KANT'S THEORY OF JUDGMENT

KANT'S THEORY OF JUDGMENT
-----------------------------------------------------
By Marsigit, Yogyakarta State University, Indonesia
Email: marsigitina@yahoo.com
Hanna, R., 2004, noted that Kantian cognitive faculty is innate in the threefold sense: first, it is intrinsic to the mind; second, it contains internal structures that are underdetermined by sensory impressions that is being a priori); and third, it automatically systematically synthesizes those sensory inputs according to special rules that directly reflect the internal structures of the faculty. According to Kant,  understanding and sensibility are sub-served by the faculty of imagination and generate: the spatial and temporal forms of intuition, the novel mental imagery in conscious sensory states, the reproductive imagery or memories, and the schemata. Accordingly, judgment is the mediate cognition of an object, and it is the representation of a representation of it.  Kant in Hanna, R, 2004, argued that in every judgment there is a concept that holds of many representations, and that among this many also comprehends a given representation, which is then immediately referred to the object. Kant  claimed that a judgment is nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception. Kant  insisted that judgment connects epistemology in Kant's sense directly with his conception of a science as a systematically unified body of cognitions based on a priori principles. As it was noted by Hanna, R., 2004, Kant held that that a belief constitutes scientific knowing if and only if the judgment underlying that belief is not only subjectively sufficient for believing but is also objectively sufficient for believing, and coherent with a suitably wide set of other beliefs; the objective sufficiency of a judgment is the inter-subjectively rationally communicable conscious state of conviction or certainty.

Hanna, R., 2004 indicated that one of the most controversial, influential, and striking parts of Kant's theory of judgment is his multiple classification of judgments based on  the kinds of logical form and kinds of semantic content and stands to the analytic-synthetic distinction, or synthetic a priori. Kant’s table of judgments captures a fundamental part of the science of pure general logic: first, pure,  because it is a priori, necessary and without any associated sensory content; second, general, because it is both universal and essentially formal; third, logic, because it systematically provides normative cognitive rules for the truth of judgments and for valid inference. Kant's table of judgments consists: Quantity of Judgments: universal, particular, singular; Quality: affirmative, negative, infinite; Relation: categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive; and Modality: problematic, assertoric, apodictic. Kant  added that the propositional content of a judgment can vary along at least three different dimensions: its relation to sensory content; its relation to the truth-conditions of propositions; and its relation to the conditions for objective validity.

A Priori Judgments And A Posteriori Judgments

Hanna, R., 2004, elaborated that the notion of cognitive content for Kant has two sharply distinct senses that are intension and sensory matter; and a significant and unique contribution to both the form and the objective representational content of cognition arises from the innate spontaneous cognitive capacities and arising from either sensory impressions or innate spontaneous cognitive capacities. For Kant,  this allows us to say that a cognition is a posteriori or dependent on sensory impressions just in case that it is strictly determined in its form or in its semantic content by sensory impressions; however,  a cognition is a priori or absolutely independent of all sensory impressions just in case it is not strictly determined in its form or in its semantic content by sensory impressions and is instead strictly determined in its form or in its semantic content by our innate spontaneous cognitive faculties. According to Kant,  pure a priori cognitions are those that in addition to being a priori or absolutely independent of all sensory impressions and contain no sensory matter whatsoever and thus some but not all a priori cognitions are pure.

Kant, as it was noted by Hanna, R., 2004, insisted that a judgment is a posteriori if and only if either its logical form or its propositional content is strictly determined by sensory impressions; and a judgment is a priori if and only if neither its logical form nor its propositional content is strictly determined by sensory impressions and both are instead strictly determined by our innate spontaneous cognitive faculties, whether or not that cognition also contains sensory matter; or it is a priori if and only if it is necessarily true. Kant  added that the contingency of a judgment is bound up with the modal dependence of its semantic content on sensory impressions that is it's a posteriority and that that necessity is equivalent with strict universality that is a proposition's lack of any possible counterexamples or falsity-makers as well as that necessity entails truth. Kant  concluded that not only do a priori judgments really exist in various sciences but also that there really are some pure a priori judgments as in mathematics.

The first distinction separates a priori from a posteriori judgments by reference to the origin of our knowledge of them; a priori judgments are based upon reason alone, independently of all sensory experience, and therefore apply with strict universality; a posteriori judgments, on the other hand, must be grounded upon experience and are consequently limited and uncertain in their application to specific cases (Meibos, A., 1998). Meibos concluded that this distinction also marks the difference traditionally noted in logic between necessary and contingent truths. According to Kant,  analytic judgments are those whose predicates are wholly contained in their subjects; since they add nothing to our concept of the subject, such judgments are purely explicative and can be deduced from the principle of non-contradiction; while synthetic judgments, on the other hand, are those whose predicates are wholly distinct from their subjects, to which they must be shown to relate because of some real connection external to the concepts themselves (Meibos, A., 1998).  Hence, synthetic judgments are genuinely informative but require justification by reference to some outside principle.

Analytic Judgments And Synthetic Judgments

Hanna, R., 2004, again noted that for Kant the analytic-synthetic distinction is exhaustive in the sense that every proposition is either analytic or synthetic but not both, his two-part doctrine of analyticity in turn provides him with a two-part negative doctrine of syntheticity; a proposition is synthetic if and only if its truth is not strictly determined by relations between its conceptual microstructures or conceptual comprehensions alone; and a judgment is synthetically true if and only if it is true and its denial does not logically entail a contradiction. Hanna noted that Kant directly connects the semantics of syntheticity with the semantics of intuitions, just as he directly connects the semantics of analyticity with the semantics of concepts; and a judgment is synthetic if and only if its meaning and its truth are strictly determined by its constituent intuitions, whether empirical intuitions or pure intuitions. A synthetic judgment is the intuitional components that strictly determine its meaning and truth, not its conceptual components that a synthetic judgment is an intuition-based proposition.

Pure mathematics is the first science Kant attempts to prove is possible; when we think about how we perform a mathematical operation, such as 645 * 32, we realize that this type of mathematical concept is not true by definition, but requires reason and analysis of experience, and thus they must be synthetic concepts; however, mathematical principles such as x+0=x are also necessarily true and therefore a priori truths (Meibos, A., 1998). Meibos noted that one of the first hurdles Kant must overcome, then, is how math can be deduced a priori, without any previous knowledge or experience; the answer to this dilemma is that mathematics is based on principles that are gained through pure intuition instead of empiricism. Further, Meibos lectured that whereas empiricism is the a posteriori awareness of external objects via sense perception, pure intuition is the a priori visualization of pure forms in one’s mind; this pure intuition does not require experience in order to function.

Meibos, A., (1998), delivered the question how, then, can we imagine something we have never seen?; the answer is that intuition does not represent things as they are in the real world, but only the form of sensibility of real-world objects. Meibos, from Kant, concluded that mathematics is possible through the intuition, the structuring of sensibility. Further, based on Kant, Meibos lectured that certain understanding is the result of both judgments of experience, which are always valid and are based on a priori concepts of the understanding, and judgments of perception, which are subjectively valid and are based on simple observation. Meibos then concluded that metaphysical truths cannot be deduced through observation, but only by reasoning; just as the categories of understanding allow one to deduce universal truths from experience, so do necessary concepts of the faculty of reason allow one to deduce universal truths from the understanding.

Synthetic A Priori Judgments

Hanna, R., 2004, noted that Kant holds that all the basic statements of traditional metaphysics are, at least in intention, synthetic a priori judgments; therefore, the critique of traditional metaphysics is nothing except that it deepened and extends investigation of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. By combining the a priori-a posteriori distinction with the analytic-synthetic distinction, Kant  derives four possible kinds of judgment: analytic a priori, analytic a posteriori, synthetic a priori, and synthetic a posteriori. Due to the fact that analytic judgments are necessarily true and that necessity entails apriority, it follows that all analytic judgments are a priori and that there is no such thing as an analytic a posteriori judgment; however, the synthetic judgments can be either a priori or a posteriori; while synthetic a posteriori judgments are empirical and contingent, however, synthetic a priori judgments, by contrast, are non-empirical, non-contingent judgments.

Hanna, R., 2004, elaborated that synthetic a priori judgments have three essential features: first, its meaning and truth are underdetermined by sensory impressions and it is also necessarily true; second, its truth is not strictly determined by conceptual factors alone, and its denial is logically consistent; and third, the meaning and truth of a synthetic a priori judgment is intuition-based. According to Kant  our a priori formal representations of space and time are both necessary conditions of the possibility of human experience and also necessary conditions of the objective validity or anthropocentric empirical referential meaningfulness of judgments, which in turn confers truth-valuedness upon propositions, it then follows that a synthetic a priori judgment is a proposition that is true in all and only the humanly experienceable possible worlds and truth-valueless otherwise (Hanna 2001, 239-245).

Hanna, R., 2004, further elaborated that synthetic a priori judgments are either true or truth-valueless in every logically possible world, it also follows that they are never false in any logically possible world and thus satisfy Kant's general definition of a necessary truth that is that a proposition is necessary if and only if it is strictly universally true, in that it is true in every member of a complete class of possible worlds and has no possible counterexamples or falsity-makers. According to Hanna, Kant offers an account of human rationality that is essentially oriented towards judgment, and then in turn works out accounts of the nature of judgment, the nature of logic, and the nature of the various irreducibly different kinds of judgments, that are essentially oriented towards the anthropocentric empirical referential meaningfulness and truth of the proposition.

Ultimately, (Meibos, A., 1998) summed up that these two classes of synthetic a priori judgments are entirely separate: the one based on experience, and the other never able to be proved or disproved through experience. The possibility of synthetic a priori judgments is the basis for each of Kant’s answers to how mathematics, natural science, and metaphysics are possible experience combined with each science’s a priori concepts allows one to make conclusions in each area. According to Kant,  Mathematics has the a

priori concepts of time and space that allow the understanding to combine observations of shape and quantity into the science of math; while natural science has the twelve categories that subsume experience in order to form laws of nature. He noted that metaphysics has the three transcendental ideas through which reason structures understanding into general metaphysical principles, the justification of which require that metaphysics be a science and not mere speculation; these three sciences, with their common thread of synthetic a priori ideas, allow us to refute skepticism and to make true statements about the phenomenal world.

Note:

  Hanna, R., 2004, Kant's Theory of Judgment, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=kant-judgment
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Meibos, A., 1998, Intro to Philosophy: Kant and a priori Synthetic Judgments, Prof. Arts Notes for PHIL 251
  Hanna, R., 2004, Kant's Theory of Judgment, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=kant-judgment
  Ibid
  Ibid.
  Ibid.
  Meibos, A., 1998, Intro to Philosophy: Kant and a priori Synthetic Judgments, Prof. Arts Notes for PHIL 251
  Ibid.