Abstract

My thesis focuses on Kant's Doctrine of the Transcendental Schematism. My basic claim is that the doctrine of the schematism is of central, systematic importance for the Critique of Pure Reason. My hypothesis is that if the doctrine of the schematism is analyzed within the historical, logical, and methodological context of the Psychological-Empiricist theory of empirical concept formation, then it can be demonstrated that the notion of the schematism acquires a status of central significance with respect to both the explicit problem of the mediation of pure concepts and intuitions, and the implicit problem of laying the foundation for establishing the constitution, character, and conditions of objectivity involved in ordinary empirical concept formation. More specifically, I argue that in the doctrine of the schematism Kant implicitly takes up the problem of concept formation in order to reform and revise its typical, historical Psychological-Empiricist formulation by demonstrating that, in the end, it is the schema, and not the image, that the functions as the true and proper vehicle for the "psychological" realization of concepts. Properly understood, then, the schema stands not as a mere picture-image or copy of the object but rather as the presentation of a basic synthetic method, or, more precisely, as the product and monogram of the pure imagination a priori