(J) Intellection (cont.)
Logical Bias in Psychology
If we are still to speak of the elements of thought, we must extend this term so as to include not only the sensory elements we are said to receive but three distinct ways in which this pure matter is combine: (1) the forms of intuition, [76-3] – Time and Space; (2) the real categories, -- Substance, Attribute, State, Act, Effect, End or Purpose, &c., -- the exact determination of which is not here in place; and (3) certain formal (logical and mathematical) categories, -- as Unity, Difference, Identity, Likeness. These can no more be obtained by such a process of abstraction and generalization as logicians and psychologists alike have been wont to describe than the melody could be obtained by suppressing all the several notes in a tune. They are not primary concepts more general than all others in the sense in which animal is more general than man, but rather distinct methods of relating or synthesizing presentations. Kant, though he accepted almost unquestioned the logic and psychology current in his day, has yet been the occasion, in spite of himself, of materially advancing both, and chiefly by the distinction he was led to make between formal and transcendental logic. In his exposition of the latter he brings to light the difference the "functions of the understanding" in synthesizing –or, as we might say, organizing – percepts into concepts and the merely analytic subsumption of abc and abd under ab, -- a,b,c, and d, being what they may. Unlike other concepts, categories as such do not in the first instance signify objects of thoughts however general, but these functions of the understanding in constituting objects. In fine, they all imply some special process, and into these processes it is the business of psychology to inquire. But only the briefest attempt at such inquiry is here possible.
Footnotes
[76-3] As to these it must suffice to refer to what has been already said; comp. pp. 53 and 64 sq.
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