CPR: Transcendental Logic and Metaphysical Deduction

Here we dive in to the Transcendental Analytic, which with the Transcendental Dialectic is a major division of the Transcendental Logic, and the one concerned with positively establishing how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible with regard to understanding, to reason (the Dialectic is the negative side). The Analytic will take up many posts, and this one covers Kant’s introductory statements, in which he first explains what transcendental logic is, before getting in to the Analytic.

For orientation:

General Logic

Before getting into transendental logic Kant quickly disposes of general logic. He brings it up mainly for architectonic reasons, and perhaps to ensure that his transcendental logic is not confused with regular logic. I think of general logic as what we would now call formal or informal logic, the rules of ratiocination, the basic rational forms. It is all form, and no content, whereas transendental logic is concerned with how the objects of experience come under pure concepts to provide contentful knowledge, i.e., synthetic a priori knowledge.

But general logic, just like transcendental logic, is divided into analytic and dialectic. I think this distinction just concerns the use to which general logic can be put, and does not point to a substantial difference. Analytic general logic is that which is used legitimately, to handle actual content. Dialectic general logic is illegitimate, and results in conceptual juggling according to logical rules where there is no proper (empirical) content. Dialectic results when we think too highly of general logic, as an organon rather than just as a canon, i.e., when we think it can provide us with positive contentful knowledge without reference to objects. This latter is the logic of illusion. [B85-86]

Question: What then is the difference between general analytic logic and transcendental analytic logic? They don’t seem too dissimilar.
Answer: Let’s see…

In the expectation, therefore, that there may perhaps be concepts referring a priori to objects, not as pure or sensible intuitions, but merely as acts of pure thought – being concepts in fact, but neither of empirical nor of aesthetic origin – we form in advance **the idea of a science of pure understanding and of pure rational knowledge, whereby we think objects entirely a priori. Such a science, which would determine the origin, the range and the objective validity of such knowledge, would have to be called transcendental logic. For it deals with the laws of the understanding and of reason **only insofar as they are referred a priori to objects, and **not, like general logic, insofar as they are referred indiscriminately to empirical as well as pure rational knowledge. [B81]

According to this, general logic applies (unchangingly) to both empirical and pure rational knowledge, whereas transendental logic applies only to the empirical. But what, then, of the transendental dialectic? How does it differ from general dialectical logic (the logic of illusion, of idle talk [B86])? The difference is that general logic is all analytic, whereas transendental logic is synthetic, or at leasts attempts to be. When the concepts treated by transendental logic are used to apply beyond experience, it becomes transendental dialectic, and (almost) equally as illusory as general dialectical logic.

Transcendental Logic

In a transendental logic we isolate the understanding (as above in the Transcendental Aesthetic we isolated sensibility), and we take from uor knowledge only that part of thought which has its origin solely in the understanding. The use of this pure knowledge has as its condition that objects to which it can be applied are given in intuition. [B87]

That is to say, although it concerns only understanding as distinct from sensibility, it is always applied to the latter via intuition.

Transcendental Analytic

That part of transendental logic, therefore, which teaches the elements of the pure knowledge of the understanding, and the principles without which no object can be thought at all, is the transcendental analytic … [B87]

The transcendental analytic is that which treats of the concepts and principles of the understanding, and as these concepts and principles exist for application to intuitions, transcendental analytic, unlike dialectic, ultimately concerns the empirical.

Question: I suppose, then, that transendental dialectic would have to be a logic of concepts and principles which do not exist. (?)

Now, more specifically, analytic is about breaking down a priori knowledge to find its elements…

Transcendental analytic consists in the analysis of all our a priori knowledge into the elements of the understanding. [B89]

Now Kant begins to lead up to his tables, the table of judgements and the table of categories.

... what is required, in fact, is their connection in a system. [B89]

For transcendental logic, analytic, and transcendtal philosophy in general to be a science, we need to have a system.

Transcendental logic /analytic

Q. Canon / organon? (b85-87)
Q. Is t.logic a form of general logic? What is the structure?

Truth (b82). An indicator is not possible, but then (b84), 'logic must furnish criteria for truth’ it is all about validity vs soundness, there being no indicator of the latter, whereas criteria for truth preservation are furnished by logic.

Analytic of concepts – an analysis of the faculty of understanding

Metaphysical deduction (judgements, categories)

I’ve got pitifully little to say at this stage about the judgements and categories. This is partly because I think that (1) His specific parsing of the understanding is not very interesting or important in itself; he could break it down just any way he likes and the rest of his philosophy will hang together just the same, and (2) I want to see what he’s driving at in the transcendental deduction and the principles, before coming back to this stuff (although I might not come back to it here).

The production of the list of pure concepts of the understanding (categories) from the table of judgments is known as the “metaphysical deduction.” [G. J. Mattey, here]

This article discusses the prerequisite positions on which the metaphysical deduction depends:

Kant’s Theory of Judgement

Thus, in Kant’s thought about the mind early in CPR, there is not one central movement but two, one in the Transcendental Aesthetic and the other in the Metaphysical Deduction. The first is a move up from experience (of objects) to the necessary conditions of such experience. The second is a move down from the Aristotelian forms of judgment to the concepts that we have to use in judging, namely, the Categories. One is inference up from experience, the other deduction down from conceptual structures of the most abstract kind.

SEP: Kant’s View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self

Judgements

Q. How do they fit in?

Judgement here seems to be the application of general logic, such that it can apply to anything, whether or not its content is intuitive. The sections on the table of judgement seem to be merely a high-level overview of logical principles, ie., what we now call formal logic.

Judgements (and possibly the categories too) are the forms of thought, parallel to space and time as the forms of intuition.

Categories

(b102) Transcendental logic deals with the manifold of a priori sensibility, which is the material for the categories

Thought, which is spontaneous, ie., generated purely by the mind, yet requires material, and this material – the manifold above – must be synthesized

(for spontaneity see cpr2)

Synthesis of the manifold is the operation of “going through, taking up and combining” the contents of the manifold in a certain way. The contents are representations — Q. are they intuitions?

Synthesis creates an item of knowledge (b103), and in general, knowledge is produced by the synthesis of the manifold. Synthesis “gathers” the elements of knowledge and “unifies” them. It is only in this unity that knowledge is produced. The unity of the synthesis of the manifold is what is required for the synthesis to be brought under concepts, or what results when the synthesis is brought under a concept (B103, 104)

The manifold, that is, the bunch of representations, is given

“in terms of content no concepts can arise analytically”

This means that concepts in action arise with the supply of representations from without – note that this does not necessarily mean empirical, cos the manifold in space and time is a priori Q. What is the manifold “contained” in space and time?

Synthesis is effected by the faculty of imagination

manifold -> synthesis -> (conceptual) unity -> knowledge

(this applies both to a priori representations and to intuitions)

judgements : categories is 1 : 1

Categories/pure concepts: representations of the understanding which apply a priori to objects. These objects – the empirical objects of experience – are brought to the understanding via the synthesis of the manifold and thereby make these categories transcendental, not general – because general logic has no such content.

A narrower definition:
> They are concepts of an object in general, by means of which the intuition of an object is regarded as determined with respect to on of the logical functions in judgement. (b128)

I am still not happy about this separation of general and transcendental logic

It is not that transcendental logic has nothing to do with judgements, but that the first table, so-called the table of judgements, is the table of the (general) logical functions operating in judgements, that is, the functions of thought when abstracted from all content.

The categories are what we find when we ask how judgements apply to content, ie., to objects of intuition. In other words, the categories are part of transcendental logic, because they are the a priori functions that must exist for us to gain knowledge or have experience at all.

But at the same time, the categories are more fundamental. They are primitive concepts rather than just functions of thought. The idea here may be that the categories are transcendental, ie., they’re part of the conditions of (possible?) experience, and even though the judgements are in some way subsidiary or derivative of these concepts (i am not sure about that), the functions of thought, the types of judgement, can be misused, as in dialectic or the logic of illusion.

Now we get a better idea of transcendental vs general logic. Just as the categories are used in judgements, transcendental logic is the ground or source of general logic, but the latter is different in that it is an abstraction from content. So the two kinds of logic do not stand opposed to each other, but are merely different levels of, or views on, the same basic faculty, namely understanding or thought.

A different way of putting it: the categories are the concepts that are used (and sometimes misused) in judgements.

Essay Questions

What is the relationship and difference between the judgements and the categories?

Criticisms

It’s called a deduction, but the categories seem to be brought in out of nowhere and without justification, via the judgements. But does this matter?

It is thanks to, or through, concepts that we can think an object of intuition (b106)

Q. Why is causality a category, but space and time are not? See the second post – space and time are not concepts

Some of what I say here might suggest that the categories are the conditions of intuition. This would be wrong…

The categories of the understanding … do not represent to us the conditions under which objects are given in intuition (b122)