Why can "oneness" not be learned from perception/intuition (Kant)?

Question

I am currently reading Introduction to German Philosophy by Andrew Bowie, and he writes something in the chapter on Kant I don't quite understand. Namely, during a discussion on the First Critique (focusing on, I think, how we have knowledge through intuitions and concepts), he says that someone can learn the concept "red" by seeing a number of things with the same color, and that is how that someone can say that there is a red ball on the table. He contrasts this with oneness (as in, "there is one red ball on the table"), saying someone "cannot learn the notion of oneness from seeing lots of single things, since that presupposes the notion we are trying to learn" (pg. 19).

I am quite confused on the justification for this claim. In particular, in what way is "oneness" presupposed here that "redness" is not? Do I need to recognize that an object is a single object in order to see/learn oneness? How come I don't need to recognize that an object is red in order to see it's redness?

Sorry in advance for any flaws or unclearness in this question - I am relatively new to philosophical reading and very new to Kant, so I am still learning how to pose questions like this intelligibly. If it helps, earlier in the paragraph he mentions "pure concepts of understanding," and I think he views Kant as believing these include oneness. Also, he immediately moves on from oneness to the example of 2 + 2 = 4 being a synthetic a priori judgement, although he does indicate this is controversial.

Answer 1

I totally agree with @David Gudeman, answer - 1st paragraph, but then on I see it differently.

I interpret the text :

cannot learn the notion of oneness from seeing lots of single things, since that presupposes the notion we are trying to learn

as follows:

by seeing lots of single (different) things we can infer differencies by making perceptual comparisons, i.e. diffentiations of colors, redness e.t.c. but in order to conceptualize the oneness we need to see for example one apple in the table and then two apples in a basket.

(oneness is an abstraction, it's not depicted or contained in the objects themselves.)

Answer 2

Part of acquiring a concept is acquiring the ability to compare different objects as to whether they fall under the concept. You can see a red thing without ever coming up with the concept of being red. In fact, linguistic evidence shows that people did not distinguish what we call red until fairly recently. Ever wonder how American Indians got to be called "red" as in "redskins"? It's because the American Indians didn't have a word to distinguish red from other warm colors such as brown skin tone, so when they spoke of their place in American society, they spoke of white men, black men, and red men. Does this mean that they couldn't see red? No, they saw it, but they don't seem to have thought of it as a specific distinction. Color words in languages evolve and become more complex as a culture develops dies and pigments so people have more control over colors.

Contrast this with oneness. How could you see an object and not have this concept? Imagine an infant learning to see for the first time. At first, perhaps, the visual field is just a mash of colors and shapes, but nothing is singled out. The first time the infant singles out a particular object to focus on, say mother's face, the infant must have the concept of this being an individual thing, otherwise it would just be part of the background. The infant can't recognize an individual, distinct object without having the concept of an individual, distinct object. By contrast, the infant can recognize a red object without recognizing that it is red. Perhaps later it will see another red object and then remember the first one and draw a comparison, and then draw a distinction with other things that are not red, and then it will have the concept of redness, but it need not have that concept initially to see a red object.

Kant makes a similar argument about space. We can't learn about space by seeing objects "out there" in the world because the mere fact of recognizing that something is "out there" in the world is a recognition of space. The concept has to be innate.

Answer 3

someone can learn the concept "red" by seeing a number of things with the same color

This is an interesting claim but terribly fanciful. We don't learn concepts. We acquire most of them through our interactions with the physical world, provided our perception sense work normally. And some of them may be innate, although this may only work if we have a "normal" interaction with the world. How this process can succeed exactly is more for science to tell us. This is presumably extremely complex.

The concept of the red colour is presumably much easier to acquire than the concept of democracy. Humans normally have three types of cone cells in their eyes, which together allow us to distinguish red from other colours. We presumably don't have specialised cell to tell us if something is democracy.

Would we not acquire the concept of red if the world was entirely red? Would we still have the ability to see red things after having grown up in a world entirely blue? Is it enough to perceive the colour of something red to acquire the concept of red? I don't think Kant knew what he was talking about.

someone "cannot learn the notion of oneness from seeing lots of single things, since that presupposes the notion we are trying to learn"

We don't learn the notion of oneness. We either acquire it through perception or it is innate, but we won't be able to say which it is just be reading Kant.

Still, the notion is so basic that it is probably innate. This, of course, would say that it is indeed "presupposed", but probably no more that the colour red itself is "presupposed" through our cone cells.

How can we form the concept of democracy? There is no unique concept of democracy. We each form our own concept, and it is presumably rather difficult to decide whether two persons have, or do not have, the same.