 Maimon’s reliance on mathematical examples is not coincidental, since it is (primarily) in mathematics that we find real syntheses, namely, syntheses that pass the test of the law of determinability. This special advantage of mathematics is due to the role of construction in mathematics. Thus, in the case of the straight line the intellect commands a construction of a line in pure intuition according to the concept of straight. In such a way, the connection between the subject and the predicate, while synthetic, is nevertheless necessary. (As Freudenthal (2006) notes, however, as Maimon’s thought develops he becomes more skeptical that straightness can be constructed according to the concept of a line, or that a circle can be constructed from its concept. Since these stand at the heart of Euclidean geometry, Freudenthal argues that while Maimon holds that geometry is synthetic, he begins to doubt that it is absolutely necessary, since it must rely on ineliminable intuitions rather than the understanding alone.) By contrast, a judgment such as “The cup is green” fails to accord with the law of determinability, for the connection between the subject and the predicate remains merely problematic. For our intellect, the greenness of the cup is something that is merely encountered, rather than consciously constructed, and thus it fails to express any internal connection between the subject and its predicate. By using the Law of Determinability Maimon thought to provide a way both to generate new concepts as well as to decipher the basic categories of thought. Mathematics provides us with an example of how these derivations should work. However, this law also seems to point out the unreliability of empirical judgments.