THE ROLE OF THE IMAGINATION IN KANT'S THEORY OF EXPERIENCE
Wilfrid Sellars
Page 4
Source: http://www.ditext.com/sellars/ikte.html
IV
37. In the preceding section of the paper I emphasized a distinction between what we perceive the object as and what we perceive of the object. I related this distinction to the distinction between the complex demonstrative thought component and the complex-image component of the perceptual experience. I now want to do this in a more systematic way and to relate it to Kant's theory of categories.
38. The basic idea Is that what we perceive of the object in visual perception consists of those features which actually belong to the image-model, i.e., its proper and common-sensible qualities and relations. Also its perspectival structure. On the other hand, what we perceive the object as is a matter of the conceptual content of the complex demonstrative thought. I pointed out that the sensible features belong in both contexts. Thus the phrase "cube of pink (from a certain point of view)" refers both to an actual feature of the image-model and (in second intention) a component of the conceptual center of the demonstrative thought. Thus,
39. Now I emphasized that we do not perceive of the object its causal properties. What we see of it are its occurrent sensible feature. This can now be generalized as follows. We do not perceive of the object its character as a substance having attributes, its character as belonging with other substances in a system of interacting substances, its character as conforming to laws of nature. In short, we do not perceive of the object what might be called "categorial" features. For the image construct does not havecategorial features. It has an empirical structure which we can specify by using words which stand for perceptible qualities and relations. But it does not have logical structure; not-ness, or-ness, all-ness, some-ness are not features of the image-model. They are feature of judgment. More generally we can say that the image-model does not have grammatical structure. (It will be remembered that we are construing mental judgments as analogous to sentences. A judgment, we said, is, as it were, a Mentalesesentence episode. And, of course, Kant's categories are grammatical classifications. They classify the grammatical structures and functions of Mentalese.
40. Thus the category of substance-attribute is the structure 'S is P', the form of subject-attribute judgment. The category of causality is the form 'X implies Y'. The category of actuality is the form 'that-p is true'. More accurately, the categories are these forms or functions specialized to thought about spatio-temporal object.
41. In the preceding section we were concerned with the distinction between concepts of empirical object and the schemata of these concepts, i.e., the rules for image-model sequences which are determined by the concept of object-in-various-successive-relations-to-perceiver. But Kant also uses the term schema in connection with the categories. The categories do not specify image-models. There is no image of causality as there is an image of a house. Yet they do have in their own way schemata, i.e., rules specified in terms of abstract concepts pertaining to perceptible features of the world. Thus the schema for causality is the concept of uniform sequence throughout all space and time.
42. The Humean concept could be said to have images in an extended sense. Thus a person in a thunderstorm who experiences a finite stretch of lightning-thunder uniformity could be said to have experiences an image of causality. Kant, of course, does not say this, and I introduce it only to show that this new use of "schema" is not completely foreign to the previous one.
43. The schematized category of causality, then, is the ground-consequence category where the ground (antecedent) concerns the occurrence of one kind of event, K1, at t and the consequence concerns the occurrence of another kind event, K2, at t + (delta t). Since the ground is an event being of kind K1 it must be true that whenever K1 occurs, K2 also occurs.
44. The categories are in first instance simply identical with the forms of judgment, a point which must be grasped if traditional puzzles about the metaphysical deduction of the categories are to be avoided. These forms of thought would be involved in thinking about any subject matter from perceptual objects to metaphysics and mathematics.
45. The so-called pure categories are these forms of thought specialized to thought about objects (matter-of-factual systems) in general. Such objects need not be spatio-temporal, as are the objects of human experience. The full-blooded categories with which Kant is concerned in the Critique are the pure categories, specialized in their turn to thought about spatio-temporal objects. The relation of the forms of thought to the pure categories is that of genera to species, as is the relation of the pure categories to schematized categories.
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