Kant calls his Transcendental Deduction "the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics" (4:260). Readers have found it not just difficult but downright impossible. I will address two long-standing problems. First, Kant seems to contradict his conclusion at the outset of his proof. He does so in both the 1781 and 1787 editions of his Critique of Pure Reason. Second, Kant seems to argue for his single conclusion twice over in his Critique's 1787 edition. I (...) will propose novel solutions by considering why Kant's Deduction is more difficult than his Transcendental Aesthetic, on one hand, and his 1770 Inaugural Dissertation, on the other. My broader aim is to oppose a subjectivist interpretation of Kant's Deduction with an original interpretation. On the subjectivist interpretation, Kant holds that the categories apply to appearances because appearances necessarily conform to our subjective forms of the understanding. I will argue to the contrary in addressing the first problem. On my interpretation, the reason that the categories apply to appearances is not just because of what our subjective forms of the understanding are. It is because of what objects are as appearances. What are objects as appearances, for Kant? In addressing the second problem, I will argue that they are objects of our possible intuitions and judgments. (shrink)

Intentionality may be dealt with in two different ways: either ontologically, as an ordinary relation to some extraordinary objects, or epistemologically, as an extraordinary relation to some ordinary objects. This paper endorses the epistemological view in order to provide a model of semiotic intentionality defined as the meaning-and-cognizing process that constitutes to power of the mind to be about something on the basis of a semiotic system. After a short introduction that presents the components of semiotic intentionality (viz. sign, act, (...) content, referent) along with their division into an intending and a fulfilling side (Sect. 1), the first main part of the paper analyzes semiotic intentionality at its primary level (a.k.a. 'concrete intentionality') as a real and subjective relation between meaning-intending and meaning-fulfilling acts grounded in the manipulation of some semiotic system (Sect. 2). Then, building on such concrete intentionality, the second main part of the paper analyzes semiotic intentionality at its secondary level (a.k.a. 'abstract intentionality') as an ideal and objective relation between intentional and fulfillment contents, which in turn: (i) proceed from an abstraction performed on the intending and fulfilling acts, respectively, and (ii) retroactively categorize the intending and fulfilling acts, respectively (Sect. 3). Finally, from this combination of an act-based conception of content with a presentationalist account of intentionality, the conclusion of this paper produces the intended model of semiotic intentionality in such a way that knowledge and truth are then respectively defined in it as the subjective correspondence between the two acts of concrete intentionality and as the objective correspondence between the two contents of abstract intentionality (Sect. 4). (shrink)