A bit of context for that passage would be helpful. Otherwise I'd have to check the text myself to really answer.

Note that Kant says he "cannot rest in" the intuitions, which could simply mean that intuitions are not yet knowledge - something else is required.

Why does he say that he cannot use the term intuition if they are to become knowledge?



Another interpretation would be the cosmological computer brain. Intuition would be like the hardware of the computer/brain itself ( representing things-in-themselves). Experience would be the software programming.

Intuition then can be thought of as an innate, a priori thing in itself. A fixed property of conscious existence.

Consider this example of a propositional statement/judgement:

1. Every event must have a cause.

That's called a synthetic a priori judgment. It's a synthesis of two concepts: experience and innate/fixed or what psychologists would call, intrinsic intuition.

So we know the statement is partially true but we're not exactly certain because we have not experienced every event.

Therefore, we have something else that exists that causes us to make that judgment or ask that question (every event must have a cause). Thus Kant's " Intuition".

The irony is, physical science almost always uses synthetic propositions to carry forward thought about something that they feel needs to be discovered. So Kant was on to something... .

Beyond that, I think Kant talked about transcendental inquiries and things like noumena, and so on.

As an analogy Kant means that ‘intuition’ is the canvas (spacial-temporal) and what we sense is the paint.

We cannot have knowledge of our means of having knowledge. We cannot ‘unsee’ what we are seeing anymore than we can see what is never an item of vision.

Note: this isn’t my opinion. Kant’s use of the term ‘intuition’ is nothing like how we use the term today - it catches a few people out from time to time. He says, very clearly, there are ‘two pure forms of sensible intuition’ referring to a prior, these being ‘space and time’. Just to be clear he doesn’t mean physical space and time.

“Intuition” & “representation”, in strict & proper Kantian terminology, are interchangeable words, i.e., synonyms; accordingly, there are three different kinds of intuitions or representations, namely, “pure”, “empirical”, & “intellectual” or “categorical.”

Correspondingly, an “object” is what is intuited or represented, by a given subject, in the three possible manners aforementioned.

Now as to the question that you ask, why intuitions aren’t to be considered as knowledge? I can’t answer now due to both place & time constraints, but I’ll check back later & give an answer when I’m home & have more time.

Note: this isn’t my opinion. Kant’s use of the term ‘intuition’ is nothing like how we use the term today - it catches a few people out from time to time. He says, very clearly, there are ‘two pure forms of sensible intuition’ referring to a prior, these being ‘space and time’. Just to be clear he doesn’t mean physical space and time. — I like sushi

This is mostly on point, I just wanted to note that Kant doesn't use the term "intuition" at all. He uses the term "Anschauung". There is a german term for "intuition" - it's "Intuition". Another possible way to translate "Anschauung", would be "perception". This would clash with other terms, but it may be easier to grasp what Kant means - the basic ability to perceive things at all.

“Intuition” & “representation”, in proper & strict Kantian terminology, are interchangeable words, i.e., synonyms; accordingly, there are different three kinds of intuitions or representations, namely, “pure”, “empirical”, & “intellectual” or “categorical.” — aRealidealist

In the section in question, Kant does use two different german words - Anschauung (intuition) and Vorstellung (representation). We could perhaps say that the representation is a specific kind of intuition - one that represents an object.

I don’t see how, as no intuition cannot not be a representation, thus the latter cannot be a mere sub-set of the former. That’s the whole case with Kant, we can never intuit things as they are in themselves, but only representations of these, thus all of our intuitions are representations (they’re no different).

Why does he say that he cannot use the term intuition if they are to become knowledge? — Atharva Dingankar

An intuition does not become knowledge; it is the first stage in representing a real external object of which we may have a posteriori knowledge. We “...cannot rest on these intuitions...” because they are, while absolutely necessary, entirely insufficient by themselves for acquiring knowledge of anything. Intuition makes knowledge possible, but are not themselves knowledge, or even knowable as such, described rather as “...forms of objects residing in the mind, in which all the manifold content of the phenomenal world is arranged and viewed under certain relations....”.

The “...if they are to become knowledge...” refers to the objects of sensibility, represented by the term “appearance”, which then must relate to an intuition or manifold of intuitions, by means of the imagination under rules called “schema”, which then become “the yet unnamed objects” called phenomena.

One must be very careful, and very exact, with respect to the Kantian epistemological system. “...if they are to become knowledge...” makes explicit the object presented to sensibility is not already known, it is something new, of which there is no extant experience. It follows that objects of which there is no experience cannot have its own intuition, which is the primary ground for Kant’s refutation of Hume’s rejection of a priori reason and “reason is merely the slave of the passions...”.

Good stuff!!

Thanks, but with Kant, one is not often sure he’s got it right. Mostly his fault, though.....he didn’t write for us common folk, doncha know. He wrote for the university professors of his day, and to quietly take sides in the Mendelssohn/Jacobi pantheistic Spinoza-isms running rampant in Germany and France at the time.

Yeah I don't think it's an all or nothing dichotomization exercise though.

Some stuff was very useful. With respect to intuition, it seems he got that one right. Like I alluded to in my earlier post here, synthetic propositions are the mainstay in the sciences... .

The point is there's much more to living life than pure reason.

Sorry....what dichotomy are we talking about here?

Yeah, I suppose. Still, anyone living life, no matter the how, if he should internally examine any part of it whatsoever, he must use pure reason to do it. Maybe it has a different name these days, but that’s still what it is, for all intents and purposes.

In other words I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater LoL. Some of his stuff was obviously very impactful and still useful to this day.

I'm not sure I'm following you on the examined life introspection thing though. I believe that was part of his critique or concern that there were limits to pure reason; the a priori.

In this case, as opposed to sensory experiences we gain from living life.

Be well.