Kant study notes

materials

background & overview

Instead of starting with skimming the main works before diving in deep, like I’ve done for other philosophers, I decided to do preliminary reading. I read Prolegomena then a reader’s guide, without taking extensive notes. Both were really enjoyable and understandable.

My prompt to ChatGPT:

you are a philosophy tutor/mentor and I am a student. I am going to read Kant’s critique of pure reason. What books and sections should I focus on?

Answer (expand) -->

Reading Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” can be quite challenging, but it’s incredibly rewarding. Here’s a structured approach to help you navigate through this dense text:

Preliminary Reading:

  1. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Kant: This is a shorter and more accessible work where Kant outlines his main ideas.
  2. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: A Reader’s Guide by Sebastian Gardner or Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’: A Guide by James O’Shea: These secondary texts provide a helpful overview and guide to the main ideas and arguments.

Primary Focus in “Critique of Pure Reason”:

Prefaces and Introduction:

  1. Preface to the First Edition (A Preface): Understand the historical context and Kant’s motivations.
  2. Preface to the Second Edition (B Preface): Offers a clearer and more mature presentation of Kant’s critical project.
  3. Introduction: Covers key concepts such as a priori/a posteriori knowledge and analytic/synthetic judgments.

The Transcendental Doctrine of Elements:

  1. Transcendental Aesthetic:

    • Section I: Space
    • Section II: Time
    • These sections explain Kant’s theories of space and time as forms of human sensibility.

  2. Transcendental Logic:

    • Transcendental Analytic:

      • Analytic of Concepts:

        • Chapter I: The Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding
        • Chapter II: The Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding (especially the Second Edition): This is the famous “Transcendental Deduction” which is central to understanding Kant’s argument for how we can have knowledge of the world.

      • Analytic of Principles:

        • Chapter I: Schematism
        • Chapter II: System of All Principles of Pure Understanding: Focus on the sections on the Axioms of Intuition, Anticipations of Perception, Analogies of Experience, and the Postulates of Empirical Thought.

The Transcendental Doctrine of Method:

  1. Transcendental Dialectic:
    • Book II: The Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason:
      • Chapter II: The Antinomy of Pure Reason: Understand the conflicts that arise when reason oversteps its boundaries.

Supplementary Reading:

  1. Critique of Pure Reason (abridged editions or commentaries): Look for editions that provide summaries, commentaries, and explanations of the dense philosophical arguments.
  2. Secondary Sources:
    • The Cambridge Companion to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Offers a collection of essays by various scholars on key aspects of Kant’s work.
    • Kant and the Claims of Knowledge by Paul Guyer: A thorough analysis of the “Critique of Pure Reason”.

takeaways

Critique of Pure Reason

The “copernican revolution”, “subject decides on the contents of reality” is close to something I had already written about before reading Kant. It’s the main plot device in one of the short stories I wrote, and I can see some parallels.

Tendency to look for the thing that explains everything - thing-in-itself. It’s interesting that he separates it out and decides that it can’t be explained, just “gestured at”.

When I tried explaining to someone how not all knowledge comes from experience, I gave the example of us inherently having a conception of time and space. The person I explained it to was initially sceptical, then upon hearing about time and space being somehow inherent in humans, they agreed. When I saw them think, I imagined that they thought, “Oh, ok, so time+space are written into our genetic code somehow.” The thing is, you can apply the same logic recursively, the next level is to the species as a whole. Ex: not all genetic code in a species has to come from experience. Some aspects of time+space are inherent in having genetic code. Etc, etc.

One of the systems he describes, from a high level:

  1. Appearances produced by senses
  2. Appearances produced by imagination, using concepts/laws
  3. Consciousness recognizes appearances matching across both, makes knowledge

A pattern of thought that I took away from Kant was: Our thinking faculties appear to behave like some system. If we imagine a model of that system, then extrapolate all kinds of edge cases or conditions, we run into some really interesting realizations that seem to map to our understanding of things.

Another pattern of thought that I took away after reflecting on Kant (which may have had nothing to do with Kant specifically) was: asdf

reading notes

A Critique of Pure Reason

Preface #2

Copernican revolution before: our knowledge must conform to objects => we can never have a-priori knowledge about objects after: objects must conform to our knowledge (more specifically, our intuitions like the existence of time/space)

Introduction

1. The distinction between pure and empirical knowledge

Our knowledge starts with experience. No knowledge comes before experience.

Just because our knowledge starts with experience, doesn’t mean knowledge is entirely made out of experience.

Is there a-priori knowledge? Is there knowledge independent of the senses?

A-priori: independent of all experience Pure a-priori knowledge: has nothing empirical mixed in

2. We have some items of a priori knowledge, and even the common understanding is never without them

Experience never guarantees strict universality of anything. Universal knowledge has to have some source. Necessity and universality indicate that knowledge is a-priori.

Causality includes necessary connections and universality of effect.

If you take any thing and imagine every property and attribute is removed from it, you’ll still be left with the space that thing occupies. That space is lodged in your “faculty of knowledge”, independent of experience.

3. Philosophy needs a science to show that there can be a priori knowledge, and to establish its principles and its scope

Some knowledge seems to push beyond the limits of experience. Like God, freedom, and immortality. Metaphysics starts off by assuming it’s able to handle the task of exploring these phenomena.

Math is an example of how far you can go with a-priori knowledge independent of experience.

Plato started to do this, but he didn’t base his ideas on any solid foundations, so he was free to imagine whatever he wanted.

4. The difference between analytic and synthetic judgment

Analytic judgement: the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that’s hidden inside of A. Ex: all bachelors are single.

Synthetic judgement: the predicate B lies entirely outside of the subject A, but is connected to it. Ex: all bachelors are rich.

Judgements based on experience are all synthetic. Use principle of contradiction to extract the truth from the analytic judgement.

“Every event has its cause” It’s a synthetic judgement. Experience can’t connect event -> cause, because it’s more general than experience can support and the judgement connects them necessarily - a-priori.

“We have to make synthetic a-priori judgements possible.”

5. All theoretical sciences of reason contain synthetic a priori judgments as principles

Math, natural science, and metaphysics all use synthetic a-priori judgements.

Math Math judgements are all synthetic. The principle of contradiction can help prove a synthetic judgement, but another synthetic judgement is always required to prove a synthetic judgement. Math propositions are all a-priori, so they require necessity.

Geometry has some analytic judgements, but only because those judgements can be intuited.

With Metaphysics we analyse and clarify concepts a-priori. We also seek to enlarge our knowledge a-priori. Purely synthetic a-priori concepts.

6. The general problem of pure reason

“How are synthetic a-priori concepts possible?” Metaphysics has been wishy-washy until now because no one answered this question.

Hume came closest, but he thought that stuff couldn’t be known a-priori and reason was all borrowed from experience.

If metaphysics is not a science, then it’s at least a natural predisposition. How is metaphysics as a natural disposition possible? It doesn’t really matter - it will always get us to produce metaphysics, so we have to figure out why we have metaphysics.

Metaphysics doesn’t deal with objects of reason. It deals with reason itself - problems that spring from nature itself, rather than the objects of nature.

Dogmatic metaphysics doesn’t work.

7. The idea and division of a special science called ‘critique of pure reason’

Reason is the faculty that provides a-priori knowledge.

This is a critique, not a doctrine, of pure reason. Exploration.

Transcendental: knowledge about what makes it possible to know objects a-priori

Transcendental philosophy may not contain anything empirical

Two stems of human knowledge:

Transcendental aesthetic

1

Intuition: the way objects relate to knowledge, immediately. Our ability to be knowingly confronted by individual things.

Sensibility: the capacity for getting representations that lead to us being affected by objects

Understanding: thinking through objects

Appearance: an empirical intuition of. The result of an intuition that’s related to its object through sensation.

The form of the appearance must already be in the mind to order/pattern the appearance. So the form is a-priori. The appearance is a-posteriori.

If you have a body, then remove from the representation of the body:

Transcendental aesthetic: the science/principles of a-priori sensibility

Transcendental logic: principles of pure thinking

In the transcendental aesthetic, remove everything that understanding thinks, then remove everything sensed, and we are left with empirical intuition, which reduces to time and space.

2 Metaphysical exposition of space

Outer sense: represent objects as outside us and all in space.

Inner sense: internal states and representations. Doesn’t operate in a manner parallel to the outer sense. Time.

What are space and time? Options:

Space:

3. Transcendental exposition of the concept of space.

Space isn’t a property of or set of relations among objects-in-themselves. (properties and relations can’t be intuited a-priori)

Space is nothing but the form of all appearances of outer sense. It’s the condition for sensibility. A mind’s ability to be affected has to come before the affection. It’s only from the human standpoint that we can talk about space.

Space is empirically real and transcendentally real. It’s both externally the same and subjectively the same across all humans. Colours, in contrast, are the same externally, but internally might be experienced differently.

4. Metaphysical exposition of the concept of time

Time is not an empirical concept drawn from experience. To represent things as existing in parallel or series, we need a presupposed representation of time.

We can have the thought of time without any appearances - time when nothing exists/happens. We can’t have the thought of events without time.

Time has one dimension and different times are not simultaneous, but successive. Just like space is not successive but simultaneous.

Time being infinite is an intuition. Any limited cut of time must be possible. To be this way, time has to be intuitively infinite.

5. Transcendental exposition of the concept of time

6. Conclusions from these concepts

Time isn’t a separate object or something that objects can have.

Time is the a-priori condition of all appearances. Space is the pure form of outer intuitions, but outer intuitions have to be represented internally, so they need to conform to time.

We can’t say, “all things are in time” We can say, “all appearances of things are in time”

7. Elucidation

Nothing other than space and time are a-priori in the same way. Everything else requires some experience.

organon: complete account of how reason does its pure work. Scope, principles, concepts. canon: the part of an organon that allows us to judge pure uses of reason.

8. General remarks on the transcendental aesthetic

We know nothing about objects-in-themselves, except through our sensibility. That perception is special to us, and might not be the same for other beings.

Our sensibility is a confused, self-entangled representation of things.

For the mind to know about itself, it has to change itself and then feel the result of the change. The mind can’t intuit its actual self, because its intuition is passive and sensible. It can only intuit the appearance of change.

If space/time have objective reality, then you’d have two infinite things with crazy properties that makes everything hard to make any sense of.

Logic Introduction: The Idea of a Transcendental Logic

1. Logic in general

Knowledge comes from

Intuitions and concepts can be pure or empirical. Containing or not containing sensation. Pure is a-priori, empirical is a-posteriori.

The two functions are both necessary and non-exchangeable. They should be inspected independently. Aesthetic: science of sensibility Logic: science of understanding.

Logic breaks down into general vs. special. General: logic of elements. Pure or applied.

General logic: filters out content of the knowledge through the understanding. Has to do with the form of thinking.

Pure logic: no empirical principles. A-priori.

2. Transcendental logic

Pure intuitions vs. empirical ones. Thoughts of objects can be pure vs. empirical.

Pure thoughts of objects are concerned with the origin of items of knowledge. He’s expecting that there’s objects that can be related to concepts a-priori.

3. The division of general logic into analytic and dialectic

Truth: the agreement of knowledge with its object. What is truth? = What is the general and certain criterion of truth of any item of knowledge?

If truth has to do with objects, then objects must be distinguishable from other objects. The notion of a single criterion of truth is false.

Universal and necessary rules of understanding are necessary for the truth (but not sufficient).

Something agreeing with logical laws doesn’t mean it’s true. So you can’t just use logic alone - you have to use solidly based information from the outside. When general logic is used in this way, it’s called dialectic.

Dialectic: logic of illusion. Tricks and pretending methodical thoroughness.

4. The division of transcendental logic into analytic and dialectic

Transcendental analytic: the part of transcendental logic that expounds the elements of pure knowledge yielded by the understanding + the principles required for an object to be thought.

Transcendental analytic should be a canon for evaluating the use of understanding Transcendental analytic should not be an organon of a general and unrestricted use of understanding. You shouldn’t be using it to operate on imagined objects, not tied to empiricism.

Transcendental analytic:

To be complete, need:

  1. an idea of the totality of a-priori knowledge provided by the understanding
  2. the classification of concepts that such an idea generates
  3. the inter-connections among those concepts, making them constitute a system

Analytic of concepts

Chapter 1: Metaphysical Deduction

1. The logical use of the understanding in general

So far, understanding is the non-sensible faculty of knowledge (negative definition). Can’t have intuition that isn’t sensible, so there can’t be any intellectual intuition, so understanding doesn’t involve intuition.

Understanding has to be knowledge through concepts. Understanding is discursive rather than intuitive. Intuitive: knowing about something by being confronted by it Discursive: knowing about something by having a description, thinking, or concept applies to it.

Intuition comes from passive states while concepts come from active states.

  1. A concept unifies many items. Judgements are a kind of structuring a concept.
  2. The items that a concept brings together are representations (something that covers both concepts and intuitions).
  3. Understanding is a faculty of thinking & judging (judging is a subset). Thinking is operating with concepts. The only use understanding can make of concepts is to judge by means of them.

    2. The logical function of the understanding in judgements

For the form and not content of judgements, there are 12 categories: Quantity

non-x and not x and pretty much the same.

3. The pure concepts of the understanding, i.e. categories

Understanding is active. For understanding to have knowledge of space&time a-priori, it has to go through it, take it up, and pull it together somehow. This is called synthesis.

Synthesis: the action of assembling different representations and grasping their variety in one item of knowledge.

If we want to know about the first origin of our knowledge, we need to look at its synthesis.

Transcendental knowledge teaches us how to bring the pure synthesis of representations to concepts.

Table of categories: quantity

Aristotle’s list had some sensibility ones and empirical ones that didn’t belong. And it was missing some.

The table provides all the elementary concepts of the understanding. It provides the form (but not the content) of a system of them in human understanding.

The table can be split into two parts:

In each of the trios, the third is made up of the first two. Community is a special case.

Chapter 2: Transcendental deduction

1. The principles of any transcendental deduction

Things like fortune and fate are permitted in everyday speech, but when we inspect them more closely, they can’t be explained by experience or reason.

We have two groups of concepts which both relate to concepts a-priori:

We don’t need to deduce them empirically because they apply to concepts without having to borrow from experience.

How knowledge comes to be:

It’s more obvious how space and time apply to objects intuitively a-priori. It’s not as obvious for the categories.

Objects of sensible intuition must fit the formal conditions of sensibility a-priori. (obvious)

Objects of sensible intuition must fit the conditions that the understanding requires for the synthetic unity of thinking.

1/2 Final step towards the transcendental deduction of the categories

How can a synthetic representation and its object come to terms with each other? Either

  1. the object makes the representation possible
  2. the representation makes the object possible

1 means no a-priori representations. 2 not like “the representation creates the object”, more like “only through the representation can the object be known”

An object can be known when there is:

All experience contains:

The objective validity of the categories rests on the fact that experience is only possible through them. A-priori concepts are a-priori conditions of the possibility of experience. Those concepts are therefore necessary.

Three sources of experience: sense, imagination, self-awareness. They are the basis for:

2. The a priori bases for the possibility of experience

A concept can be produced a-priori if:

What are the a priori conditions that •make experi- ence possible, and that •remain as its substructure even when everything empirical has been filtered out from appearances?

Thinking about an object involves more than the faculty of understanding.

If each representation was standalone, never interacted with each other, knowledge wouldn’t be possible.

What faculty is responsible for referencing objects?

Three acts of synthesis in all knowledge:

  1. apprehending representations as states of mind in intuition
  2. reproducing them in imagination
  3. recognizing them as a concept

2/1 The synthesis of apprehension in intuition

All our knowledge is subject to time because it belongs to inner sense. They have to be ordered, connected, and inter-related in time.

Every intuition contains a manifold (variety of different elements). A manifold requires different times for the different elements. For the manifold to give rise to a unified intuition, it must first be run-through and held together. Synthesis of apprehension: the act of running through and holding together. SoA can be a-priori or empirical.

2/2 The synthesis of reproduction in imagination

There has to be something that make the reproduction of appearances possible. The a-priori basis for the synthetic unity of appearances.

If we can show that a manifold is structured in a way to make throughgoing synthesis possible, then we can show that the synthesis of imagination is based on a-priori principles in advance of experience.

Any mental activity like drawing a line in thought or think about a particular time or number, requires apprehending a series of elements in a time-taking manifold.

The synthesis of apprehension (transcendental basis for any items of knowledge) & synthesis of imagination (presupposed for any empirical acts of thinking) together make up the transcendental faculty of imagination.

2/3 The synthesis of recognition in a concept

The unitary consciousness is what makes a single representation out of the manifold that is intuited by iterating along time, then reproduced in imagination.

Consciousness must always be present, otherwise there are no concepts or knowledge of objects.

Object of representations (transcendental object): the form surrounding “something = x”

There must be a transcendental basis for:

Transcendental self-awareness: the always-present, passive, “I think”. It is the a-priori basis for all concepts.

The mind’s consciousness of its own identity is also a consciousness of a unity of the synthesis of all appearances according to concepts.

The transcendental object gives objective reality to empirical concepts, makes concepts refer to objects.

If objects are given to us through appearances, then the appearances must fall under the a-priori rules of synthetic unity of self-awareness. Otherwise knowledge is not possible.

2/4 Preliminary explanation of the possibility of the categories as items of a priori knowledge

The form of experience is the throughgoing synthetic unity of perceptions. It is the synthetic unity of perceptions in accordance with concepts.

Categories are the a-priori conditions of thought. They are conditions for the possibility of experience.

Everything we know or think has to come through basic self-awareness. The “I” has to run through it all, and we know this a-priori. So every appearance must satisfy whatever is needed to go past the “I”.

3. The understanding’s relation to objects as such, and the possibility of knowing them a priori

We can have experience because of: sense, imagination, and self-awareness.

Sense represents appearances in perception. Imagination represents appearances in association/reproduction. Self-awareness represents appearances in recognition.

Self-awareness ties the other two together. Self-awareness recognizes that an imaginatively produced representation is the same as one you had in a previous perception.

Pure self-awareness supplies the principle of the synthetic unity of the manifold in all possible intuition.

Knowledge is possible because of a necessary unifying work of pure synthesis of imagination, prior to self-awareness.

How categories help the understanding come to grips with appearances:

  1. Every appearance contains a manifold
  2. Different perceptions occur in the mind separately and on their own
  3. Perceptions have to be combined in a way that passive sense doesn’t provide This active faculty of synthesizing the manifold is imagination.

You have to put past perceptions beside current ones to make knowledge, but you can’t just do that randomly.

Hilarious quote:

The objective unity of all empirical consciousness in the single consciousness of basic self-awareness is thus a necessary condition for any possible perception; and therefore the affinity of all appearances, near or remote, is a necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination which is grounded a priori on rules.

Imagination (generation of concepts) is necessary to meld with perceptions to make a unitary experience.

Understanding is:

Rules make up nature, instead of nature making up the rules. (nature being, the causal order of things) Nature is the synthetic unity of the manifold of appearances according to rules.

All “appearances as possible experience” are a-priori in the understanding, and receive their formal possibility from the understanding. All “appearances as intuitions” are in the sensibility and their form is only possible through the sensibility.

If the objects in our knowledge were things-in-themselves, we couldn’t have a-priori concepts of them.

About appearances:

2. Transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding

2/1 The possibility of combination as such

The concept of combination involves:

The concept of the unity of the manifold must precede a-priori all concepts of combination because:

2/2 The basic synthetic unity of self-awareness

Pure self-awareness: as opposed to empirical self-awareness. Presupposed by all your thoughts and intuitions, so it can’t result from looking inwards.

Basic self-awareness: the self-consciousness that produces the representation “I think”. Can’t be accompanied by or derived from any further representation.

Transcendental self-awareness: indicating a-priori self-awareness

The analytical (pulling apart) unity of self-awareness is only possible under the presupposition of some synthetic one.

2/3 The principle of the synthetic unity of self-awareness is the supreme principle of all use of the understanding

Supreme principle governing how intuitions relate to the understanding:

  1. the manifolds of sensibility satisfy the formal conditions of space and time
  2. the manifolds of intuition satisfy the conditions of the basic synthetic unity of self-awareness

2/4 What the objective unity of self-consciousness is

Three levels of unity:

  1. the subjective unity of consciousness. Unified in the thought, “I think”
  2. the objective unity of consciousness (transcendental unity of self-awareness). Pull together various items in sensory field and unify them as all being of some object.
  3. the empirical unity of self-awareness / self-consciousness 3 depends on 2 depends on 1.

2/5 The logical form of all judgments consists in the objective unity of the self-awareness of the concepts that the judgments contain

Logicians say that a judgment is the representation of a relation between two concepts.” But that doesn’t express what the relation is between the two concepts.

Use the relation in the realm of understanding, not imagination.

Subjective relation in the mind: “when I hold this body, I feel an impression of weight” Objective relation in the objects: “it, this body, is heavy”

2/6 All sensible intuitions conform to the categories, because otherwise their manifold can’t come together in one consciousness

The action of understanding is done through the basic kinds of judgement. The logical shape of these kinds of judgements is a category. The manifold in any intuition conforms to the categories.

2/7 Remark

Imagine a (divine) understanding that produced objects at the same time as representing them, instead of representing objects given to it from elsewhere. The categories would not be useful to it. Categories are rules for an understanding that can’t do anything except think.

We can’t explain why this involves the twelve categories anymore than we can explain why space and time are the only two forms of our intuition.

2/8 The only work a category can do in the knowledge of things involves applying it to objects of experience

The only work a category can do in the knowledge of things involves applying to objects of experience.

2/9

Space and time only have meaning within the limits of experience. Outside of that boundary, they don’t represent anything at all. They are within the senses and have no reality outside of them. Concepts beyond our sensible intuition are merely empty objects to us, we can’t even judge where there could be objects.

2/10 The application of the categories to objects of the senses as such

Categories are just the mere forms of the thought. They don’t say anything about what object is there. So how do we get a-priori knowledge through the understanding?

The synthesis that is embodied in the categories is the basis for the possibility of a-priori knowledge.

Two syntheses that understanding performs:

Synthetic unity of self-awareness is different than inner sense. Synthetic unity of self-awareness:

Determinate intuition: detailed sensory state

How can the “I” that actively things be different than the “I” that passively thinks? They exist at different points in time in the same “I”.

2/11

The analytic of principles

When reason is used in a transcendental way, the result is illusion, not truth. Reason has to be handled with the transcendental dialectic, not the analytic.

The analytic of principles is canon of judgement.

Introduction: Transcendental judgment in general

Understanding is the faculty of rules, judgement is the faculty of applying rules. General logic can’t apply rules - it can’t decide when is appropriate to apply, it can only apply.

Examples sharpen judgement.

Philosophy mostly does negative around judgement - what not to do.

Since everything in transcendental philosophy is a-priori, it has to a-priori provide both the rules and judgements about when to apply them.

Schematism: sensible conditions where pure concepts of the understanding can be applied.

Principles of pure understanding: synthetic judgements that flow a-priori from pure concepts of the understanding and form an a-priori basis for all other items of knowledge.

Chapter 1: The schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding

[meta: it’s like he’s trying to describe machine learning when the only thing anyone knows about is rule-based systems]

Whenever an object is “brought under” (merged in the understanding with) a concept, the object must “be the same sort” as the concept. They have to contain the same stuff.

Pure concepts of the understanding have nothing in common with empirical intuitions.

How can we apply the categories to appearances? (ex how to apply causality to an appearance) There has to be some third thing that’s like the category and the appearance, both intellectual and sensible. That is the transcendental schema.

Transcendental schema: for any category C, the representation of C-in-time. (categorical inclusion + temporality of sensibility).

  1. Concepts mean nothing to us unless an object is given for the concept or the elements that make up the concept
  2. Objects are only ever given through states of our sensibility
  3. Pure a-priori concepts must contain
    1. Whatever they need to go through the work of understanding
    2. a-priori formal conditions of sensibility - for the category to be applied to the object

Schema of a concept of understanding: the formal and pure conditions of sensibility restricting the concept

The schema is only a product of the imagination. It is not the image. It is a method of representing the image that fits a concept. . . . . . Is an image of five dots, but the schema is ‘5’, for the category of multitude.

It is schemas and not images that underlie our pure sensible concepts.

The schema of a triangle can’t exist anywhere except in thought.

The schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul

The image is a product of the empirical faculty of reproductive imagination. The schema of sensible concepts is a product of pure a-priori imagination.

Categories:

All these schemas contain & make representable, something to do with time.

•magnitude: the generation (synthesis) of time itself, in the temporally drawn-out apprehension of an object; •quality: the synthesis of sensation (perception) with the representation of time, i.e. the filling of time; •relation: the connection of the perceptions with one another at all times in accordance with a rule of time-determination;
•modality: time itself, as the correlate of the facts about whether and how an object belongs to time.

Schemas are a-priori rule-governed aspects of time. Magnitude: time-series Quality: content of time Relation: order of time Modality: scope of time wrt all possible objects

This makes it clear that the schematism of the understanding….amounts to the unity of all the manifold of intuition in inner sense, and to nothing else. That means that it indirectly comes down to the unity of self-awareness, as the active counterpart to inner sense, which is passive. Thus the schemas of the concepts of pure understanding are what enable the concepts to relate to objects, and thus to have significance; nothing else plays this role. So the bottom line is this: the categories can’t be used in any way except empirically, because all they do is to bring appearances under general rules of synthesis. . . .that make them fit for a thoroughgoing connection in one experience.

[Douglas system understanding so far] Appearances in manifold -> apply schemas in synthesis -> concepts activate. …? -> …? -> generate concepts. Concepts from sensibility + concepts from imagination => recognize overlap.

Chapter 2: The system of all principles of pure understanding

A-priori principles are the basis for other judgements, and they are not founded on higher or more universal knowledge. They can still be proven, but not in any objective way. They have to be proven, or things are founded on unproven stuff.

1. The supreme principle of all analytic judgments

Judgements have to be not self-contradictory. The principle of contradiction is universal and the criterion of truth. It belongs only to logic, valid for all knowledge considered as just knowledge. It shows the truth of an analytic judgement.

You shouldn’t have to include the concept of time in the expression of the principle. (x and not x “at the same time”)

2. The supreme principle of all synthetic judgments

If knowledge is to have objective reality, i.e. to relate to an object and have meaning and significance in relation to it, the representation of the object must be related to actual or possible experience.

Representations of objects must be related to actual/possible experience, otherwise knowledge generated from those representations is not objectively real.

The possibility of experience is what gives rise to a-priori knowledge.

Experience is the only kind of knowledge that can give reality to other kinds of knowledge.

The supreme principle of all synthetic judgements:

Every object conforms to the necessary conditions of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience.

There’s some system. Objects that come out of that system must exhibit certain properties, otherwise they couldn’t have come out of that system. Otherwise, the objects are not “objectively real”.

3. A systematic presentation of all the synthetic principles of pure understanding

All the laws of nature fall under the higher principles of understanding. They apply those higher principles in special cases to the understanding.

Some principles of mathematics are derived through the understanding, and so they aren’t principles of the understanding.

When concepts of understanding are applied to possible experience, their synthesis is used as mathematical or dynamical. The synthesis is mathematical when it is concerned with the intuition of appearance, while it’s dynamical when it is concerned with the existence of appearance.

The a-priori conditions of intuition are necessary conditions of any possible experience. While the conditions of the existence of the objects of a possible empirical intuition are only accidental/contigent.

The principles of using math are necessary. The principles of using dynamical are a-priori necessary when there’s an empirical thought in an experience.

The principles of pure understanding:

Mathematical/Dynamical are labels that describe how principles are applied and their “evidentness”. 1&2 are mathematical, 3&4 are dynamical.

Connecting: synthesis of things that belong together. Assembling: synthesis of things that don’t necessarily belong together.

1. Axioms of Intuition

Their principle is: all intuitions are extensive magnitudes.

All appearances contain an intuition of space and time. This is an a-priori condition of their form.

An object can’t be perceived as an appearance without the concept of magnitude happening.

Extensive magnitude: the representation of its parts makes the representation of the whole possible. The representation of the parts has to precede the representation of the whole.

All appearances are intuited as aggregates, as bunches of previously given parts.

The principle makes mathematics applicable to objects of experience. A-priori.

Appearances are not things-in-themselves, but they’re all we get. Appearances are what have to satisfy any conditions of our intuitions.

The synthesis of spaces and times is the essential form of all intuition. That synthesis is what makes us able to be conscious of appearance, and therefore every outer experience. That synthesis is what makes us able to have knowledge of outer objects of experience. Whatever pure mathematics holds for the synthesis of apprehension must also hold for the objects that went through it.

2. Anticipations of perception

Their principle is: in all appearances, any real object of sensation has intensive magnitude (degree).

Perception is empirical consciousness. Space/time can’t be “perceived”, but objects of perception can.

An appearance needs formal features if it is to be an intuition at all. An appearance needs material features to represent an object in space/time.

There can be a gradual change from empirical consciousness to pure consciousness, leaving only a “formal a priori consciousness of the spatio- temporal manifold”. Pure consciousness is magnitude=0, therefore objects of perception have intensive magnitude.

Anticipation: something that can be known about all sensations a-priori (even though the sensations themselves can’t be known)

Sensation is the element in any appearance that doesn’t involve a temporally drawn-out synthesis proceeding from parts to the whole representation; so it has no extensive magnitude.

Sensation has to go through some system before it becomes an appearance. Appearances and not sensations have magnitude.

The real has magnitude, but not extensive magnitude.

Continuous magnitude: no part of it is the smallest possible. Space and time are continuous magnitudes. All appearances are continuous magnitudes.

Alterability of an appearance depends on features of appearances, so it can’t be explored a-priori.

No perception or experience has a complete absence of reality. The proof of an empty space or time can’t be proved with experience.

The degree of a feature can reduce down to zero without the extensive magnitude disappearing too.

3. Analogies of experience

Their principle is: Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions

Experience is empirical knowledge. Any item of knowledge contains a manifold of perceptions pulled together in one consciousness.

To determine the time-involving facts about objects, we have to connect them through concepts. So experience is possible only through a representation of the necessary connection of perceptions.

The three modes of time are persistence, succession, and coexistence.

Constuitive rule: tells you what something is / what it is like Regulative rule: tells you how to look for a thing

FIRST ANALOGY

Principle of the persistence of substance:

In all change of appearances substance persists, and the amount of it in Nature doesn’t get larger or smaller

Kind of like the law of conservation of matter.

Substance: the persisting element in the experienced world, in relation to which all temporal relations of appearances can be determined.

So far, this proof has only been made through experience.

Old philosophical assumptions: •Nothing comes out of nothing •Nothing can revert into nothing

They only apply to appearances in the domain of experience.

Experience couldn’t be unified if we allowed that new things—new substances—could come into existence; for then we would lose the only item ·in the domain of appearance· that can represent the unity of time, namely the identity of the substratum in which change has thoroughgoing unity.

The principle is necessary for experience. Experience wouldn’t “work” if substance didn’t persist across changes, so the principle is a consequence of our systems and not a fact of reality.

SECOND ANALOGY

Principle of temporal sequence, in accordance with the law of causality:

All alterations take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect.

All appearances of succession in time are only alterations. All change of appearances is merely alterations. Appearances follow one another and we connect two perceptions in time.

No state of affairs has its “when” (the time to which it belongs) as an empirically perceptible feature of it.

Cause and effect relates the appearances together. Therefore appearances as objects of experience are only possible if they conform with the law of cause and effect.

Something happening can’t be perceived unless the previous state didn’t have that appearance.

Appearances have to be causally chained together, and it’s hard to imagine them not chained together.

The only way I can make my subjective synthesis of apprehension objective is through a rule in accordance with which the appearances are determined by the preceding state.

The only way I can chain appearances objectively is by using the rule that appearances are decided by the previous state.

When I perceive that something x ·objectively· happens, the first thing that is contained in this representation is that something y happened just before, because it’s only by reference to a preceding y that this appearance x gets •its time-relation, i.e.

  • its existing after a time when it didn’t exist, ·i.e.
  • its status as an event or happening

The first thing contained in a representation is the event that preceded it. That means the previous event preceded according to a rule. That means:

It’s only through appearances (things in time) that we can empirically detect the continuity in the way times hang together.

The understanding makes the sensation of objects possible. It carries the time-order over into the appearances. It relates each event to the preceding ones.

How does a thing pass from state x to state y? The two instants are the boundaries of:

The law of the continuity of alteration: time doesn’t consist of smallest parts, there’s no atomicity. Same with time-taking events. There’s no smallest difference between two real items any more than there is a smallest difference between two periods of time.

any perception is drenched in time

THIRD ANALOGY

Principle of coexistence, in accordance with the law of interaction or community: All substances that can be perceived to coexist in space are in thorough-going interaction with one another.

If objects had perceptions only at different points in time and not together, we couldn’t learn that they coexist.

When two objects are empirically represented as coexisting, they have to be causing features of one-another. They’re in a dynamical community with one-another if it’s possible to know through perception that they exist at the same time.

Summary of analogies

•an appearance has to time itself as a magnitude (the magnitude of existence, i.e. duration ·= persistence·); •appearances have to one another in time as a successive series;
•appearances have in time as a sum of all simultaneous existence.

  1. An appearance is a magnitude in time.
  2. Appearances are successively chained in time.
  3. Appearances collectively make up simultaneous experience.

4. Postulates of empirical thought

Possible: whatever agrees with the formal conditions of experience (conditions of intuition/concepts) Actual: whatever is tied to “material conditions of experience” (sensation) Necessary: whatever is required by the universal conditions of experience, and connected to the actual

Possible An object that fulfils the other three analogies of experience is not necessarily possible. (If it changes or is linked to other appearances or is in community with other objects)

What allows us to connect the concept X with the possibility of there being such a thing as an X?

Actual

No mark of a thing’s existence can be found in its concept. What indicates actuality: a perception that provides the concept with its content. Also: the concept being connected with knowledge (ex: magnetism in iron filings)

Refutation of Idealism

Two forms: problematic idealism: the existence of objects in outside space is objectionable (a-la Descartes) dogmatic idealism: space and everything that needs space to exist are impossible

If space is a property of things-in-themselves, the dogmatic idealism is unavoidable.

Dogmatic idealism is disproven by the transcendental aesthetic. Problematic idealism is disproven by showing that outer experience is possible if inner experience exists.

THESIS: My consciousness of my own existence and of details about myself proves the existence of objects in space outside me.

All knowledge of temporal stuff presupposes knowledge of something persistent in perception. I am in different states through time, and those other states of me are outside of me, therefore there is stuff outside of me.

“I” isn’t an intuition - it’s an intellectual representation of the activeness of a thinking subject. It’s not persistent like matter.

The intuition I have about “I” is sensible and not intellectual, so it necessarily brings time into the story.

Outer sense is tied into inner sense.

Everything that happens is determined a priori through its cause in the ·domain of· appearance.

Propositions:

  1. Nothing happens through blind chance
  2. Necessity is always conditioned and intelligible
  3. There are no leaps in chains of appearances
  4. There are no blanks/gaps between appearances in the totality of empirical intuitions in space
General Note on the System of the Principles

Unaided categories can’t show us that a thing is possible.

Chapter 3: The basis for distinguishing all objects into phenomena and noumena

When we are trying to extend our knowledge, the attitude, “I want to know how this will be useful before doing the work” is harmful and absurd.

The understanding can’t both:

Two things required for every concept:

  1. logical form that makes it a concept
  2. possibility of applying to some concept

Quantity Magnitude: a fact about a thing that makes it possible to think about how many units are involved in it. The how-many-times (units) is based on successive repetition - time.

Quality To explain reality’s contrast with negation, we have to think of time as being filled or empty.

Relation Substance has persistence Cause requires time for multiple states Community requires two-way causal interations

Modality Something is contingent if its nonexistence is possible. Exist -> nonexist is a state change that requires time.

The pure concepts of understanding can’t be used transcendentally, only empirically.

Categories are nothing but forms of thought. They are just the logical capacity for uniting the manifold given in intuition into one consciousness.

Phenomena: sensible entities Noumena: intelligible entities. Ex: things-in-themselves

Two kinds of noumenon:

Categories can only be used to understand things in space and time.

Problematic concept:

  1. contains no contradiction
  2. related to other items of knowledge, by serving as a boundary to the concepts involved in them
  3. can’t be known to be objectively real

The concept of noumenon is problematic. You can’t apply transcendental use of the understanding with noumenon as an object.

Appendix: amphiboly of the concepts of re- flection arising from the confusion of the empirical use of the understanding with its transcendental use

Critique of Pure Reason: The Dialectic

Introduction

Transcendental Illusion

The senses don’t err because they don’t judge at all. Transcendental misuse of the categories is an error in the faculty of judgement.

Logical illusion: the illusion that a formally invalid argument is valid. Trascendental illusion: illusions disproven by transcendental logic, which tend to persist after being proven invalid. (ex: the world must have a beginning in time)

2. Pure reason as the seat of transcendental illusion

A. Reason in general

Reason can be used in a merely formal manner or as a source of concepts and principles itself (transcendental use).

The understanding can’t give us any synthetic items of knowledge derived from concepts.

Knowledge derived from principles is quite different than knowledge derived from the understanding.

Just as understanding can be seen as the faculty that uses rules to unify appearances, reason can be seen as the faculty that uses principles to unify the understanding’s rules. Reason gives a-priori unity by means of concepts to the understanding’s complex web of knowledge.

The logical use of reason

Immediate vs. inferred. We get so used to inferring that we forget what’s immediate and what’s inferred.

In every process of reasoning, there’s:

  1. The premise
  2. The conclusion (another premise)
  3. The inference (where the conclusion is inseparably connected with the premise)

If you can get 2 without 1, it’s immediate. Immediate inferences: inferences of the understanding Non-immediate inferences: inferences of reason

C. The pure use of reason

Reason can either be considered all on its own as an independent source of concepts or as a subordinate faculty for imposing logical form on knowledge. Kant says it’s #2.

reason makes the ·output of· the understanding hang together in a thoroughly connected whole, by bringing it under principles, the understanding connects up the various outputs of intuition, by bringing them under concepts

Does pure reason contain a-priori synthetic principles and rules? Understanding deals with objects by bringing intuitions under rules. Reason doesn’t deal with objects, but understanding and its judgements.

When reason is used logically, it looks at a judgement and tries to find a more general rule where that judgement is a special case. The universal rule is the premise and the judgement is the conclusion.

Book 1: the concepts of pure reason

1. The ideas in general

It’s better to go back in history and pick out a word from a dead language, rather make your own up.

Levels of ideas:

  1. Perception: representation accompanied by consciousness.
  2. Cognition: perception of something.
  3. Concept: cognition relating indirectly to objects, through features that they share.
  4. Pure concepts
  5. Notion: pure concept originating solely from the understanding
  6. Idea: concept formed from notions that has “outrun the possibility of experience”

2. The transcendental ideas

Absolute has two meanings:

a transcendental concept of reason always aims at absolute totality in the synthesis of conditions

Reason needs to assume a series of conditionals taken as a whole is True.

3. System of the transcendental ideas

Three kinds of relation-based classifications of pure reason:

  1. categorical: ideas containing the absolute unity of the thinking subject (psychology, soul)
  2. hypothetical: ideas containing the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearances (cosmology, world/universe)
  3. disjunctive: ideas containing the absolute unity of the conditions of thought in general (theology, God)

Pure reason x the understanding’s concept of objects leads to:

  1. the concept of absolute unity in the thinking subject (soul)
  2. logical procedure in hypothetical inferences of reason leads to the “utterly unconditioned in a series of given conditions” (universe)
  3. the mere form of the disjunctive inference of reason must necessarily involve the highest concept of reason (God)

Book 2: The dialectical inferences of pure reason

Three kinds of dialectical inferences of reason

  1. Transcendental paralogism: the transcendental concept of the subject => absolute unity of the subject, although it contains nothing but a manifold and we have no concept of the manifold subject, only the thinker.
  2. Antimony of pure reason: the transcendental concept of the absolute totality of the series of conditions for any given appearance.
  3. Ideal of pure reason: the absolute synthetic unity of all the conditions for things to be possible.

Chapter I: The paralogisms of pure reason (1st edition)

logical paralogism: inference of reason that is fallacious in form

transcendental paralogism: transcendental basis for the formal fallacy

“I think” is a transcendental concept

Using categories:

All concepts of pure psychology can be pulled out of these elements:

“I” isn’t even a concept - it’s a bare consciousness that accompanies concepts.

It is a priori necessary that I attribute to a thing all the properties that are preconditions of my having any thought about them.

There are properties of a thing that are necessary for me to be able to think about them. I attribute those properties to that thing. I can’t get any representation of a thinking thing externally, only internally. Therefore external thinking things must have their own version of the property “I”.

First paralogism: Substantiality

[faulty logic]

In Transcendental Logic, he showed that pure categories have no objective significance except when they are brought under an intuition. Substance is a category.

“I” can’t be represented as the state of something else. The constant logical subject of thought is not something we can have knowledge about.

Second paralogism: Simplicity

[faulty logic]

A thought has to be made by one thing. A thought can’t be thought compositely, although pieces of the thought can be put together in composite, then thought altogether as one thought by one thing.

The only reason why anyone has cared about the assertion of the simple nature of the soul is as a way of distinguishing this •thinking subject from all •matter, thus enabling the soul to escape from the dissolution to which matter is always liable.

The only reason why people care about the soul being “simple” is so that it can be divided from other substance, which is what Descartes’ arguments depend on.

There is:

  1. The something that underlies outer appearances
  2. The something that is the subject of our thoughts

If 1 were a thing-in-itself, then it would be a different substance than 2. But it’s just an appearance. There’s nothing stopping 1 & 2 from being made of the same stuff, therefore the soul is not simple.

Third paralogism: Personhood

[faulty logic]

If I view myself, I can say both:

When I look at someone else, my consciousness is not bound up with their identity. I could be different number of things. I could be passing my consciousness off to them, and they could be passing it back to me.

The real logical progression is

  1. Assume: as far as I can tell, I exist forever
  2. I am a person When an outside observer asks, “are you a soul?” The response they get is “yes”, but it’s a meaningless assumption.
Fourth paralogism: ideality (in regard to outer relation)

the ideality of outer appearances: open-to-question-ness idealism: doctrine of the ideality dualism: opposing doctrine that we can know certainly about objects of outer sense

Transcendental realism: time and space are given in-themselves Transcendental realists = empirical idealists transcendental idealists = empirical realists

empirical: realism: we can’t be certain that the proposition is true idealism: we can be certain that the proposition is true

transcendental: idealism: metaphysics propositions are complex statements about minds realism: metaphysics propositions are independent of our minds

We have to learn about the soul from experience rather than reason because it’s not a subject we can reason about - it’s a mechanism in the mind.

We run in trouble over interaction only when we •hypostatise outer appearances, •come to regard them not as representations but as things existing by themselves outside us, with the same qualities that they have in us, and •think of them as acting on our thinking subject in the way they (as appearances) act on one another.

We run into trouble when we think that outer appearances exist as things-in-themselves outside us, with the same qualities as we perceive them having inside of us. And when we think they act on other things the same way they act on us.

Three kinds of objections to a judgement (some proposition P about object x):

Three kinds of theories about connection between soul and body:

  1. physical influence (what must be)
  2. predetermined harmony (what is)
  3. supernatural intervention (what ought to be)

1 doesn’t fall to dogmatic objection.

Three dialectical uses of pure reason:

  1. The synthesis of the conditions of thought as such
  2. The synthesis of the conditions of empirical thinking
  3. The synthesis of the conditions of pure thinking

Cause the three sciences of pure reason:

  1. transcendental psychology
  2. transcendental cosmology
  3. transcendental theology

The paralogisms of pure reason (second edition)

Without providing any positive doctrine, rational psychology reminds us that we should regard reason’s refusal to give a satisfying answers to our inquisitive questions about things that are beyond the limits of this present life as being reason’s hint that we should divert our self-knowledge from fruitless and extravagant speculation to fruitful practical use.

Analytic propositions:

In all judgments I am the determining subject of the relation that constitutes the judgment

The I of self-awareness, and therefore the I in every act of thought, is one, and can’t be resolved into a plurality of subjects, and consequently signifies a logically simple subject.

“I” is logically simple, but it doesn’t mean that “I” is a substance.

Through all the variety of which I am conscious through time I am identical with myself.

I distinguish my own existence as that of a thinking being from other things outside me—among them my body.

Refutation of Mendelssohn’s proof of the permanence of the soul

The usual argument for the permanence of soul is that it’s simple and can’t go out of existence by dissolution to something lesser. It doesn’t have parts and can’t be taken apart. It can’t gradually go out of existence - it has to be instant, but that means a discrete point in time where it exists, then next discrete point where it doesn’t, but that’s impossible because time is continuous.

The soul has intensive magnitude, not extensive magnitude. It can gradually lose powers.

It’s impossible to arrive at results that lie beyond the limits of experience using dogma. The defence:

  1. try to prove that the proposition is necessarily true
  2. find that this can’t be done
  3. explain why it can’t be done (the limits of our reason)
  4. make the opponent back down too, because they are infringing on the same limits

Concluding the solution of the psychological paralogism

1 The object of inner sense is in time-only. 2 The objects of outer sense are in space and time. 2 appears to one externally. Whatever underlies the appearance of both may not be different. The only question that remains is, “How is it possible for any two substances to interact causally?”

Moving across from rational psychology to cosmology

Chapter 2: The antinomy of pure reason

world-concept: any transcendental idea that concerns the absolute totality in the synthesis of appearances

1. System of cosmological ideas

The only source for pure and transcendental concepts is the understanding. Reason is not a source, but it can clean empirical concepts into pure ones.

For a given condition we want to turn into a concept, reason demands absolute totality on the side of the conditions that the understanding finds for all appearances.

Because each of the conditioned relation is an instance of one of the categories, transcendental ideas of reason are categories extended to the unconditioned.

Reason has an interest in the question ‘Was there a first time?’ but not in the question ‘Will there be a last time?’

…

But most of the time empiricism itself becomes dogmatic about ideas, confidently denying whatever lies out of reach of the knowledge it can have through intuition. When that happens. empiricism shows the same lack of modesty ·that it has criticised in its dogmatic opponents·; and this fault is especially blameworthy because it does irreparable harm to reason’s practical interests.

…

1. Solution of the cosmological idea of the totality of

the composition of the appearances of a cosmic whole

The empirical regress we can’t experience an absolute limit; we can’t experience any condition as being empirically absolutely unconditioned.

That’s because such an experience would have to involve perceiving a limitation of appearances by nothing, i.e. by the void, and it’s impossible to perceive a void.

Absolute limits don’t work because we’d need to perceive a limitation of appearances by nothing.

Groundwork for the metaphysic of morals

Preface

Ancient greek philosophy divided into logic, natural science, and ethics. Logic is about formal knowledge, doesn’t care about differences between objects. Natural sciences is about laws of nature. Ethics is about laws of freedom.

Moral laws are different from any practical knowledge involving anything empirical AND they depend on non-empirical knowledge.

For something to be morally good, it has to both conform to the law and be done because it conforms to the law.

Three reasons for not going straight into critical examination of pure practical reason:

  1. Pure speculative reason is more useful than pure practical reason, because theoretical pure reason is dialectical (has inherent contradictions), while human reason can end up pretty correct and practical.
  2. Practical and speculative reason have to be brought together.
  3. Metaphysic of morals is easier to understand, made for stupid people

Chapter 1: Moving from common-sense knowledge to philosophical knowledge about morality

People who employ a lot of reason tend to be less happy. Good will requires the use of reason. Good will (morality) and happiness seem to be in opposition, but we have to balance them.

First proposition of morality:

For an action to have genuine moral worth it must be done from duty

Second:

An action that is done from duty doesn’t get its moral value from the purpose that’s to be achieved through it but from the maxim that it involves, ·giving the reason why the person acts thus

Moral value doesn’t come from the ends of an action. It comes from the reason why the person acts this way.

Third:

To have a duty is to be required to act in a certain way out of respect for law

That is, I ought never to act in such a way that I couldn’t also will that the maxim on which I act should be a universal law.

Chapter 2: Moving from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysic of morals

Old stuff was too into self-interest.

We can’t get our concept of morality from examples because we can’t know they’re good examples without having a concept of morality first.

Each human is an end to themselves.

the end or purpose that all men naturally have is their own happiness.

the principle of morality in three ways: •Act as though the maxim of your action were to become, through your will, a universal law of nature. •Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means. •Act only so that your will could regard itself as giving universal law through its maxim.

Chapter 3: Moving from the metaphysic of morals to the critique of pure practical reason

The concept of freedom is the key to explaining the autonomy of the will

12 Aug 2024