Category (philosophy)

“ To ask if a category is true or not, must sound strange to the ordinary mind: for a category apparently becomes true only when it is applied to a given object, and apart from this application it would seem meaningless to inquire into its truth. ”

“ They are our own notions resulting from co-operation of imagination and judgment, concerning the ultimate and unanalyzable forms of our own existence and development.” In other words, the categories are highly abstract, have no content, and are realized as a kind of thinking which has for its object all the other mental processes. ”

“ But we shall have to follow here the guidance of the categories,—only, as in the present case a thing, "I," as thinking being, is at first given, we shall—not indeed change the order of the categories as it stands in the table,—but begin at the category of substance, by which at the a thing a thing is represented and proceeds backwards through the series. ”

“ In Aristotle's conception, therefore, the Categories may not have been a classification of Things; but they were soon converted into one by his Scholastic followers, who certainly regarded and treated them as a classification of Things, and carried them out as such, dividing down the Category Substance as a naturalist might do, into the different classes of physical or metaphysical objects as distinguished from attributes, and the other Categories into the principal varieties of quantity, quality, relation, etc. ”

“ Thinking consists in arranging our ideas, and consequently in classifying them. To think of fire, for example, is to put it into a certain category of things, in such a way as to be able to say that it is this or that, or this and not that. But classifying is also naming, for a general idea has no existence and reality except in and by the word which expresses it and which alone makes its individuality. ”

“ On the other hand, the concepts of the Philosophy of nature are categories, which as such present themselves in their emptiness as intuitions, and intuitions, which in their blindness present themselves as categories. ”

“ The incongruity of erecting into a summum genus the class which forms the tenth category is manifest. On the other hand, the enumeration takes no notice of any thing besides substances and attributes. In what category are we to place sensations, or any other feelings and states of mind; as hope, joy, fear; sound, smell, taste; pain, pleasure; thought, judgment, conception, and the like? Probably all these would have been placed by the Aristotelian school in the categories of actio and passio ”

“ Even the popular voice thus recognises that something more than the facts of sense is needed to make a work pregnant with matter. And what is this additional desideratum but thoughts, or in the first instance the categories? And yet it is not altogether wrong, it should be added, to call the categories of themselves empty, if it be meant that they and the logical Idea, of which they are the members, do not constitute the whole of philosophy, but necessarily lead onwards in due progress to the real departments of Nature and Mind. ”

“ For this problem of the categories, in all its abstractness, is still a common problem for all of us. Do you ask, however, what such researches can do to furnish more special aid to the workers in metaphysics, in the philosophy of religion, in ethics, or in æsthetics, beyond merely helping towards the formulation of a table of categories—then I reply that we are already not without evidence that such general researches, abstract though they may seem, are bearing fruits which have much more than a merely special interest. ”

“ The categories of 'thought' and 'things' are indispensable here—instead of being realities we now call certain experiences only 'thoughts.' There is not a category, among those enumerated, of which we may not imagine the use to have thus originated historically and only gradually spread. ”

“ It seems a bold claim to make for any scheme of categories, that it exhausts all the known modes of reality. We often experience objects of thought which seem at first sight incapable of reduction to any of Aristotle's suprema genera. But more mature reflection will always enable us to find a place for them. In order that any extrinsic denomination of a substance constitute a category distinct from those enumerated, it must affect the substance in some real way distinct from any of those nine ”

“ But if I say "Man is mortal," I am thinking, not of any particular man, but of the class of men in general. Such an idea is called a general idea, or a concept. All class-names, such as man, tree, house, river, animal, horse, being, which stand, not for one thing, but for a multitude of things, represent concepts. We form these general ideas by including in them all the qualities which the whole class of objects has in common, and excluding from them all the qualities in which they differ, that is to say, the qualities which some of the objects possess, but others do not. ”

“ Nevertheless, we do not know things as they are in themselves. First, because the categories, or the forms of our understanding prevent. By bringing that which is given as the material of knowledge into our own conceptions as the form, there is manifestly a change in respect of the objects, which become thought of not as they are, but only as we apprehend them; they appear to us only as they are transmuted into categories. ”

“ The features of any object that we contemplate may with intelligent judgment be divided into two classes, according as they are inherently essential, or else merely contributory, to the existence of that object as an individual entity. ”

“ Categories as modes of understanding, schemata as modes of productive imagination, data of sense as modes of affection, are linked together, and appear to have a nature and existence independently of one another, and of the synthesis in which they are combined. ”

“ But the understanding in the process of knowledge makes use of the universal form of synthesis, the judgment; intellectual function is essentially of the nature of judgment or the reduction of a manifold to unity through a conception. The specific or type forms of such function will, therefore, be expressed in judgments; and a complete classification of the forms of judgments is the key by which one may hope to discover the system of categories. ”

“ They, however, may be reduced to the three terms of the ideal formula; for whatever is conceivable is being, existence, or the creative act of being. The categories are not, then, merely formal, simply conceived by the mind cum fundamento in re; but are the ideal principles of things themselves. Take the categories of space and time, which seem to puzzle the author as they have puzzled many greater and wiser men than he. ”

“ These categories of freedom- for so we choose to call them in contrast to those theoretic categories which are categories of physical nature- have an obvious advantage over the latter, inasmuch as the latter are only forms of thought which designate objects in an indefinite manner by means of universal concept of every possible intuition ”

“ A sixth distinction of propositions is into categorical and hypothetical. A categorical proposition is that which is simply or absolutely pronounced, as every man is a living-creature, no man is a tree; and hypothetical is that which is pronounced conditionally, as, if any thing be a 39man, the same is also a living-creature, if anything be a man, the same is also not-a-stone. ”

“ The only remaining class of Namable Things is Attributes; and these are of three kinds, Quality, Relation, and Quantity. Qualities, like substances, are known to us no otherwise than by the sensations or other states of consciousness which they excite: and while, in compliance with common usage, we have continued to speak of them as a distinct class of Things, we showed that in predicating them no one means to predicate any thing but those sensations or states of consciousness, on which they may be said to be grounded, and by which alone they can be defined or described. ”

“ The apriorist postulates this singular quality, but does not account for it; for saying that the categories are necessary because they are indispensable to the functioning of the intellect is simply repeating that they are necessary. But if they really have the origin which we attribute to them, their ascendancy no longer has anything surprising in it. They represent the most general relations which exist between things; surpassing all our other ideas in extension, they dominate all the details of our intellectual life. ”

“ As, therefore, in the character of pure categories, they must be employed empirically, and cannot be employed transcendentally, they are of no use at all, when separated from sensibility, that is, they cannot be applied to an object. ”

“ And while this selection is not merely a subjective matter, left to the mere caprice of the idea itself, certain it is, that in order to find out what the truth of a man’s ideas is, you must take account not merely of the sort of correspondence that he intends to attain in the presence of his object, but of the selection that he himself has made of the object by which he wishes his idea to be judged. ”

“ The further the dialectic goes from its starting-point, the less self-centred and independent do the categories appear; and the more permanent becomes the process, until, finally, it is seen to be the only real meaning of the categories. (2) In the categories of Being the thesis and antithesis are neither of them superior to the other. An advance is first made by both being included in the synthesis. In the categories of Essence and the Notion there is no longer an opposition produced by two terms, and mediated by a third ”

“ For this very reason, too, the categories of modality are nothing more than explanations of the conceptions of possibility, reality, and necessity, as employed in experience, and at the same time, restrictions of all the categories to empirical use alone, not authorizing the transcendental employment of them. ”

“ A new classification, therefore, which includes, in its generic character, those neglected qualities, will of course draw to them attention, which they could not otherwise have obtained; and, the more various the views are, which we take of the objects of any science, the juster consequently, because the more equal, will be the estimate which we form of them. ”

“ That is to say, unless we have reason to assert a generalisation—the generalisation that objects of a certain kind are generally made by men, we have no reason to suppose that these particular objects, which are of the kind in question, were made by men. ”

“ We are in a dilemma: we cannot describe mankind at all without categories, and if we go on to make our categories more and more exact, each one of them would at last contain only one person. Two things result which are practically important, and which furnish us with scientific concepts which we can employ in further study: (1) The classification gives us the notion of the relative position of one, or a subdivision, in the entire group. ”

“ After what has been proved in our deduction of the categories, no one, it is to be hoped, can hesitate as to the proper decision of the question, whether the employment of these pure conceptions of the understanding ought to be merely empirical or also transcendental; in other words, whether the categories, as conditions of a possible experience, relate à priori solely to phenomena, or whether, as conditions of the possibility of things in general, their application can be extended to objects as things in themselves. ”

“ This turning of Conditionals into Categoricals is called a Change of Relation; and the process may be reversed: All the wise are virtuous may be written, If any man is wise he is virtuous; or, again, Either a man is not-wise or he is virtuous. But the categorical form is usually the simplest.
If, then, as substitutes for the corresponding conditionals, categoricals are formally adequate, though sometimes inelegant, it may be urged that Logic has nothing to do with elegance ”

“ The only inference that can fairly be drawn from it is, that in all probability there are seven principles which enter into the composition of a human being. But this inference can by no means establish the correctness of the particular classification under consideration. Otherwise the truth of any seven-fold classification we may choose to adopt can be equally proved by this process of reasoning. Any person can name any seven principles in the complex structure of man and claim the sanction of nature for his classification, as is now done by my critic. ”

“ If every object which fulfils the notion A also fulfils the notion B, then A and B are categorically related. Every A is a B. The categorical relation of notions conditions a relation of the extent of notions, called subsumption. A logic of categorical relations must show a complete parallelism with the logic of subsumption. A science claiming to embrace the whole of logic can afford to neglect neither of these two. ”

“ The different categories have certain traits in common, not a single one of our thoughts but will find a place in the one or the other. Another feature which characterises all is, that without them no experience would be possible, they rule our understanding. ”

“ In Book I, Chapter II, I have adopted a new definition of ‘Classification’, which enables me to regard the whole Universe as a ‘Class,’ and thus to dispense with the very awkward phrase ‘a Set of Things.’
In the Chapter on ‘Propositions of Existence’ I have adopted a new ‘normal form,’ in which the Class, whose existence is affirmed or denied, is regarded as the Predicate, instead of the Subject, of the Proposition, thus evading a very subtle difficulty which besets the other form. ”

“ The product of Generalization or Conception is called a Concept. A Concept is expressed in a word, or words, called "A Term." [Pg 108] A Concept is more than a mere word—it is a general idea. And a Term is more than a mere word—it is the expression of a general idea.
A Concept is built up from the processes of Perception, Abstraction, Comparison and Generalization. We must first perceive; then analyze or abstract qualities; then compare qualities; then synthesize or classify according to the result of the comparison of qualities. ”