Elegi Menggapai "Kant's Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding"

By Marsigit

Kant, 1787, claims that as a one-dimensional object, time is essentially successive that is one moment follows another; and in order to think time as a succession, we must generate the time-series i.e. we must think one moment as following another.



Kant suggests that at each point of the series up to that point; therefore, we always think time as a magnitude.

Accordingly, since the categories of quantity are those of unity, plurality and totality, we can say that they apply to appearances in that all appearances must be thought as existing within a specific time-span which can be thought as momentary, that is, as a series of time spans or as the completion of a series of time spans.

On the other hand, Kant insists that we can think of a given time as either empty or full; in order to represent objects in time we must resort to sensation, so that in thinking a time we must always ask whether that time is filled up.

Thus the schema of quality is the filling of time; it would be natural to assume that the question whether-a time is full admits of a simple answer of yes or no.

However, Kant claims that reality and negation must be conceived as two extremes or limits, between which exist infinitely many degrees; he calls these degrees as "intensive magnitudes”

Meanwhile, Kant, 1787, insists that time is supposed to relate objects, not to one another, but to the understanding, that is, we can think an object in one of three ways:

(1) as occupying some time or other without specifying what part of time, that is, the schema of possibility in which we can think of an object as possible in so far as we can think of it as occupying some time or other, whether or not it actually occupies it;

(2) as existing in some definite time that is the schema of actuality in which we think of an object as actual when we claim that it exists in some specific part of time; and

(3) as existing at all times that is the schema of necessity in which an object is thought as being necessary if it is something which we must represent as occupying all times.

In other words, we could not think of a time which does not contain that object.

Kant sums up that time is to be seen as the formal a priori condition for all appearance; whereas space remains the pure form of all outward intuition, time supplied the subject with an inward orientation essential for perceptual relations.

Kant argues that the structure for the a posteriori representations we receive from sensation must itself be a priori.

This leads him to the science of a priori sensibility, which suggests that our capacity to receive representations of objects includes a capacity to receive representations of the a priori form of objects.

Accordingly, since space is one of two such a priori forms, a priori sensibility includes a capacity to receive pure representations of space.

Kant denies that time and space as an absolute reality, and maintains that outside of its cognitive function time is nothing.

Accordingly, the objective validity of time and space is limited to the regularity of their relationship to sensation; yet within this limited framework, their activity was constant and predictable.

Kant states that space and time do not exist by themselves, that is, they are not real things existing outside of our mind.

They are not qualities, nor relations belonging to the things in themselves.

They are the forms of our empirical intuition and are rooted in the subjective structure of our mind.

Further, he claims that we sense space and time with two forms of empirical intuition and they themselves intuition at the same time.

These intuitions are pure, since they are capable of becoming objects of our inquiry quite apart and independent from our empirical intuition.

Kant also claims that space and time are also a priori, because these intuitions as the forms of empirical intuitions precedes from all empirical intuitions, as long as they are the subjective conditions in which something can be an object of our empirical intuition.

Space and time , therefore, are not containers in which all the real things are en-compassed nor the dimension or order which belongs to the things in themselves; they are the forms of our intuition.

Kant claims that our ideas are in regard to their origin either pure or empirical; they are intuitions or concepts.

While Evans, J.D.G, (1999), notes from Kant that the notion of object structurally presupposes the subject, so the transcendental and necessary unity of apperception is the end product of a process of connection and synthesis of phenomena which depends on the application of the representation of an object in intuition to experience.

Our minds are not comfortable with simply observing the sensuous world and its connections through universal laws; it requires some knowledge of things in themselves to be content (Kolak, in Meibos, A.).

We know that pure science exists because there are universal laws, such as “substance is permanent” and “every event is determined by a cause according to constant laws”

These laws must not be a posteriori, because experience can only teach us what exists and how it exists, but not that it must exist.

Neither are they a priori, for we must make our deductions from observations.

However, the conformity of experience to constant laws must be an a priori understanding.

Through our awareness , we have perceptions; then, our sensibility, by using the concepts of pure understanding, structures these perceptions into experiences which we use to form science.

This process is called the schematism of pure understanding where schemata are notions of objects categorized and structured in time.

The categories can only subsume schemata and not awareness.

Kant claims that there is only one way in which a mediating element can be discovered, that is, by examining the single element which is present in all appearances, but at the same time, it is capable of being conceptualized as “time”.

According to him, we must, therefore, discover various ways of thinking of time, and if we can discover the ways in which this must be done, we can say that they both conform to the conditions of thought and are present in all appearances.

Kant calls these conceptualizations of time "schemata".

He then finds four fundamental modes of thinking time, one corresponding to each of the basic divisions of categories that are time-series, time-content, time-order, and the scope of time.

Kant convicts that schemata for the categories of relation are treated separately because the relational categories treat them in respect to one another and that time considered of it-self is successive but not simultaneous, and space is simultaneous but not successive.

Kant , therefore thinks objects in a time-order:

as enduring through a number of times i.e. of the permanence of substance;

as abiding while all else change;

as in one state of affairs which succeeds another i.e. we think the states of substances as occupying a succession of times in accordance with a rule;

and as co-existing i.e. the schema of reciprocity or mutual simultaneous interaction.

Next, Kant maintains that in all subsumptions under a concept, the representation must be homogeneous with the concept; however pure concepts of understanding can never be met with any intuition.

Hence, Kant argues that the transcendental schema in which it mediates principle between category and appearances must be pure and yet sensible.

According to Kant , the application of the category to appearances becomes possible by means of the transcendental determination of time, that is, the schema of the concepts of understanding and mediates the subsumption of appearances under the category.

Accordingly, the schema is always a product of imagination; it makes images possible as the products of the empirical faculty of reproductive imagination.

Kant concludes that there is a schema for each category in which the magnitude is the generation of time itself in the successive apprehension of an object.

Kant defines quality as the filling of time and reality as the sensation in general pointing to being in time; while negation is not-being in time and relation is the connecting of perceptions at all times according to a rule of time determination.

Further, substance is permanence of the real in time; cause is the real which something else always follows; community is the coexistence according to a universal rule of the determinations of one substance with those of another.

While modality is the time itself as the correlation of the determination whether and how an object belongs to time; possibility is the agreement of the synthesis of different representations with the conditions of time in general; actuality is the existence in some determinate time and the necessity is the existence of an object at all times.

References:
Kant, I., 1787, “The Critique of Pure Reason: Preface To The Second Edition”, Translated By J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Retrieved 2003
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Gottfried, P., 1987, “Form of Intuition: Kantian Time And Space Reconsidered”, The World & I: Issue Date: AUGUST 1987 Volume:02 Page: 689. Retrieved 2004
6 Shabel, L., 2003, “Reflections on Kant's concept (and intuition) of space”, Studies In History and Phi losophy of Science Part A Volume 34, Issue 1 Retreived 2003,
7 Gottfried, P., 1987, “Form of Intuition: Kantian Time And Space Reconsidered”, The World & I: Issue Date: AUGUST 1987 Volume:02 Page: 689. Retrieved 2004
8 -------, “Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): “Kant's Criticism against the Continental Rationalism and the British Empiricism”. Retrieved 2004
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11Ibid.
12 Meibos, A., 1998, “Intro to Philosophy: Kant and a priori Synthetic Judgment”s, Prof. Arts Notes for PHIL 251. Retrieved 2004
13Ibid.
14Kant, I., 1787, “The Critique of Pure Reason: Preface To The Second Edition”, Translated By J. M. D. Meiklejohn, Retrieved 2003
15Ibid
16 Ibid
17Ibid
18 Ibid
19 Ibid
20 Ibid
21 Ibid