Part of Kant's transcendental deduction (A119-23) takes us from the empiricist starting point to the position of transcendental idealism. Kant argues from the fact of perceptions as semantic grounds to the necessity of our unifying contribution to those perceptions.
Three steps:
I could not apprehend perceptions, if there were not contiguity between them. Otherwise perceptions would be encountered dispersed and isolated in my mind.
I could not associate perceptions, if there were not a subjective ground for recalling them. Otherwise I would not be able to bring perceptions to an image, or else representations would reproduce each other without distinction.
I could not determine those perceptions as a thing unless they are also associable; I could only be conscious of those perceptions as determinable if they belong to one consciousness. But one consciousness is only possible through the unity of apperception. Therefore, there must be an affinity to perceptions, which provides an objective ground of association.
By showing that there is an object affinity of perceptions, grounded on the unity of apperception, Kant has shown that, while perceptions are still our epistemic starting point, we could make no progress in our cognition unless we contributed objective rules of unity to all of our conscious sensory experience.
In the background, Kant is also setting up a modal question about perception. Perceptions are the ground for any cognitive claim to actuality. A concept is more than merely possible when its object is grounded in perception. The givenness of perception provides independent epistemic grounds to say that the concept is meaningful.
But Hume presented a dilemma about perceptions. All of our cognition is grounded in perception. If I have perceived all of the shades of blue except one, can the concept of that missing perception be considered cognition? Can we talk about possible perceptions in a meaningful way?
The above argument suggests that we can. Perceptions, as conscious appearances, are also subject to the transcendental unity of apperception, and thus, the pure functions of understanding. There are no simple perceptions, thus perceptions can be taken apart and recombined according to the rules laid out by the principles of pure understanding. We can thus ground possible perceptions through the same transcendental principles that would ground the real possibility of an empirical object.
Three steps:
I could not apprehend perceptions, if there were not contiguity between them. Otherwise perceptions would be encountered dispersed and isolated in my mind.
I could not associate perceptions, if there were not a subjective ground for recalling them. Otherwise I would not be able to bring perceptions to an image, or else representations would reproduce each other without distinction.
I could not determine those perceptions as a thing unless they are also associable; I could only be conscious of those perceptions as determinable if they belong to one consciousness. But one consciousness is only possible through the unity of apperception. Therefore, there must be an affinity to perceptions, which provides an objective ground of association.
By showing that there is an object affinity of perceptions, grounded on the unity of apperception, Kant has shown that, while perceptions are still our epistemic starting point, we could make no progress in our cognition unless we contributed objective rules of unity to all of our conscious sensory experience.
In the background, Kant is also setting up a modal question about perception. Perceptions are the ground for any cognitive claim to actuality. A concept is more than merely possible when its object is grounded in perception. The givenness of perception provides independent epistemic grounds to say that the concept is meaningful.
But Hume presented a dilemma about perceptions. All of our cognition is grounded in perception. If I have perceived all of the shades of blue except one, can the concept of that missing perception be considered cognition? Can we talk about possible perceptions in a meaningful way?
The above argument suggests that we can. Perceptions, as conscious appearances, are also subject to the transcendental unity of apperception, and thus, the pure functions of understanding. There are no simple perceptions, thus perceptions can be taken apart and recombined according to the rules laid out by the principles of pure understanding. We can thus ground possible perceptions through the same transcendental principles that would ground the real possibility of an empirical object.
No comments:
Post a Comment