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According to Kantian epistemology, there are three falcuties of mind; sensibility, understanding and imagination. Unfortunately, the differentiation between these three are not totally sure to me so I would like to get verification. Here is how I attempted to understand:

When I look at a tree, the noumenon of the tree is perceived via sensibility and a corresponding phenomenon of the tree arises to my cognition. However, this phenomenon is unprocessed so I don't yet recognize that this phenomenon is that of a tree; just like how an image is nothing but a bunch of pixels to a computer. It is only after the imagination synthesizes the phenomenon that I can label the phenomenon with an appropriate concept(tree). Finally, the understanding makes a judgment about the phenomenon by using a priori categories. For example, it may use the category of unity and existence to judge that "There exists a single tree."

Is my above understanding correct?

Dimen
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  • I am afraid, computer processing analogy does not really work with Kant, it attempts to peek behind the curtain using terms that only apply on the phenomenal side of it. The "noumenon of the tree" is not perceived via sensibility, it is not accessible to any of our faculties, according to Kant. There is no "noumenon of" anything, the thing-in-itself is completely inscrutable. We can talk about noumena abstractly, because they still obey logic, but not connect them to phenomena in any way. Sensibility does not deliver anything "of a tree" either, its output is completely undifferentiated. – Conifold Aug 05 '21 at 07:54
  • @Conifold But can't I refer to 'noumenon of the tree' in a sense that it is logically coerced for there to exist a reason as to how the phenomenon of a tree came to me, and such reason can only be referred as the 'noumenon of the tree'? Also, if sensibility does not deliver anything of a tree, by what mean is it possible for me to judge that this phenomenon is that of a tree? – Dimen Aug 05 '21 at 08:21
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    "Reason as to how the phenomenon of a tree came to me", i.e. its cause, relies on causality, which is a category of experience. According to Kant, it is a mistake to apply such categories beyond any possible experience, i.e. to the noumena. This is the heart of his criticism of old metaphysics. Your analogy of processing external inputs is better suited for this older Aristotelian conception. The undifferentiated manifold of sensation is first shaped by forms of intuition and schemata, *they* enable the result to be brought under concepts, such as tree. We read off what *we* placed there. – Conifold Aug 05 '21 at 08:56
  • @Conifold Oh I understand what you mean. Then is it at least true that after the faculty of imagination, the intuition is processed as a tree? And after understanding a judgment about the tree is formed? – Dimen Aug 05 '21 at 10:05
  • The word "processed" suggests extraction of information by some kind of algorithm, but that is not what Kant describes. He insists on "spontaneous" generation of each stage (intuitions, thoughts) that conforms to constraints (schemata, categories) but is not determined by the previous stage and those constraints. We can speculate (as Kant's commentators do) that the previous stage is somehow probed with what is generated at the next one until the response is "satisfactory", but Kant himself says next to nothing on this. Intuition is not processed as a tree, concept tree just "fits" it. – Conifold Aug 05 '21 at 22:01

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