Introduction to Kant

Dr Will Large

Those who have attended my lectures in the past know that I do not go in for intellectual biography.I am interested in Kant the

philosopher, the writer, and not Kant the man.This does not mean of course that the social situation in which Kant wrote had no
significance whatsoever on what he wrote, but the twist and turns of the relation between life and writing are far more complex and
intertwining than any intellectual biography, with its supposedly significant events and happenings of human life, like so many birthdays
and Christmases, can give. Kant was born April 22, 1724, in Kngisberg, Prussia (now Kalingrad in Western Russia) and died on
February 12th 1804.

The subject matter of this course is perhaps his most famous and influential work but also his most difficult and forbidding, The

Critique of Pure Reason.Well we should not scare ourselves too much. Even from our position of being absolute beginners we can get
something from this text.And that is what we should be happy with.Why do we think that philosophical works are

simply vessels of information that we can dip our hands into and get what we want without really making an effort?On the other

hand, let's not sanctify Kant too much.Let us admit that is in reading the Critique the fogs of Knigsberg appear to drift across

our souls making everything obscure and indistinct.Kant was a veritable machine of concepts.This means that above all he

invented a whole new language.Anyone who has attempted to learn a language knows how difficult this is, because it is not

merely a matter of understanding, but of putting something in a alien expression into your own words.Reading Kant could be

compared with reading Chinese in this regard.One hardly knows how to advance through the strange Hieroglyphs. [1]

What is it that Kant was meant to have invented, and which we shall be trying to get our heads around this semester?The

answer to this question is transcendental idealism. [2] Now like any philosophical doctrine the best way to begin to understand it is to
grasp what it is a reaction against.No philosopher writes in isolation, but always in reaction to those who have written

before hand, because no problem simple falls from the heaven.Transcendental idealism is a reaction against two kinds of

philosophy of the 18th century, empiricism and rationalism.This might seem very peculiar to us, since we might think that these

two kinds of philosophy are the only two ways of doing philosophy, and thus to reject both is to reject philosophy

altogether.How can there be a philosophy that is neither rational nor empirical?You can see why Kant had to invent a whole

new language of philosophy to express this third alternative that did not fit into the traditional way of talking about things, even

amongst those who disagreed vehemently against one another.

We said that transcendental idealism is opposed to both rationalism and empiricism, but it would be just as well to say that it is

an amalgam of both.What it is opposed to is there pure separation into two opposed spheres.Perhaps, thought we shall see that this can
only be the most preliminary and loose explanation, we can come to the first definition of transcendental idealism as a kind of rational
empiricism or empiricist rationalism.We can see that this might mean by looking at some quotes from Kant,

though we shall not be quoted the Critique of Pure Reason, but what is called Prolegomena to every Future Metaphysics,

and which Kant wrote as a kind of idiots guide to the much bigger and more complicated first book, but which is unfortunately

not much simpler:

I openly confess that a reminder by David Hume was the very thing which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and
gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction. If we start from a well-founded though
undeveloped thought which another has bequeathed to us, we may well hope by continued reflection to advance farther than the acute
man to whom we owe the first spark of light. [3]

Let us not get lost in trying here to find out what it was that Hume reminded Kant of, though we shall find out later in the

course, but simply pay attention to the rather ambiguous nature of this passage. In one sense, Kants philosophy owes

everything to Humes empirical scepticism, but in another it goes quite further than it. In what way is transcendental idealism

more than empiricism?Not an easy question, as we shall see, but let us here begin to set the ground as how it will be answered.

The question is how can we get to know something and to see how Kant gets awoken from his dogmatic slumber we need to

go back to Descartes.As you all remember, Descartes put forward the interesting idea that I could doubt the whole existence of the
world, but that one thing that I could not doubt is the cogito ergo sum, for even if I doubt everything I can not doubt the I that is so
doubting.This means that everything that is contained in this I also cannot be doubted.I can think of a cup.I might

doubt the existence of cup in the real world, it might be a figment of my imagination, but I cannot doubt the idea of the cup in my mind,
for it wholly present to the thought that thinks it.The problem for Descartes is how do we get from the certainty of my

inner mental world, to the uncertainty of my knowledge of the external world.The answer is God, which is why Descartes needs the
philosophical proofs of Gods existence.If God exists, which Descartes believes can be demonstrated philosophically in the form of the
ontological argument, then this Good must be a just.A just God ensures that the external world, which he created, corresponds to my
inner world.Thus I can be sure that my idea of the cup, which I am entirely certain of, is the same as the actual cup which exists in the
external world.

What Kant calls a dogmatic slumber is this heady mix of theology and philosophy.Kants argument will be how can philosophy be
certain of its knowledge of the external world, when it bases its certainty on what cannot be known, namely God (thus, as we shall see, it
is just as important for Kant to show that there can be no proof for Gods existence, as it is for Descartes to have this proof).It would
mean that our knowledge of the cup could only be guaranteed by divine intervention, and a intervention that we ourselves could have no
insight into.

The fact that theology has sneaked into philosophy tells us something has gone wrong. Theology is usually philosophy gone a bit
mad.This can make theology interesting, but also a little suspect in its own commitment to argument.Thus what we need to do is go back
to the relation of knowledge itself, and see what really appears there without introducing a deus ex machina, or other metaphysical
hobgoblins.First of all there is subject and there is an object that confronts this subject.What the subject knows about this object, in one
sense comes from the object itself, and in another sense comes from the subject(when we come to look at the subject in greater detail we
will need to ask who this subject is is it me or you or something greater than both of us?).We can say therefore that unlike Descartes
and all the other metaphysical dogmatists, Kant tries to understand our world immanently, rather than appealing to something
transcendent.And yet doesnt this lead us astray? We supposed to be learning what transcendental idealism means, and yet we are told he
explains the world immanently.We need to make a clear distinction between transcendence and transcendental in Kants
philosophy.Transcendence is anything that is appealed to beyond human sensibility, and in our tradition that is usually God.The meaning
of transcendental is obviously going to be more difficult and we are only going to get to its meaning by going back to this relation
between the subject and the object.

Kant is rejecting Descartes transcendent argument that we can only know the object by the mediation of the divine power, but

at the same time he will reject the Humean argument that we know the object simply by adding up our sense impression.This is

because we can make a distinction between the form of our experiences and the content of our experiences.
Now the content of our experience does belong to the object, and Kant will call this, perhaps slightly confusingly for our

purposes, sensible intuition.But this intuition does not merely have a content but a form, and it is this form which transcends both the
individual object and the individual subject.It is this transcendence that Kant is referring to in the expression

transcendental.It is the proof of these forms that Kant hopes to demonstrate in The Critique of Pure Reason.They are space

and time, and the categories of the understanding.What is significant here, and we shall go both in their demonstration and

description by Kant later, is that these forms of the object, which are true of every object of human experience, belong to the

subject.This is why Kants explanation of the world is immanent, for he makes no appeal to anything that might go beyond the

subject that experiences.Yet, this subject, which is the source of the form of objects, is not any subject.It is neither you or me,

for example, but is the form of the subjectivity itself.It is this last idea which is perhaps the most difficult to explain and to grasp it is to
understand the heart of transcendental idealism itself.

[1]There is salvation near at hand though in the form of Howard Caygills A Kant Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995),

[2]Let us say right from the start that transcendental here has no mystical or spiritual meaning as transcendental meditation.

[3]Kant, Prolegomena in Kant Selections, ed. L. W. Beck, (London: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1988), p. 159.

Kants Copernican Turn

We spoke last week of Kants philosophy as a revolution in the history of philosophy and a complete reversal of the previous way of
understanding our knowledge of the world. This revolution bears a name, and it is a name that Kant himself gave to it: the Copernican
revolution [1].

Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all our attempts to extend our knowledge of objects
by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must
therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our
knowledge. We should then be proceeding on the lines of Copernicus primary hypothesis. BXVI

We can understand what this revolution might mean by comparing it to what Kant believed needed to be rejected if we were to give a
secure foundation to our knowledge of the world, namely dogmatic metaphysics [2].

It is opposed only to dogmatism, that is, to the presumption that is possible to make progress with pure knowledge, according to
principles, from concepts alone (those that are philosophical), as reason has long been in the habit of doing; and that it is possible to do
this without having first investigated in what way and by what right reason has come into possession of these concepts. BXXXV.

The test for whether metaphysics is valid or not for Kant is experience. As he writes in the first sentences of the introduction of The
Critique of Pure Reason, knowledge begins with our experience of the world, and without this limitation of experience, there would be
no brake to our imaginative production of concepts. For Kant, however, this is precisely where classical, as opposed to critical
philosophy, has erred. For it has believed that that principle of a philosophical method is to be determined to the extent that it rejects
reality for the ethereal realm of pure ideas, which Kant rather picturesquely describes in the image of the flight of a dove:

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty
space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the senses, as setting too narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured out beyond it on
the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of the understanding. A5/B9.

But if our experience of the world is the test for the validity of our philosophical method, why is Kant simply not an empiricist, rather
than a transcendental idealist as we described last week, and does this not contradict the meaning and import of the Copernican
revolution that asserts that the world must conform to us, rather than we to the world? The solution to this contradiction is to see that for
Kant experience is not all that it seems to be. Or to put it another way, and this is perhaps the central paradox in Kants thought, there is
more within experience than merely experience.

Kants belief that this is so is indirect. His claim is that if we do simply assert that all knowledge is empirical, then we are denying the
very a priori nature of own knowledge. What Kant means by the a priori is that which is independent from our knowledge of the world
that is arrived at through our senses, which can be defined in contradistinction as a posteriori knowledge. The examples of a priori
knowledge that Kant gives are mathematics and physics. I know that a triangle must have three sides without having to test this
empirically. I also know that everything in nature has a cause without having to test the hypothesis experimentally. The criterion for the
difference between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is necessity. For this reason we should not confuse what is a priori with merely
what is universal, for the latter rests only on observation and there is no absolute certain that an event could be otherwise or a different
theory could be used to explain its significance, whereas without the category of causality we could not make sense of the notion of
event at all; the world would be meaningless for us.

Since what is a priori cannot come from experience, since nothing from experience can happen from necessity, then it must have another
source. This other origin is the subject. Kant writes, that we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into them
[BXVIII]. When, therefore, are these a priori principles merely subjective fantasies? Why is not Hume right to suggest that causality,
for example is merely a subjective representation that is simply the habitual way that we look at the world, and does not exist in nature
itself? Kants position is not that far from Hume, as Broad is right to put out, but his disagreement with him is that we could choose not
to look at the world in this way [3]. Thus we come to a second paradox of Kants thought, that not all that is in the subject is merely
subjective.

To see why that a priori knowledge, even though it has its origin in the subject, and this is why Kant speaks of a Copernican Turn, but is
not subjective in the sense in which is merely a representation of the human mind, we need to clarify certain terminological distinctions
[4]. When Kant speaks about the difference between appearance and thing in itself, as we spoke of last week, this should not be
modelled on difference between what is merely subjective on the one hand, and what is objective on the other, as we might say, for
example, using that old Platonic example, that the stick appears bent in the water, but the real stick is not. This would be to distort
Kants distinction between appearance and thing in itself in the classical distinction between appearance and essence [5]. The difference
between the classical and critical philosophy, is that the former opposes the sensible and intelligible realms, whereas the latter places the
intelligible within the sensible. To understand what Kant means by appearance is to see that the distinction between form and matter is
internal to it. It is not, as in the classical picture, that form equals essence, and appearance matter. Kant would say that it is the form of
appearance that is a priori and comes from the subject, whereas the matter is given by experience and is a posteriori.

To confuse the form of appearance with the matter of appearance is to confuse transcendental idealism with empirical idealism and is to
mistake Kants project with his predecessors. For it is precisely to avoid empirical idealism that Kant invents transcendental idealism.
We need to distinguish four possible positions of epistemology to be able to determine the true nature of transcendental idealism. They
are:

1. Transcendental Realism

2. Empirical idealism

3. Transcendental idealism

4. Empirical realism.

For Kant these four positions always come in pairs. Thus if you are an empirical idealist, it necessarily follows that you are an
transcendental realist, and if you are empirical realist, then it also necessarily follows that you are a transcendental idealist. How can we
explain these terms in greater detail? First of all we need to understand that the meaning of real and ideal change when we are
describing them in a transcendental or empirical way, and much of the confusion about Kant lies in misunderstanding these subtle
differences. Following Allison, we can define ideality being part of consciousness, and reality as being independent or outside of
consciousness [6]. From an empirical standpoint, what is ideal is in the private data of the individual consciousness, whilst what is
empirical is, to use Allisons expression, the intersubjective, spatiotemporal realm of the objects of human experience. Where we might
go wrong is when we take this empirical definition and simply transpose it to the transcendental sphere. Thus, we confuse
transcendental idealism with empirical idealism. It is this confusion that might make us think that the a priori, in Kants sense, is merely
subjective; in other words that it simply an idea in our minds.
How then can we make sense of the distinction between the ideal and the real in a transcendental manner? What is transcendentally
ideal are the a priori conditions of human empirical knowledge, and what is transcendentally real is that which is independent of these
conditions; that is to say non-sensible objects. What is important to underline here is that transcendental idealism does not speak of
appearances, but of the conditions of experiences. Its object is not what we know, but how we know.

Kant, therefore, is an empirical realist, that objects are independent of the individual consciousness but a transcendental idealist, that the
form of knowledge is the condition for these objects. It is important not to confuse transcendental idealism with psychology.
Psychology is an empirical science that begins with individual consciousness from which by a process of induction, like any other
natural science, it arrives at universal laws. Universal laws of nature, however, are not the same as a priori conditions of knowledge, for
the former are contingent and the latter are necessary for the representation of an object. Psychology can tell us why we see this
particular object in this way, or react to this situation in this way, but it cannot provide us with the description of the object in general
(how every object must be formed to be a sense object, or an object of judgement), for it too must begin with this general object as a
presupposition.

As we have said, it is Kants argument that empirical idealism always leads to transcendental realism. We have already seen this to be
the case with Descartes. If I say that all I can truly know are my representations of things in my mind, then I am claiming that reality of
objects is independent of my consciousness and I cannot know them. This further entails, as we have already recognised, that only God
can know the reality of things. Transcendental realism is therefore theocentric. We might, therefore, characterise Kants Copernican
revolution as anthropocentric. All we can know is that which remains within the limits of human knowledge, what is given to us in
experience, and what is ideal is merely the form of this experience whose source is the structure of human subjectivity in general.

[1] Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473-1543), Polish astronomer, best known for his theory that the Sun is at rest near the centre of the universe
and that the Earth, spinning on its axis once daily, revolves annually around the Sun.

[2] We might call dogmatic metaphysics rationalism, since Kant has such thinkers as Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza in mind.

[3] See, G.D. Broad Kant an Introduction, (Cambridge: CUP, 1978), p. 13. He is wrong, however, to suggest that Kant has advanced no
further than Hume in this problem.

[4] What follows owes much to Allisons account in Henry Allison, Kants Transcendental Idealism (London: Yale University Press,
1983), pp. 1-35.

[5] This is why the notion of form is central to Pippens understanding of Kants project. See, Robert Pippin, Kants Theory of Form,
(Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 1-25

[6] Ibid, Kants Transcendental Idealism, p. 6.

back to W Large contents page

Metaphysical Deduction

Dr William Large

In the next two weeks we shall be looking at what many consider to be the most difficult part of The Critique of Pure Reason, which is
called the deduction. It is the most difficult part, because it is the proof of transcendental idealism itself at the level of concepts.We must
remember that for Kant that there are two source of human knowledge, and human must be emphasised, concepts and intuitions. In terms
of transcendental idealism, the mode of presentation of the object, that is to say the manner in which the object is given, rather than what
it is, cannot be deduced from experience itself, but has it source in the subject. If knowledge has two sources, then it must also have two
pure forms. Thus if we speak of intuitions and concepts, we must also speak of pure intuitions and pure concepts.

We have already seen the proof of pure intuitions in the transcendental aesthetic The proof, however, for pure concepts cannot be seen,
since the presence of space and time in given through experience itself, though we need to underline they are not in experience, but
shape, organise and form it, whereas concepts have their seat in what Kant calls the understanding. In certain sense, space and time, are
immediately present in our experience of the object, whereas what concepts are pure concepts need to be demonstrated by us. This is
why Kant spends so much more time on the deduction, the proof of pure a priori concepts, which do not merely describe the object but
constitute it, than the transcendental aesthetic.

What then is a concept for Kant? As opposed to an intuition that is given to the faculty of representation, a concept is an idea or thought
that is applied to appearance. The faculty that corresponds to concepts is the understanding.We cannot know anything without the
combination of both intuitions and concepts.This, Kant would say, is something that we have to accept, and there is no philosophical
explanation why this is so. Unlike God, who knows things in themselves, as we might suppose (what Kant calls intellectual intuition),
we can only know things through the concepts we have of them. Human cognition, Kant says, is discursive (A68/B93). We never just
see the tree in our backyard, as it is in itself, rather we see the tree as a tree, that is to say through the concept tree.But what is this
concept?Like with intuition Kant makes a distinction between pure and empirical concepts. The concept tree is an empirical concept.
Although the concept itself comes from our own understanding, the material of this concept must come from experience. But a concept
is not merely descriptive for Kant; rather he says that all concepts have a function (A68/B93). What is the function of a concept? It
unifies (or synthesises, which means the same thing for Kant). Thus the empirical concepts organise, shapes or unifies are experience of
the world. It is quite wrong therefore to think that I have an immediate perception of a tree, and then I simply apply the concept tree to
it; rather to be able to see a tree at all I must also have the concept alongside my intuitions. As Sebastian Gardner points out, I do not just
have an mass of red sensations, rather I see a red patch as an organised unity, and this unity does not come from sensation itself, for all
that sensation gives me is simply this array of red sensations.[1] Kant, however, does not believe that all that the understanding
contains are empirical concepts, rather, like with intuitions, there are also pure concepts. Unlike with intuitions, however, these pure
concepts are not simply given, rather we have to arrive at them through a process of analysis so that we end up with the most generalised
concepts.This is why this section of The Critique of Pure Reason is called the transcendental analytic.

Henry Allison demonstrates to us what such an analysis might be.Take the example, he suggests, of the judgement Socrates is a man.
[2] This judgement about a singular concept, Socrates but through analysis of the judgement we can see that it is based on a more
general concept man and so on as we go back to more and more general concepts. For Kant, however, this process cannot go back
forever.We will eventually reach the most generalised concepts, such as entity, property, individual, class, and totality that cannot be
broken down any further. They are the most fundamental grammar of our judgements about objects.

Now it is these most general concepts, which Kant calls logical forms and which are the clue for Kant of what he will latter call the
categories.In other words Kant is beginning with the most general way in which we talk about things, and from that he is deducing the
general categories of objects.It is this deduction that he calls the metaphysical deduction, and which must be distinguished from the
transcendental deduction that we will be looking at next week. The key to make sense of this mysterious faculty that Kant calls the
understanding is therefore our judgements what are say about objects. In the most general way, Kant believes, that our judgements
about objects can be exhaustively described in 3 possible kinds with for 4 possible elements, which he lays out in the table of
judgements (A70/B95) and every judgement we use can be shown through analysis to contain these 3 kinds.[3]

But this is only the clue for pure concepts of the understanding, for we must make a clear distinction between what Kant calls general
logic and transcendental logic General logic merely describes the pure form of logical judgement and the rules of thought. It does not
demonstrate how these are related to objects. The latter is the function of transcendental logic. The hypothesis of transcendental
idealism, the famous Copernican revolution, is that objects must conform to our form of knowledge, and not the other way around.In
other words that mode of presentation of the object is determined by our mode of cognitionNow Kant has already argued that human
cognition is made of two parts: intuitions and concepts.Thus, he needs to show how concepts themselves determine the object a p.Thus
he needs to show not just the logic form of our pure concepts, but show how these pure concepts themselves determine the mode of
presentation of objects. It is this that is the movement from the table of judgement to the table of categories.

The best way to see how this works is to use an example: the category of substance, Kant argues, is deduced from the logical form of
categorical judgement. The best way of understanding this is that we can talk about a pure concepts either from the side of the logical
judgement or from the side of the picture of the object that it gives us. Thus, categorical judgement always takes the form x is F, as for
example Socrates is a man. But when this logical form is applied to an object, we arrive with category of substance. There is an x in
which the property man inheres. It is very important for Kant to show that substance is a category, and not something ontological, that
is to say real. In other words, the category of substance organises our representations, it is itself not a representation.We must be clear
that is also not a logical proof. Rather the logic forms are a clue to the categorical forms, and both have their common source in the
understanding. In the same way that we have gone from the logical categorical function of judgement, to the category of substance, we
can go through all the other parts of the table of judgement, to produce the table of categories (A80/B106).

Most commentators, however, think that the metaphysical deduction fails to set out to do what it proposes, namely proof conclusive a
systematic list of the pure concepts of the understanding. The problem has to do with the table of judgement, which Kant takes for
granted to be exhaustive. He does not prove this however, but simply takes these logical functions from tradition. The problem with the
table of judgement, however, does not invalidate Kants major hypothesis that our experience of the world must be constituted by a priori
concepts, rather he needs a better proof of what these concepts might be, rather than just a list of logical functions that he simply accepts
are given.[4] This second proof is given in the transcendental deduction that we shall discuss next week.

Transcendental Deduction

Dr William Large

Today we come to the most difficult part of The Critique of Pure Reason. Indeed, there are some commentators who have made whole
careers through simply discussing this part of the book. Even Kant himself was so concerned about the difficulty of the transcendental
deduction that he completely rewrote it for the second edition. We cannot hope, therefore, to be able to grasp and understand every
argument and detail of this section, but we should be able to get the general aim and show how it fits into our own understanding of
transcendental idealism.

Remember it is Kants hypothesis that it is not our knowledge that must conform to objects, but rather objects that must conform to our
knowledge. Why is this so? For the opposite is not a tenable position. If we claim that the object is utterly exterior to us, then how can
we show that it is possible to know it at all? We saw that Descartes could only solve this problem through the existence of God, who
would ensure that our representations, how the object appears to us, would be the same as the object is in itself. Kants solution to the
problem, however, does not need to turn to theology for assistance. Rather he simply puts forward the hypothesis that since it is we who
relate to the object, then it is we who will determine what the object is. This means that what the object is in itself is simply unknowable
by us, and all we can know our appearances. We need to be very clear here that what Kant means by appearances is not what is usually
meant by this word in philosophy, namely illusion. For to interpret appearance as illusion is to understand it in opposition to essence, the
thing in itself, but if appearance is the only thing we can know, then we cannot compare it to another kind of knowledge in comparison
to which our knowledge of appearances would be said to be deficient.

If we only know appearances, then the question of objectivity becomes quite different. It is no longer the problem, which has been the
age-old philosophical problem, of knowing the objective essence of the object as opposed to our subjective impressions of it, but
whether our experience of appearance has any coherence or order. In Kants vocabulary, whether our experience involves any necessity.
It is clear that this necessity cannot be found in experience itself, for our experience is contingent and open. This leads us to the paradox
that in order to understand experience, we need to go beyond experience. This is precisely the trap for philosophy, for in this murky area
it is very tempting to invent all kinds of mythical concepts, since the limiting factor of experience has been left behind.

Kants solution, first of all, is to stay with the appearances themselves, so as not to be lead astray. Thus, in the transcendental aesthetic,
we begin with immediate experiences, or what Kant calls intuitions. We recognise that every one of our experience takes place in
space and time, but Kant has to show, in order to defend his position of transcendental idealism, that they can neither be real, nor merely
concepts. In other words, space and time, although not empirical, organise our experience of the world. This would mean, against
common sense, that space and time are not something outside ourselves, nor merely words, but an element in the subjective
constitution of appearance, but nonetheless objectively valid since they are true for every experience what so ever.

Our experiences, however, for Kant are not merely immediate representation to the mind, but they are also discursive. He means by this
that we do not merely perceive something through our senses rather we also experience it through a concept. Thus, we never just see the
house rather we see the house as a house. For this reason, knowledge for Kant is intuition plus concepts, but he equally wants to show
that just as space and time constitute our experience prior to any actual experience, so too does our conceptual understanding. The
difficulty here is that is clear that space and time are given to us immediately in intuition and that they determine how objects appear to
us, but it is not so clear that concepts do. It is certain that there are concepts in our mind, but why arent these concept simply in our
mind? How do we know that they have any necessary connection to appearances in the way space and time does? It is the purpose of
the transcendental deduction to show that our conceptual understanding is just as important to the constitution of the object as the form
of our intuition, in other words that concepts, at least the pure concepts of the understanding, are not merely descriptive, but constitutive.

In the metaphysical deduction, Kants argument goes from the logical use of concepts to the necessity of the categories. In other words,
we cannot understand the logical form of categorical judgement (x is F) without positing category of substance. In the transcendental
deduction we start with the relation between the subject and the object itself. Now in ordinary view of things, we would think that all we
need to make sense of is the terms of the relation itself: subject, object. The most difficult philosophical question, however, is how it is
that the subject has any relation to the object at all. In other words what is the bridge between the subject and the object. Kants
rejection of transcendental realism is that we cannot see how there could be a bridge between them at all.

Now this bridge has two sides that coincide with the two element of the relation that need to be joined. Thus, there is a subjective side of
the transcendental deduction and an objective side. The clue to finding out what these two sides do is in the function of the concept. We
remember that in the metaphysical deduction, Kant describes this as the capacity of concepts to organise our experiences by giving them
a unity and coherence. This question now is whether there is a conceptual unity that is even prior to our experience and which makes
this experience possible, just as space and time make possible our empirical intuitions.

This means that we are looking for a subjective unity and objective unity that is prior to our actual experience. Another way of looking
at this question is what ensures that appearance in general, rather than this or that appearance has wholeness and integrity, and is not
simply a jumble and mess of sensations and impression. For I know that my experience is ordered. Kant would say that first of all that I
can say my experiences. Thus no matter what experience I am having it is always related back to an I (what this I will the object of a
latter part of The Critique of Pure Reason, but it itself cannot be an object, otherwise we would fall into an infinite regress). It is this I
that I can refer back every experience, which gives unity to my representations. We should be careful not to confuse this I with the
empirical consciousness itself; that is to say the individual consciousness of you or I, rather it is the general form of consciousness itself
which ensures that intuition hold together in a minimal unity without which there would be no object at all to experience:

The synthetic unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all knowledge. It is not merely a condition that I myself
require in knowing an object, but is a condition under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me. (B137).

Just as there is a subjective pole to the unity of experience, so there is an objective pole. Here we are speaking of not just this or that
object, but the object in general - in other words, the concept of the object. The argument is that without this general concept, the
experience of an actual object would be impossible. Again like the transcendental self, this transcendental object gives unity to our
experience. It is important, however, not to confuse the transcendental object x with the thing in itself. Kant is not saying that behind
every object there lies the general object that gives unity to it. So, for example, every particular object would be the actual manifestation
of one and the same substance. Rather the general object only has a organising function in terms of our knowledge, but without which
our experience would be impossible, without which, in other words, there would be no object at all for us.

Both the subjective pole and the objective pole of human knowledge are mutually dependent upon one another. Thus without the unity
of experience there would be no unity of the self, and without the unity of self there would be no unity of experience. This is why it is
the transcendental unity of apperception and the transcendental object x which act as the bridge between the subject and the object. Not
of course the object as it is in itself, but the object as appearance. It is also demonstrate that without conceptuality; that is to say, without
unity, there would be no experience of any object at all. Thus conceptual conditions for human knowledge, and not merely the condition
for valid knowledge of the object, but equally the possibility of that object at all:

The a priori conditions of a possible experience in general are at the same time conditions of the possibility of objects of experience.
(A111)

Both the necessity of a minimal self and a minimal object demonstrates the truth of transcendental idealism, for in their absence no
experience of an actual object would be possible, but at the same time neither can be found in experience. It follows, therefore, that the
general form of subjectivity must constitute experience in advance, and this general form is the pure intuitions of space and time, and the
pure concepts of the understanding that organise our experience into a unity without which there would be only chaos and anarchy.

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