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Chapter 4 - Grammar, Categories, and the Structure of Experience

from Part I - Linguistic Implications of Kant’s Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2025

Luigi Filieri
Affiliation:
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Konstantin Pollok
Affiliation:
Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany
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Summary

Kant claims that to “pick out from ordinary cognition the concepts that are not based on any particular experience and yet are present in all cognition from experience (for which they constitute as it were the mere form of connection) required no greater reflection or more insight than to cull from a language rules for the actual use of words in general, and so to compile the elements of a grammar” (4:323). The analogy with grammar offers a fruitful way to understand how the categories apply to and structure the materials provided by sensibility and empirical concepts. The categories might be described as providing the rules of a kind of ‘transcendental grammar’ that makes experience possible. Attending to the analogy with grammar reveals that the link between the categories and empirical concepts is far closer than one might initially think, since the content to which the categories apply must be grounded in sensible experience. Grammar does not create new content but rather informs propositions by giving structure to linguistic elements available to speakers of a language; likewise, the categories do not produce new cognition but rather ‘inform’ judgments by giving structure to the sensible contents provided by experience.

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