetical unity).

ii. Analysis: the bringing together of different representations under one conception; but transcendental logic reduces to conceptions – not representations – the pure synthesis of representations. Requires:

1. A manifold (diversity) of pure intuition; the synthesis of this manifold; the conceptions which give unity to pure synthesis and consist only in the representation of this necessary synthetical unity, which is given by the understanding.

iii. The same function which unifies manifold representations in judgment also unifies the synthesis of manifold representations in intuition(s), which is called the pure conception of the understanding.

1. Pure conception of the understanding: applies a priori to objects of intuition (without regards their differences). By means of the synthetical unity of the manifold (representations) in intuition, a transcendental content is introduced into representations, which are pure concepts of the understanding, and apply a priori to objects. The Table of Categories, or Pure Conceptions of the Understanding, follows:

iv. The catalogue [table] of all the originally pure [not intermixed with sensation] concepts [active representations enabling thought] of the synthesis [action of unifying representations together] which the understanding contains [performs] a priori [transcendentally, as a method of gaining knowledge], constitute the pure understanding.

1. Only in the categories can the understanding render the manifold of intuition conceivable (i.e., to think an object of intuition).

2. The third term of each category arises from the contemplation of one of the two preceding forms with the other; but is not a derived, but a primitive, conception of pure understanding; nevertheless a specific act of the understanding required to produce it.

Transcendental Doctrine of the Elements June 7, 2008

Second Part: Transcendental Logic

I. Of Logic in General

a. All knowledge arises from two sources in the mind:

i. Intuition: the faculty (power) of receiving representations (impressions). Through intuition, an object is given to us. Always sensuous.

ii. Understanding: the power of cognizing by means of the representation given in intuition (production of concepts). The thinking of the object.

1. All knowledge (cognition) requires an intuition and a conception in correspondence, since “without the sensuous faculty no object could be given to us, and without the understanding no object could be thought.”

2. Pure Conception/Intuition (a priori): no sensation in the representation. Of intuition = form under which the thing is intuited; of conception = form of the thought of the object.

3. Empirical Conception/Intuition (a posteriori): when sensation (presence of object) contained in them; or there is in the cognition “matter” (content).

b. Understanding: the faculty of spontaneously producing representations (spontaneity of cognition); or of thinking an object of sensuous intuition.

i. The mind makes conceptions sensuous (joins them to an object in intuition); and intuitions intelligible (brigns them under conceptions). Without this synthesis, no knowledge is possible. The understanding cannot intuit; the sensuous faculty cannot think. They must form a unity.

c. Twofold division of Logic:

i. General Logic [universal]: necessary laws [form] of thought (relations of cognitions to each other), without which no exercise of the understanding is possible. Doesn’t regard differences in objects. Contemplates representations, not origins (transcendental logic), as a form of understanding which can be applied to representations.

1. Pure General Logic: abstracted from all empirical conditions of the exercise of the understanding (sensation); from the causes of particular cognitions (since experience required for particulars). Regards pure a priori principles of reason, in respect of the “formal part of their use.” Is not psychology, but forms of thought. Makes abstraction of specific cognitions of the understanding.

2. Applied General Logic: directed at the laws of the use of the understanding and reason, under subjective empirical [=psychological] conditions, but doesn’t regard differences in objects. Is a representation of the understanding concretely by the subject.

i. Particular Logic: contains rules for the correct use of the understanding [thinking] about a particular class of objects; specifically in reference to regional or provincial disciplines within the sciences.

II. Of Transcendental Logic

a. Like intuitions, a contrast drawn between pure and empirical thought (understanding) of objects, such that a type of thought exists whereby we do not abstract all content of cognition. Laws of pure thought of an object.

i. Intuition: the faculty (power) of receiving representations (impressions). Through intuition, an object is given to us. Always sensuous.

1. Origin of our cognitions of objects (aside from affection by the object).

a. Formal logic doesn’t regard the origin of cognition, and so cannot contemplate representations (as the laws of thought/relations to others). Consequently, general logic only treats form.

b. Transcendental Logic: treats how certain representations (intuition/conceptions) are applied and/or possible a priori.

i. I.e., the a priori possibility of cognition, and the a priori use can only properly be called transcendental (necessary conditions of experience).

ii. Space (geometry, synthetic a priori) is not an a priori cognition; the knowledge that such a representation is not of empirical origin, that it relates to objects of experience (although a priori), is transcendental.

1. Application of space to objects in general is transcendental, but not in relation to sense.

iii. The transcendental/empirical distinction belongs to the critique of cognitions, not in their relation to an object.

iv. A science of pure understanding and rational cognition, by means of which we cogitate objects entirely a priori (conceptions which relate a priori to objects as pure thought).

III. Of the Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic

a. Truth is the correspondence (accordance) of a cognition with an object. Falsity occurs in lack of correspondence, although it (predicate) can be true of other objects. Therefore, the objects must be distinguished.

i. “Of the truth of cognitions in respect of their matter [content], no universal test can be demanded, because such a test is self-contradictory,” since truth relates to this excluded [abstracted] object.

b. Logic, insofar as it “exhibits” [displays] universal and necessary laws of understanding, with regards the form of our cognition, presents us a criterion of truth. Falsity is the understanding contradicting its laws of thought [itself].

i. This does not mean that (if accurate in logical form) a cognition agrees with it object; so agreement with form of understanding a negative determination.

c. General/Analytic Logic: (1) negative determination of truth; (2) formal operations of the elements of the understanding; (3) exhibits the operations as the logical critique of knowledge [cognition].

i. All knowledge (ought be) submitted to the Analytic before we determine truth of content.

ii. The Analytic is insufficient to determine predicates of objects (objectivity).

d. Dialectic Logic: general logic treated as an organ[an] (instrument) for the production of objective assertions (predications).

i. A “logic of illusion” which treats only formal conditions of correspondence of objects with the understanding, but doesn’t regard the objects themselves.

IV. Of the Division of Transcendental Logic into Analytic and Dialectic

a. Transcendental Analytic: the part of transcendental Logic which treats the elements of pure cognition of (“yielded by”) the understanding, and the principles without which no object could be thought. Logic of truth, since no cognition can contradict it without losing all content (reference to object).

b. Transcendental Dialectic: makes of the formal principles of pure understanding, by judging without distinction (of objects, which includes distinction between “sense” and “non-sense” items).

i. Misuse of the Analytic when used as an instrument of “unlimited” and “universal” exercise of understanding, and attempts to judge synthetically with pure understanding alone.

ii. Proper use is to test judgments of pure understanding.

Transcendental Doctrine of the Elements June 6, 2008

First Part: Transcendental Aesthetic

I. Definitions

a. Representation: designates an object in its determination by the subject; being the subjective action of forming the object at that level. Includes intuitions, concepts, and ideas. The understanding processes representations. Also: “presentation.”

b. Concept/conception: active representations, by means of which our understanding enables us to think. Concepts serve as “rules” (by conformity with the categories) which allow us to perceive general relations between representations.

c. Intuition: passive representations, by means of which our sensibility enables us to have sensations. Intuitions (requiring appearances to be given in Space and Time) allow us to perceive particular relations between representations (limiting empirical knowledge to sensible realm). Is in immediate relation to objects; a means for all thought.

d. An exposition is metaphysical if it argues from first principles a priori; it is transcendental if it argues for synthetic a priori judgments which follow from the preceding exposition.

II. Introductory

a. sensibility: “the capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects.” By means of sensibility, objects are given to the subject (thus arising intuitions, “that to which all through relates by means of signs”). Thus, sensation is the effect of an object upon the faculty of representation (affection); this renders us with empirical intuition, of which the undetermined object is called the phenomenon

i. matter: that of the phenomenon which corresponds to the sensation

ii. form: that which effects (such) that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations.

c. the matter of the phenomenon given a posteriori. The form must “lie ready a priori for them in the mind”; and must be regarded separately from all sensation (affection).

d. Pure representation (transcendental): “[a] representation wherein nothing is not with that belongs to sensation.” Hence, “we find in the mind (a priori) the pure form of sensuous intuitions in general,” wherein the phenomenonal world is arranged under certain relations. Pure intuition is the pure form of sensibility (Space and Time, which are “principles of knowledge a priori“).

i. Extension and shape, which belong to pure intuition, existing a priori in the mind as a form of sensibility, and without any “real object of sensation,” are the transcendental conditions of sensibility.

III. Section I. – Of Space

a. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception: in order that I may represent sensations in Space, the “representation of space must already exist as a foundation.” Hence, “space is not a [concept] which has been derived from outward experiences,” but external experience is itself only possible through [the said] antecedent representation [of Space].” Space is a necessary representation (form of pure intuition) a priori, which “serves as a foundation of all external intuitions,” – it is “the condition of the possibility of phenomenon.” Space is represented as an “infinite given quantity,” hence not a concept, but a pure intuition a priori.

b. Transcendental Exposition of the Conception of Space:

i. [Euclidean] geometry is a synthetic science a priori, meaning the mind has a “formal capacity” for it; or the “subject’s being affected by objects,” and thereby representations or intuitions thereof, are a form of the external sense. I.e., the necessity of geometric inference is possible only if its truth is found a priori in intuition.

ii. For geometry to determine the “properties of space synthetically, and yet a priori,” it must be originally intuition, for from a concept [its analysis],” only what is contained within it [would be analytic knowledge, or tautological, which is not the case]. The intuitions of geometry are “united with the consciousness of their necessity,” and therefore geometry is the form of the external sense.

c. Conclusions from the Foregoing Conceptions:

i. Space doesn’t represent any content (matter, accident, property) of objects as things-in-themselves (nor their relationships to each other).

ii. Space is the form of all phenomenon of external sensation, or the subjective condition of the sensibility which makes external intuition possible.

1. Hence sensibility is a pure intuition a priori, containing principles of objects prior to experience.

iii. The predicate of Space only applies to objects insofar as they manifest (are objects of sensibility). The constant form of receptivity is sensibility and is a necessary condition of all relations in which objects can be intuited as existing without a subject).

1. Conditions of sensibility: possibility of existence of phenomenon; not of the thing-in-itself,” since “space contains all which can appear to us externally…but not all things-in-themselves.”

2. There is an empirical reality of space with regards to all possible external experience, although it must be known through its transcendental ideality (i.e., “it is nothing as soon as we withdraw the condition upon which the possibility of all experience depends.”

3. The intuition of space affords us synthetical a priori knowledge [of geometry], but no other subjective representations; other representations belong to the “subjective nature of the mode of sensuous perception [sensation].”

a. Sensations do not give a priori cognition, but are changes in the subject (affections) as the object + sensuous perception.

4. Nothing intuited in space is a thing-in-itself, since space is not the form which belongs as a property to things. Outward objects are representations of our sensibility, where the form is space. Nobody can experience the thing-in-itself.

IV. Section II. – Of Time

a. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception

i. Time is not an empirical conception, but the a priori foundation thereof. No empirical time could be conceived (coexistence, succession) if time did not exist a priori as its foundation (antecedent to it).

ii. “Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all our intuitions [or is the pure form of all sensuous intuition].” We cannot think (understand) phenomenon outside of time. As such, it is a pure intuition a priori.

iii. On the necessary a priority of time is founded synthetic a priori principles of succession and time (as geometry of space), which cannot be derived from experience (or they would not be a priori, but a posteriori.

iv. “The infinity of time signifies nothing more than that every determined quantity of time is possible [only if] on time [lies] at the foundation.” A concept of time [for/of/in an object] must have an immediate intuition at its basis, for conceptions are only partial representations, and cannot provide the (a) complete representation of time.

b. Transcendental Exposition of the Conception of Time: all representations of things (conceptions of change, motion, place) are possible only in and through the representation of time. If time were not an internal intuition a priori, no conception could render comprehensible the possibility of change.

i. Kant defines change as “a conjunction of contradictorily opposed predicates in one and the same object.” Time, therefore, renders two contradictory statements of properties (determinations, predicates) in one thing, one after the other.

ii. In contrast to empirical sensations, which cannot be false or contradictory as such, time renders possible the affirmation of one and another thing in “empirical contradiction” with one another.

c. Conclusions from the Following Conceptions:

i. (a) There is not something which subsists of itself. If this were the case, then time would be something real, but without “presenting to any power of perception any real object,” which is absurd. (b) Time doesn’t “inhere in things as an objective determination,” for it would then be antecedent to things (-in-themselves as their condition), not discerned or intuited by means of synthetic a priori propositions. (c) Time is the subjective condition under which an intuition takes place, represented prior to objects, and thus a priori.

ii. Time is (nothing more than) the internal sense, or that of the intuitions of the self and an internal state, and is thus not a determination of outward phenomenon. It determines the relations of representations internally.

iii. Time is the immediate condition of all internal, and therefore the mediate condition of all external, phenomenon. Thus “all phenomena in general, that is, all objects of the senses, are in time [and in] relations of time.” Thus time is the formal condition a priori of all phenomenon.

1. Space is merely the pure form of external intuitions (of phenomena); but belongs to our internal state (as all representations, as determinations of the mind), and is thus subject to time.

iv. The objectivity of time is in its relationship to phenomenon, not to things-in-themselves; for independent of our mind it is nothing, but valid for all possible experience: it is not applicable, epistemologically, to things outside phenomenon.

1. Therefore, “all things, that is, objects of sensuous intuitions, are in time.” Only then can it [time] have universality a priori as well as objective reality.

2. Time has “objective validity in reference to all objects which can ever be presented to our senses,” but time has no claim to absolute reality as a property inhering in objects (or as a “condition of the thing”).

v. Time cannot subsist or inhere in things-in-themselves, and “we can find [an] objective reality as is itself empirical,” that is, in regard to objects as phenomenon.

V. Addendum and General Remarks

a. Elucidations: the external and internal sense are both of the “genus phenomenon,” meaning: (1) the objected considered as a thing-in-itself, without regards the mode of intuiting it (space, time), is problematic (epistemologically); (2) the form of our intuition of an object must not be sought in the thing-in-itself (metaphysical or absolute reality), but in the subject to which it appears – “which form of intuition nevertheless belongs…to the phenomenal object.”

i. Time/space are two sources of knowledge from which various a priori synthetical cognitions can be drawn. Pure mathematics being this cognition of space and/in its relations (but is applicable to objects only as phenomenon). Note the consequences the denial of knowledge or intuitions of transcendental (absolute) realities has on a metaphysics of God (or metaphysics of any kind!).

ii. The Transcendental Aesthetic can contain only space and time, since all other concepts (even motion = unity of space and time) relating to sensibility presuppose something (an object which is) empirical.

1. The Aesthetic cannot “number the conception of change among its data a priori,” since time, but only something in time, can change. To acquire the concept of change presupposed the perception of something changing (in time).

b. General Remarks on Transcendental Aesthetic

i. “[T]he representation in intuition of a body,” including ours, “contains nothing which would belong to an object considered as a thing-in-itself.” that is, it can contain no content for cognition. The phenomenon or appearance of something, and the mode in which we are affected by that appearance, are the only means by which we can gain content for cognition. Only our subjectivity determines the form of the object as a phenomenon.

ii. Space gives us synthetic a priori propositions of “apodictic certainty,” e.g., of geometry, which are given through intuitions and conceptions as such.

1. Empirical Propositions are synthetic a posteriori, of experience, and therefore cannot be necessary or universal.

2. Conceptions/intuitions (and propositions synthetic) a priori are given (constructed) by the object in intuition.

a. (1) In the subject, there exists a faculty of intuition a priori; (2) this subjective condition (in respect to form) is the universal condition a priori under which the object of external intuition is itself possible; (3) the geometric object fulfills (e.ii.2) a priori, else it couldn’t be necessary (is a synthetic a priori proposition deriving from the pure intuition of space).

b. “If…[space and time] were not a mere form of the intuition, which contains conditions a priori, …you could not construct any synthetical proposition regarding external objects.”

3. All in our cognition that belongs to intuitions contains nothing more than relations. These relations are: extension, motion, laws of motion. Therefore, through the sensibility, nothing but “mere representations of relations are given,” including the relation of the object to the subject.

a. Time contains relations of: succession, coexistence, permanence.

b. Form of intuition = nothing but relations. that is, “the mode in which the mind is affected by its own activity…its presenting to itself representations, [and] consequently the mode in which the mind is affected by itself; that is…an internal sense in respect to…form.”

c. Apperception: consciousness of self as the “simple representation of the Ego.” We have an internal perception of the representations previously given in us

d. If self-consciousness apprehends mental contents, it must affect them to produce an intuition of itself (in time).

iii. Phenomenon are actually given insofar as some property depends on the mode of intuition of the subject in the relation of the object to the subject. Hence all sensuous intuitions are ideal.

c. Summary

i. “We are in possession of pure a priori intuitions of space and time,” in which we find (when “in a judgment a priori we pass out beyond the given conception”) something which is not discoverable in that conception, but is found a priori in the intuition which corresponds to the conception, and can be united synthetically with it. Sphere of validity is phenomenal.

ii. Recapitulation:

1. All intuition is a representation of phenomenon; and the objects (and relations) of our intuition are not in-themselves (things-in-themselves).

2. If the subject is removed (the subjective constitution of our senses), then space and time, and the phenomena and relations in them, disappear. Phenomena only exist in the subject.

3. The nature of objects as things-in-themselves, without reference to the receptivity of sensibility, is unknown to the subject, since we know only (them only in) our mode of perceiving them.

4. Space and time are pure forms of intuition, antecedent to perception, and a priori (hence “pure intuition”).

5. Sensation = matter in cognition a posteriori = empirical intuition. Only form (pure intuition) pertains absolutely and necessarily to our sensibility, whatever our sensations may be.

Kant’s silhouette June 6, 2008

Kant, in outline form. Updated whenever I see fit, find time to read, transcribe notes, stop sleeping, or generally get up off my ass. Outline, however, is incorrect. What would be correct is silhouette, since outlines are brief and terse, but silhouettes are proportional in size (and, in the case of Kant, the potential to rip whole sections of skin off one’s body in a manic, somnambulant, fit of frustration) and shape, only with less color. Therefore: silhouette, the outline-form for people with problems of brevity.