DYNAMICAL AND MATHEMATICAL

[B110] Opposing kinds of categories. Kant divides the table of categories into two groups, namely that containing dynamical categories and that containing mathematical categories. Mathematical categories are "concerned with objects of intuition, pure as well as empirical" dynamical categories "with the existence of these objects, in their relation either to each other or to the understanding". [A162/B202] Likewise, Kant divides the axioms of intuitions into two groups, those principles which are mathematical (whose a priori application to appearances has intuitive certainty), and those which are dynamical (whose application to appearance "is capable of a merely discursive certainty"). The distinction is not one of the content of the categories or principles, but of their application. [B199] "In the application of pure concepts of understanding to possible experience, the employment of their synthesis is either mathematical or dynamical". The mathematical concerns "the a priori conditions of intuition [which] are absolutely necessary conditions of any possible experience", the dynamical with the existence of an appearance. [A227/B280] The principle of causation is a dynamical principle. Cp. Concepts and Intuitions, Sensibility and Understanding.