Categorial Necessity and Categorial Illusion

Abstract

In Chap. 9, I elucidate further my position on the two-step proof, and specifically what, in my view, it means for Kant to say that categories are necessarily instantiated in all of our determinative judgements solely in virtue of the act of transcendental apperception. In this context, I also address a related issue, namely, whether there can be cases of categorial illusion, cases for which it seems that the categories are instantiated in our judgements but where in fact categories turn out not to be instantiated. I argue that the idea of categorial illusion is based on a conflation of the necessary categorial application in Kant’s (transcendental) sense and cases of empirical illusion. It is therefore not something we should worry about. The exemplification of the categories in a determinative judgement about an object necessarily entails the exemplification of the categories in the object of judgement.

Notes

• 1. See the discussion in Schulting (2017:222–223, 314), and Chap. 6, this volume.

• 2. Note the difference between a false judgement about an object and a judgement about an illusionary object. As I pointed out in KRS (Schulting 2017:120), giving the example of the bloody dagger in Macbeth (‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still’, W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, II.1), a judgement about an illusionary object is not a false judgement about an object that is in fact not there, rather on Kant’s account such a judgement amounts to a hallucination, and is strictly speaking not a judgement. This is different from judgements or statements about transcendent entities, which are neither true nor false: they just lack the criterion for real possibility and are therefore merely speculative at best (see further below).

• 3. See further Schulting (2018, Chap. 7) on the relation between the combination and unity of one’s representations