Critique of Pure Reason 20 - The Factory of Thought

We started our factory tour by looking at machinery of image and perception. Next time we'll take a look at the thinking machine.

READ FOR NEXT TIME

Sec II: "3. On the synthesis of recognition in the concept.
Sec II: "4. Explanation of possibility of categories as a priori cognitions."
Sec III: "On the relation of the understanding to objects in general and the possibility of cognizing these a priori."
Sec III : "Summary representation on the correctness of this deduction"
§15 - start of the B deduction

A103 - A130 of the A deduction and
B130 - B131 of the B deduction
Guyer, pages 230 - 246

02/01/26 - #21: Synthesis of Apperception
02/15/26 - #22: Looking at the machinery in reverse
03/01 - # 23: Starting the B deduction

WHAT WE JUST TALKED ABOUT

We talked about the first two parts of the infamous trifold synthesis. If cognition (thinking) is about thinking of objects, then objects must be delivered to us for cognition in a particular way, according to rules. Ergo, the appearances which we contemplate must be constructed according to some rules.

WHAT STUMPED US (or at least me)

Wow, what didn't stump us. We have at least three different interpretations of what the syntheses of apprehension and imagination are and how they work with each other, as well as variations of each of them. If I get a chance, I'll try to write an article in Substack that highlights the different interpretations we discussed today. It's way too long for me to try to enter that here.

SUMMARY OF THE SECTIONS WE JUST COVERED

These are my interpretations of the section. Different plausible interpretations were introduced at our meeting, and I might change my mind about my own interpretation. But here's what I have so far.

1. Synthesis of Apprehension

Are the thoughts we think and the images we see constructed? Is Kant saying that when I see an object moving across a room, my mind like a four-dimensional graph that plots points and connects them?

There is no thinking (or perception, for that matter) without time. Any thought or appearance has to be broken up into discrete moments or parts, and a moment must be unified, or we wouldn't be able to apprehend the moment. The moment arises out of the manifold which is Kant's term for the raw data of the world that bombards our senses but are not yet consciously accessible to us. The moment is constructed from the manifold into a unity, but in order to do this, "it is necessary first to run through and then to take together this manifoldness."

It's as if the points of the image, the moments, first have to be plotted on coordinate system of the mind before we can draw a line connecting them. That's how we draw things in geometry, so obviously, the mind must work the same way? We plot these points when we see something, but we also do it when we imagine something, i.e., we also do it a priori.

2. Synthesis of Reproductive Imagination (Imaginative Reproduction?)

So if apprehension plots the points, how do I get a full blown image? For when I see a line, don't I see more than a series of points?

* Not only is a static image a collection of points in space, a moving image collects those points in time. In fact, a static line that you are able to see is in fact a result of a dynamic process involving time, so the static picture isn't as frozen in time as one might think.

* This also allows for conceptual association, like associating the metal cinnabar with redness. The fact that the image of the metal is always reproduced in red indicates that there is some rule to its formation. If you don't agree with that, then surely we must all agree that the ability to make such associations relies on a preconscious ability to do so.

* The fact that this can be done in imagination indicates a separation between capacity and empirical actuality. In fact, our imaginative capacity ENABLES the empirical capacity.

ARGUMENTS

1. What we associate with objects varies with experience, but our ability to make associations are made possible by an inner capacity. This indicates the fact that we are dealing with appearances, not things in themselves. If we did have direct access to things in themselves, then we wouldn't need an inner capacity for making association.

2. If apprehension gives us a unity of points and moments that we can plot into the four dimensional grid of our mind, then our connecting of those moments and points within that grid must be a transcendental process of the mind. If I didn't have that capacity to keep the points together in my mind, then the apple that I see before me would fall apart into its little disparate points and moments. My mind is constantly working to maintain the connection.

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