receptivity

is the 'capacity [of the subject] to be affected by objects' and precedes all discrete intuitions of objects.

Receptivity involves the 'capacity [of the subject] to be affected by objects' and precedes all discrete intuitions of objects (CPR A 26/B 42). It forms one of the two sources of knowledge identified at the beginning of the transcendental logic, namely the 'capacity for receiving representations (receptivity for impressions)', which is accompanied by the 'spontaneity of concepts' (A 50/B 74). By itself receptivity yields only 'the manifold of representations [which] can be given in an intuition which is purely sensible' according to the form of intuition or 'the mode in which the subject is affected' (CPR B 130). However, in combination with spontaneity it enables the generation of knowledge. Describing the character of this combination is the basic philosophical challenge faced in CPR, particularly since Kant refused the option of subordinating either receptivity or spontaneity each to the other, whether in an empiricism which would abstract concepts from intuitions, or a rationalism which would regard intuitions as confusedly perceived concepts. However, in the course of analysis the distinction between receptivity and spontaneity repeatedly collapses, notably in the antinomies. There Kant finds that he cannot describe receptivity without assuming both the results of the spontaneity of the understanding and the postulate of a transcendental object. He first of all describes 'the faculty of sensible intuition' as 'strictly only a receptivity, a capacity of being affected in a certain manner with representations' and then goes on to point first to these representations being related to each other in terms of the forms of intuition, and then as determinable 'according to the unity of experience' (CPR A 494/B 522). Only having got this far can these representations be entitled objects, and the cause of the representation of these objects through the sensibility be identified as an unknowable correlate of receptivity in other words, the 'transcendental object' or the 'something corresponding to sensibility viewed as a receptivity' (ibid.).

receptivity, n.Definitions

receptivity