Two Functions of Perception in Kant
Hemmo Laiho*
University of Turku, Finland
Abstract
Kant uses
terms translatable as ‘synthesis’ and ‘perception’ in different ways in
different contexts, which suggests that there are different kinds of synthesis
and perception. I propose that there are two main basic functions of perception
according to Kant: that of singling out a thing and that
of getting perceptually informed about the configuration of the thing’s
perceptible features. I argue that the first function is not dependent on the
kinds of syntheses Kant analyzes in the Critique
of Pure Reason but grounds any such synthesis. I also
argue that if singling out a thing is considered to involve synthesis, then the
term ‘synthesis’ is identified with a unification of sensory information itself,
which is not of much consequence for the transcendental philosopher. The paper
also aims to clarify what ‘manifold’ consists in and what the starting point of
the ‘synthesis in apprehension’ might be.
Keywords
Intuition,
Perception, Synthesis
Abstrakti
Kant käyttää
‘synteesiksi’ ja ‘havainnoksi’ käännettävissä olevia termejä eri tavoin eri
konteksteissa, mikä viittaa erityyppisiin synteeseihin ja havaintoihin. Esitän,
että Kantin mukaan havainnolla on kaksi perustavaa funktiota: olion yksilöinti
ja olion havaittavien ominaisuuksien konfiguraatiosta perille pääseminen.
Väitän, ettei ensin mainittu funktio riipu senkaltaisista synteeseistä, joita
Kant analysoi Puhtaan järjeen kritiikissä, vaan perustaa tuollaisten
synteesien mahdollisuuden. Lisäksi väitän, että jos olion yksilöinnin katsotaan
edellyttävän synteesiä, synteesillä tarkoitetaan tällöin aisti-informaation
itsensä yhdistämistä, jonka tarkastelun voidaan katsoa olevan jokseenkin
epäolennaista transsendentaalifilosofille. Artikkelissani pyrin myös
selventämään, mistä ‘moneus’ koostuu ja mikä voisi olla ‘synteesin
apprehensiossa’ lähtökohta.
Asiasanat
Havainto, Intuitio,
Synteesi
1.
Introduction
I take it that much of what Kant says about sense perception implies that
outer perception has two basic cognitive functions according to Kant:
(PERCEPTION 1) To single out a thing,
where the thing is understood as a “whole”, e.g. that very thing over there.
(PERCEPTION 2) To get perceptually
informed about the configuration of the thing and its perceptible features or
“parts”, e.g. this rectangular-shaped heavy
thing.
In addition to capturing something
deeply true about the phenomenology of perception, the distinction can help us
understand Kant’s theory of cognition in many ways. In particular, the
distinction can be used to clarify what ‘manifold’ might consist in and what
the starting point of the ‘synthesis in apprehension’ in perception might be—a
task Norman Kemp Smith deemed impossible (Kemp Smith
2003, p. 97). More generally, the distinction makes one wonder what exactly is the theoretical role of perceptually locatable and traceable
particular things in Kant’s philosophical system and what after all does the
supposedly necessary linkage between synthesis and perception mean.[1] To that end, this paper challenges the idea that all
kinds of perception, PERCEPTION 1 included, is dependent on the kinds of
syntheses Kant analyzes in the Critique
of Pure Reason. As
I hope to be able to show, Kant the philosopher is not even
supposed to explain the kind of unification of sensory information that might
be required for PERCEPTION 1.[2] This is to say that
while some such processes could just as well be called syntheses, and be of
great importance in psychological explanations of
perception, such
processes are not Kant’s real concern in his critical
philosophy.
I begin, in Section 2, with
preliminary remarks on perception and synthesis. In Section 3, I claim that
synthesis, as used in the context of critical philosophy, refers to a cognitive
function that stands on the capacity to perceptually single out particulars,
not the other way around. The primacy of such an “intuitive” capacity over
synthesis is further illuminated in Section 4 by showing that unlike synthesis,
intuition does not proceed from “parts” to the “whole.” Finally, in Section 5,
I make a tentative proposal how all of this might relate to the Transcendental
Analytic in general and to the transcendental deduction of the categories in
particular.
2. Preliminary remarks on perception and synthesis
Kant’s use of the term ‘perception’ (Wahrnehmung, also perceptio and Perzeption)
is ambiguous. For instance, perception can indicate entertaining mere sensation
(Empfindung, also sensatio) (e.g. A170/B212; see also Falkenstein 1995, p. 161) or even just an
inner feeling (e.g. KU, 5:289; cf.
Reid 1969, II.XVI). Such uses of the
term differ greatly from the ordinary use—as in the perception of a house, for
example. Moreover, in Kant’s texts, we find several other terms that refer to
the kind of phenomenon that can be regarded as perception or species of perceptual
representation. An obvious example would be observation
(Beobachtung). Though not as
self-evident, apprehension (Auffassung, Fassung, also Apprehension)
would be another. The more general term cognition
(Erkenntnis, also cognitio) should be mentioned as well,
and not solely because Kant sometimes calls cognitions perceptions, but because
his use of this term is not exactly consistent either.[3] Last but not least, there is empirical intuition (empirische
Anschauung), which Kant sometimes identifies with and sometimes separates
from Wahrnehmung (see e.g. Prol, 4:283, 300; V-Met-L2, 28:557; B162).
This brief terminological reminder
already suggests that Kant does not have a single psychological process or
phenomenon in mind when he speaks of perception, or what we might want to
simply call perception. Thanks to the ambiguity we can also quite safely take
some freedom in using the term ‘perception’ in the Kantian context to indicate a
wider phenomenon than, say, what he might mean by Anschauung or Wahrnehmung in
some specific context. (Even if at times these two terms seem to track the
distinction between PERCEPTION 1 and PERCEPTION 2.) In any case, it is clear
that Kant recognizes and distinguishes several
kinds of perceptual representation according to different cognitive functions served by perception (broadly conceived). As
already suggested and formulated in the Introduction, I take the main basic cognitive
functions of perception to be that of singling out a thing (PERCEPTION 1) and
that of getting perceptually informed about the configuration of the thing’s
perceptible features (PERCEPTION 2).
To count as genuine perceptions, all
kinds of perception require that the perceiver is affected, and the manner the
perceiver is affected correlates both with more or less quantifiable features
such as shapes and qualitative features such as colors in given empirical
circumstances. To this extent, perceiving is beyond our control, as we cannot
typically choose what to perceive or how a certain thing appears to us. In this
sense, we are controlled by sensibility
(Sinnlichkeit) i.e. the faculty
responsible for the receptivity of sensory matter, sensations, intuitions and,
indeed, for the fact that objects are given
to us (e.g. A19/B33).
It should be equally clear that with
the notion of synthesis Kant wants to emphasize that representing also requires
conjoining, combining, placing or putting together separate elements that cannot do the job individually, and that
the final cognitive product is a unification of those elements. An obvious
example of such a connecting activity would be a thought according to the
logical form S is P. For example, when we think of a bridge built of stones, or
rather that the bridge is built of
stones, we combine the representations of bridge and stone in a certain manner,
thereby achieving a unified representation of a stone bridge. This is a result
of an act of predication, and also a result of subsumption, as long as we at
least implicitly represent the stone bridge as belonging to a wider class of
objects. In such cases, we genuinely understand how things are, which requires
more than just sense perception, namely the capacity of judgment. To put it
differently, we then have experience (Erfahrung) in the full sense of the
term, which is more than just perception, namely “perception that is
understood.” (Kant 2005, p. 172; HN,
17:664) Here, I think, we are already cognitively beyond mere PERCEPTION 1 or
PERCEPTION 2.[4]
The idea that perception itself
involves synthesis is not so clear. To begin with, Kant distances perception
(or at least some kinds of perception) from judgment, as he identifies thinking
with judging (e.g. A69/B94) while at the same time clearly regarding intuition
as a distinct kind of representation that can take place even prior to thinking
(B67; B132; HN, 17:620). What is more, Kant links perceptual synthesis with the sensible faculty of
imagination, not with the intellectual faculty of understanding (Verstand) (see e.g. A78/B103; A120;
B151; V-Lo/Wiener, 24:701-2). Indeed,
Kant thinks that imagination (Einbildungskraft,
also imaginatio) is no less than
necessary for perception. As he points out in a footnote in the so-called
A-deduction:
No psychologist has yet thought that
the imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself. This is so
partly because this faculty has been limited to reproduction, and partly
because it has been believed that the senses do not merely afford us impressions
but also put them together, and produce images of objects, for which without
doubt something more than the receptivity of impressions is required, namely a
function of the synthesis of them. (A120n)
Here, Kant seems to imply that the
role of imagination in perception is to produce images by placing impressions
together. However, this is something he never really explains, which makes it
difficult to say exactly what he means by this remark. Moreover, he refers to psychologists, and perhaps much of the
rest of what he says in that context is not grounded in a psychological point
of view, which is why I tend to think that the footnote is merely an off-topic
parenthesis.
Be that as it may, the idea that
perception itself involves synthesis can mean quite different things. For
example, explaining perceptual synthesis in terms of representing concrete
particular elements together (such as stones) to obtain a (more) unified view
on things (such as bridges made of stones) differs drastically from explaining
perceptual synthesis in terms of connecting—to put it somewhat
anachronistically—sense-data or bits of sensory information received by the
senses to have them processed into representations of stones and bridges in the
first place. More generally put, the latter type of explanation reflects the
idea that “the three-dimensional visible world is something the mind synthesizes from scratch” (Waxman 2005,
p. 162) whereas the former type of explanation does not start from scratch at
all, but from particular things such as stones and bridges.
Interestingly, as we will see in the
next section, both ideas can be found in the Kantian corpus. At the same time,
we find a tension: Should we understand both PERCEPTION 1 and PERCEPTION 2 in
the way that suggests a kind of thoroughgoing synthesis, it would mean that
PERCEPTION 2 simply denotes a further synthesis, whereas the kind of
explanation, which starts from particulars, not only clearly preserves a
distinction between perceiving the bridge as such and perceiving it in some
more detailed manner, but makes something
distinguishable as the basic unit of perception.
The quoted passage from the
A-deduction may seem to better support the idea that even PERCEPTION 1 only
becomes possible via a synthetic operation that puts together sensory
information itself. While some Kant commentators remain ambiguous on this, some
commentators do think, more or less explicitly, that Kant’s views of synthesis
are to be understood along such lines (e.g. Falkenstein 1995, p. 123; Strawson 1966,
p. 32; Kitcher 2011, p. 107; Westphal 2004, p. 89). However, as already
suggested, I do not think that this is Kant’s view. At least it is not Kant’s
view in the context of transcendental philosophy, though something like it may
be a plausible empirical psychological explanation of sense perception
according to Kant as well. Instead, as far as Kant’s philosophical account of
perception goes, synthesis builds upon the capacity to establish relation to
individual empirical things, which is to say that perceptual synthesis starts
from particular things or their individuatable features antecedently given in
intuition. In a word, synthesis stands on PERCEPTION 1. My take on the matter can
be illustrated in a table form roughly as follows:
|
Psychology |
Transcendental philosophy / Kant in CPR |
||
|
Unification of bits of sensory information . . . . . . . →
{O} ‘Synthesis’ |
Singling out a thing (“that”) {O} Intuition PERCEPTION 1 |
Representing perceptual elements together { a, b, c } = O Apprehensive
synthesis PERCEPTION 2 |
Understanding an object of perception “O is P” Judgmental
synthesis |
|
‘Perception’
(broadly conceived) |
|||
3. What is apprehension targeted at?
To make better sense of what we just
suggested, let us ask: What exactly is synthesized in perception? What does
‘manifold’ stand for? As I see it, the best place to look for answers is Kant’s
notion of apprehensive synthesis.[5] As
Kant describes this kind of synthesis in the second edition Critique,
by the synthesis of apprehension
I understand the composition [Zusammensetzung]
of the manifold in an empirical intuition, through which perception, i.e.,
empirical consciousness of it (as appearance), becomes possible. (B160)
The explication does not reveal what
exactly Kant thinks is composed or put together in the synthesis of
apprehension which he sometimes also seems to take as necessary for perception.
It seems, however, that he must have in mind one of the two alternatives
examined in the previous section. That is to say that either a totally
unstructured sensory manifold is being apprehended, in which case the synthesis
in question starts more or less from scratch, or that the manifold itself is
prestructured in some fundamental sense, being more like a set of possibilities
for further connecting activities rather than the ground zero of every possible
perceptual representation.
The “scratch” reading builds on the
idea that we synthetically build the visible world out of the motley material
provided through affection. In that case, PERCEPTION 1 too must be regarded as
constituted by simpler elements put synthetically together—not totally unlike a
set of pixels that constitute a desktop icon on a computer screen. In this kind
of model, the explanation of perception begins from the “putting-together” of
the sensory stuff itself. Kant himself speaks of such an idea in his lectures:
With every manner in which we are
affected there are two parts: matter, i.e., the impression of sensation, and
form, i.e., [the] manner in which impressions are unified [vereiniget] in my mind. Otherwise I would have millions of
impressions but no intuition of a whole object. (Kant 2001, p. 154; V-Met/Mron, 29:800)
Basically, Kant points out here how
the input of impressions or sensations, or the sensory stuff itself, must be
unified for PERCEPTION 1 to be possible.
Such
a unification operation can well be dubbed synthesis.[6] Then again, when we perceptually represent an object, we do
not represent millions of impressions
hanging together, but rather this or that thing. In Kant’s terms, we have an
“intuition of a whole object.” This is also the level Kant typically speaks at:
namely, at the level of conscious representation of objects. The kind of
sensory unification processes implied by the quote, however, are clearly
inaccessible to us. It can thus be questioned from the outset that such
sensory-level “syntheses” would belong to Kant’s transcendental philosophy,
where he typically links synthesis with a set of a priori concepts, also known as the categories, and works under
the presupposition that that which contributes to a priori cognition “cannot
remain hidden from us” (A13/B26). This is not to deny
unconscious representations from Kant’s view of the human mind but to press the
point that, for Kant, the philosophically relevant explanation of perception
hardly consists in giving an account of subconscious information processing or
the like. To put it differently, Kant was probably not very interested in how
perception actually develops into the kind of phenomenon it is (cf. Hatfield
1990, p. 107).
There is a further reason to believe
that the kind of “psychological” model that deals with the sensory information
itself does not draw upon those explanatory resources Kant resorts to as a
transcendental philosopher. To cite a passage from the Transcendental Analytic:
Things [Dinge]
are simultaneous insofar as they exist at one and the same time. But how does
one cognize that they exist at one and the same time? If the order in the
synthesis of apprehension of this manifold is indifferent, i.e., if it can
proceed from A through B, C, and D to E, but also conversely from E to A. For
if they existed in time one after the other (in the order that begins with A
and ends at E), then it would be impossible to begin the apprehension at the
perception of [Wahrnehmung vor] E and
proceed backwards to A, since A would belong to past time, and thus can no
longer be an object of apprehension. (A211/B258; my emphasis)
Here, as Kant notes how apprehending
can sometimes proceed in two different ways, he speaks not only of things—which
suggests that these As and Es are individual objects of perception—but also of
perceptions of As and Es, which suggests that in apprehending we go from one
perception of a thing to another, not from one sensory input to another. Moreover,
the quote indicates how the manifold appears
as organized into things we can perceive and be aware of—what we dubbed distinguishables in the previous
section. Just as importantly, the passage suggests that perceptual relation to
things is not itself constituted by apprehension. Rather, apprehensive
synthesis builds upon the capacity to single out things (PERCEPTION 1), which
suggests more generally that the cognitive subject must have (at least some
kind of) perceptual access to things prior to apprehensive synthesis. Further,
the quoted passage indirectly evidences that if some special kind of
“synthesis” does precondition PERCEPTION 1, it is not the kind of synthesis that would have a core significance in
Kant’s critical philosophy, assuming apprehensive synthesis would be the sole
candidate for such a thing.
4. On parts and wholes in intuitive representing
Why does Kant introduce the notion of
intuition in the first place? Contrary to what commentators (e.g. Kemp Smith
2003; Smit 2000) have suggested, I would say that because Kant was driven by
the idea that not all representing is tied to advancing from parts to the
whole. In the Critique, Kant suggests
this much as early as the Transcendental Aesthetic. As he explicates the notion
of intuition, he attributes to concepts a cognitive limitation of having to
proceed from partial representations, while an entire representation can be given in intuition (A32). What is
more, in his lectures on logic, where he calls intuitions “thoroughly
determinate cognitions” (Kant 2004, p. 597; Log,
9:99), Kant seems to repeat in different words what he has been trying to say
all along: namely, that perceptual reference to an individual thing can be
fixed (bestimmt) through, and only
through, intuition.
Later
in the Critique, Kant emphasizes that
every intuition is an extensive magnitude. This emphasis might give a reason to
think that intuitions cannot be immediate in the sense that they would not
require synthesis from parts up. As Kemp Smith has put it, basing his reading
on B202-3, “extensive magnitude cannot be apprehended save through a ‘synthesis
of the manifold,’ a ‘combination of the homogeneous’” (Kemp Smith 2003, p. 94).
However, I find it more plausible that Kant should be read as holding that this
is so only insofar as a certain kind of representation is concerned, namely,
precisely the kind of representation by which the cognitive subject actually
apprehends or represents the extensive magnitude of a thing to herself. And, as
a matter of fact, in the Critique, Kant
does remark in a footnote:
We
can intuit an indeterminate quantum as a whole, if it is enclosed within
boundaries, without needing to construct its totality through measurement,
i.e., through the successive synthesis of its parts. (A426/B454n)[7]
Though seemingly marginal, this small
quote from the First Antinomy is particularly revealing for our purposes. As
the wider context implies, the real problems of the Critique concern synthesis in terms of measurement, understood as
“repeated addition of units to each other” (A428/B456). This in turn suggests
that it is this kind of operation that requires synthesis that proceeds from
parts (plurality) to the whole (totality), not intuition as such. It is also
worthwhile to note that such an activity belongs to thinking (A428/B456); and as just suggested, it
is thinking, not intuiting, that is tied to the cognitive limitations of
concept-use and thus necessitated to a progression from parts.
When applied to sense
perception—which should be totally legitimate since perception shares the same
a priori structure with every humanly possible sensible representation—the
primacy of intuition over synthesis suggests that we can perceptually single
out a thing without having to successively go through its composition. It also seems
then that the ultimate reason for Kant’s introduction of the notion of sensible
intuition is to underscore the human capacity to represent things
instantaneously, albeit merely sensibly since we are not capable of
intellectual intuition (B308). Consequently, it is plausible to take intuition
as such as something that is not constituted
by the kind of connecting activity Kant analyses in certain parts of the Critique. Rather, intuition or
PERCEPTION 1, and with it the possibility of being presented with particular
things, understood as “wholes”, grounds the possibility of further
“synthesizing” activities, such as PERCEPTION 2.
This
reading is also strongly supported by the way Kant understands sensible or
aesthetic clarity and distinctness in intuition. The basic idea goes roughly as
follows.[8] We represent clearly when we are able to distinguish objects
from each other (Anth, 7:137-38). A
clear representing remains indistinct until we become conscious of the
manifold, which can be understood in terms of becoming aware of object’s
composition (Log, 9:34; Anth, 7:138). In both cases, the kind of
awareness involved can also be merely intuitive or aesthetic (Anth, 7:135; EEKU, 20:227*; ÜE,
8:217*). I take this to mean that we can perceive an individual thing in
a detailed manner without a conceptual or “logico-predicative” understanding of
what the thing is or how its parts are related to the whole. For example, if
you do not recognize the thing before you as a house, even if you can perfectly
distinguish it from the garden, you do not recognize the function of the
rectangular-shaped reflective surfaces either. Yet, you have an aesthetically or
intuitively distinct representation of the house.
The
following quote from the Jäsche Logik is quite illuminating in this
regard:
We glimpse a country house in a
distance. If we are conscious that the intuited object is a house, then we must
necessarily have a representation of the various parts of this house, the
windows, doors, etc. For if we did not see the parts, we would not see the
house itself either. But we are not conscious of this representation of the
manifold of its parts, and our representation of the object indicated is thus
itself an indistinct representation. (Log,
9:34)
As I read it, the quote suggests that
to be conscious of the house as a house, or “that the intuited object is a house”, we must be
aware of its parts as parts of the house. This is because houses do have
doors and windows, and to be aware that the thing is a house is to understand
at least that much of such things, whereas if we just saw a big rectangular
block in the distance, we could not be said to be consciously representing a
house. In this sense, the representation of the house becomes both aesthetically and logically
(conceptually) clear and distinct only if we understand how the kinds of parts
or features we have distinguished contribute to house-representations in
general. More importantly for our purposes, however, the quote suggests a
perceptual situation in which “we are not conscious of this representation of
the manifold of its parts”. Yet we are looking at that rectangular block in the
distance. In other words, though we do not go through the combined features that make a house, and
thus are perhaps unable to see that it is indeed a house we are looking
at, we nevertheless single out that very thing in the distance. In all, this
suggests that the manifoldness as such (in the sense which would indicate an
awareness of the object’s composition) does not need to be represented in order
to perceive something in the first place. On the contrary, an aesthetically
indistinct representation of a thing seems to suffice for PERCEPTION 1.
Thus, on my reading, composing a
manifold equals finding out and being aware of a structure of distinguishable parts in some plurality. This
involves PERCEPTION 2. However, that does not mean that the object in question,
understood merely as this thing here or that very thing over there,
is not perceived if no representation of its composition takes place. On the
contrary, supposing we have a sufficiently clear aesthetic representation of the
thing, we succeed in singling it out. In a word, we succeed in perceiving it in
the sense of PERCEPTION 1, which is at the same time necessary for PERCEPTION
2, but not the other way around.
5. What about the transcendental deduction?
To reiterate, perception has two
fundamental cognitive functions according to Kant. The first—PERCEPTION 1—is to
establish relation to individual empirical things also dubbed above as distinguishables. The second function—PERCEPTION
2—is to achieve a distinct view on the object perceived. Accordingly, it is one
thing to explicate perception in terms of establishing a relation to an object,
and quite another to explicate perception in terms of figuring out how the
object is composed. Kant himself explicitly refers to this distinction in the
transcendental deduction of the categories, as he differentiates between
intuiting a house and making the
intuition of the house into a perception of the house (B162).
In
above, we also made the further claim that PERCEPTION 1 does not depend on
synthesis, at least not in the sense Kant analyzes this capacity as a
transcendental philosopher. Granted, this claim is problematic in light of
Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. To my mind, that is mostly
so because the success of the deduction seems to depend on the idea that
“synthesis, through which even perception itself becomes possible, stands under
the categories” (B162), which in turn can be taken to imply that all kinds of
perception depends on categorial synthesis (see also e.g. Allison 2004; Gomes
2014, pp. 14-15).
It
goes without question that the text suggests a deep interconnection of
perception and synthesis. Yet the possibility that Kant’s argument is only
meant to hold for perception in a very specific sense of the term cannot be
ruled out (see also Tolley 2013, p. 124). As we have seen, there is textual
basis for taking apprehensive synthesis or PERCEPTION 2 as drawing on the
capacity to single out things, and thus as dependent on PERCEPTION 1 and the
possibility of being confronted with particulars, not the other way around. If
this is so, then we are in the position to claim that whatever Kant has in mind
with the link between synthesis and perception, there are reasons to believe
that he is not trying to explain what can be taken as the most basic cognitive
task of sense perception: namely, perception in the sense of PERCEPTION 1. We
have also already refuted the possibility that the kind of sensory unification processes
alluded to above could be a function of the categories.
Read against this, it appears quite plausible
that the deduction deals with a kind of perception, or a certain function of
perceptual representation, not with perception tout court. Accordingly, the claim that all kinds of perception
must be subject to categorial synthesis appears to be too broad to give a
sufficiently clear view of Kant’s intentions besides the obvious, namely that
there must be some kind of affinity between perceptions, syntheses and
categories for us to be able to think and judge about sensible objects. In all,
given the context-sensitivity of the terms ‘perception’ and ‘synthesis’, which can
be used to refer to various kinds of cognitive functions or capacities, it
should not come as a surprise that some of them were not Kant’s concern in the
deduction.[9]
What is more, when one reads the
B-version of the deduction carefully, one discovers that the very idea that
perception must be subject to the categories comes with a qualification:
Now since all possible perception depends on the
synthesis of apprehension, but the latter itself, this empirical synthesis,
depends on the transcendental one, thus on the categories, all possible
perceptions, hence everything that can ever reach empirical consciousness,
i.e., all appearances of nature, as far as
their combination is concerned, stand under the categories [...]. (B164-65;
my emphases)
To begin with, and most importantly for our purposes, the
emphasis on the synthesis of apprehension leaves PERCEPTION 1 out of the
picture. One should also take special note of Kant’s reference to appearances,
that is, to undetermined objects of
empirical intuition (A20/B34), as opposed to, say, “data of sense themselves
unconnected and separate” (Strawson 1966, p. 32). Accordingly, whatever
combination exactly means in this context, it is something that happens in
relation to (conceptually undetermined) objects, not in relation to the
possibility of the objects (or appearances) as such. Moreover, since Kant now
uses the German word Verbindung,
which connotes intellectual synthesis (Verstandesverbindung)
rather than any of the sensible ones (see B151), he might actually have a very
specific kind of synthesis in mind in the quoted passage: namely, presumably,
the kind of judgmental synthesis we referred to in Section 2. In addition, the
dependence relation in question, or the exact meaning of the verb ‘to stand
under’, remains unclear. It could simply mean, for instance, that everything
that is given to us must fall under the scope of the categories. Besides, one
should not ignore the larger context of the passage, which is not sense
perception as such, but the far more abstract issue of how the categories are
supposed to “prescribe laws […] to the nature as the sum total of all
appearances” (B163).[10]
The overall
goal of the Transcendental Analytic is equally revealing in this respect. As
Kant explicitly puts it, he aims to analyze thinking and understanding in its
pure use (A64-65/B89-90). This can be read as indicating that he has already
analyzed intuiting and sensibility in the Transcendental Aesthetic (see also
A62/B87). Above all, one should not forget Kant’s stark intuiting-thinking
distinction at this point. In fact, important as it is, Kant reminds the reader
of this distinction in the introductions to both the Transcendental Logic and
the Analytic (A64/B89). In the former, before embarking on his analysis of pure
understanding, Kant even emphasizes that the entire analysis will depend on the
condition “that objects are given to us in intuition” (A62/B87). He also says
that he will scrutinize “merely the part of our thought that has its origin solely
in the understanding” (A62/B87; my emphases). Accordingly, assuming that Kant
stays true to his goals, he is not going to present new conditions on sensible
representation at this point.[11]
In
other words, as we enter the Analytic, it is quite likely that Kant is building
on the premise that empirically given particular things are present to the
cognitive subject. That this is the starting point from which Kant’s account of
thinking and understanding carries on is also suggested in the third Critique, where Kant explicitly says
that the role of sense perception is to offer
(darbieten) particulars to the
understanding (KU, 5:186). Such a
starting point is very different from the one in which the mind receives a
stream of sensory information from which it shapes actual representations. This
is not to say that Kant thought that such a picture would be blatantly wrong.
Rather, the point is that, as a transcendental philosopher, he is not supposed
to provide such explanations.[12] In particular, we should keep in mind that transcendental
philosophy is about a priori cognition, the possibility of which does not rely
on outer affection. By contrast, the investigation of actual perceptual
processes would require empirical study of the mind and/or bodily functions.
Such studies would also include explanations involving sensory systems that
operate both independently of and beyond the reach of our will and
consciousness, and thus beyond the scope of a priori cognition as well.
Put
differently, Kant’s account of thinking seems to assume that quite much is
provided to the mind independently of understanding. Tellingly, at one point in
the first edition Critique Kant goes
so far as to claim that not only motion, extension, and impenetrability, but
also composition (Zusammenhang) can be provided to us
through outer sense (A358). A circle closes. If Kant thinks that composition (presumably
in some specific sense of the term) can be given sensibly, then it might just
as well be that he did not intend to mean that the perception of ordinary
objects, such as colorful billiard balls with numbers on them, is dependent on
combination as he used the term in the Analytic. It might also be that Kant
really means the representation of
combination in the Analytic (see B130). In that case, the deduction would be
more about the conditions of some such higher-order representation rather than
combination or synthesis as such (see also Allais 2017). However that may be,
the Analytic appears to stand “methodologically” on PERCEPTION 1 in any case.
Even
in that case, one tricky problem
remains. How can one secure the compatibility between perceptions and the
categories, given that we must also be able to think about what is sensibly
present to us, if the deduction does not really deal with perception in the
pritimive sense elaborated above? A detailed answer being beyond the scope of
this paper, here is a short answer. The key Kantian idea is that since
every humanly possible sensible representation rests on the a priori intuitions
of space and time, everything that takes something spatiotemporal as its object
necessarily has an element to it that is cognizable a priori. As most clearly evidenced by geometrical
construction, the understanding is able to use the otherwise blind
imagination for a priori purposes. Imagination in turn is constrained by the
same a priori intuitions of space and time. Consequently, understanding has
access not only to imagination, but, via imagination, to a priori sensibility
as a whole. Now, if the understanding can access the a priori ground of
sensible representation in pure a priori representation, then the understanding
must surely be able to think of a thing that accords with that same ground, that
is, shares the structural features with a priori sensible representation, even
if the understanding had nothing to do with the genesis of the perceptual
representation of the thing. This, I think, is how understanding ultimately
relates to sense perception according to Kant, which explanation, moreover, is
separable from any such explanation that deals with the unification of sensory
information itself.[13]
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