Immanuel Kant Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Principles of pure understanding==== Kant's deduction of the categories in the "Analytic of Concepts", if successful, demonstrates its claims about the categories only in an abstract way. The task of the "Analytic of Principles" is to show both ''that'' they must universally apply to objects given in actual experience (i.e., manifolds of intuition) and ''how'' it is they do so.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|pp=9β10}} In the first book<!--????--> of this section<!--????--> on the "[[Schema (Kant)|schematism]]", Kant connects each of the purely logical categories of the understanding to the temporality of intuition to show that, although non-empirical, they do have purchase upon the objects of experience. The second book continues this line of argument in four chapters, each associated with one of the category groupings. In some cases, it adds a connection to the spatial dimension of intuition to the categories it analyzes.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|pp=10β11}} The fourth chapter of this section, "The Analogies of Experience", marks a shift from "mathematical" to "dynamical" principles, that is, to those that deal with relations among objects. Some commentators consider this the most significant section of the ''Critique''.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=11}} The analogies are three in number: # ''Principle of persistence of substance'': Kant is here concerned with the general conditions of determining time-relations among the objects of experience. He argues that the unity of time implies that "all change must consist in the alteration of states in an underlying substance, whose existence and quantity must be unchangeable or conserved."<ref>see Kant, ''CPuR'' A182β26/B224β36</ref> # ''Principle of temporal succession according to the law of causality'': Here Kant argues that "we can make determinate judgments about the objective succession of events, as contrasted to merely subjective successions of representations, only if every objective alteration follows a necessary rule of succession, or a causal law." This is Kant's most direct rejoinder to [[Humeanism#Causality_and_necessity|Hume's skepticism about causality]].<ref>see Kant, ''CPuR'' A186β211/B232β56</ref> # ''Principle of simultaneity according to the law of reciprocity or community'': The final analogy argues that "determinate judgments that objects (or states of substance) in different regions of space exists simultaneously are possible only if such objects stand in mutual causal relation of community or reciprocal interaction." (This is Kant's rejoinder to [[Leibniz]]'s thesis in the ''[[Monadology]]''.)<ref>see Kant, ''CPuR'' A211-15/B256-62</ref>{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|pp=11β12}} The fourth section of this chapter, which is not an analogy, deals with the empirical use of the modal categories. That was the end of the chapter in the A edition of the ''Critique''. The B edition, however, includes one more short section, "The Refutation of Idealism". In this section, by analysis of the concept of self-consciousness, Kant argues that his transcendental idealism is a "critical" or "formal" idealism that does not deny the existence of reality apart from our subjective representations.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=12}} The final chapter of "The Analytic of Principles" distinguishes ''phenomena'', of which we have can have genuine knowledge, from ''noumena'', a term which refers to objects of pure thought that we cannot know, but to which we may still refer "in a negative sense".{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|pp=12β13}} An Appendix to the section further develops Kant's criticism of Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism by arguing that its "dogmatic" metaphysics confuses the "mere features of concepts through which we think things...[with] features of the objects themselves". Against this, Kant reasserts his own insistence upon the necessity of a sensible component in all genuine knowledge.{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|p=13}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page