5. Transcendental Logic
Kant’s logic is called a transcendental logic. Concerning the question of how objective knowledge can be obtained, Kant held that objective knowledge can be obtained by thinking, through one’s forms of thought, about the sense content gained through forms of intuition.
As already explained, thinking follows certain forms: the judgment forms and inference forms in formal logic; the three stages of dialectical form in Hegel’s logic; the forms of intuition and twelve forms of thought in Kant. Kant divided judgment into four headings: quantity, quality, relation, and mode. Further, he divided each of these into three kinds, establishing twelve forms. Based upon these forms, he established twelve forms of thought, or twelve categories. A category is the most basic framework through which we think. Categories are also called a priori concepts.
Kant held that the forms of intuition and the forms of thought are a priori, and not related to experience. His logic is called a transcendental logic. Cognition, however, can not be achieved with only a priori forms. Cognition takes place when the a priori forms are connected to the sense content from an outside object, whereby an object of cognition is finally synthesized. Kant’s forms of thought are forms for cognition. They are concepts, or categories. A concept is something like an empty container. It is meaningless if there is no content. For example, the concept of “animal” has no substance (content) and it is merely a concept, whereas individual beings that really exist such as chicken, dog, horse, shark, and so on are beings with concrete content.
For Kant, things-in-themselves can not be known. The things themselves send various stimuli to our sense organs, whereby this manifold of sense―sense content, or sense qualities―is perceived. When the sense content and the concept of an “animal” are united the object of cognition is synthesized, for example a chicken or a dog.
Thus, the forms of thought themselves are only an empty framework, and only when they are filled with the qualities from the outside, is the object of cognition synthesized. Thus, in Kant, cognition is that of the synthesized object. Formal logic since Aristotle has dealt with the general forms and laws of thought, without considering the object of thought. Kant’s logic, however, was epistemological logic, aiming to verify how knowledge about the object is achieved.