This chapter outlines Kant’s account of empirical concept formation and discusses two objections that have been advanced against it. Kant holds that we form empirical concepts, such as colour concepts, by comparing sensory representations of individuals, identifying shared features, and abstracting from the differences between them. According to the first objection, we cannot acquire colour concepts in this way because there is no feature that all and only the instances of a given colour share and the boundary between colours is (...) conventional. According to the second objection, assuming that all instances of a given colour share certain features, we can identify them only if we already possess a concept of that colour. None of the two objections is convincing as it stands. Kant can offer replies to both objections that are consistent with his views and with empirical evidence concerning the perception and representation of colours. (shrink)

Much of the scholarship on Kant’s theory of concept formation has focused on the question of whether his theory suffers from circularity, i. e., whether it presupposes the very concepts whose origin it should explain. In this article, I defend Kant against a well-known objection raised by Hannah Ginsborg. Ginsborg, I argue, overlooks the relatively narrow aim of Kant’s theory of concept formation. Kant explicitly frames it as an account of a concept’s inherent generality, or form. However, Ginsborg’s objection is (...) not about a concept’s form; it concerns the concept’s content. Moreover, Kant addresses the issue that she raises in his theory of definitions, which explains how a concept’s content can be revised and perfected. Kant considered all empirical concepts to be incomplete and imprecise. For this reason, he denied that they can be properly defined. Kant also did not regard the content of empirical concepts as fixed or permanent. Indeed, he expected that we would continually expand and revise their content on the basis of experience. I argue that these facts, along with the narrow scope of Kant’s theory of concept formation, effectively defuse Ginsborg’s objection. (shrink)