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categories of thought

in the thought of Immanuel Kant, 12 basic concepts of human understanding that are essential to the interpretation of empirical experience. These include such fundamental ideas as unity, plurality, reality, negation, causality, and so on. Although they are necessary to the understanding of sense experience, the categories are themselves a priori rather than empirically given. Time and space play a similar role in ordering one’s sense impressions but are classed by Kant as immediate intuitions rather than categories of thought. The categories are applicable only to the world of appearances or phenomena; there is no reason to suppose that they apply to things-in-themselves (see noumenon).

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Psychology term of the day

March 17th 2025

family study

family study

research conducted among siblings, parents, or children to assess evidence for genetic links for characteristics or outcomes, often related to health or disease. For example, a family study might be conducted to assess whether individuals from the same family who share a similar genetic structure also have similar responses to a health-promotion intervention such as diet, exercise, or medication. The extent to which performance on a given measure varies as a function of genetic similarity is used as an indication of the heritability of that measure.