"Kant and the Capacity to Judge" will prove to be an important and influential event in Kant studies and in philosophy.

I argue that Kant’s distinction between the cognitive roles of sensibility and understanding raises a question concerning the conditions necessary for objective representation. I distinguish two opposing interpretive positions—viz. Intellectualism and Sensibilism. According to Intellectualism all objective representation depends, at least in part, on the unifying synthetic activity of the mind. In contrast, Sensibilism argues that at least some forms of objective representation, specifically intuitions, do not require synthesis. I argue that there are deep reasons for thinking that Intellectualism is (...) incompatible with Kant's view as expressed in the Transcendental Aesthetic. We can better see how Kant’s arguments in the first Critique may be integrated, I suggest, by examining his notion of the 'unity' [Einheit] of a representation. I articulate two distinct ways in which a representation may possess unity and claim that we can use these notions to integrate Kant’s arguments in the Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction without compromising the core claims of either Sensibilism or Intellectualism—that intuition is a form of objective representation independent of synthesis, and that the kind of objective representations that ground scientific knowledge of the world require synthesis by the categories. (shrink)

Abstract 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. (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)

BRENTANO'S APPROPRIATION OF THE Scholastic notion of intentionality, and of what Brentano called "the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object," was early on exploited in a reading of Kant's theory of objects and appearances. Apparently the first systematic attempt was undertaken by Hans Vaihinger. However, Vaihinger's is radically different from more recent intentionalist readings of Kant. Albeit not in every respect, I propose that a return to this aspect of Vaihinger's approach supports a rewarding advance on such readings. After (...) a general introduction, I survey three instances of the latter—Prauss, Pereboom, and Sellars—in section 2 (and comment on some others in notes throughout). In sections 3 and 4, I then turn to Vaihinger's approach. (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)

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)

Wonderfully clear, scholarly, and well argued, Kant’s Intuitionism offers a bold new interpretation of the thesis of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Falkenstein reads Kant as a “formal intuitionist.” That is, he takes Kant to have maintained that the forms of intuition, space, and time were given along with sensations. They were neither preexisting representations, nor intellectual or imaginative constructions out of sensations. In this context “given” contrasts with “constructed”; subjects’ representations of space and time derived from their sensory constitutions. When subjects’ (...) senses were stimulated, that produced sensations with intensities varying according to the stimulus; because of the subjects’ constitutions, the intensity values were ordered after one another in time and adjacent to one another in space. Falkenstein characterizes space and time as “presentational orders” of sensations. (shrink)

It's well-known that Kant believed that intuition was central to an account of mathematical knowledge. What that role is and how Kant argues for it are, however, still open to debate. There are, broadly speaking, two tendencies in interpreting Kant's account of intuition in mathematics, each emphasizing different aspects of Kant's general doctrine of intuition. On one view, most recently put forward by Michael Friedman, this central role for intuition is a direct result of the limitations of the syllogistic logic (...) available to Kant. On this view, Kant's reasons for introducing intuition are taken to be logical or mathematical, rather than philosophical. The other tendency, which I shall try to develop here, emphasizes an epistemological or phenomenological role for intuition in mathematics arising out of what may loosely be called Kant's ‘antiformalism.’This paper, which focuses specifically on the case of geometry, falls into two parts. First, I consider Kant's discussion of intuition in the Metaphysical Exposition of the concept of space. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason makes important claims about space, time and mathematics in both the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Axioms of Intuition, claims that appear to overlap in some ways and contradict in others. Various interpretations have been offered to resolve these tensions; I argue for an interpretation that accords the Axioms of Intuition a more important role in explaining mathematical cognition than it is usually given. Appreciation for this larger role reveals that magnitudes are central to Kant's philosophy (...) of mathematics and to the part that intuition plays in it. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant famously characterizes space as a unity, understood as an essentially singular whole. He further develops his account of the unity of space in the B-Deduction, where he relates the unity of space to the original synthetic unity of apperception, and draws an infamous distinction between form of intuition and formal intuition. Kant ’s cryptic remarks in this part of the Critique have given rise to two widespread and diametrically opposed readings, which I call the Synthesis (...) and Brute Given Readings. I argue for an entirely new reading, which I call the Part-Whole Reading, in part by considering the development of Kant ’s views on the unity of space from his earliest works up through crucial reflections written during the silent decade. (shrink)

I use recent work on Kant and diagrammatic reasoning to develop a reconsideration of central aspects of Kant’s philosophy of geometry and its relation to spatial intuition. In particular, I reconsider in this light the relations between geometrical concepts and their schemata, and the relationship between pure and empirical intuition. I argue that diagrammatic interpretations of Kant’s theory of geometrical intuition can, at best, capture only part of what Kant’s conception involves and that, for example, they cannot explain why Kant (...) takes geometrical constructions in the style of Euclid to provide us with an a priori framework for physical space. I attempt, along the way, to shed new light on the relationship between Kant’s theory of space and the debate between Newton and Leibniz to which he was reacting, and also on the role of geometry and spatial intuition in the transcendental deduction of the categories. (shrink)

Hence, there is still controversy over which of the two versions of the deduction deserves priority and whether indeed any distinction between them can be maintained that would go beyond questions of presentation and involve the structure of the proof itself. Schopenhauer and Heidegger held that the first edition alone fully expresses Kant's unique philosophy, while Kant himself, as well as many other Kantians, have only seen a difference in the method of presentation.

This paper contains a critical analysis of the interpretation of Kant's second edition version of the Transcendental Deduction offered by Béatrice Longuenesse in her recent book: Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Though agreeing with much of Longuenesse's analysis of the logical function of judgment, I question the way in which she tends to assign them the objectifying role traditionally given to the categories. More particularly, by way of defending my own interpretation of the Deduction against some of her criticisms, (...) I argue that Longuenesse fails to show how either part of the two-part proof may be plausibly thought to have established the necessity of the categories (as opposed to the logical functions). Finally, I question certain aspects of her 'radical' interpretation of the famous footnote at B160-1, where Kant distinguishes between 'form of intuition' and 'formal intuition'. (shrink)

Kant’s revolutionary new approach to philosophy was accompanied by the introduction of a largely novel terminology. With the Kant-Lexikon, a lexical reference gives the modern reader access to his work on the basis of present-day editions and takes into account 20th century and contemporary research and advances in lexicology. The Kant-Lexikon includes 2395 entries authored by 221 scholars.