Objective Validity: Kant on Judgment and the Relational Categories
How would you explain Kant's distinction between objectively valid and merely subjectively valid judgments? Choose one of the pair of examples he uses to discuss this distinction and explain how it illustrates the role played by the relational categories in making objectively valid judgments.
Kant distinguishes between objectively valid judgments and merely subjectively valid judgments to clarify how our representations can amount to knowledge of an object rather than reflecting only our own "laws of association." A merely subjectively valid judgment (judgment of perception [JoP]) arises when the subject combines these representations according to the laws of association in the imagination. This judgment demonstrates how perceptions are solely connected within one's mental state. In class, we discussed that the representation of the sun shining on a stone is followed by the subject's representation of the stone becoming warm. This sequence expresses a contingent conjunction of the individual subject's experience and is therefore not expected to hold for everyone. This judgement lacks necessity and universality, and therefore does not count as a judgment about an object.
However, an objectively valid judgment (judgment of experience [JoE]), occurs when this understanding contributes a category that necessitates the connection between representations. These judgments express a rule which holds for all subjects because its connection is grounded in the object itself rather than in the flow of the subject's perceptions. Therefore, objectively valid judgments possess the universality and necessity required for experience.
Kant uses the example of the sun and the stone to provide an in-depth explanation distinguishing this difference between JoP and JoE. The subjectively valid judgment is: "when the sun shines on the stone, it becomes warm," which is merely the succession of one's own perceptions (JoP). On the other hand, the objectively valid judgment is: "the sun warms the stone." This judgment requires the application of the relational category of cause and effect, which transforms a subjective sequence into a necessary connection. By applying the concept of cause, the understanding explains that the warming follows from the shining "in accordance with an absolutely general rule," valid for all possible subjects. These relational categories therefore play a crucial role in making objectively valid judgments as they supply the rules which determine when a sequence of perceptions should be taken as reflecting an order in the object rather than merely a subjective association.