A central issue in debates about Kant and nonconceptualism concerns the nature of intuition. There is sharp disagreement among Kant scholars about both whether, prior to conceptualization, mere intuition can be considered conscious and, if so, how determinate this consciousness is. In this article, I argue that Kant regards pre-synthesized intuition as conscious but indeterminate. To make this case, I contextualize Kant's position through the work of H.S. Reimarus, a predecessor of Kant who influenced his views on animals, infants, and (...) the role of attention. I use Reimarus to clarify Kant's otherwise ambiguous commitments on the determinacy of intuition in animals and newborns, and the role attention, concepts, and judgment play in making intuited contents determinate. This contextualization helps to shed light on Kant's discussion of pre-synthesized intuition in the threefold synthesis of the A-Deduction by demonstrating that Kant's theory of mind in the deduction offers transcendental grounding for empirical accounts of infant development like Kant and Reimarus's. The upshot is a Kant at odds with many recent interpretations of his theory of mind: pre-synthesized intuition is conscious but indeterminate. (shrink)

Kant's comments on animal minds have provoked radically different readings, with some contending animals have clear and distinct awareness of their world and others contending animals lack consciousness altogether. This paper argues that Kant's comments have received such divergent responses because, according to Kant, we inevitably slide into a deceptive anthropomorphism when talking about non-human minds. While Kant follows contemporaries, such as H.S. Reimarus, in arguing humans can only conceive of animal minds by analogy with their own, Kant's transcendental idealism (...) shifts the meaning of this analogy. The upshot is that animal minds, just like the mind of God, are intrinsically unimaginable for humans. We can talk about them, but it is mere talk; we cannot know what we are talking about. (shrink)

My dissertation defends a non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of nature. Inspired by the picture of nature in the Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, most readers align Kant with Early Modern mechanists, who claim that we can know that the internally purposive form of causality characteristic of organisms has no place in nature. To these mechanistic readers, Kant banishes internal purposiveness from nature. To moderate mechanistic interpreters, because we cannot know whether there are internally purposive (...) things in nature and we can demonstrate that mechanism applies to nature, Kant pushes us to believe that any seemingly internally purposive natural products will eventually be explained in mechanistic terms. To strong mechanistic interpreters, Kant gives us the tools to know that there is no room for the special kind of teleology organisms exhibit in nature. My non-mechanistic interpretation rejects this trend by arguing that Kant urges us to believe that the internally purposive activity characteristic of organisms exists in nature. Belief in this context is a firm, positive, and voluntary attitude that aligns with and serves a subject’s interests and ends, and that has implications for the subject’s rational action, assertion, and deliberation. Kant’s stated goal in the third Critique is to bridge the gulf between freedom and nature. My non-mechanistic interpretation offers a new account of how Kant promises to construct this bridge. (shrink)