Categories — Fundamental concepts or modes of being and predication. Aristotle listed ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, passion. Kant reformulates: categories are pure concepts of the understanding (causality, substance, unity, plurality, etc.) that the mind imposes on sensory experience to render it intelligible. Without categories, sensory data would be “blind”; without intuitions, categories would be “empty.”
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