Kant’s Opinion of Thoughts, Content, Intuitions, and Concepts

Kant, unlike previous philosophers, he didn't believe that we had innate ideas; that is, we could not simply know something within our minds without having any sensibility. Kant also disagreed with empiricism because, according to him, there was no way to justify that any form of a posteriori knowledge could have any "universal and necessary validity" (Introduction, pgs. 2-3.) Kant did believe that while our ideas didn't derive from empiricism, in other words, our sense-experience, we haven't had any way of utilizing ideas without sensory experience. As he says in his writing, "But experience is the product both of external objects affecting our sensibility and of the operation of our cognitive faculties in response to this effect (AI, BI)" (pg. 6.) So, while we don't come across the ideas separate from experience-because even our conceptions of time and space require an inner sensibility-having experience without ideas would be void of a key component as well.

In this essay, I will be utilizing Kant's explanation in the Critique of Pure Reason to better explain the reason why thoughts need content and intuitions need concepts. I will define the meaning of content, intuition, thinking, and concepts in the way that Kant uses the terms to eliminate possible misinterpretations as well. In doing so, it'll explain Kant's quote that "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" (A51/B75).

Now, as I've heard in a lecture, when I attended the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, a professor of mine by the name of Addison Ellis mentioned that thinking is an activity which is done to itself. Therefore, there must be something which is being thought of. When we are even thinking of thinking, that itself is the act of thinking. Now bare with me because I know that sounds awkward. To get a better understanding of what thinking is, I will have to explain the various components and terms Kant uses to show the very purpose of thinking. Sensibility is our minds' ability to receive representations to the extent that it's affected. On the other hand, "the faculty for bringing forth representations itself, or the spontaneity of cognition, is the understanding" (A51/B75.) Since intuitions reside in the senses, and it can only be from how we interact with them, "the faculty for thinking of objects of sensible intuition...is the understanding. Neither of these properties is to be preferred to the other." We need thoughts to obtain understanding of the things that we perceive.

When Kant says that there is emptiness in thoughts without content, I don't think that he is implying the thoughts are nonsense. From what I interpretted; it seems as though there simply would be no thoughts if there was no content to think of. Given that all things exist within time and space-so far as we know it-it would be safe to say that all things require some form of sensibility to understand them. So, how would we be able to hold a thought of anything for it to even be deemed as nonsense? For something to be empty is for it to lack meaning, to contain nothing, or to have no elements. While nonsense is defined as something that lacks meaning, I wouldn't necessarily call thoughts without content nonsense-because there would be no thoughts to think of. Instead, I'd call it a sort of void, which is completely empty; and because all thoughts require some form of sensibility, if there is no content, or things included in these thoughts, then it would be completely empty.

To clarify, let's consider this bowl of Halloween candy. I put a bowl of Halloween candy outside of my apartment each year. Now it starts off as full till more people take the candy until there is only one piece left. The contents of my bowl are now weak-it's lacking what it once had, yet it isn't empty. It still has one in there! An optimist, however, would say that the bowl isn't empty because something still resides within it. Now, if someone comes by and takes that last piece, my bowl of candy is no longer lacking meaning, nor is it even a bowl of candy anymore. It is empty-therefore void of candy. It's just a cat bowl now. It wouldn't even be considered nonsense because there wouldn't be a knowledge of what the bowl is for because it would no longer sit outside as there would be no use for it. Again, just a cat bowl. So, in reference to Kant's claim, the thoughts aren't nonsense, they just simply would not exist because our only way of thinking is through the content that we actively think about.

To understand Kant's quote that this video is explaining, it is vital to understand what intuitions are. He plainly defines intuition as "the representation of appearance" (A42/B59.) It is the correlation between the cognitions of a thing and the objects. Now intuitions are broken into two types: pure intuition and empirical intuition. Kant says, "We are acquainted with nothing except our way of perceiving them...Space and time are its pure forms, sensation in general its matter" (A42/B59.) Appearances hold the ability for us to intuit things. According to Kant, for empirical intuitions, what we are sensing aren't simply these things without us intuiting them. It is because we relate them subjectively based on our own perceptions that they appear before us as they do. We have no knowledge of what these things are outside of us because we can only sense them through ourselves-so if they were different than what we perceive them to be, it would remain unknown to us. Ants, or even aliens, may have the ability of perceiving the world completely different than us humans, however we would only know the world as it is to us.

So, for instance, if a person had seen a pair of pants that were orange, they would know it's relation to the color without having a name or concept for orange. The difficulty with this here, is that without that conception of orangeness, it wouldn't be orange. All things orange would still exist containing that physical experience, yet the word orange would no longer hold that same correlation that it would if orangeness had been defined as being orange. Now if other beings, like an ant or a butterfly, perceived the pants as something entirely different, they would associate that appearance with the pants instead. However, all things with that appearance would still be correlated by the concept of what it is. I used this example to show that there is a difficulty even in explaining intuitions without explaining the concepts themselves. As Kant says, "if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us" (A42/B59.)

Again, intuition in matter-a posteriori intuition-isn't the only type of intuition. It's also in form, which is pure intuition. Form holds the ideas of space and time-which exist outside of the sensible. It's only possible to know of space and time prior to all forms of perception. This is different from empirical intuitions because no matter how much we attempt to advance our knowledge or understanding of things, it would remain futile because what we know is only understood through our cognitions. We can only really know that there is a form greater than the empirical-which is space and time-yet Kant believes this a priori knowledge isn't attainable. We only know of them through their relation to other things and our understanding of the relation.

Now that I've explained what the forms of intuitions are, I'll explain how Kant defines concepts. Concepts come from understanding the intuitions (A19/B33.) They are the form of intuitions. Since we can only understand things through our relation to them, the concepts must also be in relation to the appearances that are perceived by us. These appearances however can't be determined by each appearance, but rather the form of appearance. The form is "that which allows the manifold of appearance to be ordered in certain relations" (A20/B34.) It is what connects all things of certain categories. Think of the color orange as I mentioned before-or even red. All things orange, or red, exists in direct relation to its form of orangeness, or redness. The form is what already exists a priori. Appearances cannot exist without the form of appearance because it's through them that appearances are able to be understood. As Kant states in A20/B34, "the pure form of sensible intuitions in general is to be encountered in the mind a priori, wherein all of the manifold of appearances is intuited in certain relation. This pure form of sensibility itself is also called pure intuition." So, when Kant says that "intuitions without concepts are blind" he's saying that you quite simply cannot have one without the other because you would be incapable of understanding what it is that you are sensing. "Intuitions and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all our cognitions, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a cognition" (A50/B74.) Knowledge, which is a consciousness of a unity requires a unity of a manifold. A manifold is the unity of an act of ordering many representations under one. The lack of understanding not only stops the ability of judging, but it halts the capability of unity because unity requires understanding.

To conclude, when Kant says that "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" (A51/B75) he means that the opposites rely on one another. If we cannot understand the objects before us, then we can't even create a thought of them. It also goes to show that if we have no sensibility of the objects, then quite simply for us there are no objects to perceive. It's like a loop. If we don't have feet, then we can't have shoes; whereas we wouldn't need shoes if we didn't have feet. While one doesn't create the other, they rely on one another to create a unity of cognition--a unity of knowledge. The senses have no way of thinking just as the understanding cannot intuit anything. In this video, I have done my best to explain Kant's definitions of thinking, content, intuition, and concepts. In doing so, I hope that it has given reasoning to show why thoughts require content and intuitions require concepts.