First Division: Analytic
(202-3)
Task:
Analysis of the faculty of Understanding
(just as Transcendental Aesthetic was analysis of Sensibility)
Questions:
1.
How is experience possible (and not just pure sensation)?
2.
What does the Understanding do in judgments in general?
3.
What does the Understanding do in applying itself to sensation that enables cognition of
objects?
Method:
Research the possibility of a priori concepts (of the Understanding) not by analyzing concepts, but by analyzing the “pure use,” the logical function of the Understanding. Just as Kant isolates the Sensibility in the Transcendental Aesthetic, here Kant will isolate the Understanding.
(204-5)
Terms:
Cognition
No intuitions can arise independently of Sensibility, so Understanding cannot be a faculty of intuitions.
Understanding, rather, is a faculty of concepts. While Intuitions depend on affections in sensation,
Concepts depend on functions (of unity) in judgments. Intuitions are the GIVEN, which are THOUGHT
through concepts. This, for Kant, is Cognition.
Concepts
1.
depend on “functions” (which are “the unity of the action of ordering different representations under a common one”)
2.
are grounded on the “spontaneity of thinking” (see Categories for more)
3.
the Understanding makes judgments (predications) by means of them (concepts)
4.
are never immediately related to an object, but always related to another representation (either an intuition or another concept)
(206)
The Clue: Judgments
The logical functions of the Understanding consist in unifying representations in judgments.
1.
Thus, analysis of these functions abstracted from all content will yield the pure forms of the understanding – the a priori concepts of the faculty, which Kant calls the categories.
2.
Note: this move is similar to Kant removing all content from empirical intuitions to get to the pure intuitions of space and time, wherein he realizes the concepts of space and time are a priori forms of our Sensibility. Kant is taking logical judgments we can make about empirical experience and abstracting all content to get to the most basic types. He does not do this explicitly in the text, but rather simply presents the results in the Table of Judgments (which he adapts from a textbook on logic from Christian Wolff).
We know by experience that we can make all kinds of judgments, and when we abstract from the content of them in analysis we can arrive at the forms of our pure thinking that describe the possible judgments in a table like this, but how are they possible – what is their source and ground? Since we cannot experience the form of these judgments as an intuition of sense, our mere ability is a clue that our Understanding
brings something to experience A PRIORI.

(207-210, top)
Table, Clarifications
In this section Kant is just explaining things that would seem odd to contemporary logicians who might question some aspects of given the table of judgments (which are also described as the “moments of thinking in general”)
(210-214, §10)
The Pure Concepts of the Understanding
To get to the concepts that ground and enable the forms of judgment listed, Kant needs to explain why the possibility of judgments cannot be explained by sensation…
Sensibility needs the Synthesis of our Thought
As we have seen, general logic takes no account of content and can only give us the forms of our thinking, but not their conditions of possibility, which requires grounding in some content. Thus Transcendental
Logic, with which the Analytic is concerned, involves the A PRIORI content given by the Transcendental
Aesthetic. The problem is, Sensibility is merely the receptivity of the mind – it provides a pure manifold of intuition, but without the “spontaneity of our thought,” it cannot constitute any experience (or objects) at all. It would just be sensations. Thus, it is our activity of thinking (and not intuiting) that takes up this given manifold and combines it so that cognition is possible.
“Only the spontaneity of thought…” (210)
Empirical vs. Pure Synthesis
Empirical synthesis is the action of putting different representations together and comprehending their manifoldness in one cognition. This is what happens in judgments generally. But PURE synthesis, on which empirical synthesis is grounded, consists in this same action, but instead the manifold to be comprehended is given A PRIORI.
Imagination, Synthesis of the Manifold
The imagination, a “blind though indispensible function of the soul” synthesizes the manifold given by
Sensibility, but this is still not cognition, since there is still nothing to unify this synthesized manifold so that conceptualization is possible. Sense and Imagination alone only allow potential experience (instead of just random, singular sensations with no continuity or order). The fact that we think, and can focus our attention on specific intuitions of objects in a given manifold means that our own intelligence
(Understanding) MUST add something to order this into AN EXPERIENCE, thereby enabling judgments of objects, events, etc., and development of empirical concepts of intuitions, and all the other experiential content of discursive knowledge.
[Ex. The Magic Sailboat (from Mallrats): random sensations >> an image >> an image in which an object can be cognized]
Cognition, Necessary Synthetic Unity
The “something” that must be added from our own intelligence is the pure understanding, which consists in ALL the Categories (the pure concepts of the understanding). For there to be an object of our thought at all, the synthesized manifold must be unified A PRIORI, and this unification is the result of the system of pure concepts that impose the “necessary synthetic unity” on our manifold of intuitions.
Functions of Logical Judgment are also Pure Concepts of Understanding
“The same function that gives unity to different representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of different representations in an intuition, which, expressed generally, is called the pure
concept of understanding” (211, bottom, my italics)
Analyzing the logical forms of judgments yielded a system of types of judgments we can make, and now we see the “same understanding” (that could make those listed judgments) “brings a transcendental content into its representations by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general”

(214-218, §11-§12)
These sections are more of Kant’s commentary and clarifications which have more to do with historical matters than with the main argument. In §11 there is an interesting comment about the grouping of categories by classes of “mathematical” and “dynamical” (remark #1, p.215).
The implied picture so far (a rough sketch – there are problems with this, but it might help to visualize it this way provisionally). Read this bottom-up, 1-9:
1.
appearance, undetermined object of empirical intuition
2.
the matter in the undetermined object of intuition affect on our sensibility, producing sensations
3.
the manifold of pure intuition – the a priori forms of our sensibility, space and time
4.
sensations produce a given manifold of empirical intuitions under the conditions of 3
5.
this given manifold of empirical intuitions is synthesized by the imagination into a connected field of empirical intuitions, or, if you take a visual example, an “image”
6.
this synthesized manifold, or field of empirical intuitions is not yet cognition
7.
the field of empirical intuitions is unified by the pure concepts of the understanding, i.e. the understanding unifies the manifold, thereby making intuition of objects, and thus cognition
possible
8.
now we can have empirical intuitions (perceptions) of specific objects, since the a priori concepts of the understanding, through the spontaneity of thought, have ordered them into experience
9.
we can form concepts of the empirical intuitions of objects, make empirical judgments about them, and apply empirical concepts we may have learned from experience (e.g. if you know the concept of pencil, and one appears in your field of vision and you direct your attention to one and have an intuition of it, you can make the singular judgment: “that is a pencil.” Then perhaps you have an intuition of another object that looks similar, and you apply that concept to it as well, prompting the hypothetical judgment “these objects are both pencils because they are made of wood, have erasers, etc.”
Comments: a.
1-7 happen spontaneously – this is not conscious labor b.
The original unity of apperception is the transcendental unity that ground this whole show; it is
NOT consciousness, or inner sense
NEXT: The Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding (219-226; 245-266)