Elegi Menggapai "Kant's Phenomena and Noumena"

By Marsigit

According to Kant , transcendental illusion is the result of applying the understanding and sensibility beyond their limits.



Although the objective rules may be the same in each case, the subjective idea of causal connection can lead to different deductions.

Kant indicates that reason which connects us directly to things in themselves is a question that he cannot answer.

Transcendental Deduction aimed at showing that particular concepts, like causality or substance, are necessary conditions for the possibility of experience.

Since objects can only be experienced spatio-temporally, the only application of concepts that yields knowledge is to the empirical spatiotemporal world.

Beyond that realm, there can be no sensations of objects for the understanding to judge rightly or wrongly.

Kant states that thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.

To have meaningful awareness some datum is required.

Accordingly, we possess two sources of input that can serve as such a datum physical sensation and the sense of moral duty.

Kant admits that transcendental synthesis of imagination is an action of the understanding on sensibility, first application, and the ground of all other applications of the understanding.

Kant finds that there was a paradox of how inner sense can represent to consciousness ourselves as we appear to ourselves.

This paradox is coming from the fact that the understanding is able to determine sensibility inwardly.

The understanding performs this act upon the passive subject whose faculty it is. While the understanding does not find in inner sense a combination of the manifold, we intuit inner sense of ourselves only as we are inwardly affected by ourselves.

Kant claims that in the synthetic original unity of apperception, we are conscious only that we are. This is a thought, not an intuition.

The consciousness of self is very far from being a knowledge of self; it also needs an intuition of the manifold in the self.

According to Kant , the transcendental deduction of the universally possible employment in experience of the pure concepts of the understanding needs to be clarified that the possibility of knowing a priori, by means of the categories of whatever objects, present themselves to our senses in respect of the laws of their combination.

On the other hand, Kant points out that the relations in which a priori is recognizable in space and time are valid to all the possible objects of experience.

However, they are valid only to the phenomena and not to the things in themselves. Therefore, space and time have the empirical reality and the transcendental ideality at the same time.

Kant insists that any thing as long as it is an external phenomenon necessarily appears in spatial relationship; while any phenomenon is necessarily appears in temporal relationship.

It calls that space and time are objective to everything given in experience; therefore, space and time are empirically real.

They do not have absolute reality because they do not apply to things in themselves, whether as substances or as attributes.

Due to space and time have no reality, but they are ideal, this, then, is called the Transcendental Ideality of Space and Time.

Kant contends that we are never able to recognize things in themselves. Any quality which belongs to the thing- in- itself can never be known to us through senses.

At the same time, anything which given in time is not the thing- in- itself.

What we intuitively recognize ourselves by reflection, is how we appear as a phenomenon, and not how we really are.

Kant claims that synthesis of apprehension is the combination of the manifold in an empirical intuition. Synthesis of apprehension of the manifold of appearance must conform to time and space.

Time and space are themselves intuitions which contain a manifold of their own. They are not presented in a priori and they are not just the forms of sensible intuitions.

Unity of synthesis of the manifold i.e. a combination to which everything conformly represented in space and time, is given a priori as the condition of the synthesis of all apprehension, without or within us, not in, but with these intuitions.

Kant then concludes that all synthesis was in subject to the categories in which it prescribes laws of a priori to appearances.

They do not exist in the appearances but only relative to the subject.

Kant claims that pure understanding is not in a position to prescribe through categories any a priori laws other than those which are involved in a nature in general that is in conformity to space and time.

Empirical laws cannot be derived from categories but are subject to them.

In term of the outcome of this deduction of the concepts of understanding, according to Kant, we cannot think of an object safe through the categories and cannot know an object so thought safe through intuitions corresponding to these concepts.

For all our intuitions are empirical, there can be no a priori knowledge except of objects of possible experience.

Objects of themselves have no existence, and space and time exist only as part of the mind; where intuitions by which perceptions are measured and judged.

Kant then states that a number of a priori concepts, which he called categories, exist.

This category falls into four groups: those concerning quantity are unity, plurality, and totality; those concerning quality are reality, negation, and limitation; those concerning relation are substance-and-accident, cause-and-effect, and reciprocity; and those concerning modality are possibility, existence, and necessity.

Kant's transcendental method has permitted him to reveal the a priori components of sensations and the a priori concepts.

There are a priori judgments that must necessarily govern all appearances of objects; these judgments are a function of the table of categories' role in determining all possible judgments.

Judgment is the fundamental action of thinking.

It is the process of conceptual unification of representations.

Determining thought must be judgmental in form.

Concepts are the result of judgments unifying further concepts; but this cannot be an infinitely regressing process.

Certain concepts are basic to judgment and not themselves the product of prior judgments; these are the categories of the pure concepts.

Therefore, the categories are necessary conditions of judging i.e. necessary conditions of thought. We can determine which concepts are the pure ones by considering the nature of judgment.

Judgments can be viewed as unity functions for representations.

Different forms of judgment will unify representations in different ways.

Understanding is the faculty of knowledge and the first pure knowledge of understanding is the principle of original synthetic unity of apperception; it is an objective condition of knowledge.

Kant further claims that transcendental unity of apperception is how all the manifold given in an intuition is united in a concept of an object.

It is objective and subjective unity of consciousness which is a determination of inner sense through which manifold is empirically given.

Kant insists that judgment is the manner in which given modes of knowledge are brought to the objective unity of apperception.

It indicates the objective unity of a given representation's relation to original apperception, and its necessary unity.

Kant claims that the representations belong to one another in virtue of the necessary unity of apperception in the synthesis of intuition that accords to principles of the objective determination of all representations and only in this way does there arise from this relation a judgment which is objectively valid.

Kant adds that all the manifold is determined in respect of one to the logical functions of judgment and is thereby brought into one consciousness; the categories are these functions of judgment.

The faculty of understanding is a faculty for synthesis the unification of representations; the functioning of this faculty can be analyzed at two different levels.

Corresponding to two different levels at which we may understand representations: a general logical level and a transcendental level.

In terms of the former, synthesis results analytic unity; in terms of the latter, synthesis results synthetic unity; and the latter takes into account the difference between pure and empirical concepts.

According to Kant, analytic unity is an analysis of a judgment at the level of general logic which indicates the formal relationship of concepts independently of their content; while synthetic unity refers to objectivity.

At the transcendental level, judgments have transcendental content; that is, they are related to some objects; they are given to the understanding as being about something.

This is more than a matter of having a certain logical form.

In which the Categories takes play in a judgment, that judgment is a representation of an object.

Kant says:
If understanding as such is explicated as our power of rules, then the power of judgment is the ability to subsume under rules, i.e., to distinguish whether something does or does not fall under a given rule.

The following stage in Kant's project will be used to analyze the formal or transcendental features of experience that enable judgment.

If there are any such features besides what the previous stages have identified, the cognitive power of judgment does have a transcendental structure.

Kant argues that there are a number of principles that must necessarily be true of experience in order for judgment to be possible.

Kant's analysis of judgment and the arguments for these principles are contained in his Analytic of Principles.

According to Kant , the sorts of judgments consists of each of the following: some quantity, some quality, some relation, and some modality.

Kant states that any intelligible thought can be expressed in judgments of the above sorts; but, then it follows that any thinkable experience must be understood in these ways, and we are justified in projecting this entire way of thinking outside ourselves, as the inevitable.

References:
Meibos, A., 1998,” Intro to Philosophy: Kant and a priori Synthetic Judgments,” Prof. Arts Notes for PHIL 251 Retrieved 2004
2Evan, J.D.G., 1999, “Kant's Analysis of the Paralogism of Rational Psychology in Critiqueof Pure Reason Edition B, Kantian Review vol. 3 (1999), 99-105. Retrieved 2004 < http://www.qub.ac.uk /phil/courses/Kant>
3 Wallis, S.F, 2004, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), New York: Media & Communication, The European Graduate School. Retreived 2004
4 Ibid.
5 Kant, I., 1787, “The Critique of Pure Reason: Preface To The Second Edition”, Translated By J. M. D.Meiklejohn, Retrieved 2003
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10……“Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) “Kant's Criticism against the Continental Rationalism and the British Empiricism” Retrieved 2004
11 Ibid.
12Ibid.
13Kant, I., 1787, “The Critique of Pure Reason: Preface To The Second Edition”, Translated By J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Retrieved 2003
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16Ibid.
17….., “Kant” Retrieved 2004
18Ibid.
19Wallis, S.F, 2004, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), New York: Media & Communication, The European Graduate School. Retreived 2004
20Kant in Wallis, S.F, 2004, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), New York: Media & Communication, The European Graduate School. Retreived 2004
21Kant, I., 1787, “The Critique of Pure Reason: Preface To The Second Edition”, Translated By J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Retrieved 2003
22Ibid.
23Ibid.
24Ibid.
25Wallis, S.F, 2004, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), New York: Media & Communication, The European Graduate School. Retreived 2004
26Ibid.
27Ibid.
28Kemerling, G., 2001, “Kant: Synthetic A Priori Judgement.”. Retieved 2003
29Ibid.