In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant appears to make incompatible claims regarding the unitary natures of what he takes to be our a priori representations of space and time. I argue that these representations are unitary independently of all synthesis and explain how this avoids problems encountered by other positions regarding the Transcendental Deduction and its relation to the Transcendental Aesthetic in that work. Central is the claim that these representations (1) contain, when characterized as intuitions and considered as (...) prior to any affections of sensibility, only an infinitude of merely possible finite spatial and temporal representations, and (2) are representations that are merely transcendental grounds for the possibilities for receiving or generating finite representations in sensibility that are determined (immediately, in the case of reception) by means of syntheses that accord with the categories. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a novel interpretation of the role of the understanding in generating the unity of space and time. On the account I propose, we must distinguish between the unity that belongs to determinate spaces and times – which is a result of category-guided synthesis and which is Kant’s primary focus in §26 of the B-Deduction, including the famous B160–1n – and the unity that belongs to space and time themselves as all-encompassing structures. Non-conceptualist readers of Kant (...) have argued that this latter unity cannot be the product of categorial synthesis. While they are correct that this unity is not the product of any particular act of category-guided synthesis, I argue that conceptualists are right to nevertheless attribute this unity to the understanding. I argue that it is a result of what we can think of as the ‘original’ synthesis of understanding and sensibility themselves – it is a synthesis, moreover, in which the whole is logically prior to the parts. (shrink)

In his argument for the possibility of knowledge of spatial objects, in the Transcendental Deduction of the B-version of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes a crucial distinction between space as “form of intuition” and space as “formal intuition.” The traditional interpretation regards the distinction between the two notions as reflecting a distinction between indeterminate space and determinations of space by the understanding, respectively. By contrast, a recent influential reading has argued that the two notions can be fused into (...) one and that space as such is first generated by the understanding through an act of synthesis of the imagination. Against this reading, this article argues that a key characteristic of space as a form of intuition is its nonconceptual unity, which defines the properties of space and is as such necessarily independent of determination by the understanding through the transcendental synthesis of the imagination. The conceptual unity that the understanding prescribes to the manifold in intuition, by means of the categories, defines the formal intuition. Furthermore, this article argues that it is the sui generis, nonconceptual unity of space, when takenas a unity for the understanding by means of conceptual determination, that first enables geometric knowledge and knowledge of spatially located particulars. (shrink)

James Van Cleve has argued that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories shows, at most, that we must apply the categories to experience. And this falls short of Kant’s aim, which is to show that they must so apply. In this discussion I argue that once we have noted the differences between the first and second editions of the Deduction, this objection is less telling. But Van Cleve’s objection can help illuminate the structure of the B Deduction, and it suggests (...) an interesting reason why the rewriting might have been thought necessary. (shrink)

By taking into account some texts published between the first and the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that have been neglected by most of those who have dealt with the deduction of the categories, I argue that the core of the deduction is to be identified as the ‘almost single inference from the precisely determined definition of a judgment in general’, which Kant adumbrates in the Metaphysical Foundations in order to ‘make up for the deficiency’ of the (...) A-deduction. Whereas the first step of the B-deduction is an attempt to show that the manifold of an intuition belongs to the ‘necessary unity of self-consciousness’ by means of the synthesis of the understanding, the second step has the task of showing that the very same synthesis is responsible for the spatio-temporal unity of the manifold. Thus, Kant's ‘answer to Hume’ is that no spatio-temporal objects of experience at all are merely ‘given’, independently of the conceptual activities of the understanding. Against the established view I substantiate the claim that with this ‘almost single inference’ of the second proof step the distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience consequently vanished from Kant's thinking. (shrink)

On one reading of Kant’s account of our original representations of space and time, they are, in part, products of the understanding or imagination. On another, they are brute, sensible givens, entirely independent of the understanding. In this article, while I agree with the latter interpretation, I argue for a version of it that does more justice to the insights of the former than others currently available. I claim that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction turns on the representations of space and time (...) as determinate, enduring particulars, whose unity is both given and a product of synthesis. (shrink)

The article examines Kant's notion of conceptual extension in order to determine a conception of predication that could integrate, in a coherent fashion, basic theoretical commitments of general logic as he conceived it and the central tenets of his transcendental logic. After a brief overview of the several characterizations of thatnotion in the Kantian corpus, I distinguish three interpretative models concerning it in the literature. Such models are criticized and their prospects of integrating Kant's commitments in a fully satisfactory way (...) are rejected. Finally, I sketch an alternative account of Kant's notion of conceptual extension, which respects the criteria of adequacy that guided the examination of the former models. It points, on its turn, to a revaluation of Kant's notion of conceptual content. (shrink)

Esta nota crítica consiste en una aproximación a la literatura analítica reciente que discute con mayor o menor interés algunas aristas del principio de apercepción kantiano. Prestando especial atención a la forma en que esta literatura acoge el enlace entre actividad judicativa y apercepción, se identifican grosso modo tres líneas interpretativas. Si bien entrañan teorías generales sobre la mente humana, aquí se trata de ver cómo cada una de ellas propicia una hipótesis de lectura sobre qué es lo que subyace (...) a los argumentos kantianos que enlazan la capacidad de juzgar con la capacidad de apercibir. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo consiste em analisar, a partir dos parágrafos 34 a 38 da obra Kant e o problema da metafísica e segundo a exegese heideggeriana, o sentido e pertinência da inserção da problemática antropológica anteposta às três questões fundamentais expostas na Crítica da razão pura. Heidegger converte um rol exaustivo, delimitado pelas três perguntas, em um rol exemplificado, ao colocar a indagação da antropologia filosófica como pressuposto e consequência necessária das três interrogações kantianas. Heidegger recorre ao conceito de (...) finitude, para validar a importância e para fundamentar a primazia da questão antropológica sobre as demais: a interrogação “que é o homem” transforma-se na primeira que dispensa, a partir de si, as três restantes. Na finitude estão circunscritas as discussões sobre o tempo, a autoafecção pura, a imaginação e o tempo originário. É na finitude que estão os verdadeiros sinais ou ecos da antropologia filosófica kantiana. (shrink)