Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
[14] In the “Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science.”
I. This table, which contains four classes of conceptions of the
understanding, may, in the first instance, be divided into two classes,
the first of which relates to objects of intuition—pure as well as
empirical; the second, to the existence of these objects, either in
relation to one another, or to the understanding.
The former of these classes of categories I would entitle the
mathematical, and the latter the dynamical categories. The former, as
we see, has no correlates; these are only to be found in the second
class. This difference must have a ground in the nature of the human
understanding.
II. The number of the categories in each class is always the same,
namely, three—a fact which also demands some consideration, because in
all other cases division à priori through conceptions is necessarily
dichotomy. It is to be added, that the third category in each triad
always arises from the combination of the second with the first.
Thus totality is nothing else but plurality contemplated as unity;
limitation is merely reality conjoined with negation; community is the
causality of a substance, reciprocally determining, and determined by
other substances; and finally, necessity is nothing but existence,
which is given through the possibility itself. Let it not be supposed,
however, that the third category is merely a deduced, and not a
primitive conception of the pure understanding. For the conjunction of
the first and second, in order to produce the third conception,
requires a particular function of the understanding, which is by no
means identical with those which are exercised in the first and second.
Thus, the conception of a number (which belongs to the category of
totality) is not always possible, where the conceptions of multitude
and unity exist (for example, in the representation of the infinite).
Or, if I conjoin the conception of a cause with that of a substance, it
does not follow that the conception of influence, that is, how one
substance can be the cause of something in another substance, will be
understood from that. Thus it is evident that a particular act of the
understanding is here necessary; and so in the other instances.
III. With respect to one category, namely, that of community, which is
found in the third class, it is not so easy as with the others to
detect its accordance with the form of the disjunctive judgement which
corresponds to it in the table of the logical functions.
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