Kant's Categories

i want to talk today about cot's categories the categories in aristotle are categories of being they're senses in which a thing may be said to be the same thing is true in the vaisheka sutra kant proposes a system of categories but it's a rather different system as we'll see and it's doing something different these are not categories of being instead these come out of logical functions of judgment he's looking at logic and there's something that is fascinating by uh in a biographical sense when we look at this because kant in his lectures on logic and in his little book on logic says logic is a remarkable discipline it really hasn't changed for the past 2000 years and it seems to be a complete subject nothing will ever be added to it well modern logic has added a lot to it so he was writing that just a few decades before there would be a major transformation in logic but nevertheless when you look at the logical functions of judgment he outlines and look at the categories you realize well there's all sorts of stuff there that we can now explain something of in logic but that he couldn't at all so even in his own terms he should have realized wait there's a lot more to do in this subject my own logical functions of judgment include many many concepts that aren't included in my own logic book but that's just sort of a comic aside what is kant doing with these categories we've talked about kant as a rationalist he was a student of wolf who was a student of leibniz and he agrees that there are innate ideas and that there is synthetic a priori knowledge the innate ideas he refers to is the pure concepts of the understanding those are the categories but there are also synthetic operary truths he calls them laws of the understanding and so what i want to talk about today is that duo basically the categories the pure concepts of the understanding so we'll see what kant thinks are the innate ideas and also what he takes these synthetic operiori truths to be the laws of the understanding it is important to recognize that unlike other rationalists caught thinks these apply only within the realm of experience descartes and leibniz thought they were true about the world and so we're happy to apply them within experience and outside of experience even the things we cannot experience but kant says no they're really part of the way in which our mind constructs experience and so they apply only to the output of that process not to whatever input might be present or to whatever might be in the world beyond the realm of our experience he gives us as we've seen a transcendental argument he says the opioid concepts and the laws of the understanding are necessary conditions for the possibility of experience but we do have experience so of course it's possible so there must be a priori concepts there must be laws of the understanding so in short for us to experience the world at all we have to have some innate ideas these operatory concepts of the understanding or the categories we also have to have synthetic a priori knowledge through the laws of the understanding but that raises the question what are the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience what in particular do i need what are these pure concepts of the understanding what concepts do i need kant what principles must i assume as synthetic operary principles in order to have experience be possible good questions and he does answer them let's think about some experiences i have visual experiences like this of the university of texas tower or this of the white house or a field of flowers or sunset or my cat bell or a pizza or another pizza i'm fond of pizza well what makes all of these things possible notice some of these are visual experiences that's how you've seen them but i can tell you with the pizzas it wasn't just visual there was a wonderful smell a wonderful taste and so forth so we experienced the world through our five senses in all sorts of ways what makes that kind of experience possible well the first thing kant says turning to sensibility now he draws a sharp line between sensibility and understanding in short between perception and reason whatever our minds do on the basis of our experience how we process and then draw inferences from our perceptions but let's turn first to sensibility just for us to have those sensations to be able to experience the white house or sunsets or pizza well those things have to be represented in space and time so space and time he says are a priori forms of sensibility vision obviously represents things as being in space hearing does too maybe less obviously nevertheless if you close your eyes and somebody around you is making noise you can tell where the noise is coming from your auditory system does represent things as being in space and time now smell taste well not so much but on the other hand they still occur in time you anticipate the taste of the pizza you actually enjoy the taste afterwards you remember the taste and so that occurs in time we perceive things as being in space and time so here's something we can say and we can say it ah priori independent leave experience perceptible objects exist in space and time that is a synthetic operary truth it is based on the general form of sensibility the form of sensibility as representing things in space and time i've referred to the metaphor in another video of a projector kant sees the mind as something like a projector projecting an image on a screen we can know something about what's going to be on the screen and what couldn't be on the screen on the basis of understanding the projector so he thinks here's one thing i can tell you about the projector just due to the nature of our own faculty of sensibility and the way our mind processes whatever it receives things are perceived in space and time things on that screen will have a spatial arrangement and they will occur in a temporal series i can tell you that before anything appears on that screen so that's something i can know that's synthetic it's really about the things on the screen it's not just something purely logical or verbal like a screen is a screen what appears will appear i mean it's not like that right it's something that gives you real information it will be in space it will be in time and i can know that not because i actually perceive them in space and time and i say i'm figuring out you know i i perceive things i guess these things that perceive her in space and time who knew he'll say no i could really know that ah priori i know that just by knowing something about the way my mind processes information now the categories are the part that pertains to the understanding space and time are forms of sensibility but there are also forms of understanding things my mind does with the information it receives from sensation so sensibility gives the mind information and then he says a complex synthesis takes place a synthesis of the manifold of intuition is how he puts it and we construct objects out of that in broadly speaking a three-stage process i won't go through all the stages here what i'm interested in today is this question of the categories what pure concepts of the understanding are required in order for those stages of synthesis to take place he says well we can find out by looking at the logical functions of judgment the traditional rationalists had thought about universality and necessity and indeed kant says universality and necessity are absolutely fundamental for understanding why we need synthetic operatory truths and why we need pure concepts of the understanding but if we want to know what those pure concepts are they aren't just to universality and necessity it's more complicated than that we look to the functions of judgment in logic and we say what is going on in a logical judgment kot says there are basically four things going on and so there are four families of categories the first thing that goes on in a judgment is quantity okay we talk about things like socrates was a philosopher we talk about sometimes groups of things some ancient greeks were prominent philosophers we talk sometimes about a totality here's where the universality comes in all forces applied to a mass accelerate that mass and so those are basic categories things that today in logic would refer to as quantifiers or as determiners so things like sum all several every any these things function as indicators of quantity they are part of the logical functions of judgment and the same thing is true about objects one unity plurality telling the difference between one and more than one as well as well demonstratives things like this that in effect this one that one the all of those are things that fall under this general category of quality so those are words that indicate these general categories we have ways of talking about objects of telling one for more than one i've talked about some things several things all every each thing anything all of those are categories those have to be built into the mind those aren't things we get from experience you can say well i've learned about pigs by having encounters with pigs and you know working on a pig farm and so forth how did you learn about this well this what no i just mean the word this how did you learn what each meant how did you learn several how did you learn to distinguish one thing for more than one thing a person's gonna be like well do you mean how i learned the meaning of the word no no no i don't mean that i mean how you ever got the concept of one as opposed to more than one well i can't point to an experience of that and can't say yes the mind came with that okay that was part of the building structure of the mind the mind is capable of combining things into objects distinguishing one object from multiple objects is capable of actually then explaining something about these pluralities of objects and talking about one some several and so forth and so all of those come as built-in structures we aren't gaining those logical meanings from experience we aren't understanding those logical concepts from experience the logical concepts are part of the structure of the mind here's a second thing that goes on in judgments we judge quality so we affirm things we deny things and we express some limitations so kant says yes we say socrates is a philosopher or somebody can say was socrates the teacher of plato yes that's true those things are actually affirming something we can also say socrates was not a plumber and that socrates was not the teacher of aristotle we can say then the claim that socrates lived after aristotle is false so we can also deny things so our ideas of is and is not true and false yes and no these are things that are again built into the mind this that we don't learn those things through experience we may learn the gesture we may learn the words but we don't learn the concepts from experience the mind comes with those built in and the same thing he says is true with limitation something like unhappy or ahistorical or inauthentic you might think well those are just denials but god thinks not really okay say i talk to somebody i say well how are you how are you feeling today you're feeling happy they say well i don't know you're unhappy well i don't know okay there's sort of a sometimes you'll say well i'm not unhappy right is not unhappy the same as happy not really okay and that's what god's picking up on here he's saying yeah is that authentic well it's not inauthentic that's not simply an affirmation that it is authentic or you know if i refer to that as a historical does that just mean it is not historical well maybe but sometimes it really means no it goes contrary to the history and so anyway i can easily in fact you might say most of us spend many hours of our lives in states that are neither happy nor unhappy and so all of those things are built into the mind at the outset well another category is the category of relation and there are all sorts of interesting and important relations concepts some of them involve inherence and subsistence you might remember this from the categories of the vaishesika tradition as they developed beyond the original three in the sutra so we've got is the is of predication like this is a hand we've got substance quality property exemplifies participates in has instantiates for example for instance such as all of those refer to concepts that we're not gaining from experience the relation of this triangle to triangularity we don't get that from experience that's something the mind is built understanding that is built into the structure of the mind identifying things as objects having the concept of substance of those qualities hanging together in something notice these are just the things that empiricists like barkley and hume said i don't see how you can get any of this from experience god says of course you can't they come built into the mind they don't come from experience but of course we have these concepts don't tell me we don't have the concept is that we don't have the concept of a substance or quality or a property or of this participating in triangularity or exhibiting triangularity or this being an example of this more general phenomenon of course we have those concepts so and it's not just some internal custom of the mind it's something that the mind has built into it as its structure now actually there is a sense in which can't say well it is a custom of the mind you're right about that hume but it's the structure of logic that is built into the mind that's not some feeling or sentiment it's not outside of reason it is the very foundation of reason the same thing is true with causality and dependence if then relations cause effect because depends determines grounds all of those involve various aspects of this relation of causality or dependence and then there are relations of community of things being interdependent reciprocity if and only if and or unless part whole with tons of these things happen in language and they all refer to these relations of community the mind is built in such a way that it understands things as sometimes interrelated in various ways it doesn't have to learn that now it might have to learn a particular way in which things are interrelated but the idea that things can be related to one another in this way the mind doesn't have to learn that it comes built in recognizing that then finally there are modal aspects of a judgment so we can talk about possibility necessity existence non-existence he says there are three basic dichotomies here possibility and impossibility so words like possible can may might could and the concepts they stand for existence and non-existence so is exists will and so forth necessity and contingency necessary must needs to has to would all of those involve some kind of modality and he says those are important those are built into the structure of the mind hume's right we don't get necessity from experience we don't get causation from experience we don't get possibility from experience but they're crucial parts of logic they are part of the foundations of reason so don't tell me we have no such concepts or that they're outside the realm of reason or that they're just emotions and feelings of expectation nonsense they are part of the logical functions of judgment they're built into logic the very foundation of reason well when we think about advances in logic since kant stay we can say maybe modern logicians should recognize as a variety of other categories still within his basic families of categories under the heading of quantity there are lots of other words and concepts that go along in addition to the ones he mentioned so many few most more less finitely many infinitely many countably many uncountably many and then what i've marked here is a little null symbol in other words i mean whatever we say what we mean when we talk about things in terms of bear plurals tigers are striped for example lions are tawny cats meow birds fly whatever's going on there presumably that's a kind of quantity or kind of something that is built into the mind their qualities and not only the things he mentions but also things involving temporal relations they arise through sensibility but we also have built-in concepts for understanding things as arranged in time so verb tenses for example or various indicators of aspects like the difference between runs and is running and used to run and then prepositions like before after since until now then all of those are temporal things that seem to be built into the mind similarly there are other relations like equality or similarity like near far closer than between belongs to and then maybe other modalities ones he doesn't directly talk about like may should and ought things that again hume worries can't be derived from experience and kant would say yeah they're built into the nature of the mind but also things like generally typically normally maybe other things like knowing believing seeing fearing wanting maybe all of those are built into the mind as well whatever we want to say exactly about the boundaries there we should be able to say okay things like that are presumably maybe part of this idea of the pure concepts of the understanding as well they relate to the pure concepts in the sense that they relate to logical functions of judgment well what kinds of principles of the understanding do we build out of these pure concepts of the understanding here are some examples kant gives every object stands under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience let me translate from the continent language he says every object of experience is in effect something that would be displayed on that screen we've talked about i can know that all the objects have to conform to the conditions of being on that screen so they all have to conform to space and time they all have to conform to the logical functions of judgment and so they have to be one or many they have to either be related to one another or not they have to be in a relation of dependence or not they have to have some modal character either they are there now or they could be there they were there they will be there we can say something about all those structures before they even appear they are subject to the conditions of the human synthesis of the unifi unity of the manifold in other words the way in which projector forms objects and projects them onto the screen of experience secondly in all change of appearances substance is permanent its quantum in nature is neither increased nor diminished a kind of law of conservation of substance conservation of matter well after einstein were inclined to think i don't know about that that would cause but of course physics still maintains a lot of the conservation of energy and when you think about this one you can say well cod is on to something interesting here what he's saying is that substance is that in which quality is in here and so whatever you want to say about that whatever it is the quality is in here and maybe in modern physics we want to say well it's not exactly substance it's energy or it's waves or something i mean whatever physical theory ends up saying about that maybe it'll be a string in hyperspace who knows but whatever it is we could say that remains the same its qualities change but in the end we postulate that something is enduring across these changes of quality so that idea that something endures across change whether we call it substance or something else he says is a basic feature of the mind third all alterations all changes take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect in other words things just don't happen randomly and spontaneously things cause other things things that happen are effects of other things so cause and effect applies to the world we can know that because we can know something about the projector and knows that it projects things as causally related to one another and finally we know that it also projects them as interrelated with one another all substances insofar as they can be perceived to coexist in space are in thorough growing reciprocity so we know that the projector is such that the objects of experience are represented as together there in space and time as in some sense together they're under the logical functions of judgment so the in effect he's saying look here it's built into the mind that we're seeing things on one screen that we're building one universe one universal experience it's not as if we're experiencing some multiverse and different things are going on and there are these different realms of objects that are simply completely unrelated the mind is projecting things on all sorts of different screens at once no there is one screen of experience he's saying and everything is in some way on that screen related to the same logical functions related to one another on the same screen in the same spatiotemporal manifold so out of that he says we do get some synthetic a priori judgments things like physical objects are in space and time mathematics he thinks follows from this the world consists of objects having properties standing in relation to one another substances persist through change every event has a cause everything relates in some way to everything else those he thinks we can know independently of experience but they apply only to the phenomena only to the things as we perceive them only to the objects of experience the categories apply to those the priori principles apply to those we can know them with universality and necessity because they fall under the pure concepts of the understanding but the pneumonia the things in themselves the categories don't apply to them the a-priori principles don't apply to them we don't know about them at all so kant says think about our diagram over here think about this picture of the mind projecting the objects of experience we can know things about those because in the projection the mind is representing them as being in space and time the mind is representing them as being susceptible to the logical forms of judgment and so the categories apply to them we can say this is one triangle we can talk about it as an object we can do a variety of other things indicating what must be true of it and all of that indicates that those principles those opioid principles the laws of the understanding apply here but now if we move down to the realm of things in themselves the realm he refers to as the noumena the numenal realm then we say we can't say anything about those at all they are outside of what is on that screen of experience and so our concepts aren't applying to them those pure concepts of the understanding those laws of the understanding don't apply to them i can't say they have a certain character because the things projected on the screen do i don't know what they're like and so in the end he says i can know things a priori i can know things a priori about the objects of experience precisely because my mind is taking information synthesizing it in a multi-stage process and producing these objects of experience and so i can know something about what they're going to be like i have no idea what the world beyond them is like

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

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Length: 25min 38sec (1538 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021