My notion of the image schemata is directly influenced by, and it is a slight variation on, Kant's concept of "schema". The points where my view diverges from Kant's are identified below; but I would argue that Kant saw correctly that the ability of humans to have, and dwell in, a "world" is tied directly to such schematic structures of imagination as we have been describing.

It is not clear in Kant's account whether he wants to say that the schema is a "procedure", or whether he thinks that it is a "product" of a process. He speaks both ways. Sometimes he describes it as a "product" or structure resulting from imaginative activity in which concepts get connected to percepts (A142, B181). But he also describes it frequently as the procedure or rule at work in imaginative structuring (A140, B179). Perhaps we cannot resolve this ambiguity in Kant's trearment, but it is quite clear that he is insisting on the existence of structures of imignation that mediate between concepts and percepts. What I have tried to show so far is the absolutely fundamental role Kant attributes to imagination ( reproductive and productive) in our ability to have any meaningful and connectd experience that we can comprehend and reason about. In exploring the workings of imagination at the most basic level, we are probing the preconceptual level of our experience at which structure and form first emerge for us. Thus, it is not surprising that even Kant would acknowledge the limitations of his analysis. In one of the few places where he ever confesses a measure of bafflement, Kant both summarizes his view and recognizes its incompleteness:

This schematism of our understanding, in its application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze. This much only we can assert: the image is a product of the empirical faculty of reproductive imagination; the schema of sensible concepts, such as figures in space, is a product and as it were, a monogram, ofa pure a priori imagination, through which, and in accordance with which, images themselves first become possible. These images can be connected with theconcept only by means of the schema to which they belong. (A141-42, B180-181)

The metaphor of the MONOGRAM suggests that the schema is a figure or outline in imagination that can be "filled in" by paricular images or percepts. This is the closest Kant comes to describing the schema in the sense I am employing it in this book (as elaborated in chapter 2). Ihave given considerable attention to Kant's account, because he makes a point upon which the entire argument of my book rests, namely, that all meaningful experience and all understanding envolves the activity of imagination which orders our representations ( the reproductive function ) and constitutes the temporal unity of our consciousness ( the productive function ). If imagination were not always at work, we could never have any coherent and unified experience or understanding. It is for this reason that I am trying to ground my account of human meaning and reasoning upon an elaboration of the operations of imagination (construed in this broad, Kantian sense).

The Creative Function of Imagination

Up to this point we have not even mentioned the definition of imagination that is generally taken for granted by most of us. Due to the influence of Romanticism, most of us understand imagination as the capacity for creativity and novelty in art, literature, and science. It is one of the strengths of Kant's account that he does treat imagination in this sense, and he tries to relate it to the other functions we have just described. Let us then ask how successful he is at explaining creative imagination as a function that makes use of the same synthesizing capacity we have just seen to be crucial for the structuring of our ordinary experience.

Kant does not describe either the reproductive or the productive operationsas creative. He couldn't, within the constraints of his system, since that would loosen the rigor of their rule-determined activity. Both operations are treated within the context of his account of determinate judgment, whereby some more particular representation(s) is brought under (determined by) a more general representation (such as a concept). But by the time Kant wrote the third and last of his great Critiques, in which he tried to tie together his entire Critical project, he recognized the existence of another basic kind of judgment. This he called reflective judgment, which is the subject of the Critique of Judgment (1790). Kant saw that the mind does not go about only with a fixed stock of concepts under which it organizes what it recieves through its senses. It also engages inthe creative act of reflecting on representations insearch of novel orderings of them, which thereby generates new meaning. Thus, in addition to determinate judgment, ther is reflective judgment. Kant explains:

The judgment can be ragarded either as a mere capacity for reflecting on a given representation according to a certain principle, to produce a possible concept, or a capacity for making determinate a basic concept by means of a given empirical representation. In the first case it is the reflective, in the second the determining judgment. To reflect or to deliberste) is to compare and combine given representations with other representations or with one's cognitive powers, with the respect to a concept which is thereby made possible. The reflective judgment is called the critical faculty.

Kant held the reflective judgments do not constitute acts of knowledge, since they do not involve the determinate structuring of a field of representations according to a definite concept. Reflection is an imaginative activity in which the mind "plays over" various representations (percepts, images, concepts) insearch of possible ways that they might be organized, although this process is free from the control of the understanding (which is the faculty that supplies concepts). Reflective judgment is thus distinguished from determinate judgment in the following way: determinate judgment involve the recognition of some set of representations by means of a concept that is already available. Seeing a furry four-footed thing as a dog would be a determinate judgment - you are simly applying a preexisting concept to your experience.

In reflective judgment, on the other hand, ther is no pre-given concept that is automatically applied to experience. Instead, we must reflect imaginatively on a series of representations in an attempt to come up with a concept or other representation under which they can be organized. Consider, for example, my dog Zobie. There is nothing in my knowledge of the characteristics of the species to which Zobie belongs that guarantees that I can find a genus ( or general concept ) to which Zobie's species belongs. However, I can imaginatively reflect on the nature of Zobie's species and other species and sometimes come up with a unifying genus for them all. This ability to generate new concepts and new organization in my experience is the result of reflective judgment. My reflection is not guided by any concept that guarantees my success, but it results in novel structurings that can make sense.

Kant explores imagination's role reflective judgment by investigating its operation in judgments of natural and artistic beauty, and in teleological reasoning in science. His fullest account of creative imagination is situated chiefly within his treatment of the judging and making of beautiful objects. To see what , according to Kant , distinguishes judgments of beauty, ley us consider some of the kinds of judgments I might make, for instance, about a rose. First, I might take a certain sensuous and immediate pleasure in its color or its smell. These "judgments of sense" are based upon the pleasure I experience because of my body chemistry. I don't claim any universal validity for such judgments, since others might find the odor too rich or the color too dark as a result of theirm particular perceptual makeup.

Second, I might judge the rose good for a certain pupose, such as the production of rosewater. Here I can expect others to agree with my judgment, because I base it upon a concept of the qualities that make a a rose good for making rosewater. If you disagree we can argue about the matter, either by debating the concept (of what makes a rose suitable for rosewater), or else by dicussing wether this particular rose has all of the properties specified by the concept. In either case it is by referring our judgment tosome concept that we curry on our debate.

A third way to judge the rose is with an interest in its various parts and the way they serve some purpose in the rose's survival. Thus, I might make judgments about how certain parts of the rose are useful for reproduction. Here again, I bring cocepts to bear as the basis for my judgment, and it is on the basis of these concepts that I can argue with those who disagree with my judgment. There is at least a ground for a possible universal agreement with my judgment, since it rests on concepts we can all share.

But now suppose I approach the rose in a fouth way, nor caring what immediate sensual pleasure it gives, nor what purposes it serves, nor how its parts work for reproduction; instead, I simply angage in an intellectual reflection on its form (i.e., its shape, inner structure, and composition) and on various possible ways of relating its structures. Sucha reflective judgment might give me pleasure as I sense a certain "rightness" in its formal features. Its form is not "right" (or beautiful) merely because it fits some concept (some purpose the object can serve) but rather because there is ea certain harmony and graze in the relation of its formal features.

Kant calls this fourth sort of cognition of the object a "judgment of tast". He argues that such judgments are based on the pleasure we experience as we imaginativly reflect on the formal rightness of the object (think for instance, of grasping the form of a musical composition). He also insists that we can rightly claim universal validity for judgments of tast, even though they are not grounded on any shared concept that could be the basis for possible agreement. The claim to universal validity is based, instead, on the judgment attending only to formal properties of the object, which, Kant argues, can be reflected upon by everyone in the same manner. To explore Kant's extended argument for the universality of judgments of taste would divert us from our project, which is to investigate the workings of creative imagination. I have dealt with the universality issue elsewhere.

Setting aside, then the issue of whether universality can be grounded on the perception of formal features, let us consider Kant's contention that judgment of taste are exemplary of the freedom of imagination in reflective judgments. In Kant's terms, judgments of taste consist of a free play of imagination as it reflects of possible strucurings of the object being experienced. By "free play" is meant that this imaginative reflection is not guidedor determined by any definite concept (any rule) that structures its operations. In other worde, being beautiful is not a matter of possessioning a fixed set of properties specified by some concept "beauty". Strictly speaking, ther is no concept of beauty, even though we speak as if beauty consisted of properties in an object. Yet the object on which we reflect does give rise to a free play of imagination that, rather than being nonsense, really does make good sense to us. So imagination is actinmg freely (without the guidance of concepts) as it would if the understandingreally were controlling the judgment with conceptual rules.

Kant describes thie non-ruled-governed confirmity od imaginative activity to structures of understanding as a special kind of "purpossiveness" (Zweckmassigkeit) that the object has for my cognitive faculties. More precisely, ther is a "purposivness without any definite purpose," since ther is no definite concept (of a purpose the object serves) guiding the reflection, and yet is somehowfitting (purposive) for mentalactivity that makes sense to me. Objects judged to be purposive or fitting in this way are called "beautiful," and we say that they put our imagination ina playfulharmony with our intellect or understanding (i.e., our conceptual faculty). Thus, we judge objects to be beautiful by a free (non-ruled-governed) preconceptional imaginative activity that has a rational character andcan lay claim to the agreement of other judges, since it focuses only on the formal features of the object, which imaginationallows us all to experience in the same way.

In sum Kant is articulating some of the major implications of the commonplace that ther can be no fixed canon for judging beauty, that is, no set of rules (concepts) to follow in deciding whether or not something is beautiful or is e compelling work of art. There is no concept "beauty" that specifies a set of properties shared by all beautiful things. There are no rules to follow in judging the beauty of somethings. What you must do is experience the object by imaginatively reflecting on its formal features to see wether they give rise to e certain sort of cognitive harmony, which one feels as pleasure. Yet, even though there is no underlying concept, no set of rules for the judgment, it is merely subjective or arbitrary. We can defend such judgments of taste by directing the attention of others to aspects of the object, so that they, too, can experience its formal rightness, its beauty.

Let us take stock of Kant's somewhat convoluted and strained argument. Kant is struggling to express a deep insight which the confines of his system seem to exclude, namely, he sees that there is a kind of shared meaning that is not reducible to conceptual and propositional content alone. He sees that there is a preconceptional activity of imagination that is not merely subjective, even though it is not objective in the strict sense of being conformable to public rules. That is , he sees that there is a rationality without rules, that is subject to criticism, and so is not arbitrary. He sees that there are structures of imagination that can be shared by communities of people.

In short, I am suggesting that Kant is grappling with the recognition that imagination plays a far more central role in meaning and rationality than his own restrictive framework will allow. Since he has defined his rationality interms of rules, concepts, and judgments (propositions), he cannot find a place for a rationality for which there is no algorithm.