Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics — John Shaqi
Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future MetaphysicsKant, Immanuel
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Kant, Immanuel
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800; Metaphysics -- Early works to 1800
To illustrate the matter: When we say, "the room is warm, sugar sweet,
and wormwood bitter"{12}—we have only subjectively valid judgments. I
do not at all expect that I or any other person shall always find it
as I now do; each of these sentences only expresses a relation of two
sensations to the same subject, to myself, and that only in my present
state of perception; consequently they are not valid of the object.
Such are judgments of perception. Judgments of experience are of quite
a different nature. What experience teaches me under certain
circumstances, it must always teach me and everybody; and its validity
is not limited to the subject nor to its state at a particular time.
Hence I pronounce all such judgments as being objectively valid. For
instance, when I say the air is elastic, this judgment is as yet a
judgment of perception only—I do nothing but refer two of my
sensations to one another. But, if I would have it called a judgment
of experience, I require this connexion to stand under a condition,
which makes it universally valid. I desire therefore that I and
everybody else should always connect necessarily the same perceptions
under the same circumstances.
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{12} I freely grant that these examples do not represent such judgments
of perception as ever could become judgments of experience, even
though a concept of the understanding were superadded, because they
refer merely to feeling, which everybody knows to be merely
subjective, and which of course can never be attributed to the object,
and consequently never become objective. I only wished to give here an
example of a judgment that is merely subjectively valid, containing no
ground for universal validity, and thereby for a relation to the
object. An example of the judgments of perception, which become
judgments of experience by superadded concepts of the understanding,
will be given in the next note.
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