Abstract
The issue of the nature of cognitive experience has been a subject of lively debate in recent works on epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. During this debate, the relevance of Kant to contemporary theories of cognition has been re-discovered. However, participants in this debate disagree whether Kant was a conceptualist or a non-conceptualist, with regard to the character of intuitions. The central point of controversy concerns whether or not Kant’s sensible intuitions involve understanding and have a conceptual content. In this paper, I show that, despite their disagreements, both sides share a number of common presuppositions, which have determined a biased framework for the reading of Kant. My principal aim in this article is to reconcile the case for conceptualism with those interpretations which argue that intentionality and conceptuality can be separated. To achieve it, I present my own reconstruction of Kant’s theory of cognition, relying essentially on Kantian considerations found in the B-version of the Transcendental Deduction, and offer a new interpretation of Kantian conceptualism.
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Notes
Dennis Schulting (2016, V-XVIII) provides a very helpful overview of the current debate on conceptualism and non-conceptualism in Kant’s scholarship.
This fact has not gone unnoticed in the literature. See, for example, Forster (2012).
In adopting this approach I am not breaking new ground in this subject matter: so-called “continental philosophy” has always highlighted the transcendental aspect of Kant’s theory of cognition. James R. O’Shea (2006: 513) has pointed that “there was a strong revitalization of interest in Kant’s ‘transcendental’ approach to epistemological issues” in analytical philosophy. What I want to offer is a fresh perspective on major Kantian topics which has become possible thanks to the interaction of both traditions.
Cp. McLear (2014: 5) who says that “it seems clear that Kant himself took the terms ‘intuition’ [Anschauung], ‘perception’ [Wahrnehmung], and ‘experience’ [Erfahrung] to designate different things”. However, he gives a different interpretation of these terms.
There is a vivid discussion on this issue: Hanna 2005, Ginsborg 2008, Allais 2009, McLear 2011, Connolly 2014.
For example, Connolly (2014: 323) claims: “But, again, even if the ox cannot see the gate as a gate, it does not follow that the ox sees the gate as nothing. Again, we might think that even if the ox does not see the gate as a gate, it still sees the gate as an object.” But it is exactly the point that the ox, most probably, cannot see it as an object in the sense of constant and independent entity with stable characteristics as we know it. A gate for the ox may become different “objects” in different contexts of its practical activity.
Allais (2009: 405) says: “We can distinguish between perceiving a particular (having a singular representation of an individual thing outside me) and representing a particular as an object in the full-blown sense of something that is grasped as a causally unitary, spatiotemporally persisting substance whose present complex of interrelated properties are a function of its causal nature and its causal history, which is in thoroughgoing law-governed community with other objects, and which is made of stuff that cannot come into or go out of existence absolutely. If we call the latter representing an object (as Kant does in the Deduction), then we can allow that creatures that are not capable of representing objects in this sense are capable of perceiving particulars, in the sense of spatially continuous and unified individuals existing outside the subject and located in space.” (Allais 2009: 386) The last claim is, however, doubtful just because we do not know if things possess spatial continuity for animals.
Cp. “the unity of consciousness is that which alone constitutes the relation of representations to an object, therefore their objective validity, and consequently is that which makes them into cognitions and on which even the possibility of the understanding rests” (B137)
If my interpretation is correct, Connolly’s argument for the “reconceptualization” of experience can be rejected. He writes: “But what Kant’s view adds is that this conceptualization is actually a reconceptualization, not of another belief (as in the wren case), but of your appearance. The house appears to you only after the appearance is structured by the categories.” (Connolly 2014: 332)
Cp. Heidemann (2013) who represents the opposite view that concept must always have a general character.
Compare: “All appearances, as data for possible experience, are subject to this understanding.” (A119) Or “[E]verything that may ever come before our senses must stand under the laws that arise a priori from the understanding alone” (B160).
In his book “Kant’s Deduction & Apperception”, Dennis Schulting emphasizes the parallelism of the categories and the logical forms of discursive thought. Like me, he sees the role of the categories in the specification of how discursive judgements are applicable to possible objects of experience. However I cannot agree with his central claim that the categories are derivable from the very principle of apperception. In my view, schematism provides a sufficient explanation of the categories.
Similarly, some variants of non-conceptualism, namely “content non-conceptualism” (Connolly 2014: 333–335) hold that perceptual content is fundamentally imagistic, while belief content is fundamentally linguistic. The difference between the position I am arguing in this paper and content non-conceptualism is that the latter argues that perceptual states cannot in principle be conceptual.
See more about it in Soboleva 2016: 87–112.
Reflecting on this issue, Hannah Ginsborg has argued (2008: 76) that Kant’s claim that understanding must be involved in the constitution of experience can be interpreted as ambiguous: while “the specific representational contents” are ascribed to our sensibility, the “representational content überhaupt”, which we can have, thanks to understanding. This interpretation of Kant’s conceptualism is, however, dualistic and does not allow for consistent interpretation of his theory.
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Soboleva, M. How we read Kant: an Empiricist and a Transcendental Reading of Kant’s Theory of Experience. Philosophia 45, 1331–1344 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9878-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9878-0