Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Justinian II." to "Kells" / Volume 15, Slice 6

by Various

Unfortunately for the consistency of the Kritik, Kant does not attempt to work out systematically the elements involved in knowledge before considering the subjective processes by which knowledge is realized in consciousness. He mixes up the two inquiries, and in the general division of his work depends rather upon the results of previous psychology than upon the lines prescribed by his own new conception of experience. He treats the elements of cognition separately in connexion with the several subjective processes involved in knowledge, viz. sense and understanding. Great ambiguity is the natural result of this procedure. For it was not possible for Kant to avoid the misleading connotation of the terms employed by him. In strictness, sense, understanding, imagination and reason ought to have had their functions defined in close relation to the elements of knowledge with which they are severally connected, and as these elements have no existence as separate facts, but only as factors in the complex organic whole, it might have been possible to avoid the error of supposing that each subjective process furnished a distinct, separately cognizable portion of a mechanical whole. But the use of separate terms, such as sense and understanding, almost unavoidably led to phraseology only interpretable as signifying that each furnished a specific kind of knowledge, and all Kant’s previous training contributed to strengthen this erroneous view. Especially noteworthy is this in the case of the categories. Kant insists upon treating these as Begriffe, notions, and assigns to them certain characteristics of notions. But it is readily seen, and in the Logik Kant shows himself fully aware of the fact, that these pure connective links of experience, general aspects of objects of intelligible experience, do not resemble concepts formed by the so-called logical or elaborative processes from representations of completed objects. Nothing but harm can follow from any attempt to identify two products which differ so entirely. So, again, the Aesthetik is rendered extremely obscure and difficult by the prevalence of the view, already noted as obtaining in the Dissertation, that sense is a faculty receiving representations of objects. Kant was anxious to avoid the error of Leibnitz, who had taken sense and understanding to differ in degree only, not in kind; but in avoiding the one error he fell into another of no less importance.

The consideration of the several elements which in combination make up the fact of cognition, or perception, as it may be called, contains little or nothing bearing on the origin and nature of the given data of sense, inner or outer. The manifold of sense, which plays so important a part in the critical theory of knowledge, is left in an obscure and perplexed position. So much is clear, however, that according to Kant sense is not to be regarded as receptive of representations of objects. The data of sense are mere stimuli, not partial or confused representations. The sense-manifold is not to be conceived as having, per se, any of the qualities of objects as actually cognized; its parts are not cognizable per se, nor can it with propriety be said to be received successively or simultaneously. When we apply predicates to the sense-manifold regarded in isolation, we make that which is only a factor in the experience of objects into a separate, independent object, and use our predicates transcendently. Kant is not always in his language faithful to his view of the sense-manifold, but the theory as a whole, together with his own express definitions, is unmistakable. On the origin of the data of sense, Kant’s remarks are few and little satisfactory. He very commonly employs the term affection of the faculty of sense as expressing the mode of origin, but offers no further explanation of a term which has significance only when interpreted after a somewhat mechanical fashion. Unquestionably certain of his remarks indicate the view that the origin is to be sought in things-in-themselves, but against hasty misinterpretations of such remarks there are certain cautions to be borne in mind. The relation between phenomena and noumena in the Kantian system does not in the least resemble that which plays so important a part in modern psychology—between the subjective results of sense affection and the character of the objective conditions of such affection. Kant has pointedly declared that it would be a gross absurdity to suppose that in his view separate, distinct things-in-themselves existed corresponding to the several objects of perception. And, finally, it is not at all difficult to understand why Kant should say that the affection of sense originated in the action of things-in-themselves, when we consider what was the thing-in-itself to which he was referring. The thing-in-itself to which the empirical order and relations of sense-experience are referred is the divine order, which is not matter of knowledge, but involved in our practical or moral beliefs. Critics who limit their view to the Kritik of Pure Reason, and there, in all probability, to the first or constructive portion of the work, must necessarily fail to interpret the doctrines of the Kantian system, which do not become clear or definite till the system has been developed. Reason was, for Kant, an organic whole; the speculative and moral aspects are never severed; and the solution of problems which appear at first sight to belong solely to the region of speculative thought may be found ultimately to depend upon certain characteristics of our nature as practical.

Data of sense-affection do not contain in themselves synthetic combination. The first conditions of such combination are found by Kant in the universal forms under which alone sense-phenomena manifest themselves in experience. These universal forms of perception, space and time, are necessary, a priori, and in characteristic features resembling intuitions, not notions. They occupy, therefore, a peculiar position, and one section of the Kritik, the Aesthetik, is entirely devoted to the consideration of them. It is important to observe that it is only through the a priori character of these perceptive forms that rational science of nature is at all possible. Kant is here able to resume, with fresh insight, his previous discussions regarding the synthetic character of mathematical propositions. In his early essays he had rightly drawn the distinction between mathematical demonstration and philosophic proof, referring the certainty of the first to the fact that the constructions were synthetic in character and entirely determined by the action of constructive imagination. It had not then occurred to him to ask, With what right do we assume that the conclusions arrived at from arbitrary constructions in mathematical matter have applicability to objects of experience? Might not mathematics be a purely imaginary science? To this question he is now enabled to return an answer. Space and time, the two essential conditions of sense-perception, are not data given by things, but universal forms of intellect into which all data of sense must be received. Hence, whatever is true of space and time regarded by imagination as objects, i.e. quantitative constructions, must be true of the objects making up our sense-experience. The same forms and the same constructive activity of imagination are involved in mathematical synthesis and in the constitution of objects of sense-experience. The foundation for pure or rational mathematics, there being included under this the pure science of movement, is thus laid in the critical doctrine of space and time.

The Aesthetik isolates sense-perception, and considers its forms as though it were an independent, complete faculty. A certain confusion, arising from this, is noticeable in the Analytik when the necessity for justifying the position of the categories is under discussion, but the real difficulty in which Kant was involved by his doctrine of space and time has its roots even deeper than the erroneous isolation of sensibility. He has not in any way “deduced” space and time, but, proceeding from the ordinary current view of sense-experience, has found these remaining as residuum after analysis. The relation in which they stand to the categories or pure notions is ambiguous; and, when Kant has to consider the fashion in which category and data of sense are to be brought together, he merely places side by side as a priori elements the pure connective notions and the pure forms of perception, and finds it, apparently, only a matter of contingent convenience that they should harmonize with one another and so render cognition possible. To this point also Fichte was the first to call attention.

Affection of sense, even when received into the pure forms of perception, is not matter of knowledge. For cognition there is requisite synthetic combination, and the intellectual function through which such combination takes place. The forms of intellectual function Kant proceeds to enumerate with the aid of the commonly received logical doctrines. For this reference to logic he has been severely blamed, but the precise nature of the debt due to the commonly accepted logical classification is very generally misconceived. Synthetic combination, Kant points out, is formally expressed in a judgment, which is the act of uniting representations. At the foundation of the judgments which express the types of synthetic combination, through which knowledge is possible, lie the pure general notions, the abstract aspect of the conditions under which objects are cognizable in experience. General logic has also to deal with the union of representations, though its unity is analytic merely, not synthetic. But the same intellectual function which serves to give unity in the analytic judgments of formal logic serves to give unity to the synthetic combinations of real perception. It appeared evident, then, to Kant that in the forms of judgment, as they are stated in the common logic, there must be found the analogues of the types of judgment which are involved in transcendental logic, or in the theory of real cognition. His view of the ordinary logic was wide and comprehensive, though in his restriction of the science to pure form one can trace the influence of his earlier training, and it is no small part of the value of the critical philosophy that it has revived the study of logic and prepared the way for a more thorough consideration of logical doctrines. The position assigned to logic by Kant is not, in all probability, one which can be defended; indeed, it is hard to see how Kant himself, in consistency with the critical doctrine of knowledge, could have retained many of the older logical theorems, but the precision with which the position was stated, and the sharpness with which logic was marked off from cognate philosophic disciplines, prepared the way for the more thoughtful treatment of the whole question.

Formal logic thus yields to Kant the list of the general notions, pure intellectual predicates, or categories, through which alone experience is possible for a conscious subject. It has already been noted how serious was the error involved in the description of these as notions, without further attempt to clear up their precise significance. Kant, indeed, was mainly influenced by his strong opposition to the Leibnitzian rationalism, and therefore assigns the categories to understanding, the logical faculty, without consideration of the question,—which might have been suggested by the previous statements of the Dissertation,—what relation these categories held to the empirical notions formed by comparison, abstraction and generalization when directed upon representations of objects. But when the categories are described as notions, i.e. formed products of thought, there rises of necessity the problem which had presented itself to Kant at every stage of his precritical thinking,—with what right can we assume that these notions apply to objects of experience? The answer which he proceeds to give altogether explodes the definition of the categories as formed products of thought, and enables us to see more clearly the nature of the new conception of experience which lies in the background of all the critical work.

The unity of the ego, which has been already noted as an element entering into the synthesis of cognition, is a unity of a quite distinct and peculiar kind. That the ego to which different parts of experience are presented must be the same ego, if there is to be cognition at all, is analytically evident; but the peculiarity is that the ego must be conscious of its own unity and identity, and this unity of self-consciousness is only possible in relation to difference not contained in the ego but given to it. The unity of apperception, then, as Kant calls it, is only possible in relation to synthetic unity of experience itself, and the forms of this synthetic unity, the categories, are, therefore, on the one hand, necessary as forms in which self-consciousness is realized, and, on the other hand, restricted in their application and validity to the data of given sense, or the particular element of experience. Thus experience presents itself as the organic combination of the particular of sense with the individual unity of the ego through the universal forms of the categories. Reference of representations to the unity of the object, synthetic unity of apperception, and subsumption of data of sense under the categories, are thus three sides or aspects of the one fundamental fact.

In this deduction of the categories, as Kant calls it, there appears for the first time an endeavour to connect together into one organic whole the several elements entering into experience. It is evident, however, that much was wanting before this essential task could be regarded as complete. Kant has certainly brought together self-consciousness, the system of the categories and data of sense. He has shown that the conditions of self-consciousness are the conditions of possible experience. But he has not shown, nor did he attempt to show, how it was that the conditions of self-consciousness are the very categories arrived at by consideration of the system of logical judgments. He does endeavour to show, but with small success, how the junction of category and data of sense is brought about, for according to his scheme these stood, to a certain extent at least, apart from and independent of one another. The failure to effect an organic combination of the several elements was the natural consequence of the false start which had been made.

The mode in which Kant endeavours to show how the several portions of cognition are subjectively realized brings into the clearest light the inconsistencies and imperfections of his doctrine. Sense had been assumed as furnishing the particular of knowledge, understanding as furnishing the universal; and it had been expressly declared that the particular was cognizable only in and through the universal. Still, each was conceived as somehow in itself complete and finished. Sense and understanding had distinct functions, and there was wanting some common term, some intermediary which should bring them into conjunction. Data of sense as purely particular could have nothing in common with the categories as purely universal. But data of sense had at least one universal aspect,—their aspect as the particular of the general forms, space and time. Categories were in themselves abstract and valueless, serviceable only when restricted to possible objects of experience. There was thus a common ground on which category and intuition were united in one, and an intermediate process whereby the universal of the category might be so far individualized as to comprehend the particular of sense. This intermediate process—which is really the junction of understanding and sense—Kant calls productive imagination, and it is only through productive imagination that knowledge or experience is actually realized in our subjective consciousness. The specific forms of productive imagination are called schemata, and upon the nature of the schema Kant gives much that has proved of extreme value for subsequent thought.

Productive imagination is thus the concrete element of knowledge, and its general modes are the abstract expression of the a priori laws of all possible experience. The categories are restricted in their applicability to the schema, i.e. to the pure forms of conjunction of the manifold in time, and in the modes of combination of schemata and categories we have the foundation for the rational sciences of mathematics and physics. Perception or real cognition is thus conceived as a complex fact, involving data of sense and pure perceptive forms, determined by the category and realized through productive imagination in the schema. The system of principles which may be deduced from the consideration of the mode in which understanding and sense are united by productive imagination is the positive result of the critical theory of knowledge, and some of its features are remarkable enough to deserve attention. According to his usual plan, Kant arranges these principles in conformity with the table of the categories, dividing the four classes, however, into two main groups, the mathematical and the dynamical. The mathematical principles are the abstract expression of the necessary mode in which data of sense are determined by the category in the form of intuitions or representations of objects; the dynamical are the abstract expression of the modes in which the existence of objects of intuition is determined. The mathematical principles are constitutive, i.e. express determinations of the objects themselves; the dynamical are regulative, i.e. express the conditions under which objects can form parts of real experience. Under the mathematical principles come the general rules which furnish the ground for the application of quantitative reasoning to real facts of experience. For as data of sense are only possible objects when received in the forms of space and time, and as space and time are only cognized when determined in definite fashion by the understanding through the schema of number (quantity) or degree (quality), all intuitions are extensive quantities and contain a real element, that of sense, which has degree. Under the dynamical principles, the general modes in which the existence of objects are determined, fall the analogies of experience, or general rules according to which the existence of objects in relation to one another can be determined, and the postulates of experience, the general rules according to which the existence of objects for us or our own subjective existence can be determined. The analogies of experience rest upon the order of perceptions in time, i.e. their permanence, succession or coexistence, and the principles are respectively those of substance, causality and reciprocity. It is to be observed that Kant in the expression of these analogies reaches the final solution of the difficulty which had so long pressed upon him, the difficulty as to the relation of the pure connective notions to experience. These notions are not directly applicable to experience, nor do we find in experience anything corresponding to the pure intellectual notions of substance, cause and reciprocity. But experience is for us the combination of data of sense in the forms of productive imagination, forms determined by the pure intellectual notions, and accordingly experience is possible for us only as in modes corresponding to the notions. The permanent in time is substance in any possible experience, and no experience is possible save through the determination of all changes as in relation to a permanent in time. Determined sequence is the causal relation in any possible experience, and no experience is possible save through the determination of perceived changes as in relation to a determined order in time. So with coexistence and reciprocity.