stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

Transcendental deduction
The ability to understand and the ability to reason are both activities of thinking objects a priori.
“We form for ourselves by anticipation the idea of a science of the knowledge which belongs to
pure understanding and reason, whereby we think objects entirely a priori” (CPR A57/B82).
Kant recognizes that this a priori character of thinking about objects is problematic. “Thus a
difficulty such as we did not meet with in the field of sensibility is here presented, namely, how
subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity, that is, can furnish conditions of the
possibility of all knowledge of objects” (CPR B122/A90).Transcendental logic is a science that
deals with this problem. “Such a science, which should determine the origin, the scope, and the
objective validity of such knowledge, would have to be called transcendental logic, because…it
concerns itself with the laws of understanding and of reason solely in so far as they relate a
priori to objects” (CPR A57/B82). Specifically, transcendental deduction is that part of
transcendental logic that explains how subjective conditions of thought also have objective
validity. Transcendental deduction settles the question ‘by what right?’ we are justified in using
concepts. “Now among the manifold concepts which form the highly complicated web of human
knowledge, there are some which are marked out for pure a priori employment in complete
independence of all experience; and their right to be so employed always demands a deduction”
(CPR A85/B118). In fact, the goal of the transcendental deduction is even more specific. “The
employment of this pure knowledge depends upon the condition that objects to which it can be
applied be given to us in intuition. In the absence of intuition all our knowledge is without
objects, and therefore remains entirely empty” (CPR B87/A63). In other words, the
transcendental deduction explains that subjective conditions of thought have objective validity
only if they apply to objects in intuition. However, even this statement needs to be specified
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