Critique of Pure Reason 13 - Space-Time Goggles

WHAT DID WE JUST TALK ABOUT

We primarily discussed Kant's headache inducing taxonomy of logic in the opening of the Transcendental Logic.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT NEXT TIME

We're going to go deeper into the Transcendental Logic, discussing simpler (I hope) classifications like analytic and dialectic. If we're lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view), we might actually get into the table of judgments and a taxonomy of logical relations.

WHAT STUMPED US (or at least me)

1. Kant considers perception to be receptive, but in what sense?

2. There is disagreement on the proposition that Kant considers space and time to be part of a mental structure. As for what it might be beyond that, part of nature itself, Kant says we can't know . I thought this was settled Kantian science, but the case has been reopened on appeal.

3. Kant believes understanding to be spontaneous, but what does that mean? In what other contexts does he use that term?

4. Finally, there's the dreaded pink sentence, enigmatic as the Sphinx: "The difference between the transcendental and the empirical therefore belongs only to the critique of cognitions and does not concern their relation to their object." (A57/B81). What is he saying? That this critique only concerns the distinction between the transcendental and the empirical? Or that it deals only with the relationship between cognition and objects? Or that part of the critique will deal with the one and another part with of the other? Clearly, both are relevant.

READ FOR NEXT TIME

Sections III and IV of the Transcendental Logic
Openings to Transcendental Analytic and the Analytic of Concepts
§§9 and 10 of the Analytic of Concepts

A58 - A83
B83 - B109
Guyer, pages 197 - 214

10/26/25 - Continue our dissection of general logic
11/09/25 - Segue into the table of judgments.
11/23/25 - Seamlessly transition into the table of categories

SUMMARIES OF THE SECTIONS WE COVERED

These are brief summaries. I'm going to post a two-page summary of the Transcendental Aesthetic in my sub stack and share the link separately. I'll post it in the resources below once it. I may even add in some potential solutions to our daily puzzles (in which case, don't expect it to be only two pages).

Conclusion to the Transcendental Aesthetic

The synthetic a priori refers to fundamental principles of space and time.

1. Space is infinitely extensive simultaneously (which gives us math).
2, Time is infinitely sequential linearly (which gives us permance, change, and the cause-effect link).

Section I. On Logic

Human cognition arises from two sources: sensibility, which provides intuition, and understanding, which organizes these intuitions under concepts; neither alone can yield knowledge. Logic studies the rules of thought and is divided into general logic, which concerns rules for thinking in general, and particular logic, which applies these rules to specific objects or fields. General logic is further subdivided into pure logic, containing a priori formal rules unaffected by empirical factors, and applied logic, which investigates the empirical conditions of human thinking, such as attention, error, and inclination, analogous to how practical morality considers human feelings in moral practice. Particular logic presupposes general logic and applies its rules to domains beyond logic itself, like physics or biology. In modern terminology, Kant’s particular logic would be called applied, his applied logic would be called empirical, and his general-pure logic would remain pure logic.

Section II. On Transcendental Logic

Kant is working towards a transcendental logic that parallels the transcendental aesthetic. The latter explained how our way of perceiving makes mathematical knowledge possible; the former will explain how our way of thinking makes it possible to learn from experience. First he has to distinguish the "how" of transcendental logic from those logical rules we are already aware of in general logic, just as in the Transcendental Aesthetic, he needed to distinguish between the mathematical knowledge we already have and what enables us to have that knowledge.

RESOURCES

1. **hot off the press** An analysis of the term "cognition" based on its usage in the Transcendental Logic..

https://open.substack.com/pub/geraldpriddle/p/essay-3-kognition-a-timeless-puzzle?r=2rot22&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

2. Kant's argument against Newton and Transcendental Idealism

https://open.substack.com/pub/geraldpriddle/p/essay-2-kants-transcendental-aesthetic?r=2rot22&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true