Critique of Pure Reason 17 - Pure Concepts of Understanding

READ FOR NEXT TIME

Remember that the B edition has numbered sections while the A edition just has titles with no numbers. So read the following from both editions.

§13 from the B edition AND the following from the A sections

"Transition to the transcendental deduction of the categories"
"On the a priori grounds for the possibility of experience"
"Preliminary reminder"
"1. On the synthesis of apprehension in the intuition."
"2. On the synthesis of reproduction in the imagination."
"3. On the synthesis of recognition in the concept.
"4. Explanation of the possibility of the categories as a priori cognitions."

A85 - A114
B117 - B129
Guyer, pages 219 - 236

12/21/25 - #18: finish the metaphysical deduction
01/04/26 - #19: start the transcendental deduction
01/18/26 - #20: finish the transcendental deduction

WHAT WE JUST TALKED ABOUT

We discussed sections §§11 and 12. In the first, Kant gives more information about his table of categories, particularly how the third sub category in each section are arrived at by a "special act understanding" that results from reflecting on the opposition of the first two sub categories. In the second, he criticizes the so-called transcendental categories of the scholastics: unity, truth, and the good.

WHAT STUMPED US (or at least me)

1. We discussed difference between mathematical and dynamic categories, but I at least, still have some questions about it. Kant says that the dynamic categories include existence, but intensive categories, those of quality, also have to include sensory input to some extent. So existence can't be synonymous with what is drawn from experience.

2. How does that special active understanding give us the sub category community from the other categories of subsistence and alteration?

3. Kant criticizes earlier attempts at categories with an illustration of what he calls "qualitative plurality?" What does that mean? Qualitative quantity?

4. This issue might be resolved once we get to it as a group, but I did raise the question as to whether the trifold synthesis is purely apodictic, i.e., whether it is self evident upon reflection and/or what necessarily follows from self evident principles, or whether it doesn't also include some speculation or theoretical model which is merely plausible and not something that must be necessarily accepted.

SUMMARY OF THE SECTIONS WE JUST COVERED

§11 - Kant divides the categories into mathematical (relating to objects as they are given in intuition) and dynamical (relating to their existence and relations). Each class has three categories, where the third arises from combining the first two through a distinct act of understanding. Finally, Kant explains that the category of community corresponds to disjunctive judgment because both involve coordination among parts that reciprocally determine one another within a whole.

§12 - The criticism of the so-called “transcendental predicates” of early philosophers (unity, truth, perfection) is that they are not transcendental at all (at least according to Kant's concept of the term). He demonstrates that rather than inheriting in objects, they are derivable from logical form of thinking, specifically from the logical relationships of quality and quantity.

RESOURCES

1. 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