"For there would be no reason for the judgments of other men necessarily agreeing with mine, if it were not the unity of the object to which they all refer, and with which they accord; hence they must all agree with one another...
The object always remains unknown in itself; but when by the concept of the understanding the connection of the representations of the object, which are given to our sensibility, is determined as universally valid, the object is determined by this relation, and it is the judgment that is objective."
- Part II, "pages" 298 and 299 (not the common edition pages)
If I understand Kant correctly, he is arguing that to make universal judgments, we first have to make sure that we have a common understanding the object, and to do this, we check whether our perception of the object is the same as everyone else's perception. But what does he mean by "universally valid"? I think he means a concept that arises a priori and is common to all humanity. Does this also mean objectively true? I don't think so; we aren't talking about the object "in itself" but rather a commonly defined object (this reminds me of Hobbes' definitions). But how do we rise from these commonly defined obejcts - which may not be objectively real - to laws of nature, i.e. laws that are objectively true? Kant seems to connect the two by assuming that the way we experience things is a law of nature, and so by studying the origins of this law, we can see how all laws of nature are derived. But what if the former is not a law of nature? Confusion...
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