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

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

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egins with the matter <strong>of</strong> experience which activates the ability to know as the form <strong>of</strong><br />

experience. I argue that when Kant claims that it is experience that determines the objective<br />

validity <strong>of</strong> subjective conditions <strong>of</strong> thought he does not mean the form <strong>of</strong> experience; instead, he<br />

means the matter <strong>of</strong> experience.<br />

This is how Kant frames the discussion <strong>of</strong> the transcendental logic. “This other logic,<br />

which should contain solely the rules <strong>of</strong> the pure thought <strong>of</strong> an object, would exclude only those<br />

modes <strong>of</strong> knowledge which have empirical content” (CPRB80/A56). But what is this empirical<br />

content from which the transcendental logic, that is, the transcendental analytic and the<br />

transcendental dialectic, abstracts? “Both [intuition and concepts] may be either pure or<br />

empirical. When they contain sensation (which presupposes the actual presence <strong>of</strong> the object [der<br />

Gegenstand]), they are empirical. When there is no mingling <strong>of</strong> sensation with the representation,<br />

they are pure. Sensation may be entitled the material <strong>of</strong> sensible knowledge” (CPR A50/B74).<br />

The empirical content that transcendental logic abstracts from is sensation. In this sense, the<br />

transcendental logic “concerns itself with the laws <strong>of</strong> understanding and <strong>of</strong> reason solely in so far<br />

as they relate a priori to objects” (CPR A57/B82). Thus the transcendental logic deals with a<br />

priori thoughts in abstraction from sensation. However, whereas it is sensation that<br />

transcendental logic abstracts from in order to analyze the a priori thoughts, it is precisely in<br />

terms <strong>of</strong> sensation that it justifies those a priori thoughts, in other words, it is precisely sensation<br />

that determines the objective validity <strong>of</strong> subjective conditions <strong>of</strong> thought. Thus, on the one hand,<br />

Kant argues in the transcendental analytic that the categories have objective validity because<br />

they apply in sense experience: “only thus, by demonstration <strong>of</strong> the a priori validity <strong>of</strong> the<br />

categories in respect <strong>of</strong> all objects <strong>of</strong> our senses, will the purpose <strong>of</strong> the deduction be fully<br />

attained” (CPR B145). On the other hand, he argues in the transcendental dialectic that the<br />

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