Critique of the Transcend-
ental Aesthetic
In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant demonstrates that Space and Time are the only a priori cognitions; they make synthetic a priori judgments possible. These cognitions alone are not able to bring about understanding. In the Transcendental Analytic, Kant will remove the parts of sensibility, the empirical knowledge that is based on the senses, and create a list of the elements of pure logic, from which no object can be thought. These elements will take the shape of twelve concepts. The goal of this paper is to explain these concepts, and present a problem inherent in them. Then, some examples will be provided, which show further weaknesses in Kant’s attempt to reach a transcendental logic. The exposure of these weaknesses will show that Kant’s attempt, although valiant, cannot be held true as they are; if Kant’s theory is to be believable, there are some gaps that need to be filled in.
Kant claims that because intuitions come from sensibility, then understanding- the non-sensible form of knowledge- cannot be a function of intuitions. Instead, understanding must come from concepts. As opposed to intuitions, concepts are founded on functions, not senses. If acts of understanding can be reduced to judgments, then understanding itself can be understood as a faculty of judgment (A69/B94). Concepts are relate to some representation of an object, which will be called the intended reference, which we will take to mean that object which has not yet come into knowledge.
By making an exhaustive list of all of the functions of unity, Kant believes that the functions of understanding can be discovered. From the list of twelve judgments, Kant draws a list of twelve identical categories. It is important to note the structure of the categories. There are four sets of categories, Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality. In Quantity there are a) Unity- or that “All S are P, b) Plurality- that some S are P, and c) Totality, that A is P. Quality renders a) Reality, or making an assertion that ‘The soul is non-mortal, b) Negation- saying that ‘The soul is not mortal, and c) Limitation, that states that when all things that are not mortal are considered, that the soul is one of the infinite number of things that are left outside of the sphere of things that are not mortal. Relation contains a) Inherence/Subsistence-- that S is P, b) Causality/Dependence-- that if X, then Y, and c) Community- that X or Y or Z. The final section is modality which holds a) Possibility/Immpossibility--- that something’s affirmation or negation are optional, b) Existence/Non-existence-- that affirmation and negation are true, and c) Necessity/Contingency-- that the judgments are necessary.
In the category of Quality, Reality and Negation are relatively innocuous and non-problematic. The combination of the two, though, is very troubling. In essence, what Reality does is place an intended object into categories of Relation, such that as in our previous example, the soul is either in the scope of mortal things or not in the scope of mortal things. When the last of this series comes, Limitation, then what is left is a set of two spheres for which the soul cannot have dual membership; in this sense, it acts like community. Another example could be given as follows:
(Negation) A cat is not a canine.
In this example, Limitation makes the assertion that when considering canines, cats will be a number of the infinite things which are left which are not canines. This is not an egregious deduction, but what Kant fails to realize is that he has created two spheres. Canines and Non-Canines, and that intended objects of intuition cannot be in both groups, that considering other objects such as trains, asserts that trains are either canines or non-canines, since in the end, an object cannot be one thing and at the same time not be the same thing. Cats cannot be canine and non-canine. It follows from this distinction that Limitation is nothing more than a repetition of Community, since an object cannot be member of both communities.
Furthermore, the category of Limitation under Quality seems to be redundant in the definition of an object. It can already be imagined that any one item S (or A, as the case may be) will affirm some properties (rather it affirms some characteristics) and negates others. Because these are basic concepts and they seem to be necessary, then it would seem that they would have to be kept, but Limitation, because it is redundant, can be thrown out. Kantians would maybe try to argue that Limitation is necessary but how they can make this claim if there is another category that does the same function?
Another troubling combination of categories deals with Limitation. It seems that Community does not really depend very much on its two predecessors. The disjunctive appeal of Community, does not logically follow from the combination of Inherence and Causality. A possible issue here could be that Kant needed a very clean and systematic ordering to the categories sometimes requires a stretch of Kant’s imagination to come up with the final category. Kantians may try to argue along the lines that to say, for example, that ‘A banana is yellow’ would be to further say that ‘a banana is green,’ or ‘a banana is pink.’ and that the step that Community takes involves asserting that these previous statements are statements about inherence, and that these are statements create a community of statements; being in one community causally forces it out of the others. This step is very shaky a best. Causality and Inherence do not work together to lead to Community, but rather, Community is reached in the middle of the process, and Causality applied afterwards. Looking more closely, it is evident that there are statements about an object and that applying causality does not work right away. Instead, these statements can be thought of as spheres, and by applying causality, possibly saying that ‘if S, then X’ you exclude that S is Y or Z. This final step is Community, and it seems that it is valid, but it requires a lot of imagination to make it work.
Hilary Putnam made an interesting proposition once. His proposition involved two planets, one of them is Earth and the other is a close replica of Earth. Now, were a person to travel to ¬¬¬Twin Earth, he would realize after a very short time that the compound which we call ‘water’ on Earth is not the compound H20 that it is on his planet, but rather, it is XYZ! XYZ looks exactly like water and has the same properties, except for its physical makeup. So it would seem that a concept for water would not be the same on two planets. But what does this have to do with Kant? Well, the issue at hand is that the categories do not seem to allow for surprises. The tension from anyone going from Earth to Twin Earth is indicative of failures in the categories of Quality.
It would be clear to anyone from Earth that ‘water’ refers to H20. One can think of water being H20 in the past, and that water will continue to be H20 in the future. There is the difficulty of making this a semantic argument, but ignoring semantics, just assume that the qualitative properties of water are that it is a clear liquid, which makes up large bodies of water and is seventy-five percent of the human body, etc. On XYZ, this concept is not correct. The fact that water takes up space and that it exists in time, is still the only thing about the general concept of water that stays true. This definition of water previously give may require some empirical knowledge. So the definition can be simplified to water being a liquid that has the chemical composition of two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule. This set of criteria does not actually change the problem at hand. It could still be argued that the categories of Modality would allow for the truth of these affirmations and negations to be optional. If that is the case with simple judgments, then what does that mean for all other judgments? If this is an acceptable answer to the issue, then it would seem to follow that there can be no cases in which there are necessary truths. This cannot possibly be correct though because obviously, water is consistent on Earth, and as far as we know, just as water is consistent on Twin Earth; if this is the case then the concept of water would have to be necessary (on most accounts).
Another scenario involves humans dropping pictures of trees onto an alien planet. Martians would not probably have concepts for trees, as they do not exist on Mars (and we are pretending there are such things as Martians who have similar cognitions to ours). As far as Martians are concerned, trees could occupy both space and time, but they lack the ability to synthesize these a priori concepts to space and time. Likewise, a Martian could show us a blob, a blob which is supposed to be its grandmother, but because we have no a priori concepts for Martian grandmothers, we fail to synthesize. It seems then that if the concepts are to be used for intended objects of intuition, that there is a problem for novel items of intuition. We are able to think they take up space and they have a place in time, but we lack any knowledge that can be used in the concepts, or at least, that the lack of knowledge is enough to create problems for the ones who are imagining and intuiting.
It seems from these issues that Putnam’s notion that meanings are not in the head also applies to intuitions about objects. Objects themselves are not in the head and neither are their properties, nor intuitions. There then seems to be a need for something extra. If the categories are supposed to provide for ways for one to be able to make intuitions of objects, then it does not provide a solid foundation for objects that are novel. Objects that have already been processed seem to escape this instability, but this involves empirical knowledge. This is against Kant’s will, and of course, to Hume as well, that empirical knowledge be used in conjunction with a priori knowledge. This may result in tradition, i.e. fire is hot because one touches it and it hot, therefore, it will always be hot. Having a priori concepts helps in the ordering of what kinds of statements we can make about objects a priori, but when those objects are finally presented, the thinker may be in for a big surprise. Also, it was noted that some of the categories that Kant provides are a little troubling and they arise from the desire of a prettier set of categories.