Reply
Fri 9 Nov, 2012 10:36 am
Hello,
I'm attempting to read and understand Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I've got up to the section "Transcendental Logic: First Division. Transcendental Analytic" and I'm really confused.
I'm wondering if there are any Kant experts out there who can translate it for me into plain English.
Particularly, I'm confused about Sections II and III. In section II, he comes up with four "functions of thought in a judgement", each of which has three momenta:
1) Quantity of judgements: universal, particular, singular.
2) Quality of judgements: affirmative, negative, and infinite.
3) Relation of judgements: categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive.
4) Modality of judgements: problematic, assertorical, and apodeictical.
And then in Section III, he gives us four categories of conceptions:
1) Quantity: unity, plurality, and totality.
2) Quality: reality, negation, and limitation.
3) Relation: inherence and subsistence, causality and dependence, and community.
4) Modality: Possibility/impossibility, existence/non-existence, and necessity/contingency.
He says that these four categories and their momenta map directly onto the four functions of judgement and their momenta.
Now there's a lot of question I have about these sections and I hope to get most of them answered in this discussion, but I'll only start with one:
With respect to the quantitative function of judgements, what does Kant mean by universal, particular, and singular?
He does give a brief treatment of this (with emphasis on the singular) but it's very unclear and confusing. I hope someone can help make sense out of it.
Thanks.