The Analytic of Principles on Superphysics

Introduction

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The higher faculties of cognition are:

understanding
judgement
reason

General logic is a science that treats in its analytic of conceptions, judgements, and conclusions in exact correspondence with the functions and order of those mental powers which we include generally under the generic denomination of understanding.

The Schematism at of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding

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TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF THE FACULTY OF JUDGEMENT OR, ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES.

In all subsumptions of an object under a conception, the representation of the object must be homogeneous with the conception; in other words, the conception must contain that which is represented in the object to be subsumed under it.

System of all Principles of the Pure Understanding

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In the foregoing chapter we have merely considered the general conditions under which alone the transcendental faculty of judgement is justified in using the pure conceptions of the understanding for synthetical judgements.

The Supreme Principle of all Synthetical Judgements

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The explanation of the possibility of synthetical judgements is a task with which general logic has nothing to do; indeed she needs not even be acquainted with its name. But in transcendental logic it is the most important matter to be dealt with—indeed the only one, if the question is of the possibility of synthetical judgements a priori, the conditions and extent of their validity. For when this question is fully decided, it can reach its aim with perfect ease, the determination, to wit, of the extent and limits of the pure understanding.

Systematic Representation of all Synthetical Principles of the Pure Understanding

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That principles exist at all is to be ascribed solely to the pure understanding, which is not only the faculty of rules in regard to that which happens, but is even the source of principles according to which everything that can be presented to us as an object is necessarily subject to rules, because without such rules we never could attain to cognition of an object.

Axioms Of Intuition

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AXIOMS OF INTUITION

The principle of these is: All Intuitions are Extensive Quantities.

PROOF.

All phenomena contain, as regards their form, an intuition in space and time, which lies a priori at the foundation of all without exception. Phenomena, therefore, cannot be apprehended, that is, received into empirical consciousness otherwise than through the synthesis of a manifold, through which the representations of a determinate space or time are generated; that is to say, through the composition of the homogeneous and the consciousness of the synthetical unity of this manifold (homogeneous). Now the consciousness of a homogeneous manifold in intuition, in so far as thereby the representation of an object is rendered possible, is the conception of a quantity (quanti).

Anticipations Of Perception

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2. Anticipations Of Perception

The principle of these is: In all phenomena the Real, that which is an object of sensation, has Intensive Quantity, that is, has a Degree.

PROOF.

Analogies Of Experience

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3. ANALOGIES OF EXPERIENCE

The principle of these is: Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of Perceptions.

PROOF.

Experience is an empirical cognition; that is to say, a cognition which determines an object by means of perceptions. It is therefore a synthesis of perceptions, a synthesis which is not itself contained in perception, but which contains the synthetical unity of the manifold of perception in a consciousness; and this unity constitutes the essential of our cognition of objects of the senses, that is, of experience (not merely of intuition or sensation).

Principle of the Permanence of Substance

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A. First Analogy: Principle Of The Permanence Of Substance.

In all changes of phenomena, substance is permanent, and the quantum thereof in nature is neither increased nor diminished.

PROOF.

All phenomena exist in time.

Principle of the Succession of Time

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All changes take place according to the law of the connection of Cause and Effect

PROOF.

Principle of Coexistence, According to the Law of Reciprocity

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All substances, in so far as they can be perceived in space at the same time, exist in a state of complete reciprocity of action.

The Postulates Of Empirical Thought

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The Postulates Of Empirical Thought
That which agrees with the formal conditions (intuition and conception) of experience, is possible.
That which coheres with the material conditions of experience (sensation), is real.

Refutation Of Idealism

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Material idealism is the theory which declares the existence of objects in space without us to be either:

Doubtful and indemonstrable, or

This is the problematical idealism of Descartes who admits the undoubted certainty of only one empirical assertion (assertio), to wit, “I am.”

The Imaginary

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Remark 3.

The existence of external things is a necessary condition of the possibility of a determined consciousness of ourselves.

But it does not follow that every passive-knowing representation of external things involves the existence of these things.

General Remark On The System Of Principles

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It is very remarkable that we cannot perceive the possibility of a thing from the category alone, but must always have an intuition, by which to make evident the objective reality of the pure conception of the understanding.

The Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena

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We have now carefully surveyed and measured every part of pure understanding.

We have assigned to everything therein its proper place.

But this land is an island, enclosed by nature herself within unchangeable limits.

The Application of the Categories Sensory Objects

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The Equivocal Nature or Amphiboly of the Conceptions of Reflection from the Confusion of the Transcendental with the Empirical use of the Understanding.

Reflection is not occupied about objects themselves, for the purpose of directly obtaining conceptions of them, but is that state of the mind in which we set ourselves to discover the subjective conditions under which we obtain conceptions.