KANT S ARGUMENTS.

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We now come to the main arguments by

which Kant supports his contention that space is (i) apprehended

a priori (2) by a process which is not conception but sense in

tuition ; and that therefore space is not a quality or relation of

things in themselves but only of phenomena or mental appear

ances.

A. His first argument to prove that space is apprehended

a priori is stated thus :

Space is not an empirical concept J which has been derived from external J

experience. For in order that certain sensations should be referred to some

thing outside myself (i.e. to something in a different part of space from that

where I am) ; again, in order that I may be able to represent them (juorstellen)

as side by side," that is, not only as different, but as in different places, the

representation (" Vorstellung"} of space must be already there. Therefore the

representation of space cannot be borrowed through experience from relations

of external phenomena, but, on the contrary, this external experience becomes

possible only by means of the representation of space. 4

The drift of the argument is plain enough. It is that in

order, for example, to apprehend that A is in front of me and to

the right of B, I must have first apprehended empty space : I must

apprehend empty space before I can apprehend individual spatial

relations between things : therefore our apprehension of space

is an a priori perception. Certain points, however, deserve to

be noted, (i) It is sensations that assume spatial relations by

being placed "side by side," "in different places," but it is

bodies in the physical universe that are in space : the physical

universe is therefore a system of spatially arranged sensations.

(2) The representation of space is here set forth as a priori not

merely in the sense of a transcendental mental form which is

itself independent of experience, and renders experience of things in

space possible, but in the sense of temporal priority, in the sense

that actual apprehension of (empty) space must precede all

conscious perception of things as spatially related.

To the argument itself we may reply, firstly, that it is not

the supposed apprehension of empty space (which would be

1 Begriff, the term here does not mean a " concept " in the strict sense, but

has the general sense of " representation " Vorstellung ; cf. next sentence.

^ausseren, not "external" in the sense of "produced by something extra-

mental," but merely in the sense of " spatial," as the context in the next sentence

shows.

: ciitsser [itnd tifbcn and edit.] e :nan,ler. * Critique, pp. i.S-ig.

KANTS THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION, ETC. 191

presumably an individual apprehension of an individual mental

object, " empty space ") that has to be proved to be a priori ; it

is rather the apprehension of the nature of space as something

necessarily and universally such for all human mind s, and as thus

grounding the necessity and universality of geometrical judg

ments, it is such an apprehension as this that has to be proved

a priori ; and the argument does not prove this. 1

Secondly, we have no actual sense perception or sense intuition

of empty space antecedently to our empirical sense perceptions

of individual spatial things and relations, or indeed subsequently

either. We prove this, not by appealing to the fact that we are

never conscious of such a perception, for according to Kant

the supposed pure a priori perception of empty space is not a

conscious process, but by denying that there is any ground for

postulating it. To account for our empirical sense perception of

individual spatial things and relations all we need to postulate

on the part of the mind is the power or capacity for eliciting such

an act of perception, and the reduction of this power to act by

the influence of spatial things upon the mind (129). We do

not need to postulate a perceptive act of the transcendental mind

or Ego, whereby empty space would be apprehended anteced

ently to any conscious act of empirical sense perception even if

we could conceive what such an a priori perceptive act, cognitive

and yet unconscious, would be like. We therefore simply deny

the consequentia of Kant s argument : that in order to perceive

an object, A, as to the right of B, we must first have apprehended

empty space.

Thirdly, the argument proves too much ; for if, to apprehend

things as extended and spatially related, we must have not only

the capacity to do so, but also an a priori actual perception of

empty space, a pari in order to have empirical sense perception

of individual colours, sounds, tastes, smells, etc., we should need

to have antecedently not only the powers of eliciting such per

ceptions but also actual a priori perceptions of formal (or so to

speak, empty) colours, sounds, tastes, smells, etc., or at all

events the a priori " forms " of the corresponding empirical

perceptions, in whatever sense, other than that of mere powers

or capacities, Kant understands such "forms". But Kant dis-

1 As a matter of fact what Kant is thinking of all the time is the abstract concept

of space : space as abstract and universal, which cannot be apprehended by sense

perception. Cf. infra, pp. 193 sqq.

1 92 THE OR Y OF KNO WLED GE

claims the need for such a multiplicity of forms on the part of

the mind for apprehending colours, sounds, tastes, smells, etc.

Therefore there is no need for such an a priori form for the

perception of things as extended or spatial.

Fourthly, the space of which Kant was thinking as perceived

a priori is de facto space conceived in the abstract by the under

standing. Moreover, it is thus conceived not prior, but posterior

in time, to our empirical sense perceptions of individual extended

things. And finally, though derived from these latter percep

tions, nevertheless, being abstract, it presents to the intellect

relations which are absolutely necessary and universal and are

not grounded in sense experience (69).

B. Kant s second argument is stated as follows :

Space is a necessary representation a priori, forming the very foundation

of all external intuitions. It is impossible to imagine that there should

be no space, though one might very well imagine that there should be space

without objects to fill it. Space is therefore regarded as a condition of the

possibility of phenomena, not as a determination produced by them ; it is

a representation a priori which necessarily precedes all external phenomena. 1

This argument simply confounds the actual space or spatial

relations of the extended "objects" or bodies which constitute

the actually existing physical universe, with the possibility of

these bodies and the possibility of their actual spatial relations.

We can indeed think of the whole spatial or physical universe

as non-existent, but having once experienced it as actual we

cannot think of it as not even possible: we necessarily continue

to think of it as possible, and by that very fact we necessarily

continue to think of its spatial relations as possible : and this

thought or concept of the mere possibility of a spatial universe

is necessarily accompanied by the imagination image of what is

called ideal, or more properly imaginary, space indefinite, void,

empty. The fact that it is impossible for us to rid ourselves

of this representation of imaginary space only proves that we

cannot rid ourselves of the activity of memory or reproductive

imagination ; 2 it by no means proves that we must have per

ceived real and actual space a priori, and antecedently to our

actual perception of bodies, or that when we think these as

non-existent and merely possible we do not eo ipso think their

1 Critique, p. 19. Note how intuitions and phenomena are identified.

a Cf. Ontology, 84, pp. 320-1 ; MERCIKK, op. cit., pp. 389-91.

KANTS THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION^ ETC. 193

actually perceived spatial relations also as no longer actual

but merely possible. 1

The two preceding arguments purported to prove that our

apprehension of space is a priori ; the two following purport

to prove that this apprehension is a sense intuition or perception,

not a conception of the understanding?

Before stating them, however, attention must be called to

the possibility of discriminating, and the test or tests for dis

criminating, between that which is /^rceived and that which

is conceived. Kant teaches 3 that in "the representation of a

body," for instance, we can isolate what is reached by concep

tion, " substance, force, divisibility, etc," from what is given

in sensation and reached through perception. But this is not

so ; for whatever we can perceive we can also conceive or think :

the distinction between perception and thought or conception,

so far as what they represent to our consciousness is concerned,

consists in this, that what we apprehend by the former as concrete

and individual we apprehend by the latter as abstract and universal.

Even the most concrete and individual datum revealed to me

in sense perception, e.g. " this individual instance of this par

ticular shade of redness," I can and do also conceive or think of

as "a particular kind of shade of redness of which this is an

individual instance, and of which there are or can be an in

definite plurality of other instances ".

A. Kant s first argument is as follows :

Space is not a discursive or so-called general concept of the relation

of things in general, but a pure intuition. For, first of all, we can imagine

one space only, and if we speak of many spaces, we mean parts only of one

and the same space. Nor can these parts be considered as antecedent to

the one and all-embracing space and, as it were, its component parts out

of which an aggregate is formed, but they can be thought of as existing

within it only. Space is essentially one ; its multiplicity, and therefore the

general concept of spaces in general, arises entirely from limitations. Hence

it follows that, with respect to space, an intuition a priori, which is not

empirical, must form the foundation of all conceptions of space. In the same

manner all geometrical principles, e.g. " that in every triangle two sides

together are greater than the third," are never to be derived from the general

concepts of side and triangle , but from an intuition, and that a priori, with

apodeictic certainty. 4

1 C/. MAKER, Psychology (4th edit.), pp. 118-19. 8 c f- supra, p. 191, n.

3 Critique, p. 17, quoted vol. i., 51. < Ibid., pp. 19-20.

VOL. II. 13

1 94 THE OK Y OF KNO WLEDGE

Here Kant s conclusion is not what we should expect, viz.

that space is a form of a priori perception, but that it is an

actual a priori perception. He argues that because imagined

space is one, unique, numerically individual, whereof there

cannot be a plurality of instances, it must be apprehended by

perception, not conception ; inasmuch as what is apprehended

by conception is apprehended as universal, as having an inde

finite plurality of instances. In other words, he uses the proper

test to distinguish perception from conception. Unfortunately,

however, he misapplies it. The actual process is precisely the

one which he says it is not. We first perceive empirically,

through visual, tactual, and motor sensations, a plurality of

individual extended bodies in their individual spatial relations

with one another. We do not and cannot perceive empirically

more than limited portions of the whole physical or spatial

universe. But our imagination can and does multiply these by

extending or pushing out their limits indefinitely. Simultane

ously our thought seizes the homogeneous extensional or spatial

aspect of what is thus presented in imagination, and conceiving

this aspect in the abstract, apart from the concrete, extended

bodies in which it was presented, thus forms the abstract and

universal concept of space. Accompanying this is the vague

imagination image of a vast, indefinite void, the phantasm

corresponding to the intellectual concept. It is not true, there

fore, that we perceive space as a whole, first or last, a priori or

otherwise ; we perceive individual bodies with their individual

extension and spatial relations. It is not true that "we can

imagine one space only " ; we imagine the individual perceived

bodies and their spatial relations as forming one totality extend

ing indefinitely. These "parts" are imagined " antecedent to

the one all-embracing space," and the imagination of the

latter is derived from that of the former by multiplication of the

parts or extension of the limits. And meantime the abstractive

process of thought or conception apprehends, even in the first

empirical percept of a definite and limited plurality of extended

and spatially related bodies, the nature of space as a universal, 1

as applicable to an indefinite plurality of such perceived in

stances, and as (like every other abstract and universal thought-

object, e.g. colouredness in general) one and homogeneous in all its

possible instances. Kant s statement that " space is essentially

1 Cf. MAKER, Psychology (4th edit.), pp. 371-2.

KANTS THEORY OF SENSE PERCEPTION, ETC. 195

one" is ambiguous, for it may mean (i) that space as a universal,

i.e. as apprehended by abstract thought or conception, is one

and homogeneous in all its instances (as is "colouredness," or

any other universal, in all its instances) ; or (2) that the totality

of spaces, or instances of space, forms numerically one whole

or collection of parts or instances (just as the totality of colours

forms numerically one collection of colours). 1 But in the

former sense its apprehension as a universal is not antecedent

to the apprehension of its individual instances. And in the

latter sense it cannot possibly be perceived empirically, or

imagined antecedently to empirical perception ; nor is there any

need to suppose that it is or can be either perceived or conceived

a priori, for it is really a totality of empirically imagined and

conceived homogeneous parts or instances, and not a whole

apprehended a priori, by the division of which we would come

to apprehend, consciously and empirically, individual parts or

instances of space in the concrete.

B. His second argument to prove space an a priori percept

and not a concept is as follows :

Space is represented as an infinite given quantity. Now it is quite true

that every concept is to be thought of as a representation, which is contained in

an infinite number of different possible representations (as their common

characteristic), and therefore comprehends them : but no concept, as such, can

be thought as if it contained in itself an infinite number of representations.

Nevertheless, space is so thought (for all parts of infinite space exist simul

taneously). Consequently the original representation of space is an intuition

a priori and not a concept. 2

In other words, though a concept implies an indefinite

multitude of individuals which come under it, the elements which

constitute the concept itself (objectively : the mental object as

conceived) cannot be indefinite ; but the elements that constitute

space are indefinite ; therefore it is a percept, not a concept.

The reply is that although the elements or "notes" which

1 This is the elementary logical distinction between the intension and the extension

of a concept. Cf. Science of Logic, i., pp. 48 sqq. The totality of individual instances

of colour is of course a discrete quantity (qitantitas discreta) or multitude, while the

totality of individual instances of space is a continuous quantity (quantitas contimtd)

or magnitude : any perceived finite space being not merely an instance of the

conceived universal, an instance in which the nature of space is realized, but also

(owing to the peculiar nature of space as indefinitely divisible) a part (itself in

definitely divisible) of a larger perceivable or imaginable space. Cf. Science of Logic,

i., 39, PP- 86-7.

2 Critique (2nd edit.), p. 728.

13*

1 9 6 THEOR V OF KNO W LEDGE

constitute the connotation of a complex concept cannot be indefi

nite, still the conceived object may be of such a nature as to be

seen to be indefinitely divisible into homogeneous integral parts

which parts form its instances or denotation. And this is true

of space whether we think of it as finite or as indefinite. The argu

ment confounds multiplicity of the notes or elements which give

the nature of an object, i.e. the intension of the mental represen

tation, with the indefinite multiplicity of instances of the object,

i.e. the extension of the mental representation. Space is, no doubt,

thought of as containing, or applying to, an indefinite multiplicity

of parts or instances; but it is likewise thought of as being in its

nature comparatively simple, involving merely the notes of quan

tity and relation.

Space apprehended in the absence of limits, or as indefinite,

cannot be an object of empirical perception : we only perceive

extended bodies. Nor, indeed, can it be an object of empirical

imagination, for the imagination must have some sense-element

in its images, and when we are said to imagine empty space,

what really happens is that we think away all perceived and

imagined bodies and thus conceive empty space.

In contending that space must be a percept or intuition, and

not a concept, Kant is clearly under the influence of the assump

tion that only in intuition is anything given directly to the mind ;

that conception, since it represents a representation, 1 is twice re

moved from the phenomenon, which it is supposed to represent

only mediately, and three times removed from the extramental

reality, the last remove rendering the latter unknowable.