Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 1

Kant on Geometrical Intuition

and the Foundations of Mathematics

by Frode Kjosavik, Aas, Norwegen

Abstract: It is argued that geometrical intuition, as conceived in Kant, is still crucial to the epis-
temological foundations of mathematics. For this purpose, I have chosen to target one of the
most sympathetic interpreters of Kant’s philosophy of mathematics – Michael Friedman – be-
cause he has formulated the possible historical limitations of Kant’s views most sharply. I claim
that there are important insights in Kant’s theory that have survived the developments of mod-
ern mathematics, and thus, that they are not so intrinsically bound up with the logic and
mathematics of Kant’s time as Friedman will have it. These insights include the idea that
mathematical knowledge relies on the manipulation of objects given in quasi-perceptual intu-
ition, as Charles Parsons has argued, and that pure intuition is a source of knowledge of space
itself that cannot be replaced by mere propositional knowledge. In particular, it is pointed out
that it is the isomorphism between Kantian intuition and a spatial manifold that underlies both
the epistemic intimacy of the most fundamental type of geometrical intuition as well as that of
perceptual acquaintance.
Keywords: intuition, logic, arithmetic, geometry, formal system, spatial manifold

In this paper, I argue that geometrical intuition, as conceived in Kant, is still

crucial to the epistemological foundations of mathematics. For this purpose, I have
chosen to target one of the most sympathetic interpreters of Kant’s philosophy of
mathematics – Michael Friedman – because he has formulated the possible histori-
cal limitations of Kant’s views most sharply.1 I claim that there are important
insights in Kant’s theory that have survived the developments of modern mathe-
matics, and thus, that they are not so intrinsically bound up with the logic and
mathematics of Kant’s time as Friedman will have it. These insights include the idea
that mathematical knowledge relies on the manipulation of objects given in quasi-
perceptual intuition, as Charles Parsons has argued, and that pure intuition is a
source of knowledge of space itself that cannot be replaced by mere propositional
knowledge. In particular, it is pointed out that it is the isomorphism between Kan-

1 In the following, I shall use “Friedman Ia” to refer to: “Kant’s Theory of Geometry.” In: The
Philosophical Review XCIV, No. 4, 1985, 455–506; “Friedman Ib” to refer to “Kant on
Concepts and Intuitions in the Mathematical Sciences.” In: Synthese 84, 1990, 213–257.
Both are reprinted in Kant and the Exact Sciences, Cambridge, Mass. 1992, 55–95 and
96–135, respectively, and the page numbers will apply to this work. I shall use “Friedman
II” to refer to “Geometry, Construction, and Intuition in Kant and His Successors.” In: Bet-
ween Logic and Intuition: Essays in Honor of Charles Parsons. Ed. by Sher, Gila und Ri-
chard Tieszen. Cambridge 2000, 186–218.

Kant-Studien 100. Jahrg., S. 1–27 DOI 10.1515/KANT.2009.001

© Walter de Gruyter 2009
ISSN 0022-8877
2 Frode Kjosavik

tian intuition and a spatial manifold that underlies both the epistemic intimacy of
the most fundamental type of geometrical intuition as well as that of perceptual ac-
quaintance.

*
Among those who have made weighty contributions to the interpretation of
Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, three philosophers stand out: Jaakko Hintikka,
Charles Parsons and Michael Friedman. Thanks to their analytic expositions, there
has been renewed interest in Kant’s theory even after the flourishing of formal
methods within modern mathematics. There are, however, significant differences
in approach between these thinkers. While Hintikka and Parsons have both used
elements from Kant’s theory to forge their own theories of logic and intuition,
respectively, Friedman deals with Kant in a sort of backward-looking manner.
No doubt, he has proven that such a pursuit is worthwhile, laying out in detail how
Kant made profound sense of science as he found it, and, on this basis, how we can
make more sense of Kant’s views of science, as well as of his entire philosophy.
Still, his retrospective reading runs the risk of downplaying certain deep insights
in Kant that do not merely reflect the stand of scientific theories that are now super-
seded. This was particularly true of his earlier interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of
mathematics, where it is argued that it was the limited logic at Kant’s time that
shaped his theory of mathematical construction. Friedman dubs this the “logical ap-
proach”, and it is contrasted with his more recent “phenomenological approach”,
where it is suggested that Kant had a deeper reason for his views of space and time.
Here I shall discuss critically both his approaches, and I shall maintain that even the
later, richer interpretation does not capture the most essential feature of a Kantian
intuition.

1. The “logical approach” in Friedman

1.1. Monadic Logic and Quantifier Dependence

It was initially argued by Peirce that Kant’s lack of a polyadic logic gave rise to his
theory of mathematics2, and in line with this, Russell maintained that Kant thought
intuition had to be appealed to in order to guide inferences that cannot be grounded
on mere logic – an appeal obviously rendered entirely superfluous by the develop-
ment of a more powerful logic.3 Hintikka, by contrast, has claimed that Kantian in-
tuition is called for in the logical inferences themselves in an essential way, and not

2 Cf. Peirce, Charles Sanders: “Collected Papers”, Vol. 2, § 361, Vol. 3, §§ 559–560, Vol. 4,
§ 232. In: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ed. by C. Hartshorne und P. Weiss.
Cambridge, Mass. 1958–1960.
3 Cf. Russell, Bertrand: The Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge 1903, 457 f.; Russell, B.:
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. New York 1920, 145.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 3

merely as an aid to the inferences, namely, in the steps in the proofs where new in-
dividuals are introduced, i.e., in ∃-instantiations.4
Kant’s blunder, according to Hintikka, was to link intuition in the sense of a rep-
resentation of an individual to ‘sensibility’. This link can be broken, however, and
inferences which involve ∃-instantiations should still be considered synthetic, not
analytic, even after the success of modern logic. In fact, Hintikka takes the Kantian
distinction to correspond to the one in Peirce between ‘theorematic’ and ‘corrola-
rial’ reasoning.5 In geometry, in particular, the synthetic inferences will be based on
the three Euclidean operations of drawing a line segment, extending it indefinitely,
and drawing a circle by rotating a line segment, which yield all the individuals
needed. Similarly, in arithmetic, synthetic inferences are simply calculations, where
new individuals are introduced through functions.
Friedman in his logical approach apparently defends both Hintikka’s view of the
role of intuition in Kant as well as Russell’s view of its present relevance. It is argued
that Kant’s view that space and time are inseparable from pure intuition derives
from the somewhat meagre logical resources of his time. In short, Kant is restricted
to a first order essentially monadic predicate logic6, which antedated the logic of
relatives developed by De Morgan, Peirce, and, not the least, Frege. At the heart of
the argument lies the following fact: In a monadic logic, infinite divisibility, or
denseness, which is a property of space, cannot be expressed: If we have n predi-
cates at our disposal, we can at most distinguish between 2n elements in our model.
However, in polyadic quantification theory, we can formalize the notion of dense-
ness through quantifier-dependence:

∀x∀y∃z(x < y → x < z < y)

Friedman seems to take Hintikka’s interpretation a step further when he argues

that this is also the reason why mathematical concepts are inadequate unless they
are “constructed in pure intuition”, as Kant puts it, for instance through a pro-
cedure for bisecting a line segment. In other words, intuition enters not only into the
steps of an inference, as in Hintikka, but also into the very propositions themselves,

4 Cf. Hintikka, Jaakko: “Are Logical Truths Analytic?” In: Philosophical Review 74, 1965,
178–203; Hintikka, J.: Logic, Language-Games and Information. Oxford 1973; Hintikka,
J.: “Kant’s ‘New Method of Thought’ and his theory of mathematics.” In: Knowledge and
the Known. Dordrecht 1974, 126–134; Hintikka, J.: “Kant on the Mathematical Method.”
Ibid., 160–183; Hintikka, J.: “Kant’s Transcendental Method and His Theory of Mathemat-
ics.” In: Topoi 3, 1984, 99–108.
5 Cf. Hintikka, Jaakko: “C. S. Peirce’s First Real Discovery and its Contemporary Rel-
evance.” In: The Monist 63, 1980, 304–315. It is argued that the two distinctions are not
equivalent, though, in Shin, Sun-Joo: “Kant’s Syntheticity Revisited by Peirce.” In: Synthese
113, 1997, 1–41.
6 “Essentially monadic” because it does not rule out formulae like ‘∀x∃y(Fx→Gy).’ But in
such cases, quantifiers can always be driven in in accordance with the rules of prenex opera-
tions. Cf. Friedman Ia, 63.
4 Frode Kjosavik

in so far as they contain concepts that cannot represent individuals adequately by

way of monadic predicate logic alone, like particular line segments, which are infi-
nitely divisible.7 Indeed, there is an aspect of mathematical concepts that is not cap-
tured through the Kantian general notion of concepts, and Kant’s theory of syn-
thetic extensions of mathematical concepts through construction in intuition is
partly intended to make up for this.8
The implication of this reasoning is clearly that if a polyadic logic had been at
hand, Kant would have regarded our basic notions of space and time as concepts,
not intuitions. I suppose that this does not apply to intuitions in general, though,
since ‘empirical intuitions’, or perceptions, tend to be indefinitely rich in their con-
tent, unlike a polyadic concept. It is rather that our space and time intuitions are
quite abstract notions – a bit like concepts in the first place – and space and time
may be regarded simply as an invariant structure of our perceptions that can be
fully conceptualized when logical resources are added.
Friedman, of course, does not think that Kant reasoned explicitly along these
lines, since that would have required a sharp concept of monadic logic that was only
possible after polyadic logic was developed. Indeed, in no way did Kant anticipate
such a generalization of monadic logic – he rather indicated that logic appeared
complete and would not be able to advance significantly beyond the essentials of
Aristotelian syllogistic. Hence, the limits of logic of those days were bound to put
certain constraints on conceptualisation in mathematics that were not properly re-
moved until richer means of formalization came along.
The focus on the shortcomings of the logic of Kant’s time no doubt springs from
the “logical” interpretation of the intuition-concept-distinction, which can be
traced all the way back to Frege, who in Grundlagen, § 12, pinpoints the difference
between the logical notion of intuition in the Jäsche-Logik (1800), where an intui-
tion is said to be merely a singular representation, and the notion of intuition in
KrV, where there is an intimate connection between intuition and sensibility.9 The
Beth-Hintikka line of interpretation supports the logical notion, in that an intuition
is likened to a singular term10, and the role of construction in intuition is then anal-

7 Actually, there is a difference, since Friedman, unlike Hintikka, does not look to Kant for
a justification of a rule like ∃-instantiation but rather for its elimination, by way of Skolem
functions, i.e., intuition apparently adds premises to the inferences – it does not ground
an introduction of individuals from existential premises which are themselves independent
of intuition. Cf. Friedman Ia, 65. I take it that Hintikka would rather translate functions
into existential quantification followed by ∃-instantiation – thereby in effect crediting
Kant with the anticipation of the synthetic status of this rule before the rule itself was in-
vented.
8 This is also argued in Young on the basis of Friedman’s interpretation. Cf. Young, J. Mi-
chael: “Functions of thought and the synthesis of intuitions”, 113 ff. In: The Cambridge
Companion to Kant. Ed. by Paul Guyer. Cambridge 1992, 101–122.
9 Cf. Frege, Gottlob: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Hildesheim 1961.
10 Cf. Beth, Evert W.: The Foundations of Mathematics. A Study in the Philosophy of Science.
Amsterdam 1968; Hintikka, Jaakko: “On Kant’s Notion of Intuition (Anschauung).” In:
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 5

ogous to the role of free singular terms in predicates.11 Accordingly, intuition is

needed to justify existence claims, by “fulfilling” the concepts involved, so to speak.
Friedman, however, claims that intuition is demanded even to represent the exist-
ence claims, like that of a dense linear order, since the required concept is not avail-
able within monadic predicate logic: “Mere general logic is entirely inadequate for
even the representation of mathematical concepts and propositions, and this cir-
cumstance motivates a move to pure intuition and transcendental logic all by itself.”
(Friedman Ib,129)

1.2. What does Kant Mean by “Logic”?

This brings us to a major problem with Friedman’s logic-centred interpretation,

in that it does not take into account possible differences between Kant’s view of
logic and later views, like that of Frege. As John MacFarlane puts it:
It would have been open to Kant to claim that Frege’s Begriffsschrift is not a proper logic at
all, but a kind of abstract combinatorics, and that the meaning of the iterated quantifiers can
only be grasped through construction in pure intuition. […] Kant might have argued that
Frege’s expansion of logic was just a change of subject, just as Poincaré charged that Russell’s
“logical” principles were really intuitive, synthetic judgments in disguise. (MacFarlane 2002,
26 f.)

So even if we were to accept that Kant’s view of the role of constructions in

mathematics is connected to his view of the scope of logic, as suggested in Russell,
and argued more extensively in Friedman, it does not follow that we can simply sub-
stitute a modern notion of logic for that of Kant, and then conclude that construc-
tions in intuition are no longer needed in mathematics. Rather, they may be needed
even in logic, as it is now conceived, and the further claim that Kant and Frege do
indeed have similar conceptions of logic is one that calls for substantial elaboration,
which is offered in MacFarlane but not in Friedman. Let us therefore look briefly at
MacFarlane’s analysis.
The main characteristic of pure logic in Kant according to MacFarlane is that it is
general, or topic-neutral. This generality could be taken to mean that logic does not

Kant’s First Critique. Ed. by T. Penelhum und J. J. MacIntosh. Belmont, Calif. 1969, 38–53;
Hintikka, J.: “Kantian Intuitions.” In: Inquiry 15, 1972, 341–345; Hintikka, J.: “Kant’s
‘New Method of Thought’ and his theory of mathematics.” In: Knowledge and the Known.
Dordrecht 1974, 126–134; Hintikka, J.: “Kant on the Mathematical Method.” Ibid.,
160–183; Hintikka, J.: “Kant’s Transcendental Method and His Theory of Mathematics.”
In: Topoi 3, 1984, 99–108.
11 This view of construction is also defended in Parsons: “A picture common to us [i.e., to
Parsons and Hintikka] is of pure intuitions as analogous to free variables, with predicates
attached to them representing the concept they ‘construct.’” (Parsons, Charles: “Kant’s Phi-
losophy of Arithmetic”, 148. In: Mathematics in Philosophy: Selected Essays. Ithaca, NY
1983, 110–149.) However, according to Parsons, there is more to pure intuition in Kant
than this.
6 Frode Kjosavik

make any specific existence-claims,12 unlike geometry, and then it is clearly incom-
patible with the Fregean notion of logic. According to Frege, there are distinct logi-
cal objects, and if mathematics is to be reduced to logic, the existence claims of
mathematics have to be translated into existence claims of logic. In particular, the
numbers of arithmetic must be turned into logical objects. As Friedman argues that
it is precisely ontological commitment that makes the difference between logic and
mathematics for Kant, it is clear that he cannot maintain that logic in Frege’s sense
would also be logic in Kant’s sense.13
On MacFarlane’s view, on the other hand, Kant’s and Frege’s conceptions of logic
were not really at variance with each other. The main difference between Kant and
Frege might seem to be the fact that logic according to Kant is a set of rules, and for
Frege a set of truths, but MacFarlane argues convincingly that the truths of logic will
also imply norms of how we ought to think according to Frege. To be sure, the gene-
rality of logic in Kant means that its application is not restricted to any specific do-
main of objects but that it obtains for objects in general, whereas Frege thinks there
is a specific domain of logical objects, and that the logical notions discriminate bet-
ween these, in that they have to be sensitive, for instance, to the difference between
the True and other objects. To put it in modern terms, the logical notions are accord-
ing to Frege not permutation-invariant.14 Still, Fregean logic, like Kantian pure gene-
ral logic, also “provides constitutive norms for thought as such, regardless of its sub-
ject matter” (MacFarlane 2002, 35). In this sense, they are both topic-neutral.
This neat assimilation of Kant’s view to that of Frege at a normative level leaves
us with the problem of ontological commitment at the descriptive level, though. It is
not just that logic alone according to Kant does not permit any existence claims
with regard to mathematical objects, thus distinguishing it from mathematics itself,
but it also does not permit any existence assumptions regarding logical objects,
unlike that of Frege.15 In short, logic for Kant is not just general but also formal, so

12 It does not make any claims about the existence of a particular domain of objects, that is,
but to the extent that we accept logical truths that do not obtain in an empty domain, logic
does make the general existence claim that there is at least one object. In particular, ‘∀xFx
→ ∃xFx’ is a logical truth within standard monadic logic, which corresponds to the rule of
subalternation within syllogistic logic (i.e., ‘Every S is P’ ⇒ ‘Some S is P’), but it does not
hold within an empty domain.
13 In the case of arithmetic, Friedman does not think that there is an ontological commitment
to any particular kind of objects, though, but rather to the existence of a potentially infinite
domain of objects. At least, this seems to follow from his claim that arithmetic only presup-
poses the indefinite or progressive iteration of procedures of construction (cf. Friedman Ia,
89; Friedman Ib, 119 f.)
14 Cf. MacFarlane, John, 173 ff. In: What Does It Mean To Say That Logic Is Formal?
Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2000; MacFarlane, J., “Frege, Kant, and the Logic in
Logicism”, 33 f. In: The Philosophical Review 111, No. 1, 2002, 25–65. On permutation-
invariance, see Tarski, Alfred: “What are Logical Notions?” In: History and Philosophy of
Logic 7, 1986, 143–154.
15 Of course, there are not strictly speaking any mathematical objects in Kant’s weighty sense
of object (“Gegenstand”) but only mere “forms” of objects (cf. Parsons, Charles: “Objects
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 7

“it abstracts from all content” (“abstrahirt sie von allem Inhalt”, KrV, B 78). Still,
MacFarlane argues, generality is a more fundamental property of logic than formal-
ity in Kant, in that the latter is inferred from the former. Hence, if Frege’s ‘Begriffs-
schrift’ is general in Kant’s sense, and if it had been consistent, Kant would have
to accept it as logic in his own sense, but at the same time admit that formality is not
implied by generality.
I do not think that this is the only likely scenario, though. Granted that faced with
Frege’s Begriffsschrift Kant might have to concede that formality cannot simply be
inferred from generality, but he might still argue that logic is formal, since formality
has not been shown to be incompatible with generality. Furthermore, it might even
be argued that Kant infers generality from formality, rather than the other way
around, since in many contexts he emphasizes formality as the distinguishing mark
of logic, not its generality. Logic is supposed to yield principles for the form of
thought, and there are ‘forms of judgment’, just as there are ‘forms of intuition’.
The generality can be taken to follow from the fact that the forms of judgment ab-
stract from all content, relating only to the unity of thought itself, whereas the
forms of intuition in addition relate to the unity of space and time, and thereby to
some specific content of thought. After all, it is ‘form’, along with ‘matter’, which is
an orientational concept for all reflection, according to the Amphibolies of the Con-
cepts of Reflection in KrV, not generality.
Another argument in favour of this interpretation is that in Kant an instance of a
logical principle like the law of identity is taken to be a tautology precisely because
the principle is a law of thought, and the same presumably applies to instances of
the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle.16 Indeed, Kant’s for-
mal notion of logic is arguably the basis of Bolzano’s definition of logic by way of
variation or intersubstitution of non-logical terms, and thus a precursor to the mod-
ern definition of logic. The difference between Kant’s notion and the modern one is
mainly that Kant did not think it is arbitrary which terms are fixed as logical – it
is precisely those terms that express “forms of thought”, as opposed to its matter.
For Frege, on the other hand, logical truths could never be empty, as they were in
Kant.17
I shall not pursue this issue further here, however, since, unlike Friedman, I take
Kant’s view of construction in mathematics to follow from his general epistemol-
ogy, rather than any specific views about logic, and I shall return to this issue below.
It should be noted, though, that Friedman has yet to argue that modern logic is logic
in Kant’s sense, the way MacFarlane has done. If modern logic turns out to be
mathematics, the fact that properties of space, like denseness, can be expressed

and Logic.” In: The Monist 4, 1982, 491–516), in the case of geometry, and “positions” of
events, in the case of arithmetic, which in Friedman become “‘places’ in an iterative series”
(Cf. Friedman Ib, 126 f.).
16 Cf. Log, AA 09: § 37.
17 See Dreben, Burton and Juliet Floyd: “Tautology: How Not to Use a Word”, 27. In: Syn-
these 87, 1991, 23–49.
8 Frode Kjosavik

within modern logic does not itself make them independent of intuition, nor does it
show that our basic representation of space is a concept rather than a pure intuition.

1.3. “Geometrical” Intuition of Formal Systems

We may also question the very basis of the logical approach, i.e., Hintikka’s
interpretation of Kantian intuitions. This has been criticized on systematic grounds
by Parsons, Howell and Thompson, and on historical grounds by Capozzi Cel-
lucci.18 It has been pointed out that not any singular term will do – not a definite
description, for instance, as Parsons and Howell have stressed, and the latter has
argued that it can only be a pure demonstrative.19 Thompson, on the other hand,
contends that there are no counterparts to intuitions in natural language at all. The
upshot of all the criticism, which I shall not recapitulate, is that logical singularity
does not suffice to single out intuitions only, but it is not at all clear what the ad-
herents of the logical interpretation would wish to supplement it with.20
When it comes to intuition in mathematics in particular, the most immediate ob-
jection to Hintikka’s logical interpretation would be that mathematical justification
requires intuition of a formal proof itself, as a syntactical configuration, which was
certainly acknowledged by Hilbert:
So fängt denn alle menschliche Erkenntniß mit Anschauungen an, geht von da zu Begriffen und
endigt mit Ideen.21
Schon Kant hat gelehrt – und zwar bildet dies einen integrierenden Bestandteil seiner Lehre –,
daß die Mathematik über einen unabhängig von aller Logik gesicherten Inhalt verfügt und
daher nie und nimmer allein durch Logik begründet werden kann, weshalb auch die Bestre-
bungen von Frege und Dedekind scheitern mußten. Vielmehr ist als Vorbedingung für die An-

18 Cf. Cellucci, Maria Cappozzi: “J. Hintikka e il metodo della matematica in Kant.” In:
Il Pensiero 18, 1973, 232–267; Howell, Robert: “Intuition, Synthesis, and Individuation
in the Critique of Pure Reason.” In: Noûs 7, 1973, 207–232; Thompson, Manley: “Singular
Terms and Intuitions in Kant’s Epistemology.” In: Review of Metaphysics 26, 1972–1973,
314–343; Parsons, Charles: “Mathematical Intuition.” In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society 80, 1979–1980, 142–168; Parsons, C.: “Objects and Logic.” In: The Monist 4,
1982, 491–516; Parsons, C.: Mathematics in Philosophy, Ithaca 1983; Parsons, C.: “Arith-
metic and the Categories.” In: Topoi 3, 1984, 109–121; Parsons, C.: “On Some Difficulties
Concerning Intuition and Intuitive Knowledge.” In: Mind 102, 1993, 233–246.
19 The same point is made in Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre, §§ 72, 79. Cf. Bolzano, Bernard:
Wissenschaftslehre, Band I. In: Bernard Bolzano – Gesamtausgabe, Vols. 11/2 & 11/3. Ed.
by Jan Berg. Stuttgart 1987.
20 The inadequacy of logical singularity alone is also acknowledged by Hintikka: “Some critics
of my earlier work have thought that I interpret any representative which for conceptual
reasons stands for only one entity as an intuition. No, of course not. An intuition according
to Kant represents its object qua particular, i.e., without the help of general concepts.
Hence, e.g., the Vorstellung that goes together with a definite description is not an intuition
in Kant, even though it can stand for only one object.” (Hintikka 1984, 108)
21 Hilbert, David: Grundlagen der Geometrie. Stuttgart 1956. This is a quotation from KrV,
A 702/B 730.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 9

wendung logischer Schlüsse und für die Betätigung logischer Operationen schon etwas in der
Vorstellung gegeben: gewisse, außer-logische konkrete Objekte, die anschaulich als unmittel-
bares Erlebnis vor allem Denken da sind.22
Indeed, Kant himself makes a reference to Segner’s “point arithmetic”23, and he
clearly links mathematics to the manipulation of objects that are given in intuition:
Der Begriff der Größe sucht in eben der Wissenschaft seine Haltung und Sinn in der Zahl, diese
aber an den Fingern, den Corallen des Rechenbretts, oder den Strichen und Punkten, die vor
Augen gestellt werden. (KrV, B 299)

This indicates that we cannot examine the status of geometrical intuition and
construction in Kant without also looking into their status within arithmetic. It is
not just that formal proofs of geometrical theorems are symbolic, like the construc-
tions within arithmetic, so that Kant’s view of the latter might throw some light
upon the role of symbolic construction within geometry. Rather, Young has argued
persuasively that there are also ostensive constructions in arithmetic, and not only
in geometry, even if the numbers are not intuitable as such.24 The quotation above
should then provide us with an example of precisely this, in that “instances” of
arithmetical concepts are made intuitable in a way similar to the way geometrical
figures “exhibit” geometrical concepts. Kant even speaks of images in connection
with arithmetic: “So, wenn ich fünf Punkte hinter einander setze, […] ist dieses ein
Bild von der Zahl fünf.”(KrV, B 179)25
There is thus no doubt that an aspiration to develop an arithmetic based on stroke
configurations, as in the finitist program of Hilbert, would be in the same spirit as
Kant’s remark on Segner’s point arithmetic. Now, this finitist framework is of course
the basis of Hilbert’s proof theory, in that proofs are conceived as sequences of sym-
bols, just as numerals are conceived as sequences of strokes. From this, it does seem
to follow that the status of proof theory itself would have to be assimilated to that of
arithmetic in Kant, i.e., that it would depend on intuition in an essential way, and
not that the formalization of arithmetic within proof theory robs it of its intuition-
dependence, as the adherents of the logical interpretation would have it.

22 Hilbert, David: “Über das Unendliche.” In: Mathematische Annalen 95, 1926, 170 f.
23 Cf. KrV, B 15.
24 Cf. Young, J. Michael: “Kant on the Construction of Arithmetical Concepts.” In: Kant-
Studien 73, 1982, 17–46, § III. This is also argued in Parsons (cf. Parsons 1984, 111), who
regards numbers as “weakly intuitable”, in that sets with a particular cardinality are intuit-
able, if not the numbers themselves (cf. Parsons 1982, 496). In Friedman, on the other hand,
since arithmetic does not have any domain of objects of its own, it has no ostensive construc-
tions either. In short, it deals only with quantity – not with quanta – which is also why it has
no axioms, since there are no axioms for quantity (cf. Friedman Ia, 89; Friedman Ib, 107,
114, 120).
25 Friedman mistakenly holds that Young and Parsons regard ostensive construction as some
kind of seeing that arithmetical sentences are true, thus blurring the very distinction be-
tween intuition of and intuition that, which at least Parsons has been careful to make. What
Young and Parsons have in mind is no doubt intuition of instances of arithmetical concepts,
not intuition of arithmetical truths.
10 Frode Kjosavik

One might object, however, that there was symbolism even within the formal
Aristotelian syllogistic, and since this logic was regarded as analytic by Kant, sym-
bolism by itself does not mean that we have a representation that involves intuition
in an essential way. After all, even in the Jäsche-Logik there are ostensive-symbolic
diagrams which depict the structure of inferences as well as the species-genus re-
lations between the subject and predicate concept in judgments of various forms,26
a bit similar to the Euler or Venn diagrams of modern logic.27 But whereas this
validity test might be seen as a construction of concepts within naive set theory of
inclusion, exclusion, intersection, union, etc., of extensions of concepts, the logical
concepts are not themselves set theoretical, so no specific existence claims are made.
It is thus not the logical concepts that are constructed ostensively but mathematical
concepts of the extensions of non-logical concepts. It may be argued that this is why
logic is still analytic in Kant, in line with the logical interpretation of Hintikka.28
Furthermore, to the extent that logic was represented symbolically at Kant’s time,
this was just a schematic representation or illustration of the various forms of argu-
ments. Their validity or invalidity had to be established independently of the sym-
bolism itself, e.g., through the ostensive constructions just mentioned, so there was
nothing equivalent to the symbolic calculations within arithmetic, i.e., no symbolic
construction of logical concepts. The latter became possible only with the develop-
ment of quantification theory, in which both the Aristotelian term logic and the sen-
tential logic of the stoics could be incorporated.
In this way, through ostensive and symbolic construction, logic is assimilated to
arithmetic, even if it does not make any specific existence claims about infinite do-
mains of objects, unlike arithmetic. Arithmetic, on the other hand, can be assimi-
lated to geometry, which even makes specific existence claims about a particular
kind of individuals, namely, geometrical figures, in that there is an important re-
spect in which a particular kind of “geometrical” individuals – numerals – are in-
troduced in the formal proofs of elementary number theory. Indeed, the structure of
the formal system may be an essential feature of its interpretation, as in the case of
the canonical Dedekind-Peano-notation, since the numerals (0 s0 ss0 sss0) are iso-
morphic to initial segments of an
-sequence. As in Hilbert’s “geometry” of stroke-
strings, we have a structurally conspicuous notation that models itself, thereby
bringing both ostensive and symbolic constructions together – a bit like the iconic
signs and diagrams in Peirce. We also have a recursive successor function, and it
might be argued that just as Euclidean geometry is based on iteration of three dif-

26 Cf. Log, AA 09: § 21 and § 29.

27 Cf. Log, AA 09: § 68.
28 According to Friedman, the main difference between logic and arithmetic in Kant when re-
constructed in modern terms is that the latter is concerned with substitution in function-
signs, which can be iterated, i.e., f(a), f(f(a)), etc., whereas logic deals with subsumption,
which cannot be iterated, i.e., FFa is not well-formed. Cf. Friedman Ia, 86. This again links
arithmetic to the introduction of individuals, as in Hintikka, and also reminds us of the
extra-logical status of the axiom of infinity.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 11

ferent geometrical operations, Peano arithmetic is based on iteration of a successor

operation. This means that we are faced with symbolic constructions which are also
ostensive in Kant’s sense, in that there is, for instance, a linear relation between the
number of steps in the computation of a recursive addition function and the size of
its second argument.
From a logicist or deductivist point of view, it is also noteworthy that primitive
arithmetical structure is retained by “adjectival” translations of elementary arith-
metic into first order quantification theory.29 As is well-known, such a translation
of the formula “2+2=4” will contain the following pattern of quantifiers:

∃∃ (…) ∃∃ (…) → ∃∃∃∃ (…)

For this reason, even some symbolic constructions within logic itself may be re-
garded as ostensive constructions. To be sure, ostensive construction seems to be
equated with geometrical construction in Kant, and it is taken for granted in Fried-
man that they are therefore limited to geometry.30 But whether or not Kant himself
thought that there could be ostensive constructions in arithmetic, it is clear that it
does make sense to speak of quasi-geometrical configurations that exhibit the struc-
ture of progressions in elementary number theory or that of finite sets in predicative
set theory.
The syntactical configurations in Hilbert cannot be construed nominalistically,
however, since he allows stroke strings which are too lengthy to ever be inscribed.31
The ontological status of such stroke strings in Hilbert himself is not clear. One way
of dealing with it is to conceive of the stroke strings as abstract objects, which may
or may not have any concrete instances. The distinction between an abstract stroke-
string and a concrete one would then correspond to the distinction in Kant between
one that is only given through pure – or “formal” – intuition and one that is given in
empirical intuition.32 Another option is to interpret the existential quantifier mo-
dalistically – which seems to be in conformity with the emphasis Kant puts on con-
structibility in arithmetic.
Friedman observes that procedures of construction of individuals, just like con-
structive Skolem functions, seem to take the place of existential formulae in Kant.33
This may be a reasonable way of looking at it from a modern perspective. A con-
structive Skolem function could then be identified with a function that is primitive

29 Cf. Parsons 1983, 138 f.

30 Cf. Friedman Ib, 120.
31 Indeed, Hilbert suggested that the physical universe is finite – in conformity with elliptic ge-
ometry (cf. Hilbert 1926, 164 f.), which would mean that there is not only a practical limit
to how long a physical stroke configuration might be.
32 This would also correspond to Kitcher’s distinction between a ‘form space’ and an ‘object
space’. Cf. Kitcher, Philip: “Kant and the Foundations of Mathematics.” In: The Philosophi-
cal Review 84, 1975, 30.
33 Cf. Friedman Ia, 65.
12 Frode Kjosavik

recursive, thereby rendering the notion of construction more precise,34 and the
existential quantifier could be interpreted modalistically in terms of recursive com-
putability. Indeed, Friedman suggests that Kant’s theory of arithmetic should be re-
constructed within a quantifier-free subsystem of recursive arithmetic, like Robin-
son’s system, which only has free-variable generality.35 This is taken to be in
accordance with Kant’s claim that there are no axioms in arithmetic.36
We know that Brouwer, who was strongly influenced by Kant, stressed construc-
tivity in terms of recursive definitions as a similarity between intuitionism and
formalism.37 The Kantian basis of constructive functions may then taken to be the
arithmetical “synthesis of the homogeneous”,38 in that one and the same operation
is iterated on the basis of a recursive rule. Indeed, this might again be considered
as an ostensive construction, and not only a symbolic one, since the sequence of re-
peated applications of such a rule constitutes an initial segment of an w-sequence.
This cannot be Friedman’s view, however, since he thinks that Kant permits os-
tensive construction in geometry only.39 Indeed, according to Friedman, Kant does
not take arithmetic to deal with a particular successor function at all. Rather, it is a
theory of iterative operations in general. It is then precisely because of the limi-
tations of the logic of Kant’s time that he had to relate arithmetic to time, as has
been pointed out by Parsons40, rather than dealing with it axiomatically, be it within
first order logic or within set theory. Geometry, on the other hand, is a theory of
the iteration and composition of special basic operations, like the Euclidean ones of
drawing line segments, prolonging them indefinitely and producing circles. Presum-
ably, from this point of view, there is a stronger arithmetical component in Zermelo-
Fraenkel set theory, with its iterative conception of a set, than there is in the naive
set theory of Cantor, and in no way can sets be regarded as instances of numbers,
the way they are conceived in Parsons, who takes numbers in Kant to be “sets mo-
dulo cardinal equivalence”.41

34 Cf. also Goodstein, Reuben L.: Constructive Formalism. 2. ed., Leicester 1965.
35 Cf. Friedman Ib, 113. It is an important property of Robinson’s system that whereas all re-
cursive functions are representable in it, the system has only a finite number of proper
axioms, since we do not have any induction schema. In particular, specific arithmetical
statements, like ‘7+5=12’, and all instances of the laws of arithmetic (like that of commu-
tation, association, etc.) will be theorems within the system, but not the laws themselves.
36 Cf. KrV, B 204.
37 Cf. Brouwer, Luitzgen E. J.: “Intuitionistische Betrachtungen über den Formalismus.” In:
Proc. Akad. Wet. Amsterdam 1928, 374–379. This emphasis on symbolic construction also
puts a restriction on what kind of constructivism that can be recognized as Kantian. In
Bishop’s neo-constructivism, for instance, intuitive algorithms which are not Turing-com-
putable are accepted on the basis of the belief that there are mathematical objects which
cannot be described symbolically. Cf. Bishop, Errett: Foundations of Constructive Analysis.
New York 1968. This is not in conformity with a Kantian constructivism.
38 Cf. KrV, B 182 and B 300.
39 Cf. Friedman Ib, 108, 112.
40 Cf. Parsons 1984, 116.
41 Cf. Parsons 1984, 119.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 13

Anyway, even if it can be argued that construction within Peano arithmetic relies
on intuition in some sense, be it through symbolic representations alone, or also
through ostensive ones, it may not be clear whether the intuition in question is spa-
tial or temporal. To be sure, the formal system is itself instantiated in an intuitive
2-space, and is therefore bound to have at least some structure in common with
such a space. If the formal proof is conceived of just as a sequence of formulae,
which are themselves sequences of symbols, it is an initial segment of a second level
linear order of initial segments of first level linear orders. This, however, does not tie
the formal system to intuitive space in any intimate way, since it would be compat-
ible with a wide variety of 2-spaces, and from a Kantian point of view, it could be
argued that it is time, not space, that is the basis of our representation of a linear
order, since there is no direction that is intrinsic to space itself, whereas time is in-
trinsically directed because of its irreversibility, or the asymmetry between past and
future. Indeed, this might be the reason why Kant thought that there was some link
between arithmetic and time,42 since any
-sequence has a linear order as its sub-
structure. We might imagine, then, that the formal system is given in a No-Space
world, like the one suggested by Strawson, which is filled only with sounds.43
The problem with this is that in a non-spatial world there can at most be room for
a token of the formal system. At the level of types, we would need the permanence
of a weakly objectified time, i.e., of temporal successions as spatially represented.
On the other hand, just as the directedness of time is spatially represented44, the un-
boundedness of the space of formal proofs must be temporally represented, and the
same goes for the iterability of symbol-generating operations in any proof-theoreti-
cal practice, like the open-endedness of the successive application of a recursive
functor. Space and time are therefore both presupposed in an epistemology of for-
mal systems, and the fact that it is only a substructure of intuitive space that is es-
sential to the representation of a formal system does not eliminate the role of intu-
itive space altogether.
I have thereby pointed out another major problem with the “logical approach”,
at least in the backward-looking manner it is presented in Friedman, in that it does
not take the semantics and epistemology of proofs, or of formal systems and their
modelling, seriously enough. An interpretation of Kant which argues that his view
of the representation of space and time would change in the light of subsequent de-
velopments within logic, also has to ask if his views of representation within pure
logic would change when logical proofs are formalized. Furthermore, even though
there were no formal proofs in arithmetic at Kant’s time, since arithmetic had yet to
be axiomatized, Kant is clearly concerned with the issue of justification or verifi-
cation of existence-claims within arithmetic, be it through ostensive or symbolic

42 Cf. KrV, B 438.

43 Cf. Strawson, Peter F.: Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London & New
York 1959, 59–86.
44 Cf. KrV, B 154–156.
14 Frode Kjosavik

constructions. Hence, when specific existence-assumptions are introduced into pure

logic by adding non-logical axioms, like those for a dense linear order, one has to
discuss whether the justification of these will be different from justification within
algebra, which is taken to be intuition-dependent in a strong sense in Kant – despite
its abstractness.

2. The “phenomenological approach” in Friedman

2.1. The Justification of the Axioms of Geometry

I have now looked into Friedman’s logical approach to intuitive space and geo-
metrical intuition in Kant, and we have seen good reasons why it is unsatisfactory
even when judged on its own premises, namely, those of historical reconstruction.
In Friedman II, however, Friedman partly distances himself from his earlier view. He
here distinguishes between the logical approach that he has advocated earlier and a
“phenomenological approach”, which has been advanced in particular by Parsons.
The difference between the two approaches is related to the dispute between Hin-
tikka and Parsons with regard to whether immediacy is an additional property of an
intuition – besides singularity – or whether it is merely a “corollary of the individu-
ality criterion”, as Hintikka has argued. (Hintikka 1972, 342) On Parsons’s view,
immediacy in Kant does not simply mean that an intuition does not refer by means
of conceptual marks, but rather that the object of an intuition is present in some
phenomenological sense.45
According to Friedman, the “primary role of Kantian geometrical intuition, in
this approach, is to acquaint us, as it were, with certain phenomenological or per-
ceptual spatial facts, which can then be taken to provide us with evidence for or to
verify the axioms of geometry.” (Friedman II, 186) The infinity of space is a percep-
tual or quasi-perceptual fact that we are acquainted with, and is what ‘schematizes’
the concept of infinity in geometry, we might say, i.e., what grounds the legitimacy
of its application. It follows from the phenomenological view that even if Kant
would come to know about modern logic, he would still stick to his view of ge-
ometry as in need of constructions in space if its axioms are to be justified. In the
logical approach, on the other hand, it is the deductions on the basis of the axioms
that have to be justified by intuition – in terms of universal introductions and exist-
ence eliminations – and not the axioms themselves.
Friedman now agrees that there is more to the Kantian view of space than has
been encapsulated in the logical approach, and he brings in a passage from Kant’s

45 Cf. Parsons 1980, 166 and Parsons 1983, 112 and 144 f. – In Peirce, the usage of ‘intuitus’ in
the sense of “knowledge of the present as present” is traced back to Anselm’s Monologion.
Cf. Peirce 1960, Vol. V, 135. Peirce himself thinks that ‘intuition’ in Kant simply means
“non-discursive cognition”, even if the object of an empirical intuition has to be present,
and his interpretation is thus closest to that of Hintikka.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 15

dispute with Eberhard in 1790,46 which, he thinks, bears out “that the logical ap-
proach to Kantian geometrical intuition must, at the very least, be supplemented by
considerations congenial to the phenomenological approach”, and that “the infinity
of geometrical spaces is grounded in the single, uniquely given metaphysical space”
(Friedman II, 188). Indeed, Kant claims that any finite geometrical space is in a way
“cut out” from an infinite metaphysical space, and we can apparently imagine a po-
tentially infinite sequence of such finite spaces, each more extensive than its prede-
cessor.
However, unlike Parsons, Friedman does not subscribe to the view that metaphys-
ical space is epistemically prior to geometrical space in Kant, in the sense that geo-
metrical knowledge can be founded on some kind of direct acquaintance with facts
about metaphysical space. Apparently, the view that he attributes to Kant is that
while metaphysical space is the modo essendi of any geometrical space, geometrical
construction is still the modo cognoscendi of metaphysical space. This means that
perceptual or quasi-perceptual facts about metaphysical space cannot be used to
justify or verify the axioms of geometry, along the lines of Parsons’s interpretation.47
In particular, infinite extension cannot be given to us like a phenomenological fact,
through mere “intuitive insight”, as it were, so it cannot justify the second axiom of
Euclidean geometry, to the effect that any straight line segment can be extended in-
definitely.
Instead, Friedman has an operational interpretation of geometry in that “what
grounds the possibility of geometrical construction, then, is simply the immediate
activity of our a priori imagination by which we draw or describe a straight line in
thought and then rotate such a line around a fixed point” (Friedman II, 189 f.).48 In
other words, geometry is possible because we can do it, and its truth follows from

46 Cf. Br, AA 10: 419–421.

47 While this contrasts with the Russellian view that it is the inferences from the axioms that
are synthetic in Kant, Russell also touches upon this idea when he suggests that a Kantian
might argue that the definition of space can only be justified by pure intuition, which picks
out the existing space among all the possible spaces. Cf. Russell 1903, 456 ff. The view that
the inferences are analytic, and that it is only because of the justification of the axioms that
geometry is synthetic, has earlier been advanced in Beck, Lewis White: “Can Kant’s Syn-
thetic Judgements Be Made Analytic?” In: Kant-Studien 47, 1955–1956, 168–181. The
view that the axioms are synthetic has also been defended by Brittan, who argues that Kant
does not take them to follow analytically from our geometrical concepts precisely because
he foresaw the development of alternative geometries. Cf. Brittan, Gordon: Kant’s Philo-
sophy of Science. Princeton 1978. This view is rightly rejected in Friedman Ia and Ib (cf.
80 f. and 98ff., respectively). After all, geometrical concepts in Kant are not abstract enough
to serve the purpose of uninterpreted terms in formal systems. Indeed, if they were that ab-
stract, intuition would not be needed to represent them to begin with, and as long as intu-
ition is required, this cannot be so general as to permit spaces without a determinate curva-
ture.
48 The point is also made in the earlier logical approach, where the quantifier dependence of
axioms of both Euclidean geometry and Peano arithmetic (according to the modern concep-
tion) are seen to be translated into constructions. Cf. Friedman Ib, 126.
16 Frode Kjosavik

this possibility.49 He also has a kinematical interpretation of geometrical construc-

tion, which is taken to consist in the “motion of a point”.50 This yields full continu-
ity, as opposed to mere denseness, and I take it to be in accordance with Kant’s own
emphasis on the role of continuous quanta as opposed to discrete ones within ge-
ometry51, i.e., geometry does not deal with point sets.
For historical reasons, Friedman’s scepticism with regard to spatial intuition as a
mere source of geometrical insight or knowledge is easily granted – even if we leave
the controversy over Euclidean versus non-Euclidean geometry aside. All we have to
do is to look at how the concept of a curve evolved after Kant’s death. For instance,
it was noted by Bolzano (1834), and later by Weierstrass (1861), that there are
‘monster’ curves which are continuous, even though they lack a tangent at any
point, which means that they can only be constructed through ‘motion of a point’ in
an abstract sense. Peano (1890) even demonstrated how one such curve could go
through all the points of a square, and Sierpinski (1915) discovered one that inter-
sects itself at each and every point.
It is important to realize, though, that Kant never thought that intuition alone
was a source of mathematical knowledge but only construction of concepts in intui-
tion,52 and even the concepts of these ‘pathological’ curves are constructible in some
sense, in that the curves emerge as the limit of a recursive procedure. In a way, this is
no different from how a straight line emerges as the limit of an iteration of the pro-
cedure of extending a given line segment by its own length within the framework of
elementary Euclidean operations – a straight Euclidean line can never be given as
such in intuition either. This, I think, supports Friedman’s operational interpre-
tation of Kant’s theory of geometry.

49 Cf. Friedman Ib, 126 ff. It should be noted, though, that whereas the possibility of a geo-
metrical operation follows from having a Skolem function for an existential quantifier
within the logical approach, it requires “geometrical intuition and perceptual spatial
‘facts’” within the phenomenological approach. Cf. Friedman II, 213.
50 This kinematical interpretation is also part of the earlier logical approach. Cf. Friedman Ia,
72 ff. It is there connected to the strong quantifier-dependence in the axiom of Cauchy-com-
pleteness, and it is argued that Kant’s motivation is to account for the method of fluxions,
i.e., Newton’s calculus (cf. Kant’s letter to Rehberg, 1790, Br, AA 12: 375 ff.). In this
approach, as opposed to the phenomenological approach, it is thus not directly related to
our representation of metaphysical space, nor even to Euclidean geometry.
51 Cf. KrV, B 211–212 as well as B 555.
52 This is precisely what Hahn overlooks when he argues that the development of the concept
of a curve has dealt a death blow to Kant’s theory of geometry. On the alleged “crisis of
intuition”, cf. Hahn, Hans: “Die Krise der Anschauung”. In: Hans Hahn. Empirismus,
Logik, Mathematik. Ed. by B. McGuinness Frankfurt a. M. 1988, 86–114. – The claim is re-
peated in Kitcher 1975, 41.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 17

2.2. Geometrical Knowledge of Metaphysical Space

Friedman’s next step, however, is much more problematic, in that he now trans-
forms the motion of a geometrical point into the motion of a perceptual focus,
thereby wedding Kant to the kinematical conception of spatial intuition in Helm-
holtz, despite the fact that Helmholtz himself viewed this as an anti-Kantian idea.
This is supposed to account for how our knowledge of metaphysical space depends
on our knowledge of Euclidean geometry. Indeed, the first three axioms of Euclid-
ean geometry describe the kinematics of our moving our point of perceptual atten-
tion, in that every possible position and orientation in intuitive space can be con-
structed geometrically, so to speak, through translation and rotation. Metaphysical
space is thus identified with perceptual or demonstrative space, and any object can
be traced kinematically, or “phoronomically”, as Kant would put it.53
This is clearly not mere geometrical or kinematical knowledge, though, so the in-
finity of metaphysical space cannot be inferred from geometry or kinematics, since
we could at some point reach a boundary of metaphysical space, and geometry itself
can only provide us with finite spaces as well as with the potential infinity of a se-
quence of spaces where each contains its predecessor. Hence, if we were faced with
alternative geometries, we would have to take in perceptual facts to determine
which geometry that is true of metaphysical space. Still, our knowledge of the fi-
niteness or infinity of metaphysical space would depend on geometrical knowledge,
on this account, so according to Friedman’s interpretation, the latter cannot be
grounded on the former in the first place, as Parsons has argued.
Furthermore, no matter how one views the relation between geometrical and
metaphysical properties, it is clear that space according to Kant cannot have any
properties that are incompatible with the geometry of his time, like higher dimen-
sionality or curvedness. One may still wish to distinguish this intuitive space from
the space of physics, as did some of the neo-Kantians in their reply to Reichenbach’s
criticism, like Sellien.54 This is also the view held by Carnap, who made a distinction
between formal, intuitive and physical space, and who clearly understood Kant’s
theory of geometry as pertaining to intuitive space, even if he disagreed with Kant
over which properties this space has.55
This distinction between various types of spaces is not suggested by Kant himself,
however, but he does speculate on types of space of higher dimensionality, and thus
on spaces that lie beyond the realm of perception, in Gedanken von der wahren
Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1747), thereby anticipating the later works of

53 Cf. MAN, AA 04: 480.

54 Cf. Sellien, Ewald: Die erkenntnistheoretische Bedeutung der Relativitätstheorie. Berlin 1919.
55 According to Carnap, intuitive space is only “infinitesimally Euclidean”. Cf. Carnap,
Rudolf: Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre. Berlin 1922. Carnap’s view is dis-
cussed in Friedman, Michael: Reconsidering Logical Positivism. Cambridge 1999, 44–58,
and in Friedman, M.: A Parting of the Ways. Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago and
Lasalle, Illinois 2000, 64–69.
18 Frode Kjosavik

Grassmann and Riemann.56 He also theorizes that there may be a connection be-
tween the forces that act in space and the structure of space, in particular, between
gravity and dimensionality:
Eine Wissenschaft von allen diesen möglichen Raumesarten wäre unfehlbar die höchste Geo-
metrie, die ein endlicher Verstand untersuchen könnte. […] Räume von dieser Art könnten nun
unmöglich mit solchen in Verbindung stehen, die von ganz anderm Wesen sind; daher würden
dergleichen Räume zu unserer Welt gar nicht gehören, sondern eigene Welten ausmachen müs-
sen. (GSK, AA 01: 24–25)

In his critical philosophy, on the other hand, alternative spaces are ruled out in so
far as he is now concerned with accounting for the conditions of our actual experi-
ence, which he takes to permit only one kind of space. Hence, when Kant says that
all spaces must be part of one and the same space, I take it to mean not only that all
discrete spatial regions are part of a single continuous space, but also that there is
only one type of space. It should then in principle be possible, according to Fried-
man, for one and the same subject to point to all positions in this space with a “Eu-
clidean geometrical finger”, so to speak, i.e., through translations and rotations of
one’s field of perception, as if it were a rigid body moving freely through space.
Now, of course, free mobility of rigid bodies only yields a substructure of Euclid-
ean space, since all spaces with constant curvature will satisfy the conditions of the
Helmholtz-Lie theorem, be they Euclidan, elliptic or hyperbolic. As Friedman
points out, this is why Helmholtz supports an empiricist conception of geometry:
The axioms of specifically Euclidean geometry are neither necessities of thought (because we
can consistently develop the more general concept of Riemannian metrical manifold) nor
necessities of intuition (because the formal structure of spatial perception leaves all three clas-
sical cases of constant curvature still open). (Friedman II, 200)

For Helmholtz, pure geometry as such need not involve spatial intuition at all.
Rather, the reference to spatial intuition is replaced with a conceptual Riemannian
metric, Friedman seems to think, and spatial intuition is only needed to explain the
origin or application of the mathematical concept of space. I shall argue below,
however, that even a Riemannian manifold has a property which only intuition can
represent adequately, and that this property is precisely why even Riemannian
manifolds are geometrical spaces rather than just algebraic structures.

3. An Alternative Phenomenological Approach

3.1 The Structure of Intuitions vs. Concepts

It is noteworthy that Friedman in his phenomenological approach no longer con-

siders the property of denseness, which was pivotal in his logical approach, but

56 Cf. Grassmann, Hermann: Die lineale Ausdehnungslehre, ein neuer Zweig der Mathematik.
Leipzig 1844. The Ausdehnungslehre deals with n-dimensional vector spaces.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 19

rather the infinite extension of metaphysical space, which is to ground the potential
expansion of any geometrical space. When he argues that the potential infinity ac-
cording to Kant belongs to geometry, whereas actual infinity, or “an infinity in act”,
belongs to metaphysics, he is clearly not concerned with the potential infinity of
division, but rather with that of extension. Still, just as he rules out that we are in
any way directly acquainted with the infinite extension of metaphysical space, be-
cause the visual field is itself always limited, he has earlier ruled out that we have
any perception or quasi-perception of the infinite divisibility of metaphysical space,
since our senses are only finitely acute.57
I have already suggested an alternative phenomenological approach to arith-
metic, which takes the geometrical features of the formal systems seriously. I shall
now propose an alternative phenomenological approach to geometry itself, which
takes denseness rather than infinite extension as its point of departure. Contrary to
the emphasis on the developments of logic within the logical approach, I would like
to argue that what matters is not simply that we cannot conceptualize denseness
within logic, but rather that a concept cannot itself have a dense structure, as op-
posed to an intuition. A concept in Kant is either simple or finitely complex,
whereas the content of an intuition, on the other hand, can be indefinitely divided,
just as space can be indefinitely divided into regions, subregions, subsubregions, etc.
The characteristic unity of content in an intuition is brought out in the following
important passage:
Der Raum und die Zeit und alle Theile derselben sind Anschauungen, mithin einzelne Vorstel-
lungen mit dem Mannigfaltigen, das sie in sich enthalten (siehe die transsc. Ästhetik), mithin
nicht bloße Begriffe, durch die eben dasselbe Bewußtsein als in vielen Vorstellungen, sondern
viel Vorstellungen als in einer und deren Bewußtsein enthalten, mithin als zusammengesetzt,
folglich die Einheit des Bewußtseins als synthetisch, aber doch ursprünglich angetroffen wird.
Diese Einzelheit derselben ist wichtig in der Anwendung (siehe § 25). (KrV, B 136. Fn.)

Note in particular the use of “Einzelheit” here. The point is not just singularity,
in that there are only one space and one time, but also simplicity, in that space and
time exhibit homogeneity in a very strict sense. Thus, by translating “einzeln” into
“singular”, one may miss an important facet of the German term which has to do
with unity of content rather than uniqueness of reference. On the interpretation I am
offering, the “Einzelheit” is important because it forms the basis of the synthetic
unity of all intuitions, including the empirical ones, i.e., it grounds the unity of the
manifold of perception, and this unity must ultimately point to what Kant calls “the
synthetic unity of transcendental apperception”, in that everything we intuit must
belong to one and the same space and time.
I take it that it is the intrinsic unity of space, and the fact that our intuitions can
mirror this unity, that underlies our experience of the richness of everyday percep-
tion. A vast array of tropes can be taken in without effort precisely because intu-
itions, despite the complexity they present us with, are not composed of pre-given

57 Cf. Friedman Ib, 103.

20 Frode Kjosavik

sub-intuitions, just as space is not composed of pre-given sub-spaces. Indeed, even if

an intuition of a geometrical figure is interdependent on the construction of the ref-
erent itself, in a way that the perception of a physical object is not, it is still not de-
composable into a set of simple point-intuitions.
Concepts, on the other hand, are in general composed of other concepts: all the
complex ones consist of other full-blown concepts, and the whole depends on the
parts, but not the other way around. In the last instance, then, there must be simple
concepts, or else, all concepts would be infinitely complex, which would be at odds
with Kant’s statement to the effect that “kein Begriff als ein solcher kann so gedacht
werden, als ob er eine unendliche Menge von Vorstellungen in sich enthielte” (KrV,
B 40).
Thus, in the Kantian theory of ‘marks’ (“Merkmale”) in the Jäsche-Logik, each
concept that is a part of a concept is also said to be a mark of that concept. We ana-
lyse a concept by making a list of its independent, i.e., co-ordinated, marks. Some
or all of these marks might have further marks, i.e., subordinated marks. To give
an example, the concept of bachelor has two co-ordinated marks, ‘unmarried’ and
‘man’. The concept of man has as one of its marks ‘human being’, so ‘human being’
is a subordinated mark of ‘bachelor’. With regard to the subordinated marks, Kant
says:
Die Reihe subordinirter Merkmale stößt a parte ante, oder auf Seiten der Gründe, an unauflös-
liche Begriffe, die sich ihrer Einfachheit wegen nicht weiter zergliedern lassen. (Log, AA 09:
59.17–19)

By contrast, there are no simple building blocks of which space and time are
composed, and the same goes for an intuition.
We now see that the so-called synthetic unity of an intuition is widely different
from that of a concept. An intuition is not a sum of minimal parts that can be given
independently of it, like a complex concept. Each and every part that is contained in
the intuition is connected with the other parts in a much more intimate way, and
this has to do with the unity of space itself, in that all local regions of global space
are connected as tightly as is conceivable:
[…] Compositum, d.i. die zufällige Einheit des Mannigfaltigen, welches abgesondert (wenig-
stens in Gedanken) gegeben, in eine wechselseitige Verbindung gesetzt wird und dadurch Eines
ausmacht. Den Raum sollte man eigentlich nicht Compositum, sondern Totum nennen, weil die
Theile desselben nur im Ganzen und nicht das Ganze durch die Theile möglich ist. (KrV, B 466)

What Kant here names a ‘totum’ is a whole which can only be divided and sub-
divided arbitrarily, and where each part as well as the whole itself are subsumable
under the same concept, and where there is no causal interaction that keeps the
parts together.58 Against the background of such a spatial totum, with its actual
simplicity and potential complexity, an intuition can be densely packed with deter-
minations in a way that a concept can never be. The singularity of an intuition is
58 See also Reflection no. 5834 and no. 5843 (HN, AA 18: 366.05–07 and 367.17–24), and
Parsons 1984, 113.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 21

thus not just the logical – or referential – singularity that is the cornerstone of the
Hintikka interpretation, but also its epistemic singularity, in that, like space itself, it
has no real parts, only ideal ones, since the whole is prior to its parts.59
To be sure, even if a concept were to be indefinitely complex, it would not follow
from this that it would represent this indefinite complexity, as concepts in general
do not represent their own structure. On the other hand, intuitions do represent the
structure of their referents precisely by way of their structural similarity to their ref-
erents. In particular, a spatial intuition could not represent a dense space if it were
not itself dense, which is why such a space is a form of intuition, and not just a form
of the intuited.
As a form of intuition, it is also the basis of synthetic extensions of geometrical
concepts, as when the sum of angles in a triangle is demonstrated to equal that of
two right angles, even though this does not follow from an analysis of the very con-
cept of a triangle. According to Coffa, there could also be synthetic extensions of
geometrical concepts in a holistic field of meaning, i.e., synthetic judgments that are
not based on mere conceptual analysis in Kant’s sense – a view he attributes to
Helmholtz.60 The problem with this suggestion is that these extensions would have
a very different status from those which take place in a field of intuition, through
construction. After all, the semantic extension of the concept is not based on corre-
spondence with an object that falls under it, but on coherence within a field of
meaning. Synthetic extensions of representations on conceptual grounds would
therefore not have the same transparency as those on intuitive grounds, and, hence,
not the same legitimacy either.
It is clear, then, that even if Kant had disposed of a polyadic quantification theory,
so that denseness could be expressed through nested quantifiers, this would not
necessarily make the concept given by this formula under the intended interpre-
tation isomorphic to a dense substructure of Euclidean space, nor would it turn the
concept into a complete percept – like a conceptum infimum – since only a limited
number of predicates can occur in its formal representation:
Aber einen niedrigsten Begriff (conceptum infimum) oder eine niedrigste Art, worunter kein
anderer mehr enthalten wäre, giebt es in der Reihe der Arten und Gattungen nicht, weil ein sol-

59 Bolzano’s definition of a Kantian intuition as a representation that is both singular (“ein-

zeln”) with regard to its extension (logical singularity) and simple (“einfach”) with regard
to its intension (epistemic singularity) is very much in accordance with this. Cf. Wissen-
schaftslehre, § 72.
60 Cf. Coffa, J. Alberto: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station.
Cambridge 1991, 59 f. Coffa argues that Kant has confused the class of judgments that
are true in virtue of analysis and logic with those which are true on a “purely conceptual
ground” (ibid., 19) (‘clarificatory’ as opposed to ‘ampliative’ in Kant), and have labelled
both ‘analytic’. In other words, Kant has overlooked the possibility of a conceptual ground
beyond that of mere analysis and logic, in the form of a semantic basis. This semantic basis
turns out to be a “propositional context” that “is prior in the sense that the context defines
the concept” (ibid., 59). Judgments which are true “by virtue of meaning” may thus be syn-
thetic in one sense and analytic in another.
22 Frode Kjosavik

cher sich unmöglich bestimmen läßt. Denn haben wir auch einen Begriff, den wir unmittelbar
auf Individuen anwenden: so können in Ansehung desselben doch noch specifische Unter-
schiede vorhanden sein, die wir entweder nicht bemerken, oder die wir aus der Acht lassen.
(Log, AA 09: 97. Fn.)

It would rather be a concept of a type that Kant cannot really account for. Recall
Frege’s criticism of Kant’s view of concepts in Grundlagen §§ 88–89. One may ob-
ject, though, that this Kantian notion of a concept is a very crude one, namely,
a merely syntactical notion of the intension of a concept, and that it also leaves no
room for hierarchical quantification. Thus, on Frege’s more refined notion, there
will be a trichotomy between syntactical representation, intension, and extension,
and the syntactical representation can lie at different levels – the first being the
predicate level, the second, that of first order quantifiers, the third, that of second
order quantifiers, etc. The question is then whether a Fregean concept can bear a re-
lation to space that is just as intrinsic as that of intuition. This I take to be equival-
ent to the question whether the intension of a third level concept of a dense linear
order is isomorphic to a dense linear order or not. That it is not obvious what the
answer would be indicates that intuitions are epistemically privileged with regard to
our representation of space even when the more refined Fregan theory of concepts is
taken into account.
This argument does not rest on the mistaken general assumption that there must
be a one-to-one correspondence between the parts of the representation of an object
and the parts of the object itself. This view is criticized in Bolzano, who points out
that there are many concepts where this is not the case, like ‘a land without moun-
tains’ or ‘the eye of the man’.61 Still, Bolzano takes Kant to subscribe to this view –
that is one reason why Kant claims that our representation of space has to be an
intuition, rather than a concept, since only an intuition can be infinitely divisible,
like space itself.62 Coffa agrees with this, and he cites a passage from Reflexionen to
back it.63
To this it might be objected that there is of course also a concept of space in Kant –
it is just that it has to be derived from a pure space intuition. The Metaphysical
Exposition is after all an exposition of the concept of space, since only concepts can
be exposed, not intuitions. Hence, there can be no general assumption in KrV of iso-
morphism underlying any representation. Indeed, there could be no judgments
about space if there were no concept of space, since only concepts can enter into
pure propositional knowledge.
It is also clear that to the extent that there is to be a structural similarity between
a concept and an object that it applies to, this must be in a weaker sense than the
isomorphism between an intuition and its referent, since the relation between the
parts of a concept is much more abstract than is the spatial relation between the

61 Cf. Wissenschaftslehre, § 63.

62 Cf. Wissenschaftslehre, § 65.
63 Cf. Coffa 1991, 31 f.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 23

parts of its object. Also, since concepts can be more or less abstract, depending on
how many marks they contain, it means that the parts of the object can outnumber
the parts of the concept by far. ‘Something’ (‘etwas’) is according to Kant the most
abstract concept,64 as it applies to everything, but precisely for that reason it has no
parts either.
An intuition, on the other hand, can neither be made more general, nor more spe-
cific, and there is an isomorphism between it and its referent because of the spatial
unity of both. Like space itself, it has no real parts, and it can only be divided ar-
bitrarily into parts, by narrowing down its scope, which is equivalent to “zooming
in” on particular features of its referent. It is also because of this isomorphism be-
tween arbitrary partitions of an intuition and those of the space of its referent that
an intuition can pertain to a lot more determinations than a concept, since only a
totum can have an indefinite potential for perceptual complexity.
Furthermore, a pure finite space, like an elliptical space, is dense, as is a Rie-
mannian manifold with variable curvature, so even if we accept that intuitive space
is not infinite, contrary to Kant’s claim, nor flat, as he also held, it would still be
dense, and denseness is a property attributed to space-time in modern physics as
well.65 Hence, with regard to the developments within pure and applied geometry
after Kant, there is an important difference between the case of infinite divisibility,
which is what Friedman starts out with in Friedman 1992, and the case of infinite
extension, which is the mathematical property he ends up with analysing in Fried-
man II. The latter can be seen to be a contingent property of intuitive space in Kant,
since even a finite but unbounded space would be compatible with the way Kant
conceives of the unity of space in his epistemology of perception, even if he iden-
tified unboundedness with infinity. Infinite divisibility, or denseness, on the other
hand, has a completely different status in his epistemology, as it grounds the very
distinction between the unity of an intuition and that of a concept.

64 Cf. Log, AA 09: 95.

65 To be sure, even if mainstream physics has held on to continuous spaces, there are notable
exceptions. For instance, Hahn in 1934 toyed with the idea of a discrete physical space-time
(cf. Hahn, Hans: “Gibt es Unendliches?” In: Hans Hahn. Empirismus, Logik, Mathematik.
Ed. by McGuinnes, Brian. Frankfurt a. M. 1988, 115–140. More recently, in Penrose, the
geometrical points of a continuous space-time are replaced with fuzzy intersections between
‘twistors’. Cf. Penrose, Roger and Wolfgang Rindler: Spinors and Space-Time, Vol. 2: Spi-
nor and Twistor Methods in Space-Time Geometry. Cambridge 1986. – A quantized space-
time where particles jump from one position to another – corresponding to the Planck dis-
tance and Planck time – has been suggested as an explanation of why high-energy particles
can reach the Earth without being annihilated through collisions with other particles. –
See also the discussion in Forrest, Peter: “Is Space-Time Discrete or Continuous? – An Em-
pirical Question.” In: Synthese 103, 1995, 327–354. Forrest argues that it is an open ques-
tion whether space-time is continuous or discrete.
24 Frode Kjosavik

3.2 Indexicality and Isomorphism as Extra-Conceptual Facts

It is this important phenomenological fact that Friedman has overlooked in his

phenomenological approach, since he does not take into account the metaphysical
property of space that enables its indefinite potential for perceptual complexity,
even though he does discuss another metaphysical property of space – unity in terms
of all-inclusiveness and indexicality, in that all regions of metaphysical space must
ultimately be accessible to one and the same subject, through translation and ro-
tation of its perceptual focus. Indeed, unity in this sense, together with infinite ex-
tension, are now said to be the “two key features of intuitive space”.66 When Kant
claims that the unity of space does not belong to the understanding, even if it is de-
termined by it,67 this is according to Friedman simply because the relation ‘is reach-
able from here’ is indexical, not conceptual, even if the unity of apperception, which
conditions the unity of space, is itself conceptual.68
I think it is correct that the synthetic unity of transcendental apperception is not
itself token-reflexive, i.e., the “I” of the “I think” does not function egocentrically as
an essential indexical in Kant, but is rather an expression of a normative unity-con-
straint that is put on all thought. But this very abstract unity-condition is not merely
conceptual either, as that would not rule out the conceptual possibility of a multitude
of parallel non-discernable metaphysical spaces, i.e., the distinction between numeri-
cal and qualitative identity is non-enforcable by either intuitions or concepts alone.
The extra-conceptual unity of space and time, on the other hand, is not merely due to
indexicality, either. If that were the case, it would be irrelevant to geometry, which
only deals with objective spaces, and not with a “subjective” one. Rather, it is also
rooted in the fact that a totum-unity cannot be conceptualized adequately, as there
is an isomorphism between intuitions and space and time themselves, and this is
relevant to geometry, in so far as it deals with continuous spatial manifolds.
As was pointed out earlier, Friedman does not think that knowledge of metaphys-
ical properties of space can be independent of knowledge of its mathematical prop-
erties, even though metaphysical space, by virtue of allowing free mobility, condi-
tions the possibility of particular geometries. Hence, the Euclidean operations of
translation and rotation are demanded to justify or verify that perceptible spatial re-
gions are interconnected and without fixed boundaries. Both the unity, in terms of
all-inclusiveness and indexicality, and the infinite extension, or, rather, unbounded-
ness, of space are thus ascertained by the very same procedure.
To be sure, infinite extension as a geometrical property could in principle be sub-
ject to the same logical approach as infinite divisibility, but on the basis of Kant’s
characterization of the relation between finite geometrical spaces and infinite meta-
physical space it is in Friedman connected to the all-inclusiveness of metaphysical

66 Cf. Friedman II, 197.

67 Cf. KrV, B 160.
68 Cf. Friedman II, 198.
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 25

space and to the indexical representation of this all-inclusiveness. Since, according

to Friedman’s interpretation, a priori knowledge of metaphysical space depends on
geometrical knowledge, he is then forced to give a highly speculative account of the
Kantian connection between Euclidean geometry and the indexicality of our repre-
sentation of metaphysical space as an extra-conceptual fact. Thus, the geometrical
property of extension is in a way phenomenologized, whereas that of divisibility
still remains open to “logicistic” reduction within polyadic quantification theory, or
so it seems. There is, however, not much textual evidence to support the contention
that Kant thought the extension of the indexical “is reachable from here” has to be
geometrically determined, as it were, i.e., that kinematical construction of line seg-
ments and circles enters into the very acts whereby parts of metaphysical space are
demonstratively identified.
Friedman’s proto-Helmholtzian manoeuvre can be avoided if one picks the geo-
metrical property of infinite divisibility as the essential one, rather than that of in-
finite extension. This property has been phenomenologized by Kant himself
through his distinction between a totum and a compositum, and we have seen that it
parallels the dichotomy between intuitions and concepts. If one then takes the epis-
temic intimacy of a pure spatial intuition seriously, in terms of its structural simi-
larity to space itself, one realizes that intuitions are analogue, or indefinitely com-
plex, representations, as opposed to Kantian or Fregean concepts, which are digital,
or definitely complex. While we might still posit meaning-entities which are indefi-
nitely complex, like a perceptual ‘noema’ in Husserl, according to Føllesdal’s inter-
pretation,69 it is clear that only digital concepts can be represented within formal
logic. The isomorphism between spatial intuition and intuitive space is thus a fun-
damental synthetic premise of Kantian epistemology, and the post-Kantian enrich-
ments of logic and geometry have in no way altered its status, not even with regard
to knowledge of mathematical objects.
This distinguishes my phenomenological interpretation from that of Friedman.
Indeed, on his phenomenological approach, there is no reason why empirical intui-
tion, or perception, should not suffice to represent intuitive space, as in Helmholtz’s
physical geometry. Pure intuition, on the other hand, is only required to represent a
pure geometrical space, which cannot be fully conceptualized within monadic
predicate logic. Hence, Friedman still thinks that only the logical approach can ex-
plain why Kant had to introduce pure intuition:
Indeed, Kantian pure, as opposed to empirical, intuition can, of course, involve no sensations
or actual perceptions at all. Kant’s doctrine of space as a pure form of outer intuition is in this
sense entirely unique, and it cannot be satisfactorily understood, I believe, except by invoking
the basic ideas of the logical interpretation of this doctrine. It is only because there is no room
in Kant’s own conception of logical, conceptual, or analytic thought for anything correspond-
ing to pure mathematical geometry that there is a place, accordingly, for a wholly nonconcep-
tual faculty of pure spatial intuition. For Helmholtz, by contrast, there is no difficulty at all in

69 Cf. Føllesdal, Dagfinn: “Husserl’s Notion of Noema.” In: The Journal of Philosophy 66,
1969, 680–687.
26 Frode Kjosavik

formulating pure mathematical geometry conceptually or analytically, with no reference to

spatial intuition whatsoever (via the Riemannian conception of metrical manifold), and an ap-
peal to spatial intuition or perception is only then necessary to explain the psychological origin
and empirical application of the pure mathematical concept of space. (Friedman II, 202)

In other words, as soon as a pure geometrical space can be represented by way of

concepts alone, there is no need for pure, as opposed to empirical, intuition. As
Friedman points out, however, his phenomenological approach to pure geometry
can also be generalized – by way of group theory and Weyl’s idea of infinitesimal ro-
tation and translation in a metrical field, but Euclidean constructions in an ex-
tended sense of each and every point are then no longer possible, the way they are in
the case of geometrical spaces of constant curvature. This means that the logical ap-
proach to the grounds of geometrical knowledge, with its emphasis on introduction
of individuals through definite procedures of construction, is no longer compatible
with the phenomenological approach. Instead, there will be two different foun-
dations of pure geometry – one that is merely conceptual and intuition-indepen-
dent, according to Friedman, and one that is phenomenological and intuition-de-
pendent. As Friedman thinks there is both a logical or constructive and a
phenomenological side to Kantian intuition, this means than any Kantian “phe-
nomenology of space” has to be limited to homogeneous manifolds.
On the other hand, on my interpretation, the isomorphism between a manifold of
potential co-referential spatial intuitions – all “contained in a single actual intui-
tion”, as Kant would put it – and a dense or continuous spatial manifold points to a
Kantian phenomenology of space of even wider scope, since it does not matter if the
space in question has constant or variable curvature – it is still infinitely divisible,
like an intuition itself. The objection that there is a limit to how fine-grained our
perceptions can be, or that we do not know for sure that the world is infinitely com-
plex, misses the point, since the geometrical intuition that underlies our antici-
pations of open-ended continuous sequences of perceptions – or of the analogue na-
ture of perspectival variation – is that of a totum rather than of a compositum.
Furthermore, even if the truths of Euclidean geometry are not known a priori in the
sense Kant envisaged, there is still a constructive Euclidean basis of our represen-
tation of denseness or continuity. Moreover, this holds whether we accept pure in-
tuition as an independent mode of representation – as Friedman clearly does, in that
he considers it to be a separate faculty – or just view it as an invariant feature of our
sequences of empirical intuitions or perceptions, i.e., their totum-connectedness.
Furthermore, there would be no strong reason why a “pure mathematical con-
cept” should be a concept of space if a Riemannian manifold does not resemble in-
tuitive space in some important respect, i.e., if there were no link to intuition, be it
pure or empirical. It could then just as well be considered as a concept of a mere set-
theoretical structure, like a formal space in Carnap. Only if there is a relation to
Kantian intuition within the semantics – or modelling – of axiomatic systems in ge-
ometry can it be a theory of space, as opposed to a theory of structures in general,
which are just nominally identified as “spaces”. To put it in Kantian terms, this
 Kant on Geometrical Intuition and the Foundations of Mathematics 27

means that the ‘schematism’ of the original mathematical concept of space must be
taken seriously, i.e., that a phenomenological account must be given of its condi-
tions of applicability.
This is not to deny that mathematical intuition includes more abstract types of
pure spatial intuition, besides the one that is based on isomorphism between intui-
tion and what is intuited, but these are parasitic on conceptualization in a way that
quasi-perceptual intuitions are not. Topological intuitions, for instance, are based
on the concept of bicontinuous transformations, and intuitions of higher-dimen-
sional spaces, to the extent that there are such intuitions, are based on conceptual
analogies and algebraic generalization.
Kant might still have been wrong with regard to some of the properties of intu-
itive space that he took to be necessary – like its Euclidean metric. The conceptual
possibility of radically different forms of spatial intuition is also not ruled out –
where denseness or continuity or free mobility or differentiability would not play
the same part as in the kind of geometrical and kinematic intuition that we have
looked into. But from a Kantian perspective, the “concrete” type of geometrical in-
tuition that would be transparently isomorphic to space as a form of the intuited –
whichever be the properties of such a space – is bound to be epistemically privi-
leged, since its affinity to perception enters into the quasi-perceptual modelling of
the most basic mathematical terms. With regard to the modelling of the numerals, in
the form of stroke configurations, only a discrete substructure of perceptual space is
required, but a Kantian geometrical intuition is still the only transparent way
in which they can be given to us. Furthermore, as has been pointed out, the quasi-
perceptual modelling of the axioms of a Riemannian manifold does hinge on the
totum-unity of perceptual space, or that of the corresponding intuition. In short, it
is quasi-perceptual intuitions that constitute the epistemological foundations of
pure mathematics – not conceptual representations of abstract structures.70

70 I am grateful to Michael Friedman for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I have also
benefited from discussions with Øystein Linnebo.