SENSATION

[B147] "Things in space and time are given only in so far as they are perceptions (That is, representations accompanied by sensation)--therefore only through empirical representation". [A20/B34] Kant often associates sensation with the representations caused by our receptivity, i.e. with the e,empirical intuitions caused when our mind is affected in certain ways by objects. "The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation so far as we are affected by it is sensation. That intuition which is in relation to the object through sensation, is entitled empirical. The [i.e., before synthesis and judgment takes place] undetermined object of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance. That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation I term its matter". [A42/B59] "All our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance....We know nothing but our mode of perceiving [objects]--a mode which is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared in by every being, though, certainly, by every human being. With this alone have we any concern. Space and time are its pure forms, and sensation in general its matter". [A29/B45] However, Kant also distinguishes sensations and intuitions, holding that whereas the latter provide knowledge of objects, the former--as "belonging merely to the subjective constitution of our manner of sensibility"--do not. For instance, "...the case of the sensations of colors, sounds, and heat, which, since they are mere sensations and not intuitions, do not of themselves yield knowledge of any object". Empirically real objects, although constrained by the conditions of our sensibility, are not real in the subjective sense of "mere perceptions", implying that although sensation is the matter of intuitions, we are able to discriminate between merely subjective sensations and "objective perceptions" of empirically real objects (e.g., representations of objects in space are objective, whereas their tastes and colors are merely "effects accidentally added by the particular constitution of the sense organs...[which] are grounded in sensation"). Elsewhere Kant suggests that whereas perceptions and intuitions have extensive magnitude, sensations have intensive magnitude.