(7) is a development of an argument which first appears in the Prolegomena. The statement of it there given is, however, extremely confused, owing to the distinction which Kant most unfortunately introduces[965] between judgments of experience and judgments of perception. That distinction is entirely worthless and can only serve to mislead the reader. It cuts at the very root of Kant’s Critical teaching. Judgments of perception involve, Kant says, no category of the understanding, but only what he is pleased to call the “logical connection of perceptions in a thinking subject.” What that may be he nowhere explains, save by adding[966] that in it perceptions are “compared and conjoined in a consciousness of my state” (also spoken of by Kant as “empirical consciousness”), and not “in consciousness in general.”
“All our judgments are at first mere judgments of perception; they hold good merely for us (that is, for the individual subject), and we do not till afterwards give them a new reference, namely, to an object.... To illustrate the matter: that the room is warm, sugar sweet, and wormwood bitter—these are merely subjectively valid judgments. I do not at all demand that I myself should at all times, or that every other person should, find the facts to be what I now assert; they only express a reference of two sensations to the same subject, to myself, and that only in my present state of perception. Consequently they are not intended to be valid of the object. Such judgments I have named those of perception. Judgments of experience are of quite a different nature. What experience teaches me under certain circumstances, it must teach me always and teach everybody, and its validity is not limited to the subject or to its state at a particular time.”[967]
The illegitimacy and the thoroughly misleading character of this distinction hardly require to be pointed out. Obviously Kant is here confusing assertion of contingency and contingency of assertion.[968] A judgment of contingency, in order to be valid, must itself be necessary. Even a momentary state of the self is referable to an object in judgment only if that object is causally, and therefore necessarily, concerned in its production.[969]
The distinction is repeated in § 22 as follows:
“Thinking is the combining of representations in one consciousness. This combination is either merely relative to the subject, and is contingent and subjective, or is absolute, and is necessary or objective. The combination of representations in one consciousness is judgment. Thinking, therefore, is the same as judging, or the relating of representations to judgments in general. Judgments, therefore, are either merely subjective, or they are objective. They are subjective when representations are related to a consciousness in one subject only, and are combined in it alone. They are objective when they are united in a consciousness in general, that is, necessarily.”[970]
To accept this distinction is to throw the entire argument into confusion. This Kant seems to have himself recognised in the interval between the Prolegomena and the second edition of the Critique. For in the section before us there is no trace of it. The opposition is no longer between subjective and objective judgment, but only between association of ideas and judgment which as such is always objective. The distinction drawn in the Prolegomena is only, indeed, a more definite formulation of the distinction which runs through the first edition of the Critique between the indeterminate and the determinate object of consciousness. The more definite formulation of it seems, however, to have had the happy effect of enabling Kant to realise the illegitimacy of any such distinction.
We may now proceed to consider the remaining sections.[971] In section 21[972] Kant makes a very surprising statement. The above argument, which he summarises in a sentence, yields, he declares, “the beginning of a deduction of the pure concepts of understanding.” This can hardly be taken as representing Kant’s real estimate of the significance of the preceding argument, and would seem to be due to a temporary preoccupation with the problems that centre in the doctrine of schematism. So far, Kant adds in explanation, no account has been taken of the particular manner in which the manifold of empirical intuition is supplied to us.[973] The necessary supplement, consisting of a very brief outline statement of the doctrine of schematism, is given in section 26.[974] It differs from the teaching of the special chapter devoted to schematism in emphasising space equally with time. The doctrine of pure a priori manifolds is incidentally asserted.[975] Section 26 concludes by consideration of the question why appearances must conform to the a priori categories. It is no more surprising, Kant claims, than that they should agree with the a priori forms of intuition. The categories and the intuitional forms are relative to the same subject to which the appearances are relative; and the appearances “as mere representations are subject to no law of connection save that which the combining faculty prescribes.”
The summary of the deduction given in section 27 discusses the three possible theories regarding the origin of pure concepts, viz. those of generatio aequivoca (out of experience), epigenesis, and preformation. The first is disproved by the deduction. The second is the doctrine of the deduction and fulfils all the requirements of demonstration. The proof that the categories are at once independent of experience and yet also universally valid for all experience is of the strongest possible kind, namely, that they make experience itself possible. The third theory, that the categories, while subjective and self-discovered, originate in faculties which are implanted in us by our Creator and which are so formed as to yield concepts in harmony with the laws of nature, lies open to two main objections. In the first place, this is an hypothesis capable of accounting equally well for any kind of a priori whatsoever; the predetermined powers of judgment can be multiplied without limit. But a second objection is decisive, namely, that on such a theory the categories would lack the particular kind of necessity which is required. They would express only the necessities imposed upon our thinking by the constitution of our minds, and would not justify any assertion of necessary connection in the object. Kant might also have added,[976] that this hypothesis is metaphysical, and therefore offers in explanation of the empirical validity of a priori concepts a theory which rests upon and involves their unconditioned employment. That is a criticism which is reinforced by the teaching of the Dialectic.
To return now to the omitted sections 22 to 25. Section 22 makes no fresh contribution to the argument of the first edition. Its teaching in regard to pure intuition and mathematical knowledge has already been commented upon. In section 23 Kant dwells upon an interesting consequence of the argument of the deduction. The categories have a wider scope than the pure forms of sense. Since the argument of the deduction has shown that judgment is the indispensable instrument both for reducing a manifold to the unity of apperception and also for conferring upon representations a relation to an object, it follows that the categories which are simply the possible functions of unity in judgment are valid for any and every consciousness that is sensuously conditioned and whose knowledge is therefore acquired through synthesis of a given manifold. Though such consciousness may not intuit in terms of space and time, it must none the less apprehend objects in terms of the categories. The categories thus extend to objects of sensuous intuition in general. They are not, however, valid of objects as such, that is, of things in themselves. As empty relational forms they have meaning only in reference to a given matter; and as instruments for the reduction of variety to the unity of apperception their validity has been proved only for conscious and sensuous experience. Even if the possibility of a non-sensuous intuitive understanding, capable of apprehending things in themselves, be granted, we have no sufficient ground for asserting that the forms which such understanding will employ must coincide with the categories.[977] These are points which will come up for discussion in connection with Kant’s more detailed argument in the chapter on the distinction between phenomena and noumena.[978]
The heading to section 24 is decidedly misleading. The phrase “objects of the senses in general” might be synonymous with “objects of intuition in general” of the preceding section. To interpret it, however, by the contents of the section, it means “objects of our senses.” This section ought, therefore, to form part of section 26, which in its opening sentences supplies its proper introduction. (It may also be noted that the opening sentences of section 24 are a needless repetition of section 23. This would seem to show that it was not written in immediate continuation of it.) The first three paragraphs of section 24 expound the same doctrine of schematism as that outlined in section 26, save that time alone is referred to. The remaining paragraphs of section 24 deal with the connected doctrine of inner sense. Section 25 deals with certain consequences which follow from that doctrine of inner sense.[979]