(Here Dr Ross quotes my question): There was one letter that I sent where I was asking if immediate non intuitive knowledge can help for how intuitions can fit into the basket of the categories and thus become united.
(Dr Ross's answer:) In Kant, there is confusion about "intuition," since he originally says that it is given to us without any functions of thought, but then he ends up with the argument that to enter consciousness, intuition must be synthesized using the categories of the understanding.
Non-intuitive immediate knowledge is outside that debate. That is how the categories are available in the first place, but we are not aware of them until we reflect on the products of synthesis, i.e. consciousness and perception.
(Here again is part pf my question): I forget this minute how he puts it but basically I think it is that there is some aspect of the intuitions -their form- that has the possibility of fitting into the categories and then the categories unite them.
(Dr Ross:) This overlooks the existence and activity of synthesis, which leaves out Kant's mature theory. So I'm not sure what the reference in Kant would be for your citation. [my later note: I will have to look that up.]
(Me again:) Similarly there is some answer on how the categories can process the intuitions.
(Dr Ross:) Synthesis uses the categories to "process" the manifold of sensation so as to produce consciousness and experience. If "intuition" implies awareness, then the application of the term must be moved from the given manifold to the product of synthesis. This is a challenge in Kant scholarship.
(Me): It seemed to me that immediate non intuitive knowledge can be the source of this unity [of the intuitions]. That is the deeper source of knowledge that unites both the senses and the categories.
Dr Ross: Again, there are different issues. How the categories are available in the first place is different from what they are used for. Kant's argument "from the possibility of experience" means that the categories must be available in order to be used. And one thing that must also be available is the "unity of apperception," according to which synthesis constructs consciousness. That will be "the source of this unity," and it will be, like the categories themselves, non-intuitive.
Note that Kant believed the "availability" of the categories was covered by his "metaphysical deduction," i.e. that the categories are artifacts of the forms of logic. This was grossly insufficient for what was needed. To get from the form of conditional propositions in logic to the concept of causality you need, well, the concept of causality. Kant can't get that rabbit out of that hat. Modern logic, for all its faults, clarified that -- although the Stoics had done it already. Kant has similar problems in morality, thinking that moral imperatives will follow from the forms of logic also. In all of that, even Platonism works better.
Yours truly,
KR
