The combination of sensibility and understanding in Kant's Critique of pure reason

grantor: University of TorontoSince intuitions and concepts, the two elements that constitute knowledge, derive from two completely distinct sources, sensibility and understanding respectively, intuitions and concepts are themselves completely heterogeneous. This gives rise to the problem with which Kant concerns himself in the Schematism of the first Critique. Kant asks: How, given the heterogeneity between categories and appearances, is the application of the former to the latter possible? The solution he provides is the schema, which functions as a mediating representation in this application. The source of the schema, however, is imagination. Thus, I argue, in order to understand how the schema functions as mediator between intuitions and concepts, we must understand how imagination functions as mediator between sensibility and understanding. Imagination is able to mediate between sensibility and understanding since its activity manifests features in common with both. With sensibility, it shares the feature of receptivity; with understanding, it shares the feature of spontaneity. In the application of categories to appearances, imagination brings the unity of the categories to the mere synthesis of the manifold of intuition. Unity is achieved in the manifold of intuition only through the mediating activity of imagination, which brings the manifold of intuition into connection with the rules of the understanding. This process is referred to as combination. It is in the act of combination that imagination manifests both its receptive and spontaneous functions. For combination does not consist of a single act but rather a continuous series of acts--those toward the beginning of the series being more closely associated with receptivity, and those toward the end being more closely associated with spontaneity--as demonstrated in the production of the various transcendental schemata. Understood as a continuous series of acts, the combination that imagination carries out results in the continuity of the receptive and spontaneous functions of the faculties of sensibility and understanding. I conclude that it is this continuity of the faculties, achieved through the workings of the imagination in its activity of combination, that renders quite plausible Kant's solution to the problem of the Schematism.Ph.D