This paper focuses on Kant's conceptions of synthesis and spontaneity in cognition. On a popular interpretation, Kant takes judgments and other cognitive acts to be spontaneous in the sense that all judgments, thoughts, etc., are inherently self-reflexive. Yet, when it comes to synthesis, the combination of representations presupposed by all cognition, this interpretation seems only partly correct: while Kant states that allsynthesis is an act of the understanding, and therefore a self-activity of the subject, he also defines synthesis in generalas an effect of the blind faculty of imagination. I argue that, given Kant's opposing yet programmatic claims about synthesis, the self-reflexivity of cognitive acts does not reflect his complete position on spontaneity. In the paper, I propose an alternative interpretation of spontaneity, arguing that central to Kant's theory is the fundamental opennessof the relation of spontaneity to the self-conscious subject: although the subject necessarily represents itself as spontaneous, the subject ultimately cannot knowwhether it is the agent of the spontaneous acts that it represents as its own. This interpretation, I argue, better accounts for Kant's notion of blind synthesis: the latter preserves the openness of his conception of the agent of spontaneous acts. The paper offers a novel perspective on spontaneity, differing from the often debated question of whether the spontaneity of thought is absolute or relative. It offers a new way of understanding and resolving the tension in Kant's account of synthesis.
In what follows, I argue that given a Kantian conception of the capacity of reason, possession of that capacity entails possession of an implicit understanding of what understanding or intelligibility itself is. I show that this follows from Kant's conception of reason as the power or capacity for understanding or comprehension (Begreifen), together with several basic Kantian commitments about the nature of rational capacities. Through this argument, I hope to show that the core of the Kantian conception of reason is an implicit understanding of intelligibility itself. This represents a first step towards a Kantian defense of the rationalist idea that the essence of reason consists precisely in the capacity to understand intelligibility.
When discussing 'representations' (Vorstellungen) in Kant's theoretical philosophy, many authors default to one of two basic approaches: (1) anything Kant calls a Vorstellunghas some sort of semantic representational content (the Content Reading), or (2) Vorstellungen which do not have representational content are an exception to the rule, and present a puzzle to be solved (the Incongruity Reading). I argue that both these positions are mistaken. I approach the topic of Kant's notion of representation by first clarifying the connotations of Vorstellungin the post-Leibnizian context from which Kant inherited the term. I argue that Leibniz's notion of representational 'expression' and historical debates about the mind-body relationship illuminate Kant's use of this term of art, while showing that the Content Reading and the Incongruity Reading falter in attributing to Kant a contemporary sense of 'representation' linked to semantic content. As an alternative, I develop the view that Kant's Vorstellungenare mental forms of unity proper to the mind's different faculties, which unify multiplicities in their respective ways. 'Representations' are ways of unifying multiplicities first and foremost, and it is a further question how features of these forms of unification could support an account of semantic representation.
There is an immense recent literature on issues concerning the development of Kant's philosophy and the relation between theoretical and practical grounds for asserting absolute freedom. One important recent contribution to this issue is a series of writings by Patricia Kitcher. In this context I focus on three closely related works, namely, Chapter 14 from her book, Kant's Thinker, "Is Kant's Thinker (as Such) a Free and Responsible Agent?" and two later essays, "A Kantian Argument for the Formula of Humanity," and "Kant's Practical Proof of the Fact of Freedom."See Kitcher (2011), Kitcher (2017), and Kitcher (2023). It is not possible on this occasion to discuss her other work on related topics, such as Kitcher (2004).I argue in support of Kitcher's general position that Kant shifts away, quite properly, from an emphasis on purely theoretical grounds. In view of the importance and complexity of the notion of transcendental freedom, however, I also point out some remaining problems in Kitcher's work as well as in Kant's final position.
I take a new approach to the problem of interpreting the controversial footnote on B160 - 1 of Kant's first Critique, focusing on philosophical considerations about conditions under which synthesis is required for the representation of properties of space, and I argue for the following position. The form of outer intuition, which does not involve synthesis, represents the three-dimensionality, continuity, holism and uniformity of space; but it cannot represent space's singularity, because the form of outer intuition is perspectival and so cannot connect spaces represented by different empirical intuitions. As this suggests, the singularity of space must be the unity which Kant means to attribute to the formal intuition in the footnote. The formal intuition's representation of singularity can be explained on the basis of dynamical syntheses implemented through empirical syntheses. But it still qualifies as a prioribecause it depends ultimately on the transcendental syntheses which those empirical syntheses exemplify.
This paper revisits Kant's 1768 incongruent counterpart argument that space is absolute. Most commentators today dismiss Kant's argument as begging the question against the relationalist. I argue that this dismissal is too quick, and that we have something to learn by considering what might have led him to argue as he does. My focus is on the role of geometrical intuitions and the extent to which they can provide defeasible warrant for claims about space. By "geometrical intuitions" I mean both the geometrical intuitions of spatial figures in imagination as well as the claims that seem to directly follow from them. My focus includes uncovering the metaphysical assumptions that are implicated in those geometrical intuitions. Whether or not Kant's argument ultimately succeeds, the role of geometrical intuitions is worth exploring. Moreover, Kant appeals to geometrical intuitions, and any adequate interpretation of Kant will have to take them into account.
Kant repeatedly uses the biangle as an example of an impossible figure. In this paper, I offer an account of these passages and their significance for the possibility of geometry as a science. According to Kant, the constructibility of the biangle would signal the failure of geometry. Whereas Wolff derives the no-biangle proposition from the axiom that between two points there can be only one straight line, Kant gives it axiomatic status as a synthetic a priori principle possessing immediate certainty. Because we are unable to generate a schema for the biangle, the failure of the attempt to construct it is intuitively clear. The parallel between mathematical and empirical concepts is instructive because both involve the synthesis of disparate intuitions into a unity. We do not, strictly speaking, even possess a well-formed concept of the biangle, because its representation cannot fulfill certain basic requirements of concept formation.
Kant's Prize Essay of 1764 emphasizes the importance for mathematical cognition of manipulating signs according to rules, which has led some recent commentators to ask whether Kant's position there is a species of mathematical formalism. While most have hesitated to find formalism in the Prize Essay, this hesitation derives from misconceptions about what formalists actually believe. I therefore examine some nineteenth century formalists who were in dialogue with Kant, using their views as a model against which to compare the Prize Essay. I argue that Kant's view in the Prize Essay is continuous with their formalism, since the Prize Essay shares the essential aspects of their views about the sign-signified relation in mathematics and the role of signs in mathematical reasoning.
For Kant, inquiry into nature requires seeking to explain all material wholes merely mechanically, in terms of their parts. There is no consensus on how he justifies this Principle of Mechanism. I argue that Kant seeks to derive this claim about part and wholes neither from his laws of mechanics, nor from the mere discursivity of our understanding (two standard options in the literature), but instead from a priori principles laid out in the first Critique, which govern parts, wholes, and magnitudes. These principles are also fundamental to Kant's account of mathematics. Therefore, Kant's Principle of Mechanism and his philosophy of mathematics have common foundations.
Kant defines the schema of reality as the continuous and uniform generation of a quantity ascribed to sensation through which it can more or less fill time. In this paper, I ask why Kant has to attribute uniformity to the schema of reality. Through an interpretation that takes the uniformity thesis as a crucial element in Kant's formulation, I contend that, in contrast to prevailing scholarly literature, Kant's schema of reality must be comprehended mathematically without relying on regulative principles of understanding like that of causality.
AbstractKant stresses the presence, in all languages, of first-person formulas. In theAnthropology, § 1, he argues (i) that the use of ‘I’ (or any other linguistic form referring to the speaker) makes the human being “a person”, and (ii) that the use of the first-person pronoun enables the child to “think herself”. In the present paper, I claim that, in order to understand those assertions, first-person linguistic formulas should not be construed as mere expressions of an infra-discursive self-awareness; for Kant after 1781, such formulas actually contribute to making self-awareness possible.
This paper explicates the role of language and communication in Kant's account of objective judgment and objective reference. I take it that the basic units of proper objective reference for Kant are objective judgments, which according to Kant are acts of relating given cognitions to other cognitions in the unity of apperception. The question is, does language play any role in this activity, or is this activity reflected in language somehow? I argue that, unlike early critics such as Herder and Hamann (and many after them) have suggested, Kant does not overall neglect language and communication in his philosophy, but rather can be taken to give an account of how it is possible to use language objectively and communicate objective judgments in the first place. Even though I do not find it a plausible view that according to Kant there is no thinking at all without or prior to language, Kant's account does not rule out the importance of language for our thinking, judging and communicating. My claim is that Kant's account of categorical experience as universal and necessary cognition of objects provides a ground for languages and their objective use, that is, for the possibility of objective reference in language.
This paper explores Kant's account of propositional content and its implications for the relationship between his notions of knowledge (Wissen) and cognition (Erkenntnis). While previous commentators commonly read Kant as holding a Fregean theory of propositional content, in this paper I argue that Kant's theory of propositional content aligns more closely with Peter Hanks' recent account. According to my reading, Kant holds that individual acts of judging are both ontologically and explanatorily prior to propositions or Kantian judgments (Urteil). Furthermore, on my reading, acts of judging for Kant are acts of assertively predicating a property of an object rather than merely acts of neutral predication. This reading challenges the lately popular view that Kant's notions of knowledge and cognition are not only distinct but also disjunct. I instead suggest that we should regard Kantian knowledge that requires cognitions as its grounds as a species of Kantian cognitions.
In this contribution, we first discuss the aspects of the analytic method conceived by Kant in the Deutlichkeit that differentiate it from the Wolffian method and relate it to the Newtonian method. Compared to the philosophical tradition, the task of analysing concepts appears profoundly changed. Since Kant aims philosophy towards the world, he considers concepts as something given and intends to discern their characteristic marks by observing their usual applications. Although Kant abandons any attempt to define concepts nominally, he still gives great relevance to words to the extent that concepts, according to him, acquire their meaning in the linguistic usage. We will also point out how for Kant the linguistic usage makes the analysis of concepts anything but easy and how a hermeneutic process is necessary for its completion. In distinguishing philosophical signs from mathematical signs, Kant provides the semiotic reasons that underlie his recourse to hermeneutics.
Abstract The origin of languages was a hotly debated topic in the eighteenth century. This paper reconstructs a distinctively Kantian account according to which the origination, progression, and diversification of languages is at bottom reason’s self-development under certain a priori constraints and external environments. The reconstruction builds on three sets of materials. The first is Herder’s famous prize essay on the origin of languages. The second includes Kant’s explicit remarks about language – especially his notion of “transcendental grammar,” his argument that language cannot be innate, his contrast of “Oriental” symbolic (intuitive) and “Occidental” discursive languages, and his treatment of the latter as a sine qua non of humanity’s cultural and moral progress. The third includes the concepts that we need to make sense of those remarks, such as Kant’s epigenetic theory of biological formation and his account of categories as originally acquired.
In this paper I discuss Kant's philosophy of grammar in order to argue that: (a) the formal analysis of language implies that there is a structural correspondence between logical and grammatical form; (b) there is a distinction between the sense in which logic is formal and the sense in which grammar is formal; (c) universal grammar descends from the system of categorial functions that are investigated in the transcendental analytic; (d) transcendental grammar implies that the universal form of human language has its ground in the universal structure of thought; (e) the concept of a grammatical norm is clarified once we combine the theory of universal grammar with how linguistic experience takes place.
Abstract Among the passages which are suggestive of a philosophy of language in Kant’s writings are his remarks and arguments on appropriate terminology for philosophical concepts. I ask what it is for Kant that makes some words more suitable than others. I reconstruct the arguments from the Inquiry concerning the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morality (1764) and the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) that defend that there is no such thing as a proper, real definition for philosophical concepts (only nominal definition and exposition); in addition, philosophical concepts are only represented by terms in abstracto, not in concreto. On these grounds, in the Inquiry, Kant sustains that the reference of a term to a philosophical concept is ultimately sanctioned by the term’s ‘linguistic usage’ (Redegebrauch). I argue that this is the basis for Kant’s criterion in the Critique of Pure Reason of employing traditional terminology, words from ordinary language, or even words from extinct languages, to refer to philosophical concepts, and for his rejection of coining new terms – even for distinctly new philosophical thoughts.
AbstractWhat are thoughts, or propositions, exactly? I develop an answer to this question in relation to the Russellian and Fregean views – propositions as facts and propositions as contents –, defending a Kantian alternative: propositions as acts. I move from natural or naïve Russellianism and its difficulties to more sophisticated and promising Fregeanism, which can respond to these difficulties but only at the expense of leaving open serious explanatory gaps of its own. Along the way, I develop Kantianism as incorporating what is promising in Fregeanism while closing the gaps this view left open, and present it more systematically at the end.
AbstractIt is common for constructivists to claim that Kant was the first philosopher to understand moral facts as ‘constructions of reason’. They think that Kant, just like the constructivist, proposes a procedure – the Categorical Imperative – from which the order of value can be ‘constructed’ and grounds the validity of this construction procedure not in some previous value but in its capacity to solve a practical problem, the problem of ‘free agency’. I here argue that this reading is misguided and propose that we read Kant as a teleological realist instead. Kant is a realist in that he takes the value of rational nature to be objective and so not ‘constructed’. Kant is a teleological realist insofar as his derivation of the moral law from the objective value of rational nature relies on a teleological understanding of rational nature.
AbstractIs moral constructivism an account of the basis of the content of morality or of its authority? In fact, different writers have understood constructivism to be addressing different issues. In this paper I argue that Kant should be understood as a constructivist about the content of morality – or better about a limited set of general substantive principles – and as a constititutivist about its authority. After some general remarks in Section 1 about contemporary discussions of constructivism, in Section 2 I discuss Rawls’s understanding of Kant’s constructivism; Rawls takes Kantian constructivism to be a view about the content of morality. In Section 3, I give an overview of Kant’s moral conception as constructivist about the content of morality and as constitutivist about its authority. In Section 4 I address a worry whether certain features of Kant’s constitutivism rest his constructivism on a realist foundation, arguing that they do not.
