Chapter 2: THE DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

Section 2 (Version A): THE A PRIORI GROUNDS OF THE POSSIBILITY OF EXPERIENCE. (p. 151)

• A concept must be contained in the concept of possible experience, it must consist of elements of possible experience.
  • Or else it is void of content and meaningless.
  • Pure a priori concepts serve as conditions of possible experience and this is their ground for objective reality.
• The concepts which contain a priori the pure thought involved in every experience are the categories.
  • If we prove that by their means alone an object can be thought, this will be a sufficient deduction of them and will justify their objective validity.
• Receptivity: makes knowledge possible only when combined with spontaneity.
• Spontaneity: is the ground of a threefold synthesis which must necessarily be found in all knowledge:
  1. The Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition.
     • All representations, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense and are therefore subject to time.
     • Each representation, in so far as it is contained in a single moment, can never be anything but absolute unity.
     • Synthesis of Apprehension: the act of running through and holding together the unity of intuition.
       • Because it is directed immediately upon intuition which contains a manifold,
       • A manifold cannot be represented as contained in a single representation save through such a synthesis.
     • It must be a priori for representations which are not empirical.
  2. The Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination.
     • Inseparably bound with the synthesis of apprehension.
     • It is how we recognize that we have seen something before.
     • It is a priori because without it no representation of space or time would be possible.
     • Counted as one to the transcendental acts of the mind.
  3. The Synthesis of Recognition in a Concept.
     • Without reproduction, recognition in a concept cannot arise.
     • Since we deal only with representations and since objects are distinct from our representations, the object makes necessary the formal unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of representations.
       • Only when we have produced this synthesis can we say we know an object.
     • All knowledge demands a concept and a concept is always universal and serves as a rule.
     • All necessity is grounded in a transcendental condition, which, therefore, must be the ground of the concepts in general.
     • This ground is the transcendental apprehension.
       • It is the pure original unchangeable consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions and makes them possible.
       • It must precede intuitions because consciousness of self is empirical and thus we could never reach it without the transcendental apprehension.
     • Consciousness of self is at the same time the synthesis of appearances according to concepts.
     • Appearances are not things in themselves, they are representations which in turn have their object (which cannot be intuited by us) which may be named the non-empirical (transcendental) object =X.
       • The pure concept of this transcendental object is what can alone confer objective reality.
• Preliminary Explanation of the Possibility of the Categories, as Knowledge a priori (p. 138)
  • Various perceptions which all belong to the same experience represent the synthetic unity of perceptions and the form of experience in accordance with concepts.
  • The categories are the conditions of thought in a possible experience. The possibility and necessity of the categories rests on the relation in which our sensibility stands to original apperception.
  • In apperception everything must conform to the unity of self-consciousness.

• The unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of imagination is the understanding.
  • The categories are the concepts of the understanding.
• Association of Representations: the subjective and empirical ground of reproduction according to rules.
• Affinity of Appearances: the objective ground of all association of appearances.
• It is only because I ascribe all perceptions to one consciousness (original apperception) that I can say of all perceptions that I am conscious of them.
• Faculty of Rules: another way of defining the understanding.
  • The understanding is the source of the laws of nature.

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