Kant's Theory of Knowledge

by H. A. Prichard

It is clear that this passage, whatever its precise interpretation may be,[12] involves a confusion between the thought of counting and that of number. The thought of number relates to objects of apprehension and does not involve the thought of time. The thought of counting, which presupposes the thought of number, relates to our apprehension of objects and involves the thought of time; it is the thought of a successive process on our part by which we count the number of units contained in what we already know to consist of units.[13] Now we must assume that the schema of quantity is really what Kant says it is, viz. number, or to express it more accurately, the thought of number, and not the thought of counting, with which he wrongly identifies it. For his main problem is to find conceptions which at once are more concrete than the categories and, at the same time, like the categories, relate to objects, and the thought of counting, though more concrete than that of number, does not relate to objects. Three consequences follow. In the first place, although the schema of quantity, i. e. the thought of number, is more concrete than the thought of quantity,[14] it is not, as it should be, more concrete in respect of time; for the thought of number does not include the thought of time. Secondly, the thought of time is only introduced into the schema of quantity irrelevantly by reference to the temporal process of counting, by which we come to apprehend the number of a given group of units. Thirdly, the schema of quantity is only in appearance connected with the nature of a schema in general, as Kant describes it, by a false identification of the thought of number with the thought of the process on our part by which we count groups of units, i. e. numbers.

The account of the schema of reality, the second category, runs as follows: "Reality is in the pure conception of the understanding that which corresponds to a sensation in general, that therefore of which the conception in itself indicates a being (in time), while negation is that of which the conception indicates a not being (in time). Their opposition, therefore, arises in the distinction between one and the same time as filled or empty. Since time is only the form of perception, consequently of objects as phenomena, that which in objects corresponds to sensation is the transcendental matter of all objects as things in themselves (thinghood, reality).[15] Now every sensation has a degree or magnitude by which it can fill the same time, i. e. the internal sense, in respect of the same representation of an object, more or less, until it vanishes into nothing ( = 0 = negatio). There is, therefore, a relation and connexion between reality and negation, or rather a transition from the former to the latter, which makes every reality representable as a quantum; and the schema of a reality, as the quantity of something so far as it fills time, is just this continuous and uniform generation of the reality in time, as we descend in time from the sensation which has a certain degree, down to the vanishing thereof, or gradually ascend from negation to the magnitude thereof."[16]

This passage, if it be taken in connexion with the account of the anticipations of perception,[17] seems to have the following meaning: 'In thinking of something as a reality, we think of it as that which corresponds to, i. e. produces, a sensation, and therefore as something which, like the sensation, is in time; and just as every sensation, which, as such, occupies time, has a certain degree of intensity, so has the reality which produces it. Now to produce for ourselves an instance of a reality in this sense, we must add units of reality till a reality of the required degree is produced, and the thought of this method on our part of constructing an individual reality is the schema of reality.' But if this represents Kant's meaning, the schema of reality relates only to our process of apprehension, and therefore is not a conception which relates to objects and is more concrete than the corresponding category in respect of time. Moreover, it is matter for surprise that in the case of this category Kant should have thought schematism necessary, for time is actually included in his own statement of the category.

The account of the schemata of the remaining categories need not be considered. It merely asserts that certain conceptions relating to objects and involving the thought of time are the schemata corresponding to the remaining categories, without any attempt to connect them with the nature of a schema. Thus, the schema of substance is asserted to be the permanence of the real in time, that of cause the succession of the manifold, in so far as that succession is subjected to a rule, that of interaction the coexistence of the determinations or accidents of one substance with those of another according to a universal rule.[18] Again, the schemata of possibility, of actuality and of necessity are said to be respectively the accordance of the synthesis of representations with the conditions of time in general, existence in a determined time, and existence of an object in all time.

The main confusion pervading the chapter is of course that between temporal relations which concern the process of apprehension and temporal relations which concern the realities apprehended. Kant is continually referring to the former as if they were the latter. The cause of this confusion lies in Kant's reduction of physical realities to representations. Since, according to him, these realities are only our representations, all temporal relations are really relations of our representations, and these relations have to be treated at one time as relations of our apprehensions, and at another as relations of the realities apprehended, as the context requires.

FOOTNOTES

[1] p. 141.

[2] The cause of Kant's procedure is, of course, to be found in the unreal way in which he isolates conception from judgement.

[3] B. 175, M. 106.

[4] B. §§ 24 and 26, M. §§ 20 and 22.