CPR: The System of Principles: Analogies of Experience: First Analogy

A reminder:

The Analogies are dynamical principles, dealing with existence and the relations between things—they (the Analogies) are rules of universal time determination. They correspond to the Relational categories; Substance, Cause and Community.

An analogy is a comparison of one relation with another. We order events in time by analogy with an if…then logical relation, hence causality.

The overriding principle of the Analogies of Experience

Experience is possible only through the presentation of a necessary connection of perceptions.

And here is his argument for it [B218-219]:

1. Experience is cognition that determines objects via perceptions.
2. This determination of objects involves the synthetic unity of the manifold of perceptions in one consciousness.
3. No necessity in the unity of perceptions is evident from the perceptions alone, i.e., mere apprehension cannot present necessity.
4. But experience is different. It deals with the knowledge of objects.
5. Time itself cannot be perceived.
6. Therefore the determination of objects in time is based on the linking of perceptions in time “as such” (?).
7. Therefore the determination of objects in time can only occur through a priori concepts connecting with the perceptions.
8. These concepts contain necessity.
9. Therefore experience—the determination of objects in time—is possible only through the necessary connection of perceptions.

The three analogies correspond to the three modes of time:

Kant reminds us what the Analogies are meant to be doing:

Hence there will be three rules governing all time relations of appearances, whereby every appearance’s existence can be determined in regard to the unity of all time; *and these rules will precede experience and make it possible in the first place

The Analogies are regulative rather than constitutive. They concern the way that objects as cognized are related as possible existents. The mathematical principles actually constituted the objects of possible experience—in their extension in space and their intensity in sensation—but the dynamical principles (which include the Postulates of Empirical Thought as well as the Analogies) are only regulative. Kant also notes [B223] that although both kinds of principles produce equal certainty, they produce this quite differently: the mathematical principles produce intuitive evidence (see the Pythagoras proof in the previous article), whereas the dynamical are certain simply as ineluctable principles of ineluctably regulating how we judge things.

Kant also makes a point of emphasizing that the Analogies, and the synthetic principles in general, are not to be applied transcendentally. The categories, the pure concepts of the understanding, can be used transcendentally (he does it himself), but the principles are not applied transcendetally along with the categories, but only empirically via the schemata, which connects the conceptual and the empirical and is inseparable from both. Kant puts it like this:

these analogies have their sole signification and validity not as principles of understanding’s transcendental use, but merely as principles of its empirical use, and hence can be proved only as principles of such use; *and appearances must consequently be subsumed not under the categories taken absolutely, but only under their schemata [B224].

This means that these synthetic principles are not applying the categories directly, but only by analogy.

The function [that is, the pure logical function (though not necessarily of general logic only), i.e., the transcendental function], unrestricted by any sensible condition, of the unity of the schema [as such], as the unity of synthesis as such, is contained in the category. Hence these principles will entitle us to assemble appearances only by an analogy with the logical and universal unity of concepts.

In employing the principles we put the schemata in the place of the categories.

The schemata and principles are, non-technically speaking, the public-facing representatives for the pure concepts of the understanding. This is the meaning of Kant’s use of “analogy”: it expresses the empirical nature of categories as applied, to emphasize that the categories as such cannot be directly applied.

As John Callanan puts it:

For Kant, analogical inference is a means of expressing how, given an abstract transcendental principle, that principle can then be appropriately applied to a realm of particular, empirically conditioned appearances. Empirically conditioned appearances are combined analogously to the manner in which appearances per se are necessarily combined when considered abstractly.

First Analogy: Principle of the Permanence of Substance

The Time Substrate Argument

The Refutation of Idealism depends on this argument, so it’s worth exploring it.

Here is what is to be proved [B224]:

In all variation by appearances substance is permanent, and its quantum in nature in neither increased nor decreased.

Something like this:

1. All appearances are in time
2. Time itself cannot be perceived
3. Appearances vary; that is, we perceive change
4. This change can only be perceived in time
5. All presentation of succession depends on the experience of change by means of the perception of variation
6. That in which change takes place does not itself change
7. Therefore in the presentation of change, time itself does not change, but is something enduring
8. It is only in our perception of appearances that change is presented
9. Appearances share the substrate of everything real, namely substance
10. Therefore an enduring permanent substance in presentations is the condition of the presentation of change in time
11. Furthermore an enduring permanent substance is also the condition of the presentation of all succession in time
12. (Plus, because substance is the permanent and does not undergo change, its quantity remains the same)

Or as Kant puts the conclusion:

Hence the permanent in relation to which all time relations of appearances can alone be determined is substance in appearance, i.e., the real of appearance that as substance of all variation remains always the same. [B225]

Also, another version at B225/226:

1. Our apprehension of the manifold of appearance is always varying
2. Through the apprehension of variation alone, we cannot distinguish between succession and simultaneity, that is, we cannot determine objects of experience as such
3. We can only determine these distinctions if succession and simultaneity are presented as modes of something which itself does not vary
4. Therefore there must be something permanent in reference to which variations can be determined as sequential/successive or simultaneous

And so on.

The Duration Argument

[B226]

1. Duration is a magnitude of time
2. The manifold of appearances does not itself contain combination, i.e., appearances come and go without being united in any way
3. In succession alone there can be no duration, because there is nothing that endures which can be measured—that can be said to have a magnitude
4. Therefore it is only with reference to the permanent that the manifold of appearances can be chunked into durations
5. This permanent cannot be time, and so on as before … the real or substance

Therefore in all appearances the permanent is the object itself, i.e., the (phenomenal) substance …