Kant Glossary
Legend
K = Kant
G = Gardner
H = Hanna
P = Pereboom
J = Janiak
The Copernican Revolution
K: Experience teaches us that a thing is so and so, but not that it
cannot be otherwise.
K: Only the productive synthesis of the imagination can take place a priori; the reproductive rests upon empirical conditions. Thus the principle of the necessary unity of pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, prior to
apperception, is the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, especially of experience.
We entitle the synthesis of the manifold in imagination transcendental, if without distinction of intuitions it is directed exclusively to the a priori combination of the manifold; and the unity of this synthesis is called transcendental, if it is represented as a priori necessary in relation to the original unity of apperception. Since this unity of apperception underlies
the possibility of all knowledge, the transcendental unity of the synthesis of imagination is the pure form of all possible knowledge; and by means of it all objects of possible experience must be represented a priori.
The unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of imagination is the understanding; and this same unity, with reference to the transcendental synthesis of the imagination, the pure understanding. In the understanding there are then pure a priori modes of knowledge which contain the necessary unity of the pure synthesis of imagination in respect of all possible appearances. These are the categories, that is, the pure concepts of understanding. The empirical faculty of knowledge in man must therefore contain an understanding which relates to all objects of the senses, although only by means of intuition and of its synthesis through imagination. All appearances, as data for a possible experience, are subject to this
understanding.
G: Kant’s assumption that there are a priori elements in cognition, and the Critique’s exclusive concentration on them, is readily intelligible: the a priori element in cognition as a whole is the object-enabling structure of experience, the set of conditions that makes objects possible for us, and the a priori features of objects are those by virtue of which objects conform to that structure. Once this a priori structure is in place, knowledge becomes an a posteriori affair: objects may be regarded as independent from the subject and the realist model of explanation applied, i.e. our representations explained by objects rather than vice versa. Kant thus accepts realism (a subject S represents O because of how O is) at the level of common sense. This, it will be seen, is what Kant’s conception of what he calls ‘empirical reality’, by means of which he seeks to harmonise his Copernicanism with the realism of common sense, amounts to: the empirically real features of objects are those which they have over and above (and conditionally upon) their a priori features, and on the basis of which the realist form of explanation has legitimate application. Philosophical realism may be regarded as confusing these two levels, the philosophical transcendental, and the pre-philosophical empirical: the realist projects the form of explanation which we employ at the pre-philosophical level onto the level of philosophical explanation, without considering what makes empirical reality possible in the first place.
H: (1) Transcendentalism = All the forms or structures of cognitions are imposed a priori by our innate spontaneous cognitive capacities (= cognitive faculties, cognitive powers)
(2) Idealism = All the proper objects of cognition are nothing but appearances or phenomena (i.e., mind-dependent, sensory, spatiotemporal, directly perceivable objects) and never things-in-themselves or noumena (i.e., mind-independent, non-sensible, non-spatiotemporal, real essences constituted by intrinsic non-relational properties).
(1) + (2) = Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” = the Conformity Thesis = It is not the case that human minds passively conform to the objects they cognize (in Classical Rationalism & Classical Empiricism); on the contrary, necessarily all the proper objects of human cognition conform to (i.e., have the same form or structure as) our innate spontaneous cognitive capacities.
Terms
Representation
H: The human capacity to put things before it; it’s what we do as humans; a primitive.
K (J):
- Representation (A320/B376)
- Conscious
- Sensation: subjective perception
- Knowledge
- Intuition
- Concept
- Empirical
- Pure
- Notion: based only on understanding, not pure images
- Idea: set of notions
- Notion: based only on understanding, not pure images
- Conscious
G: Representation (Vorstellung) is Kant’s generic term for a constituent or element of cognition, similar in scope to ‘idea’ in the writings of the rationalists and empiricists: anything subjective that can play a role in composing a judgement or knowledge claim counts as a representation for Kant (its sense is thus philosophical, not psychological)
P: Representation is a mental state
Form and Matter
K: That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation I term its matter; but that which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations, I term the form of appearance.
H: Form = temporal and spatial structure; sets of relations. Matter = subjective sensory content. Inhalt = internal relationships, composition.
Matter is the intrinsic, non-relational phenomenal content of all conscious representations.
G: The matter of an appearance is that in it which corresponds to sensation, for which reason it is necessarily given to us a posteriori (since sensation is a posteriori). Form is the unifying structure that allows the content of experience to show itself as such. The form of appearance, whatever it may be, consists in a structure of relations […]
Kant’s striking idea is that experience cannot be ‘all content’: however minimal and atomised it may be, it must have form, because a subject can only be cognitively conscious of its experience as something if it is organised in some way.
A Priori and a posteriori, pure
K: we shall understand by a priori knowledge, not knowledge independent of this or that experience, but knowledge absolutely independent of all experience.Opposed to it is empirical knowledge, which is knowledge possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience. A priori modes of knowledge are entitled pure when there is no admixture of anything empirical. Thus, for instance, the proposition, ‘every alteration has its cause’, while an a priori proposition, is not a pure proposition, because alteration is a concept which can be derived only from experience.
Intuition and concept
K: IN whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only in so far as the object is given to us. This again is only possible, to man at least, in so far as the mind is affected in a certain way. they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts. That intuition which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled empirical.
G: Intuitions relate to objects immediately: an intuition ‘is that through which it [an object] is in immediate relation to us’ (A19/B33). The German for intuition, Anschauung, means ‘looking at’ (without any connotations of special insight), and Kant’s technical use of the term incorporates the sense of an object’s phenomenological presence to the subject (Proleg 282). Concepts, by contrast, when they relate to objects, do so mediately, ‘by means of a feature which several things may have in common’ (A320/B377). The distinction of intuition and concept thus corresponds to the distinction between the particular and the general.
H: Intuitions (Anschauungen) for Kant are cognitions that are (i) immediate (directly referential, non-descriptive), (ii) sense-related, (iii) singular, (iv) object-dependent, and (v) prior to thought.
An empirical intuition is a either (i) a direct sensory grasp of some individual material object which affects (=causally interacts with) the mind--a perception of that object (e.g., that thing over there now), or else (ii) a direct sensory awareness of the subject's own mental state or condition--a first-order consciousness ("what it's like to be").
The capacity for the first kind of empirical intuition is outer sense, and the capacity for the second kind of empirical intuition is inner sense.
J: Kant regards an intuition as a conscious, objective representation—this is strictly distinct from any sensation, which he regards not as a representation of an object, property, event, etc., but merely as a state of the subject. Whereas sensations do not represent anything distinct from the sensing subject (including perhaps the state of the subject’s body), intuitions are objective representations [because they are responses to objects, cognitions = mental states, vs just the “state” of the subject as affected by external stimuli]. Whereas intuitions are singular, immediate representations, concepts are general, mediate ones (Engstrom 2006). Each represents properties, objects, or states of affairs, but they do so distinctly. each type of objective representation, intuition and concept, can be either empirical or a priori.
Sensibility - faculty
K: The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode
in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions;The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by it, is sensation.
H: the cognitive capacity for sensory awareness, including feeling, desire, pleasure/pain.
J: sensibility = phenomenal qualitative content
G: Sensibility is the cognitive power that gives rise to intuitions, and it is a capacity of ‘receptivity’: the subject forms its sensible representations passively, through being ‘affected’ (A50-1/B74-5).
Subjects such as ourselves need to be affected in order for objects to be given to us, and the mark of affection is sensation. Sensation, and being affected, is an entirely contingent, a posteriori matter: there is no necessity to our having any sensation.
Appearance
K: The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance.
G: In the present context appearances may be understood simply as objects of experience qua sensed (the contrast with things in themselves playing no role for the moment). Thus a table as given to me in sense experience counts as an appearance. . But an appearance is not simply a manifold of sensations: it presupposes that sensations are in some way ordered, i.e. have form.
H: Appearances ( Erscheinungen) or phenomena are intersubjectively mind-dependent objects of actual or possible human sense perception. Things appear in this sense, precisely because they really are what they appear to, not because they are really other than what they appear to be. Only a mere appearance (Erscheinung) or illusion (Schein) is individually or egocentrically mind-dependent, and represents something to be other than what it really is. Furthermore, for Kant an appearance or phenomenon is token-identical with the intensional content of the objectively valid mental representation used to refer to it.
Appearances or phenomena come in two flavors: partially or wholly undetermined; and fully determined. Partially or wholly undetermined appearances are unconceptualized objects of empirical intuition. Fully determined appearances are fully conceptualized objects of empirical intuition, also known as objects of experience.
Imagination - faculty
K: Synthesis in general, as we shall hereafter see, is the mere result of the power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are scarcely ever conscious.
The synthesis of apprehension is thus inseparably bound up with the synthesis of reproduction. And as the former constitutes the transcendental ground of the possibility of all modes of knowledge whatsoever – of those that are pure a priori no less than of those that are empirical – the reproductive synthesis of the imagination is to be counted among the transcendental acts of the mind. We shall therefore entitle this faculty the transcendental faculty of imagination.
Imagination [represents appearances] in association (and reproduction).
Only the productive synthesis of the imagination can take place a priori; the reproductive rests upon empirical conditions. Thus the principle of the necessary unity of pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, prior to apperception, is the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, especially of experience.
H: Imagination ( Einbildungskraft) is a cognitive faculty that has both generic and specific aspects. When taken generically, the imagination is the source or engine of all sorts of synthesis, or mental processing. But when taken specifically as a dedicated or task-sensitive cognitive faculty, the imagination also generates (1) the spatial and temporal forms of intuition, (2) mental images in conscious sensory states, (3) reproductive imagery or memories, and (4) “schemata” which are supplementary rules for interpreting general conceptual rules in terms of more specific figural (spatiotemporal) forms and sensory images.
Understanding and sensibility are both subserved by the faculty of “imagination” (Einbildungskraft), which when taken generically is the source or engine of all sorts of synthesis, but which when taken as a “dedicated” or task-sensitive cognitive faculty, construed as either “productive” or “reproductive,” more specifically generates (α) the spatial and temporal forms of intuition, (β) novel mental imagery in conscious sensory states, (γ) reproductive imagery or memories, and (δ) “schemata,” which are supplementary rules for interpreting general conceptual rules in terms of more specific figural (spatiotemporal) forms and sensory images (A78/B103, B151, A100–102, A137–142/B176–181) (7: 167). At least in principle, then, the imagination mediates between the understanding and the sensibility by virtue of being an autonomous third basic cognitive capacity containing elements of each of the basic dual capacities (see,e.g., A115–119 and A139–142/B178–181)—which would, in effect, make Kant a cognitive-capacity trinitarian. But sometimes, contrariwise and somewhat incoherently, Kant seems instead to say that the imagination at once (i) belongs to sensibility and yet also (ii) is caused by the action of the understanding on sensibility
G: a mediating faculty
Understanding - faculty
K: from the understanding arise concepts.
the mind’s power of producing representations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge, should be called the understanding. Our nature is so constituted that our intuition can never be other than sensible; that is, it contains only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the other hand, which enables us to think the object of sensible intuition is the understanding. Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without
understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, that is, to bring them under concepts. These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.
H: Understanding (Verstand) is the cognitive faculty for intellectual awareness or thought (conceptualization, describing). The faculty of concepts, thought, and discursivity.
G: The power that enables objects to be thought he calls understanding.
The faculty of understanding, which produces concepts and applies them to objects, is by contrast active and ‘spontaneous’, meaning that it is not caused to do what it does.
The functions of intuiting and thinking are not collapsed into one another: to think of something is not to grasp it immediately in the way that perception grasps its object; our thoughts can grasp objects only by bringing them under concepts; we can know things only by thinking of what they are like (our knowledge assumes judgemental form).
P: the understanding provides concepts for synthesis, and because for synthesis to be a priori is, at least in part, for it to employ a priori concepts, Kant is contending here that synthesis by means of a priori concepts is required to account for the unity in question.
Analysis, Synthesis, analytic and synthetic concepts
K: Synthesis in general, as we shall hereafter see, is the mere result of the power of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of which we are scarcely ever conscious.
In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought (I take into consideration affirmative judgments only, the subsequent application to negative judgments being easily made), this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate to the subject A, as something which is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or outside the concept A, although it does indeed stand in connection with it. In the one case I entitle the judgment analytic, in the other synthetic. Analytic judgments (affirmative) are therefore those in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is thought through identity; those in which this connection is thought without identity should be entitled synthetic. The former, as adding nothing through the predicate to the concept of the subject, but merely breaking it up into those constituent concepts that have all along been thought in it, although confusedly, can also be entitled explicative. The latter, on the other hand, add to the concept of the subject a predicate which has not been in any wise thought in it, and which no analysis could possibly extract from it; and they may therefore be entitled ampliative.
P: Kant characterizes synthesis as “the act of putting different representations together, and grasping what is manifold in them in one cognition” (A77/B103); it is a process that “gathers the elements for cognition, and unites them to form a certain content” (A78/B103). Synthesis takes multiple representations — in Kant’s terminology, a ‘manifold’ — and connects them with one another to produce a single further representation with cognitive content (Patricia Kitcher 1990, 2011). This process employs concepts as modes or ways of ordering representations. A claim critical to the Transcendental Deduction is that it is the categories by means of which manifolds of our representations are synthesized.
G: Now, if ‘the combination (conjunctio) of a manifold can never come to us through the senses’ (B129), and thus ‘cannot be given through objects’ (B130), then it must be a priori; and if it is something over and above the reception of some content, then it must be the work of understanding rather than sensibility. We are, then, entitled to claim that there must be at least one a priori concept, namely unity. Kant calls this - the most minimal form that we must discover in experience in order for it to have cognitive significance - ‘synthetic unity’ (B130). It is called synthetic because it involves, on Kant’s account, an act of combination, Kant’s general term for which is synthesis.
H: To synthesize is to combine several otherwise disparate representational contents into a structured unity, or pattern, of some sort. Otherwise put, synthesis is information processing, or the mental generation of representations.
To analyze is to decompose a concept, intuition, judgment or other mental
representation into some or all of its basic constituents, as given in some structure.
No analysis of a representation is possible unless the mind has already synthesized that representation’s content. Hence all analysis presupposes synthesis.
A proposition is analytic if and only if its truth or falsity results either (i) from the fact that its predicate is contained in its subject-concept (which is equivalent with saying: it is true by definition; or it is true by virtue of the predicate-concept’s being identical with [part of] the conceptual microstructure of the subject-concept; or it is true by decomposition of the subject-concept into its conceptual microstructure), or (ii) from the fact that its denial entails a conceptual or logical contradiction.
A proposition is synthetic if and only if (a) its denial is conceptually and logically self-consistent, and (b) both its meaning and truth/falsity necessarily depend at least in part
on empirical or pure intuition.
A cognitive faculty is spontaneous in that whenever it is externally
stimulated by raw unstructured sensory data as inputs, it then
automatically organizes or “synthesizes” those data in an
unprecedented way relative to those inputs, thereby yielding novel
structured cognitions as outputs (B1–2, A50/B74, B132, B152). So
cognitive spontaneity is a structural creativity of the mind with
respect to its representations.
Judgment - faculty
K: In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought (I take into consideration affirmative judgments only, the subsequent application to negative judgments being easily made), this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate to the subject A, as something which is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or outside the concept A, although it does indeed stand in connection with it. In the one case I entitle the judgment analytic, in the other synthetic.
Whereas all intuitions,as sensible, rest on affections, concepts rest on functions. By ‘function’ I mean the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation. Concepts are based on the spontaneity of thought, sensible intuitions on the receptivity of impressions. Now the only use which the understanding can make of these concepts is to judge by means of them. Since no representation, save when it is an intuition, is in immediate relation to an object, no concept is ever
related to an object immediately, but to some other representation of it, be that other representation an intuition, or itself a concept. Judgment is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, that is, the representation of a representation of it. In every judgment there is a concept which holds of many representations, and among them of a given representation that is immediately related to an object. Thus in the judgment, ‘all bodies are divisible’, the concept of the divisible applies to various other concepts, but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and this concept again to certain appearances that present themselves to us. These objects, therefore, are mediately represented through the concept of divisibility.
Accordingly, all judgments are functions of unity among our representations; instead of an immediate representation, a higher representation, which comprises the immediate representation and 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 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 to some representation of a not yet determined object. (A68)
The same understanding, and indeed by means of the very same actions through which it brings the logical form of judgment into concepts by means of the analytical unity, also brings a transcendental content into its representations by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general. (A79/B105)
G: anything subjective that can play a role in composing a judgement or knowledge claim counts as a representation for Kant (its sense is thus philosophical, not psychological).
H: according to Kant, judgments are complex conscious cognitions that (i) refer to objects either directly (via intuitions) or indirectly (via concepts), (ii) include concepts that are predicated either of those objects or of other constituent concepts, (iii) exemplify pure logical concepts and enter into inferences according to pure logical laws, (iv) essentially involve both the following of rules and the application of rules to the objects picked out by intuitions, (v) express true or false propositions (truth-aptness), (vi) mediate the formation of beliefs and other intentional acts, and (vii) are unified and self-conscious.
A judgment ( Urteil ) is a logically-organized unity of concepts and/or intuitions. To judge is to predicate, that is, either (i) to apply or ascribe a concept to a thing or things referred to by intuition, or else (ii) to apply or ascribe one concept to another concept. Every judgment contains an assertible content, truth-bearer or proposition; and to assert a proposition is to take it for true (CPR A820/B848).
P: The faculty at issue in the production and use of concepts, the understanding, is the power to judge (Vermögen zu Urteilen), which is ultimately a disposition or a conatus to make judgments and to shape how we are affected so that we can make them (Longuenesse 1998: 208, 394). The logical forms of judgment are in essence the forms of combination of concepts in judgments. One such form is the categorical, which is the form of subject-predicate judgments; another is the hypothetical, the form of conditional judgments. Kant contends that the logical form of a judgment is what makes it capable of truth or falsity, for by means of such a form a judgment can constitute a relation of a subject’s representations to an objective feature of reality (Longuenesse 2000, 93–4).
One role of the logical forms of judgment is in the process of analysis, by which the objects we intuit are subsumed under concepts. What results from this process is a judgment that expresses what Kant calls an analytic unity — paradigmatically, the unity in the subsumption of several intuited objects under a single concept. But a logical form of judgment can also function in a different role: in the synthesis of a manifold of an intuition. The result in this case is a synthetic unity, the unity of a synthesized multiplicity of representations in a single intuition. The understanding, as the power to judge, functions in each of these two roles; “the same function that gives unity to concepts in judgment, also gives unity to the mere synthesis of representations in intuition” (A79/B104–5). In its synthetic role, the understanding adds content to the forms of judgment.
Reason - faculty
K: Kant explicitly says that reason is the arbiter of truth in all judgments
H: Reason (Vernunft) is either (a) the cognitive faculty for logical inference (in particular syllogistic inference) & the systematic organization of thought (theoretical reason), or (b) the innate faculty for decision-making and forming volitional intentions on the basis of desires (practical reason). Otherwise put, reason is the faculty for recognizing and following necessary normative principles.
cf Hanna on Judgments, 1.3
Metaphysical
Empirical
H: All the forms or structures of cognitions are imposed a priori by
our innate spontaneous cognitive capacities (= cognitive faculties, cognitive powers)
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