AN INTENSIONAL VIEW OF JUDGMENT IN KANT’S KRV

This paper presents an elucidation of Kant’s notion of judgment, which clearly is a central challenge to the understanding of the Critic of Pure Reason, as well as of the Transcendental Idealism. In contrast to contemporary interpretation, but taking it as starting point, the following theses will be endorsed here: i) the synthesis of judgment expresses a conceptual relation understood as subordination in traditional Aristotelian logical scheme; ii) the logical form of judgment does not comprise intuitions (or singular representations); iii) the relation to intuition is not a judgment concern; iv) the response to the question about the ‘x’ that grounds the conceptual relation in judgments must be sought in transcendental aspects: 1) on construction in pure form of intuition, 2) in experience and 3) in the requirements to experience, respectively to mathematical, empirical, and philosophical 1 IFSUL – Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia Sul-rio-grandense / CNPq – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, Brazil. Evandro C. Godoy 132 Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 44, n. 1, pp. 131-148, Jan.-Mar. 2021. judgments. The overall purpose is to build up an understanding of judgment that supports a latter assessment of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. The aim of this paper is to elucidate Kant’s conception of judgment. A correct interpretation of the central proposal of the critical program, the enquiry concerning the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments, obviously depends on a correct interpretation of judgment, which in turn depends on determining how predication, and the logical subordination of the subject to the predicate, may (or must) be conceived. As these things are not quite clear in the Critique of Pure Reason2, it seems productive to search for more elements in the logical and historical contexts. The contemporary interpretation tends to fluctuate between two approaches to judgment, one supported by a conception derived from analytic philosophy, and the other from Port-Royal Logic. The analytical interpretation supposes, implicitly or explicitly, that it is possible to read the ‘function of unity among our representations’ (KrV, A69/B94) as the subsumption of an object under a function, in FregeRussellian style3. On the other hand, the reading from PortRoyal adopts a historically more acceptable point of view, explaining judgment as predication in the scheme of Aristotelian logic, plus some novelties of modernity. The view from Port-Royal takes judgment as, or at least involves, the subordination of a singular under a universal representation4. Indeed, the dispute of the readings relies on 2 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, henceforth KrV, quoted and referred to in its two editions, A and B, as usual. 3 See, for instance, Schulthess (1981) and Strawson (1999). 4 See Pariente (1985), Brandt (1995) and Longuenesse (2000). Hanna (2018) takes a position closer to this, with respect to the An Intensional View of Judgment in Kant ́s KRV 133 Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 44, n. 1, pp. 131-148, Jan.-Mar. 2021. the predicative relation established between a singular representation (an intuition) and a general representation (a concept) from an extensional perspective. This paper starts from a critique of these views and presents a reading of judgment as subordination only of general representations, based on exegetical and historical analysis, whence the prominence of the intensional aspect imposes itself. The analytical interpretation offers a view of subordination in conformity with the reading of subsumption in the model of predicate calculus: roughly speaking, as an object ‘x’ falling under a function ‘F’, described in the expression ‘F(x)’. Beyond the explicit connection to Aristotelian logic, stated in the introduction of KrV (B viii), it seems problematic to assume this interpretation for at least two more reasons: the unrestricted transitivity of subordination must be denied in this approach, and it imposes constraints on immediate inferences of categorical propositions. One Aristotelian (The Categories V, 3b, 5, In: Aristotle (1962)) basic thesis about predication is that it is a transitive relation in the sense that if P is predicated of S, then whatever S is predicated of, P must also be predicated of. This feature is the first and principal characteristic of the classical theory of predication (Angelelli, 2004). On the other hand, subordination in contemporary logic cannot be transitive, and its understanding of predication differs from this scheme. Indeed, it distinguishes between subsumption, an object falling under a concept, and a concept falling under a concept of a higher order, and none of these relations can be transitive. The second reason is that this interpretation of subordination marks a difference among the ranges of valid inferences: in classical Aristotelian logic, the immediate predicative judgments, but, on the other hand, flirts with analytical perspective, when explaining disjunctive and hypothetical judgments as having essentially truth-functional form. Evandro C. Godoy 134 Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 44, n. 1, pp. 131-148, Jan.-Mar. 2021. inference from universal categorical propositions to particulars of the same quality is possible for all terms (e.g., All S is P implies Some S is P). However, in the interpretation from predicate calculus, this inference is blocked in the cases where S does not refer (e.g., when S is a ‘unicorn’, it is not a good inference from Ɐx (Sx → Px) to Ǝx (Sx ^ Px)). Church (1965) addresses this point and reveals an existential commitment in the modern account that is absent from the ancient scheme. On the other hand, the interpretation from Port-Royal approaches the question by taking judgment to be the ordination of representations, under the scheme of traditional predication (S is P). In this reading, predication manifests at least three aspects: it is transitive, as explained above; it is a subordination, given that it classifies representations as superior/genus or inferior/species; and it has an intensional and an extensional aspect. Since the Aristotelian Organon (Prior Analytics, I, xxvii, 43a, 25f, (In: Aristotle, 1962, p. 337)), predication has been presented as a relation, such that if P is a predicate of S, P is superior to S, and S is inferior to P. Taking the hierarchizing further, P is genus and S is species, and so it is appropriate to look for the highest genus and the minimal species (species ínfima). The distinction between intensional and extensional aspects of subordination was introduced only later in history, in the Port-Royal Logic (Arnauld and Nicole, 1992), where it is presented as “l’éntendue” (extension) and “la compréhension” (comprehension) of universal ideas. The extension refers to the subjects to which an idea applies, which are its inferiors, in relation to which the idea is superior (e.g. the idea of a triangle that has in its extension all the different species of triangles). The comprehension refers to those attributes that an idea involves in itself, e.g. the idea of triangle includes the ideas of figure, three lines, three angles, etc. (Arnauld and Nicole, 1992, p. 51-53). An Intensional View of Judgment in Kant ́s KRV 135 Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 44, n. 1, pp. 131-148, Jan.-Mar. 2021. Next, the authors (Ibid.) propose that restriction of comprehension destroys the idea, while extension can be restricted in two different ways. An idea can have its extension restricted by the union (joignant) with another distinct idea, for instance, the union of the general idea of triangle with having a right angle, and so lead to the idea of triangle rectangle. The second way to restrict the extension is by adding an indistinct, undetermined idea of some (partie), which recalls what Kant called the form of particular judgment. The ‘destruction’ of an idea by restriction of its comprehension is not quite clear, but it expresses (in a context where the logic is chiefly psychological, but not subjective) the understanding that concepts can have an empty extension but cannot have an empty comprehension.5 Later, Leibniz gave a formulation to this distinction that sounds more like the formulation of the law of inverse reciprocity between intension and extension found in Kant’s lectures on logic. In the New Essays (Leibniz, 1900, p. 523), Theophilus states that, in the judgment ‘All man is animal’6, 5 It is reasonable to suppose that even “le supreme de tous les generes”, the supreme genus, explained as a genus that cannot be a species, may have some mark in it, although not over it. At the other end of the hierarchy, according to La Logique (Arnauld and Nicole, 1992, p.53) there are ideas that cannot be genus, the ‘singular ideas’ that are the minimal species (“espèce dernière” or “species infima”). 6 In the original French: ‘tout home est animal’. To preserve a link with the Aristotelian tradition, here and henceforth the singular form will be maintained in categorical propositions. As Ian Wilks notes, “[w]hile it is comfortable and intuitive to an English speaker to pluralize both subject and predicate terms in a proposition like ‘All men are animals’, the practice initiated by Aristotle and transmitted by Boethius is to formulate the proposition with both terms in the singular: ‘All man is animal’ (Omnis homo est animal). This way of speaking can be taken quite literally as representing the content of the proposition”. (WILKS, 2008, p. 85). Evandro C. Godoy 136 Manuscrito – Rev. Int. Fil. Campinas, v. 44, n. 1, pp. 131-148, Jan.-Mar. 2021. “animal includes more individuals than man, but man includes more ideas or more formalities; the one has more examples, the other more degrees of reality; the one more extension, the other more intension.7” (NE, IV, xvii, 8) In turn, Jäsche’s text formulates it as “the content (Inhalt) an