6 Concepts, Judgment & Deduction of the Categories - Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Dan Robinson)

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

so we see that for con concepts the

conceptual dimension

is actually the seeing element in

experience

for there to be an experience in

contrast to a sensation

to a bare sensation to the triggering of

events in a sensory organ that that

is not an experience for there to be an

experience there must be an

experience of something and for there to

be a

something it has to be an entity

subsumable

under a general class of things whether

it's a chair or a person

so there is a required conceptual

framework

for experience itself and it is

experience and understanding that

together

constitute the foundations of all

knowledge

without these concepts no more than a

parade of sensations would take place

and the this parade could never rise to

the level of a this

or a that now i'd not want you to

understand this as a species of

cognitive

relativism this part of kant's argument

with appropriate reservations may be

taken to be a chapter

in the very anthropology of thought but

not as a species of relativism and when

i say a chapter

in the anthropology of thought recall

how frequently kant reminds us

that the argument in place pertains to

us

pertains to a creature of a certain kind

pertains to

human beings i think i've mentioned in

an

earlier lecture that uh that that he

expresses

impatience with those who are impatient

with this divide he's established

between phenomena

and pneumonia doesn't this lead to

skepticism

why indeed can we not comprehend things

as in themselves they really are and

kant is prepared to say

well imaginably that there is a creature

that could

but not us and that people who are

impatient with that division

are asking this is a very nearly a quote

are asking for the impossible they're

asking for us not to be human beings

so it's not a relativistic

epistemology but it is an anthropology

of knowledge it presupposes a creature

of a certain kind

and that's the only kind kant can

discuss

with any authority and it's the only

kind to which kant's argument can

relate directly and with authority

uh he probably would be interested in

that literature that we've spawned in

the last 30 years on

what it's like to be a bat but i don't

think he'd be interested

for long

now the manner in which the external

world is objectified

is according to rules that are at once

universal and necessary within the

community of

rational human beings this is another

way of saying

this isn't a relativism that leads to

skepticism the

rules that govern the synthesis

of the manifold of sensuous contact

content these rules are universal and

necessary

it's conceivable that some different

creature

might subsume appearances under

different rules

that of course is not only something we

don't know it's something

we couldn't know the emphasis here is on

what is knowable

in principle by the sort of creature

that we happen to be

so knowledge in the kantian scheme is an

amalgam

of sensibility and understanding such

that what

cannot in principle enter into

experience

cannot in principle be known and so when

he says

right at the outset but of course hume

was right

in saying that all of our knowledge

arises from experience

that part of fume kant has no trouble

with it all

and he emphasizes it he says the mistake

hume made

was that in assuming that all of our

knowledge arises from experience

our knowledge is grounded in experience

and what hume failed to appreciate

is the necessary elements of cognition

that must be in place

for there to be experience and for

experience to merge with

understanding in a rule-governed way

in such a way as to be generative of

knowledge you know all that

to be known an object must go beyond an

element of experience

and it must be located within a

conceptual framework

so what's required now is an argument

that establishes the necessity and

universality of the pure concepts

how come they're not just pap hazard

required is what kant refers to as the

transcendental deduction

of the categories

now he says not every kind of knowledge

a priori should be called

transcendental but that only by which we

know that

and know how certain representations can

be employed

or are possible purely our priori

transcendental in the sense of

establishing the necessary

enabling conditions for something else

to take place

so how do sensations of the most

rudimentary sort

enter into the formation of concepts

and how does the manifold of otherwise

disparate appearances

become a unified experience in a given

consciousness remember we not only have

to get

all of this flotsam unified

but it must be unified in a

consciousness

and it has to be unified in a

consciousness that actually has a street

address

so that all this is taking place in you

or you it's not just

out there somewhere so there has to be a

self-consciousness

in which all of this somehow takes place

and this has to be achieved without

begging the question

now um i do want to say

something i i have before on

on the kind of deduction that kant has

in mind this transcendental deduction of

the categories i mentioned this to you

before

kant did have an interest kant had an

interest in everything

but he did have an interest in in

certain uh

political events of the time

jurisdictional disputes boundary and

border disputes and various german

principalities and so forth

didn't make a close study of this but

anyone with an interest in that

certainly would have been exposed to

what were

referred to as deductions

these are filings formal filings today

we

we we talk about them as as um

legal briefs to establish the

authenticity of a claim

and that's the sort of deduction he has

in mind he's talking about an argument

that a jury would find compelling in

other words it's not a logical deduction

of the categories it's a transcendental

deduction

and the deduction in question is to make

out this case

since we can do such and such since this

happens across all of us there's no

question about

it don't you agree

that for this to be the case that must

be the case

for the conceptual lives we live for the

knowledge claims that we routinely make

do you not see that there are certain

pure

categories of the understanding that

must be in place they must constitute

the template the framework the necessary

conditions

for the knowledge we know we have you

see

it's that kind of argument and now

he so he must provide the the argument

for the conclusion that we are in a

position to make

objective judgments regarding entities

in the external world

and judgment now becomes pivotal it's

it's the

linchpin of the cognitive processes that

he's trying to

establish judgment itself

or tile

so we see that an experience is of a

something it's not merely a parade of

disconnected sensations

there must be a means not contained in

the sensations themselves

by which these experiences are forged

and kant says the way to begin an

understanding of how this takes place

is with two supreme principles

so we now get to the two supreme

principles of the first

critique

one pertains to sensibility and one

pertains to

understanding the supreme

principle in relation to sensibility is

that

the manifold of intuition quote should

be subject to the formal conditions of

space and time

that's the transcendental aesthetic the

necessary enabling

conditions for there to be sensibility

is

a spatio-temporal framework not in the

stimulus

that's something that we we bring to the

situation

that's the supreme principle regarding

sensibility

the supreme principle in relation to

understanding is that quote

all the manifold of intuition should be

subject to conditions

of the original synthetic unity of our

perception

a typical kantian phrase you're sitting

there

as if you had been paralyzed by a pot by

a

poison dart if i say it again your

facial expression will not change one

wit

i will prove this by saying it again the

supreme principle in relation to the

understanding listen now your oxford

students meaning

nothing gets by you this will

the supreme principle in relation to the

understanding is that quote

all the manifold of intuition

should be subject to conditions of the

original

synthetic unity of our perception

what's the manifold of intuition

all that impinging stuff do you say

spatio temporally received

you say intuition

unchallenged this mode of reception

and what has to happen to it it has to

get

synthesized and it has to get

unified i shall give this to you

um if it were the states you could

probably put this on sesame street

i will give it to you by way of sesame

street

part of the manifold of intuition is hot

another part of it is black

a third part of it is viscous

a fourth part of it is wet

and a fifth part of it is a pungent

aroma absolutely

absolutely synthetic unity of our

perception you will never get a cup of

coffee out of this

ah now now the eyebrows

lower a bit and the poison has worn off

so we've got to have the synthetic unity

of our perception

imposed on these sensuous

intuition the manifold of sensuous

intuitions

which by the way do not come carrying a

code

for unification we provide the

unification

the external world provides the manifold

otherwise known as we want a technical

term for this

otherwise known as the mess

all right and out of that we make

a cup of coffee constantly on my mind

during these lectures by the way

now where the jury uh in front of kant

as he argues his case

and we have to judge whether he's made

his case for the

transcendental deduction of the

categories

the transcendental as noted refers to

the necessary

conditions for there to be knowledge at

all

he puts it this way as early as a12

i call all knowledge transcendental

if it is occupied not with objects but

with the way that we can possibly

know objects even before we experience

them

you see it's the rule

according to which we can have objective

knowledge

even before our eyes are open

how do we want to understand this

we have a little booklet called the

rules of chess right

so before you ever buy pieces or open up

the border

that's every permissible move that can

take place in a game properly called

the game of chess

all knowledge is transcendental such

knowledge

is transcendental when in fact

it's occupied not with that's a watch

these are glasses

but the very possibility of knowing

anything

before we experience anything the

conditions that must be in place

for us to know things in a certain way

what way

uh our way of knowing things

so the task of the transcendental

deduction finally is the question

how do we come to have knowledge of

objects and more precisely

the task is to establish the warrant

or the justification of any knowledge

claim we might make

that would be validly tied to experience

let me summarize the approach through a

series of steps from

sensation to appearances to concepts

and then to one's own concepts the

process begins with sensation

a response or reaction on the part of

sensory organs

to stimulate originating in the external

world

and then by way of the pure intuitions

of time and space

the necessary enabling conditions of

sensibility itself

the sensations are transformed into

appearances

it's only when these appearances are

subsumed under the pure categories of

the understanding

that we can be said to have an

experience of what is

present in the external world as he says

at b161

the necessary conditions by which there

is the very possibility of experience

are the pure concepts of the

understanding

well this gets us back to a question

that i think i raised a

second week well does a dog see a tree

a creature a creature without the a

priori categories

could have the same sensations indeed

these sensations could give rise to the

same appearances

as we possess but not the same

experiences

such a creature would see a tree but not

experience it as such and again

you you know we all know dogs

see everything what they don't see they

smell

this becomes clearer in kant's treatment

of judgment

which allows us to trace the argument

from the subjectivity

of mere perception and this is a key

distinction that i i do hope

you'll rivet to the most functional

part of what frontal cortex i should

think

and bits of bits of

limbic system you want to remember this

even

viscerally do you see so when you hear

it again you

get a funny sensation like

i heard this before somewhere

and that's the distinction between

judgments

of perception and judgments of

experience

judgments of perception versus judgments

of experience

the subjectivity of our perceptions

being what it is will give rise to a

subjectivity of judgment

but as experiences arise from the

subsumption

of content under necessary and universal

categories

the judgments of experience are common

across recipients now that's going to be

part of the argument that has to be made

now integral to this entire process is

the faculty of

imagination

it's through the imagination that

concepts and intuitions become

synthesized

and become synthesized according to a

universal rule

which kant refers to as a schema

this is the way the understanding will

rise to the level of empirical knowledge

and objective

empirical knowledge the imagination is

what has the power of drawing together

certain elements

in an otherwise disconnected assortment

of sensations drawing together just

those

elements that constitute a knowable

something

but the imagination as such does not

yield knowledge

rather it makes knowledge possible it's

only when the synthesis of the manifold

is then brought into brought

under the pure categories of the

understanding

that knowledge as such arises

now you might say well the imagination

the word itself is suggestive of a kind

of subjectivity am i using my

imagination when i when i do this

and kant wants to be clear that the

process of synthesis

is not arbitrary indeed if the resulting

synthesis

generates the same object for all

comparably situated observers

then you certainly can't say that this

is the outcome of some merely

probable or iffy uh

process there must be a framework there

must be rules by which the elements of

the manifold are pulled and held

together

and this of course is what the pure

concepts of the understanding

are all about so you begin to see how

the

famous transcendental deduction unfolds

kant begins with the with an indubitable

feature of the understanding

namely the stability of representations

the virtually universal manner in which

comparably

positioned observers judge the objects

of experience now let me not be

cryptic on this point look

take a look well take a look

right now i'm larger

on your retina

my surface reflectance has just changed

an entirely different configuration of

stimuli has just occurred

as it has again just occurred

every aspect of the external world

changes

as your head movement changes

as you inspire and breathe out

every time you do this the position of

the external world

changes do you say now you've got this

incessant system of

continuous alteration constant

alteration

in a world that nonetheless contains

things that

retain their resemblance throughout all

these transformations

how does that happen it happens

in so far as some aspect of the external

world

remains of this and it remains

of this by being conceptualized

so that you are no longer limited to

judgments of perception

which can be exquisitely detailed

but you now are in a position to make

judgments of experience

yes as the chap on the hill approaches

me

his retinal projection gets larger and

larger

a judgment of perception which by the

way in classical psychophysics would be

called the stimulus error

is now corrected by the fact that you

happen to know it's a person

whose size doesn't change as he gets

closer to you

do you see what i'm talking about the

difference between

something that's perceptually governed

and something that's conceptually

governed right

percepts and concepts are quite

different

i mentioned saint augustine's

engagement of that problem i didn't

mention that did i

shall i take a moment because it shows

up again in fact descartes uses exactly

the same

example that augustine does and in a

different context

augustine uses his to become a saint

and descartes to

retain his credentials as a philosopher

um well how do you become well you can

become a sane in a lot of different ways

but st augustine was on the way to

becoming a saint

by effectively battling heresies

now here's a heresy for you

of course it couldn't take place today

nobody would think this way today

when people talk about god and tell you

what they really mean by

god they assign attributes that by the

very nature of

god are beyond the range of possible

experience god is an infinite this a

maximum

that all you can ask for etc etc

has no moving parts occupies no space

uh the whole cosmos is somehow in his

imagination

you know the story

so there isn't any empirical grounding

for epistemic claims regarding god

so when you talk about god quite

literally technically you're talking

about something you couldn't possibly

know

anything about because there is no

perceptual grounding for the knowledge

claim

right this is the sort of thing i won't

name names but i mean we could

we could bring in a an estimable group

of

oxford leading lights

probably saying my point exactly

well so saint augustine said well look

um every normally cited

person can perceive

a geometric object with four equal

sides pairs of sides subtending

angles of 90 degrees we we call that a

square

and as everyone can perceive such a

figure so everyone can conceive of such

a figure

of course everyone can also conceive of

a

kilia gun which is a thousand-sided

figure

but though you can conceive of a

kiliagon

you can't perceive it because the

angular

changes are so slight as not to be

resolvable

by way of our visual acuity

so you see you can have quite a clear

conception

of something that really exists without

perceiving it

descartes uses the exactly that example

by the way

a few years later

descartes died in 1650.

saint augustine was hitting home runs

earlier end of the 4th century

a.d ah

well whatever what what does that have

to do with this

well what it has to do with is this we

will all

have the same objective we will all have

the

same judgments of experience when it

comes to

killagans we might have radically

different judgments of perception

when it comes to killing guns

so intersubjective agreement not to

mention the stable cognition of objects

under

widely varying conditions is now

explained by way of and here i quote

can't

remember what we're trying to explain

now inter-subjective agreement

and stable cognitions of objects under

widely varying conditions

explained by way of quote a catalog

of all the originally pure concepts of

the synthesis

which the understanding contains a

priori

and these concepts alone entitle it to

be called

a pure understanding in as much as only

by them

can it render the manifold of intuitions

conceivable

in other words think an object

this division is made systematically

from a common principle

namely the faculty of judgment which is

just the same

as the power of thought

this then is the outline of the

transcendental deduction

for our representations

uh to serve as possibilities for

knowledge they must become

conceptually grounded the categories

delineated in the

in what khan calls the metaphysical

deduction

now are seen as necessary for knowledge

to be

derived from experience now he's going

to give us a metaphysical deduction

followed then by a transcendental

deduction the metaphysical deduction

to some extent tracks aristotle's uh

uh famous delineation of the categories

khan's complaint with aristotle it's not

so much a complaint he said look

you know aristotle had these categories

kant's categories are going to be

different and they're going to be much

more

carefully arranged he said

what aristotle was doing it's a mild

complaint

aristotle was just listing the

properties of things that

one knows about and subsuming them

under general categories he was pretty

much governed by

empirical considerations

uh comes well i don't want to say he

comes close to saying

you know aristotle that greek human well

aristotle was

not not not a human at all and i don't

think kant would have seen him that way

but he sees aristotle as sort of just

putting together a lot of categories

because if you get enough of them in

place it'll pretty much account for all

the properties of things that we

know about

a metaphysical deduction is different

metaphysical deduction has to do

with the number the minimum and defined

number

of categories

for all conceivable

possible objective knowledge

the argument as to what you would have

to have

minimally and devoid of all empirical

content this is what you have to have

before the eyes are open

now once that metaphysical deduction is

in place the transcendental

deduction then becomes the argument to

the effect that what you have to have

is what we have and that's what grounds

our objective

knowledge of the external world

so the transcendental deduction then

becomes

the means by which uh

what what would have to be in place

is seen to be in place and operating

with necessity and universality

in the pro-agona at 297 to

302 um

kant does draw very clearly this

distinction between

judgments of perception and judgments of

experience

do keep in mind that judgments of

perception

are subjectively valid when i

judge honey to be sweet i'm connecting

two entities a physical object that is

honey

and a subjective sensation of sweetness

there's no guarantee that others will

have the same experience

or that i will on repeated encounters

or that my own sensation is not the

result of

something other than honey quite simply

they are not the stuff of which a

science of nature is made

but judgments of experience as noted are

quite different with these we begin to

uh with what is given by way of sensuous

intuition

but this is then subsumed unto concepts

that are based on the pure categories of

the understanding

and these are universally operative

within the realm

of human cognition unlike the judgments

of perception

the judgments of experience hold good

not only for us

but for everybody and so we now have an

objective validity which says can't

is the same as necessary universality

objective validity he equates with

necessary

universality it's in this sense that the

possibility of nature

becomes tied to the possibility of

experience itself

well now we can get to b-75

again this maxim

without sensibility no object would be

given to us

and without understanding no object

would be

thought thoughts without content are

empty

intuitions without concepts are blind

so in the absence of the categories our

perceptions would quote

be without an object merely a blind play

of representations

less even than a dream you see if you

couldn't conceptualize

things note that the various elements of

the objects of thought are synthesized

but a given object

is encountered as i noted under

radically different conditions at

different times

it retains its identity as this or that

surely not as a result of anything

delivered by the senses in fact to the

extent that

we are in the thrall of our sensory

processes

it it can never be the same object on

any successive

sampling

all right so that's the transcendental

deduction of the categories it has

spawned a huge

literature much of it critical and there

are problems

that arise uh within the argument itself

some of these were duly noted if i may

say with all due respect

were rather more discerningly noted by

kant's contemporaries than by

many of my contemporaries

but those are not the same

contemporaries by the way in case you're

wondering about that

um kant is clear on the need for a

process by which otherwise

various and varying representations are

held together

he describes the process of synthesis as

quote

the act of putting different

representations together

and grasping what is manifold in them in

one cognition

now integral to this process is what

we've referred to in an earlier lecture

spontaneity

sensations as such are devoid of

structure

synthesis yields structure and

spontaneity gives rise to creative and

flexible

cognitions we we're not zombie-like in

our

in in our modes of representation

but then serious questions do arise and

and then

and can't in a letter to marcus hurts

repeats a question that has been raised

by solomon maimon

and others uh persons who have had many

criticisms of the critique

the question is this how does kant

account for the agreement between the

opriori intuitions

and the a priori concepts they come

together so

perfectly it looks almost contrived

do you see how

is it that sensuous representations are

properly taken up

in just the right way by the pure

concepts of the understanding

you know the question is it's almost

like a kind of

card trick you know or the shell game

sort of thing

is it some darwinian sort of thing that

there might have been species that

didn't do it the right way and they all

went belly up and then oh you know

we came on the scene and we do it right

what kind of an argument is it

kant says to this i answer i i don't

know that you'll find this

a compelling answer it's khan's answer

to this i answer all of this takes place

in relation to an experiential knowledge

only possible for us under these

conditions

a subjective consideration to be sure

but one that is objectively valid as

well

because the objects here are not things

in themselves

but mere appearances consequently

the form in which they are given depends

on

us what what he's saying is it

he he doesn't completely de-subjectivise

it

but he says look the pure categories

this is something that the cognizer is

imposing

on the sensuous manifold and

and as this is the necessary and

universal set of conditions for human

understanding it shouldn't be surprising

that we all do it the same way

of course we all do it the same way but

analogically speaking we all conform to

the same rules when we play chats

no surprise because everything we're

doing is governed by

a rule structure so so so again with

kant

he says all of this takes place in

relation to an experiential knowledge

that is only possible for us under these

conditions

a subjective consideration to be sure

but one that's objectively valid as well

because the objects here are not things

in themselves

but mere appearances consequently the

form in which they are given

depends on us on the other hand they are

dependent on the uniting of the manifold

in consciousness

that is on what is required for the

thinking

and cognizing of objects by the

understanding

it's only under these conditions

therefore that we can have experiences

so to the extent that the categories

that the pure concepts of the

understanding

are universally distributed in creatures

of a certain kind

are the necessary preconditions for the

understanding

that the understanding itself must merge

with experience in the right way to

constitute knowledge

to the extent that this is the case

we have

an anthropological perspective on

knowledge but a universalist

anthropological

perspective it can't be subjective

in the sense that it is subject to the

willy-nilly subjective states of

a precipitate because the knowledge

claimed

does not arise is not grounded in

perception

it's grounded in the pure concepts of

the understanding

as necessarily and universally

distributed

i said that i would be performing a

transcendental deduction in this room

in case you hadn't noticed it i did

that's it

[Applause]