Getting Clear on Sensation and Intuition

To be honest, many of the finer distinctions in Kant go right over my head, so I would probably believe him no matter what he said. Thus in writing this I hope that I’ll figure out why these distinctions matter. I will focus here on the transcendental aesthetic, and the map of the various faculties Kant draws there.

In the first paragraph of the transcendental aesthetic, Kant names two faculties: sensibility and intuition. Sensibility is “the capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects” (A19/B33), while intuition “is that through which [a mode of knowledge] is in immediate relation to [objects], and to which all thought as a means is directed” (A19/B33). Sensibility is what is responsible for us being affected by things-in-themselves, while intuition represents to us the way in which we are affected—that is, allows us to be conscious of what’s going on in sensation.

In distinguishing the two faculties, Kant is distinguishing between our being affected by an object and the our being conscious of an object. Why is this necessary? I think the necessity of this distinction must lie in Kant’s distinction between matter and form (A20/B34). Sensation, Kant reasons, is responsible for the matter of appearance, for by definition sensibility is our capability of being affected by objects. But if that was the end of the story—if the same faculty were responsible for being affected and being conscious—then form could not be given to our sensation. A single sensation cannot account for the way it stands “ordered in relations” to other sensations (A20/B34). Thus our ordered representations of sensations cannot be the same as sensation—we have sensations which supply the matter, and intuitions which represent this matter, as well as represent the form.

I am unsure whether this is a valid argument. This argument occurs before he has shown us specifically what in experience is purely intuition and not sensation. More pointedly, the ideality of space and time presuppose this distinction. At this point, space and time could still be real existences or inherent relationships of objects. Could we just reject this distinction out of hand, then, and say that the form and relationships of sensations results from the spatial-temporal form and relationships of the objects we are sensing? Or am I missing a step here? Discuss.