display all the ideas for this combination of texts
13 ideas
| 5556 | A pure concept of the understanding can never become an image [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The schema of a pure concept of the understanding is something that can never be brought to an image at all. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B181/A142) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. He is thinking of triangles, for example. The emphasis is on 'pure', and this is a nice defence of the notion of 'pure reason'. Obviously you wouldn't understand a triangle if you were incapable of imagining one. |
| 8687 | Kantian 'intuition' is the bridge between pure reason and its application to sense experiences [Kant, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: In Kant's technical sense, 'intuition' is the bridge between sense experience and pure reasoning, making it possible for us to apply our reasoning to the physical world around us. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 3.3 | |
| A reaction: Although this concept invites Ockham's Razor, I like it, since it focuses on the mystery of how reasoning can have application. It is the bridge between the analytic and the synthetic, between the a priori and the empirical. It unites thought. |
| 21759 | Kant deduced the categories from our judgements, and then as preconditions of experience [Kant, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Kant provided a 'metaphysical deduction' of the categories by deriving them from the fundamental forms of judgement. He also gave a 'transcendental deduction' of the categories ...as the indispensable conditions of our knowledge and experience of objects | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate' | |
| A reaction: I'm suspicious of the second method, because it seems that all you can do is make up an explanation of experience, with very little to go on, because it is hidden. Analysing the way we make judgements is more interesting. |
| 19655 | Kant says we can describe the categories of thought, but Hegel claims to deduce them [Kant, by Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Kant maintains that we can only describe the a priori forms of knowledge (space and time, and the twelve categories), whereas Hegel insists that it is possible to deduce them. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 2 | |
| A reaction: I've some sympathy with Kant here. There is a sort of introspective philosophical psychology which seems to be possible, independently from empirical psychology. |
| 5552 | Categories are concepts that prescribe laws a priori to appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Categories are concepts that prescribe laws a priori to appearances. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B163) | |
| A reaction: The intriguing word here is 'laws'. Might it be possible to create a new category of the understanding, by taking drugs, or by spectacularly imaginative thought? It all sounds a bit conservative (as Nietzsche suggested - Idea 2859). |
| 5544 | Four groups of categories of concept: Quantity, Quality, Relation and Modality [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Four groups of categories: Quantity (unity,plurality,totality), Quality (reality,negation,limitation), Relation (inherence/subsistence, causality/dependence,community), and Modality (possible/impossible,exist/non-exist,necessary/contingent). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B106/A80) | |
| A reaction: I can't challenge this claim, but Kant himself invites us to compare his scheme with that of Aristotle. See Idea 3311 for a summary. I prefer the way Aristotelian categories 'peter out', rather than being clear and determinate. Hegel had a shot too. |
| 5547 | The categories are objectively valid, because they make experience possible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The objective validity of the categories, as a priori concepts, rests on the fact that through them alone is experience possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B126/A93) | |
| A reaction: The human mind is clearly a sort of database, with a flexible structure, but the grounding of it has to be innate, and a priori additions are made at an early stage. I take the categories to be the basic folders of the database, but they may be cultural. |
| 17616 | Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B075/A51) | |
| A reaction: A famous assertion, which requires quite a lot of deconstruction. See MacDowell 1994 for example. Whatever the solution, it had better allow animals to cope with their world, because that's what they do. |
| 5553 | Either experience creates concepts, or concepts make experience possible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: There are only two ways in which a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects can be thought: either the experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make the experience possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B166) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of the big question about concepts. The extremes seem to be the 'tabula rasa' versus Fodor's strong 'nativism' (that most concepts are innate). Personally I want to be as empiricist as possible. Kant needs a theory of their origin. |
| 5593 | Reason generates no concepts, but frees them from their link to experience in the understanding [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Only from the understanding can pure concepts arise, and reason cannot generate any concept at all, but can only free a concept of the understanding from the unavoidable limitations of possible experience, and extend it beyond empirical boundaries. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B435/A409) | |
| A reaction: Presumably Descartes' 'natural light' should cover the understanding as much as the reason. This quotation brings out the empirical aspect of Kant's thought. It suggests that analysis is the main function of reason. |
| 22004 | Concepts are rules for combining representations [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, concepts should be thought of as rules for the combination of representations. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: Kant seems to have thought that they are rules we decree for ourselves (like the categorical imperative). So think of private languages, and you get Hegel's much more social view of concepts (I think). |
| 5543 | All human cognition is through concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The cognition of every, at least human, understanding is a cognition through concepts. ...A concept is a unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B093/A68) | |
| A reaction: This puts concepts right at the heart of human understanding, as the building blocks for propositions and beliefs. Do gods and dogs use concepts? If artificial intelligence cannot program concepts, is it defeated? Are there non-conscious concepts? … |
| 8735 | Kant implies that concepts have analysable parts [Kant, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Kant's definition of 'analyticity' presupposes that concepts have parts (at least metaphorically). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics | |
| A reaction: The concept of a 'bachelor' seem undeniably to have parts. Others, however, seem to lack components, such as 'one', 'red', 'true'. Hence concepts must fall into two groups: primitive and composite. In any language. In any proposition. |