Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
perceptions (representations accompanied with sensation), therefore
only by empirical representation. Consequently the pure conceptions of
the understanding, even when they are applied to intuitions à priori
(as in mathematics), produce cognition only in so far as these (and
therefore the conceptions of the understanding by means of them) can be
applied to empirical intuitions. Consequently the categories do not,
even by means of pure intuition afford us any cognition of things; they
can only do so in so far as they can be applied to empirical intuition.
That is to say, the categories serve only to render empirical cognition
possible. But this is what we call experience. Consequently, in
cognition, their application to objects of experience is the only
legitimate use of the categories.
§ 19
The foregoing proposition is of the utmost importance, for it
determines the limits of the exercise of the pure conceptions of the
understanding in regard to objects, just as transcendental æsthetic
determined the limits of the exercise of the pure form of our sensuous
intuition. Space and time, as conditions of the possibility of the
presentation of objects to us, are valid no further than for objects of
sense, consequently, only for experience. Beyond these limits they
represent to us nothing, for they belong only to sense, and have no
reality apart from it. The pure conceptions of the understanding are
free from this limitation, and extend to objects of intuition in
general, be the intuition like or unlike to ours, provided only it be
sensuous, and not intellectual. But this extension of conceptions
beyond the range of our intuition is of no advantage; for they are then
mere empty conceptions of objects, as to the possibility or
impossibility of the existence of which they furnish us with no means
of discovery. They are mere forms of thought, without objective
reality, because we have no intuition to which the synthetical unity of
apperception, which alone the categories contain, could be applied, for
the purpose of determining an object. Our sensuous and empirical
intuition can alone give them significance and meaning.
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