ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Kant's discussion of reflective judgment in the introductions to the third Critique, with the underlying aim of showing that interpretation of the role of taste in Kant's theory of cognition accords with Kant's own conception of that role as it is articulated in the Critique of Judgment. As Guyer suggests, Kant's claim is that scientific activity would lack rational motivation without the promise of success held out by the principle of nature's systematically. The principle of nature's systematicity, because it alone enables us to regard nature as divided into natural kinds on the basis of similarities among objects, is thus a presupposition of the comparison of representations that gives rise to empirical concepts. All comparison of natural things presupposes that nature has observed a certain economy proportional to our judgment and a similarity of forms which is comprehensible to us: and this presupposition, as an a priori principle of judgment, must precede all comparison.
