A History of Philosophy | 53 Kant on Understanding

this afternoon we move beyond cants transcendental aesthetic to the transcendental analytic and if that complicated vocabulary has registered in your consciousness you'll recognize that that means were moving from his examination of the preconditions that make possible sense perception to consideration of the preconditions that make possible conceptual understanding judgments the transcendental aesthetic is about since perception and the transcendental method that he's employing is simply the procedure of bracketing all particulars within the experience the content of the experience so as to identify the universal structure of perceptual experience which is characteristic regardless of all the variables of particular experiences and you recall that he finds that the two forms of sense perception space that is to say we see things in three dimensional ways and time experience comes to us sequentially in time and the study simply of those pure forms is what gives rise to mathematics geometry the science of space and arithmetic the science of numbered sequences the sequentiality of time well Kant has also told us you remember that percepts without universal concepts of some sort of light it's not enough for you to say blue patch now and I add patch and now to get the space-time qualities of it the forms blue patch now if that's all you say is somebody will say what on earth are you trying to say because you're not affirming anything of anything you're not interpreting the blue patch now in any way so the understanding of our experience the interpretation of perceptual experience requires that we call on more abstract general concepts in talking about it and in the transcendental analytic he is after those abstract concepts which are the necessary prerequisites for interpretive understanding of what we experience just as the forms structure perception so the categories of understanding give structure to our understanding ok and so we want to get at these categories now as we get at them keep in mind the comparison with Aristotle's categories that I mentioned a couple of days ago Aristotle identified ten categories of thought that are also categories of being Kant identifies 12 categories of thought but he does not know that categories of being keep that difference in mind his categories are really Newtonian categories so the outcome of this is to conclude the Newtonian science is dealing only with subjective structures of our thinking the way we structure the world rather than with the way the world objectively is in today's parlance he is not a realist about science but an anti realist about science science does not tell us about reality tells us on me about phenomena and one other thing too to notice that when he does present to us his categories they come in four groups of three four triads and some historians have pointed out that this is the beginning of the Hegelian dialectic thesis antithesis synthesis structuring all thought and for Hegel all being yes they when we get to Hegel will trace out his Triads thesis antithesis synthesis concepts categories but Kant's 12 categories come in that triadic form though he doesn't see it as a dialectic he doesn't think of that that comes later with Hegel know the way in which he gets at them identifies what the categories are is is really very straightforward if these are the ways which we understand things the ways in which we classify things if you like the way in which we classify our experiences then it's natural that if you can lay out a classification of different kinds of judgment we make to those judgments are likely to embody the a priori categories and of course that's precisely what he does so that if you look on pages 3 88 and 389 and I hope you brought your Kaufman if not look at somebody else's pages 388 389 you notice that at the top of 388 388 he represents under four heads twelve different logical kinds of judgments and as you look over them you'll think that he's perhaps taken this from an introductory logic textbook like perhaps you used in logic 243 because the quantity of judgments represent three kinds that we talked about in ordinary logic Aristotelian logic there are universal judgments particular judgments singular judgments Universal judgments all men are mortal particular judgments son are singular judgments this one Socrates is so these are three different quantitative categories okay then look at quality affirmative or negative or indefinite the term infinite doesn't seem quite to fit indefinite yes or no maybe affirmative and negative all A's no firm ative negatives the relational judgments we make in logic we speak of a categorical judgment all men are mortal a hypothetical judgment if you're a you're a liar and a disjunctive judgment either you are or you're not and those of you who've gotten some introduction to logical symbolism recognize that those are the three kinds of things that we identify in a symbolic form so that P and Q is a conjunction of two things you see P horseshoe Q is the hypothetical if P then Q and P wedge Q is the disjunct either/or so logical form logical form he's talking about the logical form of judgments and then the modality once again something is problematic or it's simply asserted or it's apodictic that is to say it's demonstrable e necessary so modality would say it may be is it must be and we get that even in the mood of verbs in the study of language it may be subjunctive maybe optative it is the indicative then it must be so each of them has its own for its own structure its own logic you see each of them embodies some abstract idea in addition to the particular subject matter of the judgment now what are those abstract ideas those categories and you get that at the bottom of 389 where he identifies the categories assumed in the judgments categories a gain of quantity quality relation modality you don't need to memorize the 12 but get those four at least straight quantity quality relation modality the idea of a unity of a plurality of a totality those are abstract ideas the idea of under relation substance and accidents yes the accident that in here's in the substance the quality the substance quality distinction cause-and-effect and reciprocity both cause and effect so the concept of cause and effect which he told us he was after comes right there it's an a3 or AI concept and in an under modality things like contingency and necessity possibility and necessity existence these are categories that go Oh in a way all the way back to Aristotle's thinking a very much embedded in Newtonian and Lockean thinking and there are things which Hume was quite skeptical about as far as knowledge of them in an empirical or a priori basis so that's the way in which he he gets at them it's it's pretty straightforward now before we go further however I want you to notice one thing else that he says on 388 and 389 in the second column of 388 towards the bottom of the column notice this we will see here after that synthesis in general the synthesizing unifying of our thinking is the result of what I call the Faculty of imagination a blind but indispensable function of the soul without which would have no knowledge whatsoever but of the existence of which were scarcely conscious imagination necessary for knowledge now look at 389 again that first big paragraph in the first column okay by means of analysis different representations are brought under one concept but how to bring not representations but the pure synthesis of representations under concepts this is what transcendental logic what he's doing now means to teach the first that must be given as a pre or I for the sake of the knowledge of all objects is the manifold of pure intuition space and time the second is the synthesis of the okay imagination again now this is a different concept of imagination than we had in Hobbes and Locke their imagination was simply having mental images okay that is to say the images that stick in your mind in retention in memory the images that you conjure up fictitiously in the amount picture images sends images that's not what Kant is talking about he's talking about some imaginative way in which the mind draws everything together into a unified field of understanding that may have nothing corresponding to it out there you see we create our own organized world we imagine it now this is the beginning of the romanticist conception of imagination in the Enlightenment imagination is simply having Sense images now it's a creative thing building a world Yesi in the mind well as far as Kant is concerned there are these universal principles which contribute to this building of the unified world in the mind these categories and then more but at least these categories so so keep that in mind if you in mind I didn't tell Matt to be a plan but keep it there anyway if you would now that's as far as we come then on identifying the categories any any question there comment yeah oh the Remender cysts are not as interested in categories particularly logical rational categories they're interested in the creative resources of the human mind of the human spirit what they add to what Kant does is a reaction against the notion that were basically rational beings the notion of the rule of Reason which can't still holds to is out you think we are not ruled by what we know for the romantics the romantics renfe sizing more that we are emotive beings feeling fuller beings imaginative creative beings so Kant is the transitional figure in the sense that one he's turning away from the view that we are detached spectators remember to the view that we are creators of our world of experience ok the Copernican revolution and to in bringing that sort of change in the way he uses the term imagination which becomes crucial in the language of Romanticism ok David yes the forms and categories are both a priori preconditioners thence to say our sense perception simply works in such a way that we structure all the sense impressions spatially temporarily now when you say a space and time in our minds also well not they're not innate ideas or self-evident concepts no there's simply functional principles this is the way the mind functions so it's not that we start with a concept of space or time it's rather as you start analyzing the actual way in which you perceive things you begin to realize that you perceive things spatially and temporally and say to yourself now wait a minute I didn't get that from the raw data my mind must have contributed that way of doing it the same with the categories you see you don't fish through your checklist of categories in your mind and say to yourself now let's see do I want a quantity quality relation or modality category in this case no you're not even aware of them you'll see but when you look at the understandings that we have and the structures at by looking at the structures the logical structures of judgments that we make you realize no wait a minute I don't get those ways of structuring things from experience yes I don't experience hypotheticals the hypothetical is the form of judgment that I gave it's my way of interpreting what's going on and so you only become aware of these in operation you're aware of them is functioning and then you stand back and abstract them from that they are forms of sense perception now if you understand what cants doing you don't need to stop and tell yourself I must memorize this only two forms of space and time those are the only two now you don't have to tell yourself that just look at your own sense perception and you immediately see why he says only two there are only two you think he's drawing it from a an obvious description of the way we perceive things we perceive things in spatial relationships we perceive things in temporal relationships yeah not the other 12 d12 it believes that these have definite basis or definite uses only when there are those intuitions coming in to them and then being separated out yes these concepts without percepts are empty he says that old-fashioned metaphysics or the old metaphysics if it is going to be a science deals without any of the percept coming in yeah if it's the metaphysics of the rationalists and their innate knowledge it's trying to deal with concepts devoid of percepts if it's the empiricist dealing only with sense perception they're trying to deal with percepts without concepts so when he says concepts without percepts are empty he's saying to the rationalist you can't do it and when he says percepts without concepts of blind he's saying to the empiricist you can't do it neither kind of metaphysic works you cannot have empirical knowledge without interpretive concepts and you cannot have a priori knowledge without empirical England Oh put it this way we likened the the forms and categories to Elaine's do CL ends so you you see through a lens and you only realize you have the lens and are using the lens when you're without it yes so it's not that you're conscious of the lens it doesn't hang heavily on your nose the way spectacles did you just not cut it so it okay said help yeah so try to avoid saying and you were talking about groping for the words try to avoid saying that the forms and categories are innate in Plato's sense than not in Descartes sense than not in leiden its sense that not try to avoid saying the learned because in the usual sense of learning by experience that not they may be recognized and identified in the course of experience uncovered okay for that spot in in operation by functioning call yeah yeah well I think the answer is go back to Hume and without such a lens like the concept of cause and effect can you know any matters of fact beyond present experience no your percepts without the concept of cause and effect a blind you can't know anything can't see a thing that is self-evident no no no for the moment well let me come back to your first question your first question is how do we know the lens is there if you can't see it to which the simple answer is they're not empirical objects and the more sophisticated answer is don't you remember what human told you yes a human toll dyou that without the lens of the cause and effect conception you can't know I think beyond present experience now what was the second question by the transcendental method okay let us say you try and catch it in the act how do you do that well in the case of sense-perception you break it out eliminate all particulars of sense experience or particular qualities and so forth and ask what's left and you find space-time forms with the understanding you take a look at the different logical types of thinking and cut out all of the particulars of what you're thinking about what's left certain logical concepts that are in use a conceptual apparatus that's functioning all right he's still not satisfied that this is enough and for two reasons one is the fact that we have a variety of since perceptions coming at us through five different senses so that our perceptions are so utterly fragmented in their sources yet somehow rather unified in our experience so you need to explain the unity of our perceptions the unity of the perceptual field okay the second thing is that while you have the forms of perception and the categories of understanding what gets them together how do they meet this is counts equivalent of the mind-body problem the perceptions that come into the mind and then the understanding that gets ahold of that perceptions a particular the categories the universal how do they get together and that's what he's talking about in the schema tis among the understanding okay so this is the unity of perception and this has to do with the unification of perception and thought in the understand now this is a segment that I let's see I did not ask you to outline but tremendously important for the completion of the story and for some of the things which arise out of it now as far as the unifying of experience is concerned his initial statement is on page three nine one and I want you to take a look at that it's the second paragraph on three nine one first column where he he says this if every single representation stood by itself okay every particular sense idea sense idea simple idea if every simple idea stood by itself isolate it separated from the others nothing like what we call knowledge could ever arise because knowledge forms a whole representations connected compared with each other now how do you get to begin with from simple ideas to complex ideas human said there are principles of Association Psychological Association resemblance contiguity cause-and-effect what's Kant gonna say well he says I ascribe to the senses a synopsis synopsis seeing together obsess from optical synopsis is seeing it together I ascribe to the senses capacity to see it together because in their intuition they contain something manifold there corresponds to it always a synthesis receptivity can make knowledge possible only when joined with spontaneity this spawned an appears threefold which must necessarily take place in every kind of knowledge first there is apprehension the synthesis that is apprehension apprehending that is to say being aware of it grasping it as one and the apprehension is in representations the apprehension of representations as modifications of the soul in the intuition the end shock the insight secondly reproduction of them in the imagination there's that funny word again reproduction of them in the imagination and that sounds like it's the old use of the word when you're reproducing something in the imagination it sounds like memory and third is the recognition in concepts so you have the synthesis of apprehension you have synthesis in reproduction you have synthesis in recognition and in the pages that follow he takes up each of these now the the apprehension is being aware of representations under the form of time that is to say you apprehend things as a temporal unity remember burb burb burb there you heard that as three but you heard it as one a temporal unity and particularly when I speed it up you hear it as one oh maybe if you listen closely three maybe four so that there is a synthesis that goes on in the act of reprehensive under the form of time now reproduction comes on 392 reproduction by the imagination yeah and he appeals to the association of ideas imaginatively the imaginative association of ideas yeah because if you try to reproduce that sound that I made you must first imagine it in reproducing it it's an imaginative reproduction and so the imagination is it work then in being able to reproduce it in memory in memory or in actual fact imagination and in order to associate ideas by virtue of their similarity and in developing empirical concepts of greater generality then we have to remember other cases in order to combine these cases so the imagination is at work in any generalization and then there is recognition in regards to concepts recognition in regards to concepts a general concepts that are necessary for recognition now those general concepts of course are drawn from from the categorical structure of the understanding now look on page 394 394 and he gives you an example the first full paragraph on 394 no knowledge is possible without a concept however obscure and imperfect and a concept is always something general to conserve as a rule so you measure the complex idea you've been developing in relationship to that concept that's the rule the concept of a body serves as a rule to our knowledge of external phenomena according to the unity of the manifold which is thought by it now you get a general complex idea of that thing and that thing and that thing you see and what's involved in recognition is the realization that all of these meet the rule for using the abstract concept body ok what's a body it's a thing something that exists a substance look that up in his list of categories so the concept of body whenever we perceive something outside us necessitates the representation of extension in permeability shaped yeah necessity is always founded on transcendental conditions and so forth all right you have that then representation now you have been three subjective sources at work in this unity of a perception apprehension reproduction recognition this is the mechanism at work in the mind the way it functions in producing that inner synthesis now the outcome of this then is that there is a unity to our perception that is transcendental it is in the inner resource of the human consciousness and this is what gives rise in cants mind to the question what is this ah this self this mind that unifies do you see that's the old issue isn't it how naive Descartes now sounds with his I think therefore I exist a stinking thing where on earth that I think my goodness that's a complicated process apprehension reproduction recognition forms categories oh think yeah just to think that I think therefore what I thing where's the thing in all of it all you've God is mechanism function you see the most I can say at this stage in the analysis can't in effect tells us that most I can say this effect in the analysis is that I am a transcendental unity of a perception I'm the unified totality of all my thought well that's a bit better than what old David Hume did we said I'm a bundle of perceptions but didn't have anything to bundle them together with at least to bundle them together Kant has apprehension reproduction recognition and later on when he gets into the transcendental dialectic on Friday well when we get into his transcendental dialectic on Friday we'll see what he has to say about the conception of something more like a soul but only has to start with for the eye at this juncture and all he can be sure of this Junction is that I'm a transcendental unity of our perception that's the I know in a way that's very much in keeping with the whole tradition from John Locke you see that business of personal identity you see how do I know what I am how do I know the I what is the I that I know and in the empiricist tradition it depended on memory you'll see in all of the present awareness as I have of my past and present that's the art at least that's the empirical eye the eye that I'm aware of but Kant has gone further than that you see because that's an atomized kind of eye he's got a unified kind of eye it's a big step forward in that sense and it's because of the a priori that he can call it a unified I yes a because the I is contributing its unity now when I say the I is contributing its unity well it's not just that the eye is unifying its world that it imagines out there creating our world the eye is creating its own unity I create myself well Kant doesn't put it that way but such does Sartre is able to put it that way I create myself because Kant gave him the tools for doing it I said that existentialism was a byproduct of what context do all right so the transcendental unity of a perception yeah the question of course is still whether nature in itself corresponds to the way we think and on vert take a look at his conclusion to this section on 396 396 the bottom of the second column it sounds no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should have to conform to our subjective ground and be dependent on it with respect to her laws they remember the Copernican revolution that Kant was pulling was that it's not the case that our knowledge is dependent on what nature is like but that nature is dependent upon we think at least nature for us yes and it sounds no doubt very strange that nature should have to conform to us rather than us conforming and knowledge to nature but if we consider that what we call nature is nothing but the whole phenomena nothing but appearances that's what nature is what we experience not a thing in itself but a number of representations in the mind Zen will no longer be surprised that we only see her through the fundamental Faculty of air knowing the transcendental perception and in that unity without which it couldn't be called the object of all possible experience that is nature in other words once you get the way in which the world of nature is unified for us then you see that what we call nature is conforming to us rather than us simply pressive Li conforming to it so you anticipate there his phenomenon Ummah no distinction okay any any question to that point I'm ready otherwise for the schema to zation okay 4:03 is where the schema dies Asian begins and here as I said the question is how do the forms and the categories get connected because the one is dealing with particular sense experiences and the other is dealing with abstract concepts they are heterogeneous and if they're so heterogeneous did they have any point of contact in other words the question is do they have anything in common any point of contact that was the trouble with Descartes spinel gland a pineal gland is a physical thing how can it help you make contact with an immaterial thing see that's why the pineal gland was such a goof I didn't say goof off I say goof des cartes mistake and obviously can't does not want to pull another pineal gland offs or anything analogous to it so you've got to find some commonality between the sensibility and the understanding between the forms and the categories what's it gonna be well in a word time time token time well you remember his discussions of space and time where space is the form of the outer sense and time is the form of the innocence in Lockean language space is the form of sensation and time is the form of all our reflections where is your time consciousness what is it are the sequences in your consciousness that's why time drags or races or standstill time consciousness races drags stand set so time is the form of the reflective consciousness but of course it's in the inner consciousness seen our reflective awareness that we are aware of our concepts abstract ideas so they have that point of contact time is in common to both sense perception and thought because they both go on in the consciousness so what he tries to show then is that we can relate the concept of time to all of the categories we can relate the concept of time to all of the categories and what we develop then is an abstraction you see you can call it a temper alized conception of cause and effect isn't that the ordinary way we think about cause and effect the cause must be the concurrent with or antecedent to the effect you see we think it that way and the idea of substance is of something that is it has an enduring identity enduring identity continuity and so we these these categories in relationship to time provide us with schema now that's his term schema I suppose you you you might call it a conceptual model a conceptual model a paradigm an abstraction something about schema you use the word schema in some other regards but look on page 404 404 the top of the page we he says the fact is that our pure since you were sconce EPS do not depend on images of objects but on schemata that's the plural of schema no image of a triangle in general is ever adequate to its concept how do you think the concept of triangle little little picture of lines in your mind or a things that have Brecht as well as length lines don't have that no what you have is something that exists nowhere but in thought not in sense images but in thought in abstraction and it's a role for the synthesis of imagination with respect to trying inner things so you develop mental abstractions concepts you verbalize maybe provide mathematical formulae for them but you don't picture them so the scheme murder and you you find therefore on page 405 that he runs through the various categories the schema of substance 405 first complete paragraph the schemer of substance is the permanence of the real in time the representation of it is a substrate for the empirical determination of time in general which therefore remains while everything else changes so we think of substance as a substrate and that's a schema it's an abstraction and then the next paragraph the schema of cause and causality is the real which when once supposed to exist is always followed by something else you think of it as an abstraction you define a cause a definition in that sense it's like a rule a model schema and so forth all the way through the schema to zation of the understanding so on four oh five halfway down the page he says the schemata and nothing but determinations of time a priori according to rules yes ways of thinking about time according to rules and is applied to all possible objects they refer in the order of the categories to series of time contents of time the order of time the comprehension of time so the schemata then of the conditions that are involved in thinking scheme it ization of the understanding well with that in hand the section on the phenomena and the Newman are follows very easily and I'd encourage you to read that because this is really the conclusion of the whole transcendental analytic the conclusion of the whole transcendental analytic the ground of distinction of all subjects in the phenomena and Newman are phenomena remember appearances they thing for me the ding the Newman are that big on zyk and my mind went a blank on the thing for me ding ceramic ding honzik so forth the thing for me the phenomena on page let's see page 412 page 412 he says at the top of the second column unless we are to move in a constant circle we must admit that the word phenomenon indicates relationship to something the immediate representation of which is no doubt sensuous but which nevertheless even without this qualification of our sensibility must be something by itself an object independent of our sensibility hence arises the concept of a Newman honor you see thus far he's been speaking of the way things are for us for us with our forms and categories for us through our lenses you think but how do we know there is such a thing as the thing in itself no matter well you know he could say notice the phrase ding for a make it still got the ding well the word the way he puts it is is this that if what we're talking about is the way in which we are bombarded with empirical input jumbled confused otherwise bewildering and it is met on the other hand by a tree or I forms and categories and what comes out is some thing that we can understand spatially and temporally and so forth well that there wouldn't be any content to the phenomenon unless it was thing out there to provide it with that input you see the ice cube tray alone does not give you ice cubes you got to put water in it man the lens alone doesn't help you see your friends faith there's got to be something there even though it may not be really like the way you see it through a distorting lens you've seen these distorting mirrors where you walk in and see yourself so fat and so Torme's and supposing we were distorting lenses like that for all we know that's the way our mental lens is so there may be something I know not what there there must be something I know not what there this is not Berkeley's idealism in fact in the second edition of the critique of pure reason he added a section at this juncture called the refutation of idealism in which he was arguing against Berkeley because in the first edition he had been accused of being a Berkeley an idealist we create our own world now but you created out of the raw material that the world gives you the real world gives you a senses so there is something there even though we structure it in our own minds certainly so he is then not an idealist he's a phenomenal a phenomenal astiz not deny the existence of reality in itself a phenomena list simply says their knowledge is confined to things as they appear to us he's a phenomenal there are some passages which had a first reading might be confusing because he uses the word reality in two different regards he speaks of an empirical reality which is the way in which it's real in our own experience like when somebody is suffering from hallucinations are very real to her and the phenomena are very very real to us but exactly what it is out there no science doesn't tell us nor can rationalist metaphysics starts so the conclusion of the transcendental analytic then is about the phenomena Newman a distinction now let's see one final word he speaks of the conception of noumenon as being a limiting conception and a problematic conception it's a limiting conception because it's intended to keep our knowledge claims limited if there isn't Newman and out there that we don't know then you're going to be modest in what you claim for what you think you do now so that's a limiting concept it's also a problematic concept in the sense that while it's not contradictory self contradictory at all you just cannot know what it is it's a problem it's a problem and then it is okay but what it is however couldn't we know the problem is what a later rider calls the egocentric predicament I can't know something without the I being involved maybe it'll be better called a category centric predicament here I can't know something without the categories being well this is his epistemology what comes next in the transcendental dialectic is his look at actual attempts to do metaphysics so next time we'll look at some of the classic metaphysical arguments and what Kant thinks about

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Length: 64min 4sec (3844 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2015