The Experience of Cognition: Summary of §22: 'What objective unity of self-consciousness is' in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

by Corry Shores
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The Experience of Cognition: Summary of §22: What objective unity of self-consciousness is

Immanuel Kant

The Critique of Pure Reason

I. Transcendental Doctrine of Elements

Part 2: Transcendental Logic

Division 1: Transcendental Analytic

Book I: Analytic of Concepts

Chapter II: On the deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding

(Second) Section II: Transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding. (as in the second edition) (<§§15-27)

Important Points in This Section:

- By means of our senses, we have empirical intuitions of things in space and time. What makes this possible are the a priori representations of pure space and time. We may also think about our concepts in our understanding without appealing to our senses. We may for example think about mathematical concepts in a purely conceptual way. However, we do not have cognitions until we apply our concepts to our empirical intuitions.

Points Relative to Deleuze [to be revised as we learn more. These points are mere speculations.]:

- Before we experience things in time, already we sensibly intuit a pure 'empty' form of time, which Deleuze explains is grounded on an internal disjunction in our self-consciousness.

§22: The category has no other use for the cognition of things than its application to objects of experience

[Our mind grasp things, but firstly as them being made-up of parts. Our minds engage in a manifold of acts of consciousness, but these are already pre-united by means of a self-consciousness of the unity of the one consciousness committing all these other acts in the manifold. Also, our imaginations synthesize the parts of the manifold of intuitions so to bring them together into the phenomenon of a recognizable object. Previously Kant defined thinking as the activity which brings the synthesized manifold of intuition to the unity of our self-consciousness. He explains now that this is not yet cognition.] There are two components to our cognitions.

The Two Components of Cognition

1) The concept. We need such a category in order to think the object.

2) The intuition. Our mind must also be grasping some mental content that will apply to the concept.

So for us to cognize, we need both mental 'material' filling the 'shape' of the concept (Kant writes: "if an intuition corresponding to the concept could not be given at all, then it would be thought as far as its form is concerned, but without any object, and by its means no cognition of anything at all would be possible, since, as far as I would know, nothing would be given nor could be given to which my thought could be applied" B146; p.254b).

Our intuitive mental graspings involve our sensibility ("all intuition that is possible for us is sensible (Aesthetic)" ). So we could on the one hand just think of an object in general by means of a pure concept. But if we want our thinking to reach the level of cognition, we also must relate this concept to the senses.

[Let's review the a priori of space and time. When we sense something external to us, we already regard it as external, which means it is located in a space outside us. This indicates that all our sensings of external objects are conditioned by a pure representation of space that we have prior to our experiencing external spatial things. Also consider that our inner mental life does not have spatial dimensions. So what prevents all our inner intuitions from getting mixed-up with each other rather than each being on its own in a way? We instead give our inner intuitions each their own 'place', in a sense, by placing them along a temporal succession. One intuition comes before and after other ones. In this way we may distinguish and relate them. But we do this successive placing even from the beginning, which means that we must already have a pure representation of time, even before we have inner mental experiences. Hence] on the grounds of our pure intuitions of space and time, we may then have sense-intuitions of things found in space and time: "Sensible intuition is either pure intuition (space and time) or empirical intuition of that which, through sensation, is immediately represented as real in space and time. Through determinations of the former we can acquire a priori cognitions of objects (in mathematics), but only as far as their form is concerned, as appearances; whether there can be things that must be intuited in this form is still left unsettled." (B146-147; 254bc, emphasis mine). So we can think of mathematical concepts without using sense-intuitions. But this means that no mathematical concept is a cognition. However, spatial and temporal things are only given to us as perceptions, which are the representations that accompany our sensations; and for this reason we say that they are only given through empirical representation.

So our sense intuitions are empirical intuitions. When we apply to them to our categories (our concepts), then we obtain empirical cognitions. "The categories consequently have no other use for the cognition of things except insofar as these are taken as objects of possible experience." (B147-148; p.255a)

Summary based on:

Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Eds. & Transls. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.