How Conceptually Guided are Kantian Intuitions?

The aim of this paper is to offer a critically review the recent noncon- ceptualist reading of the Kantian notion of sensible intuition. I raise two main objections. First, nonconceptualist readers fail to distinguish connected but dif- ferent anti-intellectualist claims in the contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Second, I will argue that nonconceptual readings fail because Kan- tian intuitions do not possess a representational content of their own that can be veridical or falsidical in a similar way to how the content of propositional attitudes are true of false. In this paper, I will support my own reading that sensible intuition is better seen as what Evans and McDowell have called a de re sense, whose main characteristic is object-dependence. In this sense, Kantian sensible intuitions can be seen as a sensible mode of donation of objects. In my reading, the Kantian opposition between intuitions and concepts is best seen as the opposition between the objectual de re perception of something and the propositional de dicto apperception that something is the case rather than the opposition between nonconceptual and conceptual contents. However, if Kan- tian sensible intuition is not a mental state with a nonconceptual content, it is certainly in the general anti-intellectualist neighborhood.

I give an argument against nonconceptualist readings of Kant’s First Critique, according to which one can enjoy a Kantian intuition without possessing any concepts, and present an alternative reading. The argument is that nonconceptualist readings are forced to construe the Transcendental Deduction in one of three ways, neither of which is acceptable: The Deduction is seen either (i) as inconsistent with the Transcendental Aesthetic; or (ii) as addressing a question of fact rather than a question of legitimacy; or (iii) as articulating a position that Kant himself criticizes as a form of scepticism. Consideration of the third alternative, in particular, shows that a more promising construal of the Deduction must be based on a different interpretation of Kant’s claim that intuitions and concepts constitute two distinct kinds of representation than is assumed by proponents of nonconceptualist readings. I present such an interpretation and outline the alternative reading of the Deduction that results.

Inquiry, 2012

Both parties in the active philosophical debate concerning the conceptual character of perception trace their roots back to Kant's account of sensible intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason. This striking fact can be attributed to Kant's tendency both to assert and to deny the involvement of our conceptual capacities in sensible intuition. He appears to waver between these two positions in different passages, and can thus seem thoroughly confused on this issue. But this is not, in fact, the case, for, as I will argue, the appearance of contradiction in his account stems from the failure of some commentators to pay sufficient attention to Kant's developmental approach to philosophy. Although he begins by asserting the independence of intuition, Kant proceeds from this nonconceptualist starting point to reveal a deeper connection between intuitions and concepts. On this reading, Kant's seemingly conflicting claims are actually the result of a careful and deliberate strategy for gradually convincing his readers of the conceptual nature of perception.

Kant and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature, and Religion. Essays in memory of Gary Banham, ed. Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo, 2020

2014

be the ambiguity or “Janus-faced ” character of Kant’s notion of “intuition” as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason (Sellars, 1966, p. 2). Appealing first to the formal distinction between intuitions and concepts, he notes that in Kant’s taxonomy it is the generality of concepts “whether sortal or attributive, a priori or empirical ” that distinguishes them from intuitions, since “Kant thinks of intuitions as representations of individuals ” (ibid., p. 3). But this way of drawing the distinction, Sellars notes, opens up the possibility of thinking of intuitions, nevertheless, as types of concepts—that is, as “conceptual representations of individuals rather than conceptual representations of attributes or kinds ” (ibid.). Not all conceptual ways of capturing an individual can be thought of as intuitional: the phrase “the individual which is perfectly round”, for example, doesn’t capture what is for Kant the other defining feature of intuitions, their immediacy (Sellars, 1966, p...

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European Journal of Philosophy, 2017