Intellect, Kant tells us, has 12 categories. Reason has only three ideas that do not constitute objects, but regulate actions. Are they:
• Psychological idea (soul);
• Cosmological idea (of the world as a totality);
• Theological idea (of God).
A judgment consists of the connection of two concepts, one (A) of which always fulfills the subject function and the other (B) the predicate function. Let's see what they are, according to Critique of Pure Reason from Kant:
- Analytical Judgments: are judgments in which the predicate (B) can be contained in the subject (A) and, therefore, be extracted by pure analysis. This means that the predicate does nothing more than explain or make the subject explicit. E.g.: "Every triangle has three sides”;
- A posteriori Synthetic Judgments: are those in which the predicate is not contained in the subject, but is related to it through a synthesis. This, however, is always particular or empirical, not being universal and necessary, therefore, they do not serve science. E.g.: "that house is green”.
- A priori Synthetic Judgments: are judgments in which the predicate is not extracted from the subject, but which through experience is formed as something new, constructed. However, this construction must allow or foresee the possibility of repeating the experience, that is, the apriority, understood as the formal possibility of phenomenal construction, which allows for universality and need for judgments. Experience here is not the mere deposition of phenomena in the mind due to the sequence of perceptions, but rather the organization of the mind into a synthetic unity of what is received by intuition. Kant agrees with Leibniz that "there is nothing in the mind that has not passed through the senses, except the mind itself."
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Therefore, neither dogmatic rationalism nor empiricism, but a critical rationalism or criticism that's what Kantian philosophy is all about. Science is a human construct. Reason must seek in nature the conformity that it itself places. You a priori they are the anticipation of the form of a possible experience in general. And transcendental refers to structures a priori of human sensibility and intellect, without which no experience of any object is possible. It is, therefore, the condition of knowability (intuition and thinkability), that is, the condition of possibility of any and all knowledge. It is what the subject puts in things in the very act of knowing them.
Therefore, with regard to pure reason, ideas are not knowable objects, that is, they cannot be known by men because, despite being thinkable objects cannot be intuited, and thus God, Soul, and the World as a totality do not constitute things, but regulate man's actions. They are, therefore, studied in Ethics, not in Science. They are guides, not things, causing errors and illusions in scientific judgments (so-called paralogisms).
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
CABRAL, João Francisco Pereira. "Theory of Judgments in Kant"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/filosofia/teoria-dos-juizos-kant.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.
