One must conclude that when Kant thinks of the schema of the dog, he is thinking of something very similar to that which, in the sphere of the present-day cognitive sciences, Marr and Nishishara (1978) call a «3-D Model,» which they represent as in figure 2.2.
In perceptual judgment the 3-D model is applied to the manifold of experience, and we distinguish an x as a man and not as a
Figure 2.2
dog. Which ought to demonstrate how a perceptual judgment does not necessarily boil down to a verbal assertion. In fact it is based on the application of a structural diagram to the manifold of sensation. The fact that other judgments are necessary to determine the concept of man in all its possible properties (and, as happens with all empirical concepts, the task seems infinite, never fully realized) is another matter. With a 3-D model I could even confuse a man with a primate and vice versa—but it would be difficult for me to mistake him for a snake. The fact is that in some way one starts off from a schema of this kind, even before knowing or asserting that man has a soul, that he talks, or even that he has an opposable thumb.
At this point we might say that the schema of the empirical concept comes to coincide with the concept of the object: in fact, we might say that around the schema a kind of trinity comes to be constructed, whose three «persons» are in the final analysis one and one alone (even though they can be considered the three points of view): schema, concept, and meaning.
Producing the schema of the dog means having at least one essential concept of it. Does a 3-D model of man correspond to a concept of «man»? Certainly not as far as the classic definition (mortal rational animal) is concerned; but as far as the possibility of recognizing a human being is concerned, and then of being able to add the determinations that derive from this first identification, it certainly does. Which explains why in the Logic (II, 103) Kant noted that a synthesis of empirical concepts can never come to an end, because in the course of experience it will still be possible to identify other notes of the object dog or man. But unfortunately, using an overly strong expression, Kant said that therefore empirical concepts «cannot even be defined.» They cannot be defined once and for all, like mathematical concepts, but admit of a first nucleus around which successive definitions will gel (or arrange themselves harmoniously).
Can we say that this first conceptual nucleus is also the meaning that corresponds to the term with which we express it? Kant does not use the word meaning (Bedeutung) very often, but, fancy that, he uses it precisely when talking of the schema: concepts are wholly impossible, nor can they have any meaning, unless an object is given either to them or at least to the elements of which they consist (CPR/B: 135). Kant is suggesting in a less explicit way that coincidence of linguistic meaning and perceptual meaning that was later to be energetically asserted by Husserl: a red object is recognized as red and denominated as red as the result of a single act. «All things considered to denominate as red—in the sense of present denomination, which presupposes the underlying intuition of the denominated—and to recognize as red are expressions whose meanings are identical» (Logical Investigations vi, 7: 327).
But if this is so, not only the notion of empirical concept but also the notion of the meaning of terms that refer to perceivable objects (e.g., names of natural kinds) introduces a new problem. And this is that the first nucleus of meaning, the one identified with the conceptual schema, may not be reduced to a mere classificatory datum: a dog is not understood and identified (and recognized) because it is a mammalian animal but because it has a certain form (and for the time being let us allow this term to keep all its Aristotelian connotations, despite their being highly dangerous in this context).
As we have just seen, the concept of plate must also have a correspondence with that of circularity, and Kant tells us that the schema of dog includes its having legs and that there are four of them. A man (in the sense of a member of the human race) is nonetheless still something that moves in accordance with the articulations provided for by the 3-D model.
Where does this schema come from? While in the case of the schema of geometrical figures, it sufficed to reflect on the pure intuition of space, and therefore the schema could be drawn from the very constitution of our intellect, this is certainly not the case with the schema (and therefore the concept) of dog. Otherwise we would have a repertoire, if not of innate ideas, of innate schemata: a repertoire including the schema of doghood, horsehood, and so on, until we had exhausted the inventory of the entire universe. And in that case we should also be equipped with an innate schema of the platypus, even before ever having seen one, otherwise we would not be able to think of one if we saw one. It is eminently clear that Kant could not endorse a Platonism of this sort (and whether Plato did or not is a matter for debate).
So, the Empiricists would have said, the schema is drawn from experience: the schema of the dog is none other than the Lockian idea of dog. But this statement is unacceptable in Kant’s view, seeing that experience occurs precisely by applying the schemata. I cannot abstract the schema of dog from intuitive data, because the data become thinkable precisely as a consequence of the application of the schema. And therefore we are in a vicious circle, which the first Critique (and I think this can be said with some confidence) does nothing to get us out of.
Which leaves only one solution: by reflecting upon the data from the sensible intuition, by comparing them, assessing them, by using an innate and secret art hidden in the deepest profundities of the human soul (and therefore of our own transcendental apparatus), we do not abstract but construct the schemata. While we have been taught the schema of dog—and we don’t even realize when we apply it, since by vitium subreptionis we are led to believe that we are seeing a dog because we are receiving sensations—Kant (as we have seen) saw it as a side effect of the quasi-unconscious way in which we put the transcendental apparatus to work.
That Kantian schematism implies—in the sense that it cannot but bring us to think about it—a constructivism is not an original idea, especially in the return to Kant discernible in many contem porary cognitive sciences. But that the schema can and must be a construction should not emerge so much from the fact that previously constructed schemata (e.g., that of the dog) apply; the real problem is What happens when we must construct the schema of an object that is as yet unknown?
2.7 The Platypus
The choice of the platypus as an example of an unknown object does not spring from mere whimsy. The platypus was discovered in Australia at the end of the eighteenth century and was first named «water mole,» «duck mole,» or «duck-billed platypus.» In 1799, a stuffed specimen was examined in England, and the naturalists could not believe their eyes, with the result that some insinuated it was a practical joke on the part of a taxidermist. In 4.5.1, I shall come to the story of how it was studied and defined. When the platypus made its appearance in the Western world, Kant had already written his works (the last work published was Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 1798). By the time people began talking about the platypus, Kant was already senile; it may be that someone had mentioned it to him, but the information would have been inaccurate in any case. By the time it was finally decided that the platypus was an egg-laying mammal, Kant had been dead for eighty years. We are therefore free to conduct our mental experiment and to decide what Kant would have done had he come across a platypus.
It would have been a matter of figuring the schema, starting from sense impressions, but these sense impressions are not suited to any previous schema. How could one reconcile the beak and the webbed feet with the fur and the beaver tail, or the idea of beaver with the idea of an oviparous animal; how could one see a bird where there was a quadruped ? Kant would have found himself in the same situation as Aristotle when, after drawing up all possible rules for distinguishing ruminants from the other animals, no matter which way he turned, he never managed to find a place for the camel, which eluded all definition by genus and differentia. Had Aristotle tried to make one fit, he would have had to chase another ruminant, the ox, out of its own definitory space.17
Some would be tempted to say that Aristotle would have found himself in an even more awkward position, because, since he would have been convinced that a platypus had to have an essence independent of our intellect, the impossibility of finding a definition for it would have disquieted him all the more. Kant, the confuter of idealism, would
