Lecture #24 The Axioms of Intuition the Anticipations of Perception and the Analogies of Experienc

PHIL 320
Fall 2021
John Dreher
Lecture #24 The Axioms of Intuition, the Anticipations of Perception,
and the Analogies of Experience
The Axioms of Intuition
1. We have seen that there are pure forms of intuition (space and time) and pure concepts of the
understanding, for examples unity, plurality, totality, of causality/dependence (as well as eight
others that we have yet to examine.) They are conditions of the possibility of experience, which
is to say that all experience is either intuited (perceived in space and/or time) or understood
(conceived as a unity, totality, plurality, cause or effect, etc). However, it is one thing to account
for experience and the necessary structure of it; it is another thing to show that it is objective;
that is, that those experiences are the ones actually characterize the structure of veridical
perception and true science. In Kant’s own words: ‘Every object is subject of the conditions
necessary for synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience.’ As Kant sees
it, the conditions for the possibility of experience are the same as the conditions for the
possibility of objects of experience. (MP, p.761) But what then will distinguish a phantom
(dream) from something real? For Kant it is that the real is a part of the synthetic unity of
apperception that is characterized coherently by the ‘rules for the objective [emphasis mine] use’
or the categories. Those rules are the axioms of intuition, the anticipations of perception, the
analogies of experience and the postulates of empirical thought. (p. 762) When we mistake a
dream for reality, or ask a meaningless question (for example, whether an ordinary object could
exist ‘outside’ space), we fail to follow the rules for the ‘objective’ use of the categories.
1a. The axioms of intuition are general principles describing a representation or appearances as
a synthetic unity of apperception; in other words, as ordinary things conceived as objects in time,
or in space and time. The axioms of intuition are related to the pure forms of intuition in that the
pure forms of intuition determine the structure of the representations (viz. by geometry, which
describes spatial relations, and arithmetic, which reveals the structure of temporal relations).
Whatever is represented in space and/or time has extensive magnitude . Hence the principle
underlying the axioms of intuition is that all intuitions are extensive magnitudes. Whenever we
represent (either in the imagination or via veridical perception) as an object of experience we
conceive it is a single thing or group of things existing over time. In the case that an object can
be represented by the ‘outer senses,’ principally touch and sight, it is conceived as spatial. All
these representations are extensive and all have magnitudes; which is to say that they exist for
longer or shorter periods or take up more or less space.