Varieties of Subjective Judgments

Varieties of Subjective Judgments: Judgments of Perception 269
Varieties of Subjective Judgments: Judgments of Perception

by Brigitte Sassen, Hamilton/Ontario
What is one to make of Kants judgments of perception? On the reading I propose
in this paper, they appear in the Prolegomena, as subjective counterparts of judg-
ments of experience with which Kant was primarily concerned,
1
in the second edi-
tion of the Critique of Pure Reason, as unities of consciousness based merely on
principles of association, not categories (KrV, B 139143),
2
and arguably in the
Critique of Judgment, as judgments of the merely agreeable (KU, AA 05: 20314).
Although to some extent distinct, all of these judgments are subjective, and thus
present a problem for a philosophy that links judgment to objectivity. Since the role
they played throughout the critical philosophy was a minor comparative one, they
could simply be rejected on the ground of inconsistency, as has indeed been done by
some commentators.
3
Rather than focus on this point, which I take to be correct,
1
Prol, AA 04: 297299.
2
Admittedly, not everyone treats judgments based on principles of associations (not cat-
egories) as fundamentally the same as judgments of perception. Longuenesse, for instance,
argues that the accounts that Kant offered in the Prolegomena and in 19 of the Critique
involve different standpoints and method. Whereas the Prolegomena set out a distinction be-
tween empirically subjective and objective judgments, the distinction in the Critique has to do
with the logical form of judgment. While the Prolegomena distinction may be one between
two types of empirical judgments, the Critique distinction is of two origins of judgment.
See Batrice Longuenesse: Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the
Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Princeton 1998, 180188.
Allison considers the Critiques distinction between subjective and objective unity to be
a change of subject rather than a correction of the formers [Prolegomenas] distinction be-
tween two kinds of judgment. In fact, he continues to argue that the appearance of conflict
between the Prolegomena and B-edition of the Critique may be significantly mitigated []
by a consideration of the contexts and methodological constraints of the two accounts. See
Henry E. Allison: Kants Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, revised
and enlarged edition. New Haven 2004, 178f. Unless otherwise noted, I will refer to this
edition of Kants Transcendental Idealism.
In contrast to these interpretations, I treat judgments of perception and their counterpart in
the Critique of Pure Reason together and develop a further distinction between judgments of
perception and judgments of the merely agreeable. Longuenesses and Allisons reluctance to
consider judgments and associations of perception to be fundamentally the same might spring
from the fact that they do not make this distinction, at least not along the lines I propose here.
3
According to Kemp Smith, for instance, the distinction is entirely worthless and can only
serve to mislead the reader ultimately because, not involving the categories of the under-
standing, the notion of judgments of perception cuts to the very root of Kants critical
teaching. Norman Kemp Smith: A Commentary to Kants Critique of Pure Reason. New
York 1962, 288.
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270 Brigitte Sassen
I will offer a historical/contextual account. More specifically, after briefly setting
out Kants conception of judgment in general, which should identify the problem of
subjective judgment more precisely, I will consider both judgments of perception (A)
and judgments of the merely agreeable (A') to see what might have prompted Kant
to introduce these judgments so strikingly at odds with the main tenet of the theo-
retical philosophy: the objectivity of judgments.
4
Since the primary subject matter
of this paper centers around Kants subjective judgments, the subjective judgments
of taste of the Critique of Judgment should arguably be considered in this context as
well, but given that they are the reflective judgments of aesthetics, not the determi-
nate judgments of theoretical philosophy, they need to be considered separately.
5
I Judgment
Since judgments of perception were first introduced in the Prolegomena, the fol-
lowing very brief account begins with what Kant said about judgment there. At this
point, he defined judgment as the Vereinigung der Vorstellungen in einem Bewut-
sein (Prol, AA 04: 304.3031). This minimal definition presumably covers a var-
iety of combinations, including subjective and objective ones, and Kant seems to
have been thinking along these lines there. He linked the subjective combination to
Guyer maintains, similarly, that the notion of judgments of perception cannot be recon-
ciled with the assumption that categories figure in any form of self-consciousness at all and
attributes Kants continued adherence to this notion to his fundamental ambivalence about
the proper premise for the transcendental deduction. Paul Guyer: Kant and the Claims of
Knowledge. Cambridge 1987, 101.
For a selection of alternate interpretations of judgments of perception see, for instance,
Gerold Prauss: Erscheinung bei Kant: Ein Problem der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Berlin
1971; Longuenesse: Kant and the Capacity to Judge, chapter 7; Lewis White Beck: Did the
Sage of Knigsberg Have No Dreams? In: Kants Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. by Patricia
Kitcher. Oxford 1998, 103116.
4
In a recent paper, Rhoda Kotzin and Jrg Baumgrtner undertake a project that is not dis-
similar from the one I take up here. That is, they seek to account for some of Kants more
troublesome examples (of sensation, sensible qualities, judgments of perception) in order to
find the critical lesson they are supposed to convey. Rhoda Kotzin and Jrg Baumgrtner:
Sensation and Judgments of Perception: Diagnosis and Rehabilitation of some of Kants
Misleading Examples. In: Kant-Studien 89, 1990, 401412. While the basic approach
might be similar, however, they do not locate judgments of perception in a historical con-
text, which is what I propose to do.
5
In determinate judgments, we subsume intuitions under concepts, thus determining both the
concepts, which are empty without intuitions, and the intuitions, which are blind without
concepts (KrV, B 75). Reflection, by contrast, means gegebene Vorstellungen entweder mit
andern, oder mit seinem Erkenntnivermgen, in Beziehung auf einen dadurch mglichen
Begriff, zu vergleichen und zusammen zu halten (EEKU, AA 20: 211.1416). In other
words, while in determinate judgments we subsume intuitions under concepts already given,
in reflective judgments they are subsumed under concepts to be identified through the pro-
cess of reflection (KU, AA 05: 179).
an individual consciousness, and the objective combination to consciousness in gen-
eral or berhaupt (Prol, AA 04: 304.35). By the time he wrote the second edition
of the Critique, Kant seems to have realized that the Prolegomena definition was
too broad at least in its articulation to serve the critical philosophy, covering more
types of combinations than should really be included here. Most seriously, it fails to
properly differentiate between subjective combinations of representations and ob-
jective ones, to specify, if you will, what is really entailed by a combination in the
one consciousness that is required for judgment. In the Critique, Kant demonstrated
that only objective combinations are such combinations, and are judgments in the
critical sense of the term.
Judgments, in Kants view, determinate judgments at any rate with which I am
in the first instance concerned here, are intimately connected to objects. The notions
of object and objectivity were difficult ones for Kant, as they certainly were for his
early readers.
6
The objectivity of a judgment does not emerge, as his early readers
would have thought and as common sense dictates, simply from its reference to
a mind-independent external object. Although Kant did speak of a correspondence
to objects (Prol, AA 04: 298.11), these objects are not mind-independent things in
themselves. Quite the contrary. Objects, as phenomena, are themselves generated
through judgments: Object [] ist das, in dessen Begriff das Mannigfaltige einer
gegebenen Anschauung vereinigt ist (KrV, B 137). For a unity (the Vereinigung
der Vorstellungen in einem Bewutsein) to be objective, the transcendental syn-
thesis of apperception is required, and, as Kant further specified the one conscious-
ness of the Prolegomena: ein Urtheil [ist] nichts anderes [], als die Art, gegebene
Erkenntnisse zur objectiven Einheit der Apperception zu bringen (KrV, B 141).
Not itself a concept, apperception is an act of synthesis, the combination in one con-
sciousness that is not merely a subjective individual consciousness. For the combi-
nation of representations to generate knowledge, to pertain to objects, it has to
transcend the subjective dimension. Consciousness berhaupt is the conscious-
ness that has accomplished this, and it has done so in virtue of processing through
the categories.
7
Although the one consciousness appears in the Prolegomena defini-
tion, accordingly, it is not sufficiently specified.
For a judgment to be objective, indeed for a judgment to even be a judgment (in
the critical sense of the term), accordingly, its processing must be governed by the
categories. One wonders just what this means concretely, a question to which I will
return below, but one also wonders about the implication this claim has for judg-
6
On the interpretive difficulties Kants very early critics had see Brigitte Sassen: Kants Early
Critics: The Empiricist Reception of the Critical Philosophy. Cambridge 2000.
7
The I think that must accompany all our representations (transcendental unity of apper-
ception) is not merely I, the individual subject, think[s] but We, human knowers in general
think. We think, however, not by common consent, but necessarily, in virtue of the transcen-
dental conditions of knowledge. We dont think alike in all aspects of the cognitive enter-
prise, of course, but in Kants view the structural aspects of our knowledge are a given we
intuit in a certain way, and we combine these intuitions in a certain way.
272 Brigitte Sassen
ments of perception. Given the link of judgment and objectivity, and the subjectivity
of the latter, one has to ask what would make a judgment subjective. If a judgment is
objective (and a judgment) in virtue of processing through the categories (thus gen-
erating objects and a realm of intersubjectivity), then, presumably, a judgment is
subjective if its processing is not so governed. An immediate consequence of this is
that such judgments cannot have a legitimate objective reference; they cannot be
about objects. It also seems to follow that they cannot be judgments proper. Con-
versely, for subjective judgments to be judgments, an interpretation must be offered
on which categories are involved in some sense. In that case, however, one has to
wonder how the categories are involved and what would make such judgments sub-
jective.
8
These various parameters of the difficulties surrounding subjective judg-
ments set out, let me turn to judgments of perception, keeping in mind that my con-
cern is not to defend judgments of perception against the charge of inconsistency.
9
To reiterate, my aim is to determine and assess the purpose(s) the introduction of
the two versions (see below) of judgments of perception were likely to serve. In the
course of these investigations, both the objectivity and the subjectivity of judgments
will be explored in more detail.
II Judgments of Perception (A)
The immediate problem with Kants account of judgments of perception is that it
involves two insufficiently differentiated versions of this type of judgment, the judg-
ment of perception proper (hereafter identified as A), which reappears in the
Critique of Pure Reason, and the judgment of the merely agreeable or pleasurable
(hereafter A'), which plays a more appropriate role in the Critique of Judgment.
10
This emerges both from the basic account(s) provided and from the examples Kant
introduced. Judgments of type A bedrfen [] nur der logischen Verknpfung der
8
Those who maintain that categories must be involved in judgments of perception generally
make this point with respect to a version of the judgment I later interpret as judgment of
the merely agreeable, not judgments of perception proper, but they also maintain, as do I,
that such judgments, while they have subjective objects (that is, objects only accessible to
a subject) are objective, not subjective. See Beck: Did the Sage of Knigsberg Have No
Dreams? 112114.
Prauss agrees that to be judgments, judgments of perception must involve the categories,
but, in an effort to defend the notion, maintains that to be subjective, they have to involve
the categories in a special way (Erscheinung bei Kant, 196). To make this work, he pro-
poses an interpretation of such judgments as about our subjective states, our sensations,
perceptions, appearances, but not as interpreted with a view to an object (ibid., 189).
A critical evaluation of this position would require a paper of its own. See, for instance, Jrg
Freudiger: Zum Problem der Wahrnehmungsurteile in Kants theoretischer Philosophie.
In: Kant-Studien 71, 1981, 414435, particularly 422424. See also, Kotzin/Baumgrtner:
Sensation and Judgments of Perception, 407409.
9
For references to some of these debates, see note 3 above.
10
Judgments of experience will henceforth be identified as C, those of taste as B.
Wahrnehmungen in einem denkenden Subject (Prol, AA 04: 298.34) and are rep-
resented by these examples: wenn die Sonne den Stein bescheint, so wird er
warm; die Luft ist elastisch.
11
Those of type A', by contrast, drcken nur eine
Beziehung zweier Empfindungen auf dasselbe Subject, nmlich mich selbst and auch
nur in meinem diesmaligen Zustande der Wahrnehmungen, aus (Prol, AA 04:
299.1315): das Zimmer [ist] warm, der Zucker s, der Wermuth widrig (Prol,
AA 04: 299.1011). Significantly, only the first type has a logical counterpart in
judgments of experience (hereafter identified as C): die Sonne erwrmt den Stein;
die Luft ist elastisch. Unlike A, experience requires that diese Verknpfung
unter einer Bedingung stehe, welche sie allgemein gltig macht (Prol, AA 04:
299.2425). That means, Kant further specified, that ich jederzeit und auch jeder-
mann dieselbe Wahrnehmung unter denselben Umstnden nothwendig verbinden
msse (Prol, AA 04: 299.2627). A', by contrast, pertain only to Gefhl, and
can in principle not become judgments of experience, wenn man auch einen Ver-
standesbegriff hinzu thte (Prol, AA 04: 299 note. 2930). I have designated A as
judgments of perception proper for two reasons: they can be transformed into judg-
ments of experience, and they reappear in slightly different form in the Critique of
Pure Reason as combinations involving principles of association, not categories.
12
So far all of this seems clear. The distinction Kant wanted to make involves the
question of what is at the root of the universal validity of judgments. In a circuitous
way that has to do with objective reference (Prol, AA 04: 298.11). I say circuitous
because the objective reference does not originate with the unmittelbaren Erkennt-
ni des Gegenstandes (Prol, AA 04: 2989.3637). Rather, as I have already indi-
cated, it emerges from the concepts of understanding under which a given intuition,
or set of intuitions, is subsumed. This essential ingredient is precisely what judg-
ments of perception are said not to have, at least not in the same way in which judg-
ments of experience have it.
13
Judgments of perception report on a series of obser-
11
These are Kants own examples and appear in Prol, AA 04: 297301 passim and in the note
to 20, (Prol, AA 04: 301 note). One might wish that he had used more illuminating
examples, particularly since one of them (the air is elastic) figures as both the judgment of
perception and the judgment of experience.
One might wonder whether the wenn in the first example should be translated as the con-
ditional if rather than the temporal when, as is customary. This suggestion has been made
by Longuenesse: Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 177178. I am reluctant to follow her in
this regard, however, because doing so hides the temporal sequence that Kant wants to high-
light here. Allison, however, agrees with Longuenesses proposed correction. See Kants
Transcendental Idealism, 180 note 39.
12
This is in contrast to other accounts of judgments of perception. See note 17 below.
13
As already indicated (see note 7), there is considerable discussion in the literature of the
question whether categories are involved in judgments of perception and, if so, in what way,
but it must surely be the case that their role in judgments of perception, if any, cannot be the
same as the role that they play in judgments of experience. If this were the case, then there
would not be an appreciable difference between these types of judgments, and one would
have to wonder even more why Kant bothered with these judgments at all. I will return to
this point below.
274 Brigitte Sassen
vations the subject has made, combine these representations, perhaps in view of the
principles of association, but lacking (some or all of) the transcendental forms of
thought or categories, they cannot transcend the subjective dimension, except per-
haps in a very limited way. The comparison of judgments of perception and experi-
ence is to emphasize that experience (and the universality of knowledge) requires
the concepts of understanding, it cannot simply depend on perceptions, their com-
bination, or their comparison.
14
To bring this point into greater focus, consider the difference between A
15
and A'.
While Kant presented both as judgments of perception, no doubt because he con-
sidered both to be subjective counterparts to the objective judgments of experience
with which he was primarily concerned, they are not similarly subjective. As is clear
from its reappearance in the B-Deduction (KrV, B 142), A is subjective because it
concerns the subjects personal order of apprehension a function of where and
when I am in relation to the objects perceived A' is subjective because it involves
the subjects reaction to or estimation of a sensation. A could become a judgment of
experience with the addition of the appropriate conditions of knowledge, A' could
not. A is personal but not private, A' is both personal and private. I may at this point
be the only person who has had the sensations of the sun and the warm stone in this
particular order (one that suggests an association or connection of the perceptions),
but even though other people have not had that experience and may be sceptical
about the connection, I can take them to the appropriate place under the appropri-
ate conditions and, all other things being equal, they would have roughly similar
sensations in a roughly similar order. The judgment we make does not for that rea-
son become objective (universal and necessary), but it is not solely mine any longer.
Some degree of intersubjectivity, if not universality and necessity, is at least a possi-
bility with judgments of perception A. Such comparative universality, however, is
precisely what cannot be generated with A'. The evaluation of or reaction to my sen-
sation is mine alone. Those who do not react positively (or negatively) to some sen-
sation cannot be given that reaction, even if the stimulus were the same. How we es-
timate sensations, what we like (or dislike) in sensation, is a matter of our personal
histories and the manner in which the sense organs have been shaped in view of
those histories and that cannot be replicated after the fact. Although we may agree
on our liking for certain sensory tastes, this is more a matter of what we are used to
(cultural conditioning) and cannot be taken for granted cross-culturally or even
inter-culturally.
14
Clearly, much more of an account needs to be provided of objectivity and certainty of knowl-
edge, but even these few remarks should be sufficient to indicate the basic issue. For a more
detailed account that takes the second edition of the Critique into consideration see, for in-
stance, Allison: Kants Transcendental Idealism, 7796, particularly, 8789, and 159201.
15
Although these remarks on judgments of perception appear to suggest that such judgments
are actually made, I do not take this to be Kants view. On the account I set out in what fol-
lows, such judgments were introduced to represent an alternate account of knowledge the
empiricist one which Kant contrasted to the critical approach he clearly endorsed.
This difference, while it has been acknowledged by some,
16
is generally not inter-
preted along the lines I offer here.
17
Kant himself recognized it upon the initial in-
troduction of A', but he did so only vaguely. Although he initially introduced those
judgments of perception that bedrfen [] nur der logischen Verknpfung der
Wahrnehmungen in einem denkenden Subject (Prol, AA 04: 298.34), that is,
judgments of perception proper, the set of examples he listed for purposes of illus-
tration were those that exemplify judgments of the merely agreeable (A'), not A:
das Zimmer [ist] warm, der Zucker s, der Wermuth widrig (Prol, AA 04:
299.1011). Realizing that something was amiss with these examples, viz., that they
do not serve to illustrate a logische [] Verknpfung der Warhnehmungen, he
added a footnote clarifying that they cannot function as examples of judgments that
jemals Erfahrungsurtheile werden knnten, ultimately because they pertain
merely to Gefhl (Prol, AA 04: 299 note. 2930) which cannot in principle be-
come objective, and promised to deliver a better example in the next footnote. The
example we find there (Prol, AA 04: 301 note) is the one involving the sun and
warm stone, which can function both as a judgment of perception A (wenn die
Sonne den Stein bescheint, so wird er warm) and as a judgment of experience C
(die Sonner erwrmt den Stein). In the text (Prol, AA 04: 299.2122), he referred
in both contexts to die Luft ist elastisch.
18
The introduction of A', accordingly, seems to have been a mistake, indicating that
when Kant was writing the Prolegomena, the distinction he wished to introduce was
not entirely clear to him. His initial confusion must have been clarified to some ex-
tent when he wrote the second edition of the Critique. Although judgments of per-
ception were not named here, the merely logische [] Verknpfung der Wahrneh-
mungen did appear in 19 of the Deduction, although the irredeemably subjective
version of judgments of perception, the judgment of the merely agreeable, did not.
This initial distinction set out, let me consider judgments of perception (A) in
more detail. The centrally important question to be considered here is what the curi-
ous reference to the merely logischen Verknpfung of perceptions amounts to.
16
For instance, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr.: Wahrnehmungsurteile and Erfahrungsurteile Re-
considered. In: Kant-Studien 69, 1978, 341351, particularly 343345.
17
Even those who acknowledge that A and A' are fundamentally different seem to be reluctant
to treat them as distinct types of judgments of perception. Instead one or the other form is
privileged. In the first edition of Kants Transcendental Idealism, Allison, for instance, noted
that there are two types of mental operations, but treats judgments of perception as A',
which he characterizes as judgments about subjective objects. Appealing to the Critique
(B 13942) and Reflexion 6315, Allison provides a separate account of the judgments that I
have deemed judgments of perception proper (A). Kants Transcendental Idealism, New
Haven 1983, 149158. In the revised edition of the book, Allison does not simply equate
judgments of perception with judgments of the merely agreeable, but notes that Kant dis-
tinguishes between two classes of judgments of perception. Kants Transcendental Ideal-
ism, 2004, 180.
18
For an interpretation of the elastic air example, see Longuenesse: Kant and the Capacity
to Judge, 174f.
276 Brigitte Sassen
According to Longuenesse, who seems to ignore the merely (nur) in the description
of judgments of perception as bedrfen [] nur der logischen Verknpfung of
perceptions, judgments of perception are judgments because they have the logical
forms of judgments they express the relation of the concepts combined in them
to a term x representing the object thought under the subject-concept.
19
That
such judgments involve a logical connection of perceptions, however, does not
seem to be sufficient to make them judgments in the critical sense of the term, es-
pecially considering that judgments of perception are here contrasted with judg-
ments of experience. These erfordern jederzeit ber die Vorstellungen der sinn-
lichen Anschauung noch besondere, im Verstand ursprnglich erzeugte Begriffe
(Prol, AA 04: 298.57).
20
For judgments of perception to be judgments proper, ac-
cordingly, something additional is required.
21
The logical connection is contrasted to a transcendental connection or, perhaps
better, a connection forged in light of the transcendental conditions of knowledge
(the logical functions or categories). Appropriately, Kant compared subjective
(merely logical) and objective (transcendental) relations of the same represen-
tations. In the Critique, the former relation is said to be governed at most by
Gesetzen der Association, and to allow only for an observation of my personal
(though not private) sensations: wenn ich einen Krper trage, so fhle ich einen
Druck der Schwere (KrV, B 142). The latter, by contrast, is governed by the Prin-
cipien der objectiven Bestimmung aller Vorstellungen and allows me to affirm that
er, der Krper, ist schwer (KrV, B 142). Only the latter case, according to Kant,
transcends the personal dimension and holds that diese beide Vorstellungen (of
the body and the pressure of heaviness) sind im Object, d.i. ohne Unterschied des
Zustandes des Subjects, verbunden und nicht blo in der Wahrnehmung (so oft sie
auch wiederholt sein mag) beisammen (KrV, B 142). Whereas in the one case (judg-
ments of perception), the combination is merely a function of my observations and
principles of association (der logischen Verknpfung der Warhnehmungen), and
can perhaps be repeated by myself or others, in the other case (judgments of experi-
ence), the combination, being governed by the transcendental conditions of knowl-
edge, is about objects and will hold whether or not others repeat my observations.
The latter case has an objective reference, the former does not. While I can generate
intersubjectivity even with judgments of perception, this intersubjectivity is in prin-
19
Longuenesse: Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 172.
20
Longuenesse clearly recognizes that such judgments can only have the type of comparative
universality I have just described, not the objective universality the critical philosophy as-
cribes to the categories. Kant and the Capacity to Judge, 172, especially note 11.
21
It is noteworthy here that in the Critique, Kant registered his own ambivalence about merely
logical accounts, saying that Ich habe mich niemals durch die Erklrung, welche die Logi-
ker von einem Urtheile berhaupt geben, befriedigen knnen: es ist, wie sie sagen, die Vor-
stellung eines Verhltnisses zwischen zwei Begriffen (KrV, B 140). Presumably, the addi-
tional something that is required is precisely the transcendental unity of apperception that
judgments of perception, which bedrfen [] nur der logischen Verknpfung der Wahr-
nehmungen do not have.
ciple different from the objectivity available through judgments of experience. In
the former case, I would have to make the appropriate sensations available to
people in the proper order and under the appropriate conditions, which is precisely
what is not required in the case of experience. When Kant claimed that in the one
case the connection is a logical one, accordingly, he was talking about the habits of
association that we find for instance in Hume. These are merely subjective precisely
because they involve only tendencies and habits. They are not necessary laws of
thought. Judgments of perception may have the logical form of judgments, but lack-
ing (some or all of) the transcendental conditions of thought (see below), they are
not judgments proper.
The contrast as it emerges from the Critique clarifies that what is at issue in the
introduction of judgments of perception (A) is the question of what governs a given
combination or association of perceptions or representations in one consciousness.
Although judgments of perception may mimic the activity involved in a judgment of
experience they associate sensations or perception, may even have to be governed
by principles of association something essential is missing, and it is this essential
ingredient, Kant insisted, that allows us to say something about objects even on the
basis of individual perceptions. That extra something are the forms of understand-
ing or categories that must be involved in all judgments that can make a legitimate
claim about objects without reducing to the subjective dimension.
It is important to acknowledge, however, that in spite of Kants claim to the
contrary,
22
even judgments of perception must be governed by at least some of the
categories. That is to say, the intuitions that are the ingredients in such judgments
must have extensive and intensive magnitude, and these magnitudes are a function
of the categories of quality and quantity (the so-called mathematical categories).
This point has been clearly made by Beck. He noted that even the designation of
something (a room, a stone) as warm or the sun as bright requires that our intui-
tions have intensive magnitude.
23
Arguably, an analogous point can be made about
extensive magnitude: the perception of distinct things requires the synthesis of a
spatial manifold.
If judgments of perception and experience are equally governed by the mathemat-
ical categories, we are left to wonder how they finally differ. What does C have that
A does not have that is responsible for the objectivity of the former and the subjec-
tivity of the latter? The obvious answer points to the centrally important role that
the dynamical categories, particularly those of relation, play in judgments of experi-
ence, but not in those of perception. This becomes particularly evident in Kants
17821783 lectures on metaphysics, the Metaphysik Mrongovius.
24
Not surpris-
ingly, given that these lectures were delivered at roughly the same time as the Prole-
22
Judgments of perception, he tells us in the Prolegomena, bedrfen keines reinen Verstan-
desbegriffs (Prol, AA 04: 298. 34).
23
Beck: Did the Sage of Knigsberg Have No Dreams? 112.
24
Vorl, AA 29: 747940. Thanks to Claude Pich for drawing this text and its significance in
this context to my attention.
278 Brigitte Sassen
gomena was written, we find the distinction between judgments of perception and
those of experience here as well (Vorl, AA 29: 815816). Unfortunately, here too we
find the confusion between A and A' (judgments of perception are illustrated with
the example mir ist kalt), but the text does make an illuminating comment about
judgments of experience. More specifically, the text tells us that in such judgments
mu die Folge der Wahrnehmungen nach Regeln bestimmt, i.e. nothwendig seyn
(Vorl, AA 29: 815.1112). In order that we may have cognition of things (experi-
ence), Regeln der Synthesis der Erscheinungen (Vorl, AA 29: 815.2930) are
required. These rules of synthesis allow us to claim a necessary connection of ap-
pearances; they allow us to posit grounds that hold for everyone necessarily. This
then is the difference between A and C: whereas A may connect (spatially and tem-
porally located) perceptions either haphazardly or in view of principles of associa-
tion, these principles are for Kant insufficient to warrant necessary grounds. I may
know that the perceptions of the sun and the warm stone customarily follow each
other, but I do not therefore know that the one is required for the other. I do not
know that they are necessarily connected not just for me but for everyone. This is
precisely what the (dynamic) categories provide: rules of synthesis that establish a
necessary order, one that cannot be provided merely in view of principles of associa-
tion.
25
What then is the status of judgments of perception as judgments? Given the ab-
sence of the centrally important categories of relation, it is difficult to see how they
could be judgments in the critical sense, in spite of having the logical form of judg-
ment. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the judging agent would even be permitted
to make claims about objects (the sun, the stone, the air) if these judgments were
governed only by the categories of quality and quantity. In virtue of the mathemat-
ical categories we could speak only of colour patches and their association or regu-
lar succession. Rather than say, for instance, wenn die Sonne den Stein bescheint,
so wird er warm, we could say only that there is an association of a yellow
extended colour patch and an increase in the intensity of the sensation of a grey ex-
tended colour patch. If it is really the case that the categories of relation are not in-
volved in such judgments, then Kants use of object language is as illegitimate as his
reference to judgments of perception as judgments is.
Given the many problems associated with the introduction of judgments of per-
ception, one has to wonder why Kant bothered with them at all. What is the role
they were to play in the critical philosophy?
26
Ultimately, the best answer I can pro-
25
In her treatment of the distinction, Longuenesse points to this centrally important role that
the category of causality has in judgments of experience (Kant and the Capacity to Judge,
175179). While I dont disagree with her reasoning on this point, we must not underesti-
mate the other categories of relation. Without the category of substance, for instance, we
would not be able to refer to inherence and subsistence. Although we might be able to refer
to simultaneity of perceptions, we could not say that the one inheres in the other.
26
Here the only answer we get also comes from the Prolegomena, but it is a troubling answer.
Kant said that [a]lle unsere Urtheile sind zuerst bloe Wahrnehmungsurtheile: sie gelten
vide is a contextual one. Even as the first edition of the Critique was going to press,
Kant was aware that the book was too obscure. Predictably, this was a complaint
soon made by others, even by those of his contemporaries he had thought most able
to assess and appreciate it (Mendelssohn, Tetens, Herz), and who, aside from this
complaint, remained silent, much to his dismay.
27
To add insult to injury, after this
relatively protracted period of silence (for the 18
th
century),
28
the first review, the
notorious (anonymous) Feder/Garve review, was, perhaps predictably, negative,
charging idealism.
29
If anything, the review indicated that its authors did not have
much of an appreciation for what Kant was trying to do in the Critique, thus prob-
ably cementing his plan for a popular presentation of the Critique, which appeared
as the 1783 Prolegomena. Feder/Garve certainly failed to understand the nature of
transcendental idealism, as they also failed to understand Kants conception of ob-
ject.
30
It is instructive here that although they might be deemed popular philos-
ophers,
31
they, in particular Feder, were influenced by British empiricism (particu-
larly Locke). In the years following Feder/Garve (until approximately 1788, when
Eberhards much better known rationalist criticisms began to appear),
32
Kants
blos fr uns, d.i. fr unser Subject, und nur hinten nach geben wir ihnen eine neue Bezie-
hung, nmlich auf ein Object (Prol, AA 04: 298.910), a point that he confirmed a little
later with respect to the elastic air example (Prol, AA 04: 299). It is difficult to know just
what to make of this. It suggests that judgments of perception constitute a step in the for-
mulation of properly objective judgments (of experience). While perceptions necessarily do
play such a role, it is difficult to see that judgments of perception must do so. Without
further elaboration, which Kant did not provide, I am reluctant to accept his suggestion. But
for an alternate reading of this passage, indeed, for the significance and interpretation of the
distinction as a whole see, Prauss: Erscheinung bei Kant.
27
See Kants letter to Marcus Herz, written after 11 May, 1781 (Br, AA 10: 268270).
28
For and account of periodical, particularly book review publications in 18
th
century Ger-
many, see Sassen: Kants Early Critics, 4248.
29
The anonymous first review, now identified as the Feder/Garve review, appeared in 1782, in
the Zugabe zu den Gttingischen Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, 4048. It has been re-
printed in Immanuel Kant: Prolegomena. Ed. by Karl Vorlnder. Hamburg 1976, 167174
and translated in Sassen: Kants Early Critics, 5358.
30
In his version of the review, Feder states in apparent amazement [u]nderstanding makes
objects out of sensible appearances, [] It makes them. Sassen: Kants Early Critics, 54.
31
Compared to England and France, the German Enlightenment was a relatively late arrival.
Although one could regard Thomasius and later Wolff as the first German Enlightenment
figures, the movement did not really become a broad public one until the middle of the cen-
tury with the emergence of the popular philosophers (largely in Berlin and Gttingen). A
broad and varied group of philosophers committed, like Thomasius had been in the early
part of the century, more to the principle of eclecticism than to any one philosophical figure,
the popular philosophers, as the name indicates, sought to popularize a philosophy (Wolf-
fianism) that had become altogether too scholastic. They published papers, reviews, and
criticisms, in journals, newspapers, and books. Not surprisingly, they took on the critical
philosophy, indeed, Feder and Garve produced the first review of the Critique, a review that,
as it turned out, rather dismayed Kant (see note 29 above).
32
For an account of the rationalist reception see Henry E. Allison: The Kant-Eberhard Con-
troversy, Baltimore 1973. The entire period of early Kant-criticism is well represented in
Frederick Beiser: The Fate of Reason. Cambridge 1987.
280 Brigitte Sassen
early critics were, like Feder and Garve, by and large influenced by the British em-
piricist philosophies.
In view of this context, I speculate that Kant could have thought of the introduc-
tion of judgments of perception as a useful device to do two things: first, to make
the categories and their deduction more easily accessible, and second, to respond to
the early empiricist critics. In theory, the introduction of judgments of perception
and their contrast with judgments of experience lets the reader see what Kant
considered to be the cost of the absence of the categories (of relation). Rightly or
wrongly, he believed that the principles of association in view of which perceptions
are combined in judgments of perception are contingent. They do not have the ob-
jective making powers that he believed categories to have. Demonstrating this to be
the case, as he did with respect to judgments of perception, is not tantamount to a
legitimation or deduction of the categories, but it does show their necessity, and to
the extent that it does so, judgments of perception might serve to make the Deduc-
tion of the Categories more easily accessible. It is perhaps instructive here that
Kants defender Johann Schultz, who had charged that the deduction was too ob-
scure, referred to the introduction of judgments of perception with approval, even
citing Kants warm stone example.
33
The reasoning for the second purpose the response to the early empiricist
critics proceeds along similar lines. In the critical context in which they were in-
troduced, judgments of perception present an empiricist alternative to the account
of experience Kant defended. Likely, the question the readers were supposed to ask
upon coming across this distinction is what allows for the transition from the per-
sonal (but not private) perceptions to the object, and the answer they were supposed
to give is that at the root of this ability are the necessary processing operations we
all have (the categories). If we adhered to empiricist accounts of experience, then we
might think that it involves only the combination of representations or perceptions
in virtue of principles of association. Referring to judgments of perception, Kant
suggested (at least implicitly) that we could think this way, but he also made it clear
that this sort of account comes with a price: our knowledge would not have an ob-
jective dimension, it could not be universal and necessary.
34
If principles of associa-
tion and the order of apprehension are contingent, and the categories represent the
brute fact of how discursive thought necessarily operates, then judgments governed
by the categories have the universality that is simply not available through subjec-
tive principles of association. Keeping this in mind, we can say that the distinction
between judgments of perception and those of experience serves in the first instance
33
This reference appears in Schultzs review of Ulrichs Institutiones Logicae et Metaphysicae,
which had certainly charged obscurity. See Sassen: Kants Early Critics, 210214, particu-
larly 213f.
34
In the Prolegomena, Kant explicitly equated objective validity and universal necessity (Prol,
AA 04: 298. 2829), but this is an equation he comes to abandon in the Critique of Judg-
ment. Judgments of taste are universal and necessary, but they are arguably not objectively
valid.
to compare two different accounts of judgment, the one empiricist, the other criti-
cal. It functions as a response particularly to the empiricist account of knowledge
that Kant deemed insufficient.
In view of this conclusion it does not matter whether judgments of perception are
judgments proper. On the account I have provided here, they were not introduced as
legitimate alternatives, albeit subjective ones, to judgments of experience.
35
Rather,
they were introduced to make a point about judgments of experience. If this is so,
then we do not need to worry about their status as judgments though those who
claim that in the absence of the categories they cannot be judgments proper seem to
me to be right and all efforts to defend Kant against the charge of inconsistency
are misguided. Judgments of perception may have the logical form of judgment, but
they are not judgments in the critical sense.
III Judgments of the merely pleasurable (A')
Judgments of the merely agreeable or pleasurable (A'), while mistakenly intro-
duced in the Prolegomena, have a more appropriate place in the Critique of Judg-
ment. Here they function in an analogous comparative role to bring out the central
features of the judgment of taste or beauty (B). While both A and C are logical and
determinate, albeit, as we have seen, differently so, Kant described A' and B as
aesthetic; they involve the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, though, as is to be
expected, in significantly different ways. The merely pleasurable, which pertains
merely to what the senses like in sensation (KU, AA 05: 205206), are said to
involve only sensation or at most the Beziehung zweier Empfindungen auf dasselbe
Subject (Prol, AA 04: 299.1314). Judgments of taste, by contrast, involve some
activity on the part of the mental faculties. Although without the aid of the concep-
tual apparatus,
36
they can be universal in view of this activity. In spite of these dif-
ferences, judgments of taste and of the merely pleasurable are placed together
because neither makes a claim about an object. The merely pleasurable does not do
so because sensory liking is entirely a subjective matter; it cannot be attributed to
a specific quality of an object. Nor, according to Kant, can beauty. Of course, the
estimation of beauty is not a function of sensation and to the extent that it is based
on some cognitive activity, an entirely different account must be provided here.
37
35
Nor were they introduced in order to deal with the problem of a subjective perception that is
not to become objective, as Prauss argues in Erscheinung bei Kant.
36
Although this is a claim Kant made (KU, AA 05: 286287), it is not uncontested in the
literature. Beck, for instance, argues otherwise, maintaining that a judgment does not have
to mention categorial concepts, but it has to use one. Beck: Did the Sage of Knigsberg
Have No Dreams? 112. On this point, see also Longuenesse: Kant and the Capacity to
Judge, 180188.
37
For an account of judgments of taste, which it would me too far afield to provide in this con-
text, see Henry E. Allison: Kants Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment. Cambridge 2001.
282 Brigitte Sassen
While, as with the earlier distinction between judgments of experience and those
of perception, all of this seems clear, one cannot but wonder what is going on in
the judgment of the merely pleasurable. More specifically, in what sense can it be
said to be a judgment rather than merely some sort of visceral reaction or aesthetic
response to some sensation (the response of gratification)? That response or sensory
reaction is governed by ones preferences, and these are by and large a function
of ones personal history and cultural conditioning of the organs of sense. A private
sensory response, however, could hardly be called a judgment (of the merely
pleasurable), not if judgments are to refer to die Art, gegebene Erkenntnisse zur
objectiven Einheit der Apperception zu bringen (KrV, B 141). Rather than say
something like chocolate is good or wormwood is disagreeable, such private
sensory reactions would be better captured by hm good or phew awful. Some-
thing different is going on in the judgment that chocolate is good or that worm-
wood is disagreeable, such affirmations cannot simply be a matter of a pleasurable
or disagreeable taste. As it turns out, here too a more complex account needs to be
provided than the one Kant set out.
Consider what happens when we either enjoy or dislike some taste say the taste
of chocolate or the taste of wormwood. In both cases we would have a sensation to
which we would react immediately in a distinct pleased or displeased manner.
Surely though, having and reacting to a sensation of one sort or another is not the
same as making a judgment. The corresponding judgment could be accounted for in
two ways. On the standard reading, judgments of the merely agreeable or pleasur-
able are judgments about the subject and its [] affective states.
38
This is not an
unreasonable reading, but I would like to push it a little further. On this (standard)
reading, it would be a judgment about myself, the subject having the sensation.
Accordingly, I should be saying something like: I had a pleasurable sensation when
I ate this piece of chocolate, or even I have a pleasurable sensation whenever I eat
chocolate. Significantly, as Allison has pointed out, such a judgment can be right
or wrong (I either did or did not have the sensation claimed) and clearly involves the
categories.
39
The advantage of the standard reading is that it retains the parallelism
with the judgment of taste. Though subjective in different ways, both pertain to the
subject; they are not about objects. At the same time, however, an object is in some
sense there in both judgments nature or art are deemed beautiful, chocolate is
deemed pleasurable. To capture this dimension consider the following alternate in-
terpretation.
Interpreted as judgments proper, A' could be viewed as a judgments about the
cause of some pleasurable (or disagreeable) sensation. The (agreeable or disagree-
able) sensation is then combined with a presumably earlier sensation (of the thing
that I am tasting or otherwise sensing), which is taken to be the cause of the sen-
sation. This more clearly approximates the claim that chocolate is good, meaning
38
Henry E, Allison: Kants Transcendental Idealism. New Haven 1983, 151.
39
Again, see the first edition of Kants Transcendental Idealism, 149152.
that tasting chocolate is at the root of my current pleasurable sensation. Note that
although such combinations are often immediate, they cannot be a function of sense.
They can, however, be right or wrong in a manner in which the immediate sensation
itself cannot be. One can ask, accordingly, whether the judgment is as subjective as
Kant claims it is. Differently put, the sensation of pleasure I might have when tast-
ing chocolate or the sensation of displeasure when tasting wormwood are personal
and private they cannot be required of anyone else. Nor can they be disputed. But
sensory taste, what the senses like or dislike in sensation, is one thing, judgment is
another. That is, the sensation may generate an immediate affirmation of a like or
dislike, but the judgment is that it is the piece of chocolate or the sprig of worm-
wood that gives me this particular sensation and that judgment can be right or
wrong. Several scenarios can be imagined here. Suppose that I see a piece of choc-
olate on the table and (liking chocolate) find my mouth watering in expectation of
what I think will be an exquisite taste. When I eat the chocolate, however, I find my-
self disappointed and proceed to say that there is something wrong with this piece
of chocolate or that it isnt chocolate, it merely looks like chocolate. Here I might
have forgotten that I had earlier eaten something tart. That is to say, my claim that
contrary to my expectations I am experiencing a disagreeable taste cannot be dis-
puted, but it can be disputed that the (offending) piece of chocolate is responsible.
Similarly, supposing that it is the first time that I can recall having a certain (agree-
able) sensation, I might be wrong about its cause. In either case, when we make
judgments of the merely pleasurable we are no longer dealing merely with the pleas-
urable sensation. Rather, we are combining that sensation or its memory with
the sensation or representation of what we think is responsible for having given us
the sensation. And that is a mental act or process in a manner in which having the
(pleasant) sensation itself is not.
What can one say of the judgments of the merely pleasurable, then? In the
Critique of Judgment, Kant introduced these judgments to play a comparative role
in the account of judgments of taste they were to highlight the paradoxical uni-
versality of the latter and he was right to emphasize that unlike the taste of beauty,
the taste of sense is personal, private and irredeemably subjective. But the esti-
mation of a pleasurable (or disagreeable) taste is not a judgment. On my interpre-
tation, the judgment of the merely pleasurable translates into a claim about the
cause of some (agreeable or disagreeable) sensation. It does not tell us anything
other about this object than that it is the cause of the sensation in question, but to
the extent that it tells us that much, it is a judgment not about the subject, but about
objects. Several accounts of this claim can be offered. The claim might be a function
of a combination of the taste sensation with the presumed cause forged in light of
principles of association, and this might be at the root of Kants conflation of A and
A'. Alternatively, one could attribute the connection to the categories and claim that
it is necessary (objective).
Note that on both the standard account and the account I have briefly developed,
judgments of the merely pleasurable are logical and objective, not aesthetic and sub-
284 Brigitte Sassen
jective. The reason they appear subjective has to do with the privacy of the aesthetic
sensations, but when he conflated private sense with judgment, as he did in the
Prolegomena account of judgments of perception (A'), Kant did a disservice to
the critical philosophy. Whether about the subject having the sensation (standard
account) or about the object assumed to have caused the sensation, the judgment
of the merely agreeable is objective. Although the sensation may be subjective, the
judgment is not.
On the account I have provided in this paper, both types of judgment of percep-
tion were introduced for illustrative pedagogical reasons they were to highlight
certain features of either objective conceptual or universal non-conceptual judg-
ments, viz., of judgments of experience or judgments of taste. With respect to judg-
ments of experience, judgments of perception illustrate that if we are to attain cer-
tainty, the processing of perceptions must be governed by the categories. The merely
pleasurable highlights the paradoxical universality of judgments of taste. To the ex-
tent that their role is the limited illustrative one, judgments of perception do serve
this purpose rather well. But when they are viewed in broader terms, confusion en-
sues, and one has to wonder whether the critical philosophy was in the end well-
served by Kants introduction of judgments of perception.

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