Sensations are not just stimuli that we receive; we play an important role in selecting, organizing, and transforming them into perceptions. Kant argues that this process is not automatic and requires the active intervention of the perceiving subject.
What do we mean by sensation and perception, and how do we transform sensations into perceptions? Sensation, in and of itself, is nothing more than the awareness of stimuli. It is the beginning of an experience, which in itself does not yet amount to perception. For example, when a myriad of sensory stimuli come to us, they are, by themselves, just pieces of information. But let’s say that several senses are gathered around a specific object in space and time, say an apple. If the nose’s sense of smell, the tongue’s sense of taste, the retina’s sense of sight, and the fingers and hands’ sense of touch, which perceive shape, are concentrated around this object, we now have consciousness of a particular object rather than consciousness of mere stimuli. In other words, perception occurs. This is the moment when sensation is transformed into awareness.
But is this transition automatic: do the various sensations spontaneously come together, become ordered, and become perceptions? Empiricists would say yes, but Kant disagrees, arguing that the mere aggregation of sensory stimuli does not immediately translate into perception. The different sensations are transmitted through a myriad of nerves from the skin, eyes, ears, and tongue to the brain. These sensations are not naturally organized, and if left to their own devices, they are nothing more than a chaotic “variety” of sensations. It is like expecting a general to understand and translate reports from countless points on the front into orders without any organization.
Kant argues that there is a power that does not stop at taking in this chaos of sensations, but transforms, directs, and coordinates them into something meaningful. This power is not simply a passive process of taking in sensations, but actively selects and organizes them, reorganizing them into meaningful perceptions. For example, we may pass by the ticking of a clock in a room without noticing it, but at a certain moment we become aware of it. We can say that we “hear” the sound, which means that sensations are not simply given to us, but are selected and perceived for our purposes.
Kant saw this process of perception as taking place through two frameworks: space and time. Just as a general organizes his reports according to the place and time of their origin, we arrange our various sensations in space and time, attributing them to this object here, that object there, and some point in the present or past. Space and time are not perceived objects, but rather modes of perception that make perception possible, essential frames that make sensations meaningful. These frames of space and time are the basic structures that organize our experience, and because all experience involves and presupposes space and time, they do not depend on experience. For this reason, the laws of space and time are absolute, inevitable, and immutable. In this way, Kant shows that the very way we understand experience involves a subject of cognition that is not dependent on experience. Unlike the empiricists, Kant emphasized that our perceptions are not merely dependent on external stimuli, but that we actively construct them.
This allows for a natural increase in the length of the sentence while still fitting in with the original content. The additions focus on fleshing out the explanation of how sensations are transformed into perceptions and clarifying Kant’s philosophical position.
