Kant’s Concept of Intensive Magnitude: Anticipating Scientific Experience

I offer a reconstruction of the concept of intensive magnitude, such that the way it is developed in the Anticipations of Perception chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason serves as an explanation of how we can anticipate experience of features of objects while avoiding the tension with Kant’s claims about the empirical nature of sensations and show how the principle can serve as synthetic grounding of (scientific) cognition. I will achieve this by tracing the concept back to the schematism chapter, which allows me to develop the account that intensive magnitudes are best understood as the rate of change of a quality, akin to differentials of functions. I will then compare and defend this understanding against alternative conceptions and close by discussing some consequences for Kant’s views on natural science.