If, then, we suppose an object of a non-sensuous intuition to be given
we can in that case represent it by all those predicates which are
implied in the presupposition that nothing appertaining to sensuous
intuition belongs to it; for example, that it is not extended, or in
space; that its duration is not time; that in it no change (the effect
of the determinations in time) is to be met with, and so on. But it is
no proper knowledge if I merely indicate what the intuition of the
object is not, without being able to say what is contained in it, for I
have not shown the possibility of an object to which my pure conception
of understanding could be applicable, because I have not been able to
furnish any intuition corresponding to it, but am only able to say that
our intuition is not valid for it. But the most important point is
this, that to a something of this kind not one category can be found
applicable. Take, for example, the conception of substance, that is,
something that can exist as subject, but never as mere predicate; in
regard to this conception I am quite ignorant whether there can really
be anything to correspond to such a determination of thought, if
empirical intuition did not afford me the occasion for its application.
But of this more in the sequel.
Of the Application of the Categories to Objects of the Senses in
general § 20
The pure conceptions of the understanding apply to objects of intuition
in general, through the understanding alone, whether the intuition be
our own or some other, provided only it be sensuous, but are, for this
very reason, mere forms of thought, by means of which alone no
determined object can be cognized. The synthesis or conjunction of the
manifold in these conceptions relates, we have said, only to the unity
of apperception, and is for this reason the ground of the possibility
of à priori cognition, in so far as this cognition is dependent on the
understanding. This synthesis is, therefore, not merely transcendental,
but also purely intellectual. But because a certain form of sensuous
intuition exists in the mind à priori which rests on the receptivity of
the representative faculty (sensibility), the understanding, as a
spontaneity, is able to determine the internal sense by means of the
diversity of given representations, conformably to the synthetical
unity of apperception, and thus to cogitate the synthetical unity of
the apperception of the manifold of sensuous intuition à priori, as the
condition to which must necessarily be submitted all objects of human
intuition. And in this manner the categories as mere forms of thought
receive objective reality, that is, application to objects which are
given to us in intuition, but that only as phenomena, for it is only of
phenomena that we are capable of à priori intuition.