Re: joe wants to know

nate (schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu)
Tue, 15 Jun 1999 07:35:06 -0500

While not the quote itself, it seems pertinent to it.

Critique of Pure Reason

"We might, indeed, at first suppose that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is a
merely analytic proposition, and follows by the principle of contradiction
from the concept of a sum of 7 and 5. But if we look more closely we find
that the concept of the sum of 7 and 5 contains nothing save the union of
the two numbers into one, and in this no thought is being taken as to what
that single number may be which combines both. The concept of 12 is by no
means already thought in merely thinking this union of 7 and 5; and I may
analyse my concept of such a possible sum as long as I please, still I
shall never find the 12 in it. We have to go outside these concepts, and
call in the aid of the intuition which corresponds to one of them, our five
fingers, for instance, or, as Segner does in his Arithmetic, five points,
adding to the concept of 7, unit by unit, the five given in intuition. For
starting with the number 7, and for the concept of 5 calling in the aid of
the fingers of my hand as intuition, I now add one by one to the number 7
the units which I previously took together to form the number 5, and with
the aid of that figure [the hand] see the number 12 come into being. That 5
should be added to 7, I have indeed already thought in the concept of a sum
= 7 + 5, but not that this sum is equivalent to the number 12. Arithmetical
propositions are therefore always synthetic. This is still more evident if
we take larger numbers. For it is then obvious that, however we might turn
and twist our concepts, we could never, by the mere analysis of them, and
without the aid of intuition, discover what [the number is that] is the
sum.

Just as little is any fundamental proposition of pure geometry analytic.
That the straight line between two points is the shortest, is a synthetic
proposition. For my concept of straight contains nothing of quantity, but
only of quality. The concept of the shortest is wholly an addition, and
cannot be derived, through any process of analysis, from the concept of the
straight line. Intuition, therefore, must here be called in; only by its
aid is the synthesis possible. What here causes us commonly to believe that
the predicate of such apodeictic judgments is already contained in our
concept, and that the judgment is therefore analytic, is merely the
ambiguous character of the terms used. We are required to join in thought a
certain predicate to a given concept, and this necessity is inherent in the
concepts themselves. But the question is not what we ought to join in
thought to the given concept, but what we actually think in it, even if
only obscurely; and it is then manifest that, while the predicate is indeed
attached necessarily to the concept, it is so in virtue of an intuition
which must be added to the concept, not as thought in the concept itself."

http://werple.net.au/~gaffcam/phil/kant.htm

----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Graham <pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 1999 5:13 AM
Subject: Re: joe wants to know

> Couldn't find it in a quick flick through the Prolegomena, but there's
lots
> of passages that are very close. I can send a couple of them on if you
> want. It's not at all surprising that discursive threads of Kant would
show
> up in Vygotsky via Hegel and Marx.
>
> Phil
>
> At 22:53 14-06-99 -0700, you wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >Joe Glick asked me to forward this:
> >$f
> >Joe
> >-----Original Message-----
> >>From: Glick, Joseph
> >To: 'xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu'
> >Sent: 6/14/99 1:40 PM
> >Subject: Kan anyone help on Kant
> >
> >I think I read it somewhere. I know I've quoted it, but I cannot find
> >it. There is a Kantian phrase that seems to closely echo some of
> >Vygotsky's reasoning in his writings on Scientific and Spontaneous
> >concepts. The phrase is:
> >
> >"Concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are
> >blind." I remember is as coming either from the Critique of Pure Reason
> >or from the Prolegomena. Maybe it came from my imagination.
> >
> >Can anyone out there help with a source for this?
> >
> >jglick who-is-at gc.cuny.edu (Joe Glick)
> >
> >
> Phil Graham
> p.graham who-is-at qut.edu.au
> http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html
>