BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY
practice that does have such a function, that is, a practice that is a
condition for having experience. The term ‘experience’ is used here, as
before, in its strong Kantian sense, which means, among other things
that it is an experience of objects that are determined. The following
example focuses on one such determination, size.
Imagine we are to measure the size of an object, for instance a table. 14
In order to do so, we need an object to use as a measuring rod. The
measuring is performed by placing the rod next to the table. If the table
is larger than the rod, we will have to successively move the rod from one
position to another along the object, while memorizing in the mind, or
perhaps by counting on the fingers, how many times this takes place. In
doing this, our acts are not arbitrary but take place in a regular way.
They also have a goal, finding the size of the table. According to the
definition of a practice given above, they may be regarded as a practice.
Let us call it ‘the practice of finding the size of an object’.
As can be seen, we would not attain knowledge about the size of the
table without this practice. Or to use a more Kantian expression, we
would not be able to determine this particular aspect of the table without
it. Where this particular aspect of our experience of the table is
concerned, we may say that the practice is an a priori condition of having
it.
8.5 An empirical or a transcendental deduction?
There is one problem with the example just offered which has to do with
Kant’s distinction between an empirical and a transcendental deduction.
It seems we have only given an empirical account of how the table is
measured, so what we have done, at best, is provide what Kant calls an
empirical deduction, telling the story of how the concept of the size of the
table originates in our practice.
First, let us notice, that even if Kant seems to be drawing a sharp
distinction between the two sorts of deductions in the Critique, the first
having to do merely with origin, the other with validity, it is not evident
that in his transcendental epistemology he only operates on one side of
this distinction. Both in the A- and the B-deduction of the categories and
elsewhere in the Critique, Kant frequently refers to the origin of our
knowledge. He also seems to think that, in doing this he is saying
something about the justification of this knowledge (cf. e.g. A 66/B 90
and A 86/B 119). There is more than one way to respond to this. We
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I owe this example, and also its interpretation, to Saugstad (1992), 388.