Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
In an analytical judgement I do not go beyond the given conception, in
order to arrive at some decision respecting it. If the judgement is
affirmative, I predicate of the conception only that which was already
cogitated in it; if negative, I merely exclude from the conception its
contrary. But in synthetical judgements, I must go beyond the given
conception, in order to cogitate, in relation with it, something quite
different from that which was cogitated in it, a relation which is
consequently never one either of identity or contradiction, and by
means of which the truth or error of the judgement cannot be discerned
merely from the judgement itself.
Granted, then, that we must go out beyond a given conception, in order
to compare it synthetically with another, a third thing is necessary,
in which alone the synthesis of two conceptions can originate. Now what
is this tertium quid that is to be the medium of all synthetical
judgements? It is only a complex in which all our representations are
contained, the internal sense to wit, and its form à priori, time.
The synthesis of our representations rests upon the imagination; their
synthetical unity (which is requisite to a judgement), upon the unity
of apperception. In this, therefore, is to be sought the possibility of
synthetical judgements, and as all three contain the sources of à
priori representations, the possibility of pure synthetical judgements
also; nay, they are necessary upon these grounds, if we are to possess
a knowledge of objects, which rests solely upon the synthesis of
representations.
If a cognition is to have objective reality, that is, to relate to an
object, and possess sense and meaning in respect to it, it is necessary
that the object be given in some way or another. Without this, our
conceptions are empty, and we may indeed have thought by means of them,
but by such thinking we have not, in fact, cognized anything, we have
merely played with representation. To give an object, if this
expression be understood in the sense of “to present” the object, not
mediately but immediately in intuition, means nothing else than to
apply the representation of it to experience, be that experience real
or only possible. Space and time themselves, pure as these conceptions
are from all that is empirical, and certain as it is that they are
represented fully à priori in the mind, would be completely without
objective validity, and without sense and significance, if their
necessary use in the objects of experience were not shown. Nay, the
representation of them is a mere schema, that always relates to the
reproductive imagination, which calls up the objects of experience,
without which they have no meaning. And so it is with all conceptions
without distinction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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