Der Kommentar zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft bietet eine textnahe Erschließung der zentralen Begriffe, Thesen und Argumentationsgänge von Kants Hauptwerk auf aktuellem Forschungsstand. Es ist der erste Kommentar zur KrV, der den gesamten Text in der Fassung der ersten und zweiten Auflage gleichmäßig und lückenlos berücksichtigt. Davon profitieren vor allem die „Transzendentale Dialektik“ und die „Methodenlehre“, die in früheren Gesamtkommentaren meist nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt worden sind. Die Beiträge wurden nach einheitlichen Richtlinien verfasst, wobei unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen und Interpretationsansätze zur Geltung kommen. (...) Um dem Leser dieses Kommentars die Orientierung zu erleichtern, ist jeder Beitrag in drei bzw. vier Teile untergliedert: Der erste Teil behandelt die Stellung und Funktion des kommentierten Textabschnitts in der KrV, der zweite Teil gibt einen Überblick über Inhalt und Aufbau des Abschnitts, der dritte Teil enthält den eigentlichen Textkommentar. Wo dies sinnvoll erschien, wurden in einem vierten Teil wichtige Interpretationsfragen angesprochen. Hinweise auf weiterführende Spezialliteratur am Ende eines jeden Beitrags, eine Auswahlbibliographie zu Kant und zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft sowie ein Namen- und ein Sachregister machen den Band zu einem komfortablen Arbeitsmittel für den Benutzer. Die vorliegende zweite Auflage trägt der Tatsache Rechnung, dass der Band mittlerweile als Standardwerk der Kant-Forschung gilt. Mit Beiträgen von Henry Allison, Karl Ameriksm Reinhard Brandt, Wolfgang Carl, Konrad Cramer, Jean Ferrari Eckart Förster, Volker Gerhardt, Paul Guyer, Otfried Höffe, Hansgeorg Hoppe, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Heiner F. Klemme, Lothar Kreimendahl, Béatrice Longuenesse, Georg Mohr, Birgit Recki, Alain Renaut, Peter Rohs, Gerhard Seel, Dieter Sturma, Bernhard Thöle, Eric Watkins, Marcus Willaschek. (shrink)

The deduction of categories in the 1781 edition of the Critique of the Pure Reason (A Deduction) has “two sides”—the “objective deduction” and the “subjective deduction”. Kant seems ambivalent about the latter deduction. I treat it as a significant episode of Kant’s thinking about categories that extended from the early 1770s to around 1790. It contains his most detailed answer to the question about the origin of categories that he formulated in the 1772 letter to Marcus Herz. The answer is (...) that categories are generated a priori through a kind of intellectual “epigenesis”. This account leaves unexplained why precisely such and such categories should be generated. While this observation caused Kant to worry about the hypothetical status of the subjective deduction in 1781, he would come to acquiesce in the recognition that the ground of the possibility of categories is itself inscrutable. I call this his “methodological skepticism”. (shrink)

This brief paper is devoted to criticizing the widespread reading of Kant’s first Critique, according to which reference to subject-independent objects is “constituted” by higher-order cognitive abilities (concepts). Let us call this the “constitutional view.” In this paper, I argue that the constitutional reading confuses the un-Kantian problem of how we come to represent objects (which I call the intentionality thesis), with the quite different problem of how we cognize (erkennen) (which I call the “cognition thesis”) that we do represent (...) objects, that is, things that exist independently of the subject. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Je me propose d'examiner les paragraphes 18 et 19 de la deuxième partie des Prolégomènes. Bien que ces deux paragraphes ne constituent pas l'intégralité de la déduction transcendantale des Prolégomènes, ils ont une fonction essentielle dans la mesure où ils exposent l’argument entier in nuce. Ces deux sections établissent de façon claire que la doctrine de l'idéalisme critique, présentée dans la première partie des Prolégomènes comme un idéalisme qui ne supprime pas « l'existence de la chose qui apparaît », joue (...) un rôle indispensable dans la déduction transcendantale, qui est présentée dans la deuxième partie à partir de la distinction entre jugement de perception et jugement d'expérience. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new nonconceptual reading of the B-Deduction. As Hanna correctly remarks :399–415, 2011: 405), the word “cognition” has in both editions of the first Critique a wide sense, meaning nonconceptual cognition, and a narrow meaning, in Kant’s own words “an objective perception”. To be sure, Kant assumes the first meaning to account for why the Deduction is unavoidable. And if we take this meaning as a premise of the B-Deduction, then there is a gap in (...) the argument since the categories are certainly not conditions for non-conceptual cognition. Still, I believe it is not this wide meaning but rather the narrow one that figures in any premise of the B-Deduction. Thus, in the reading that I am proposing, categories are not conditions for representing something, or even conditions for representing something objectively. Instead, they are conditions for the recognition that what we represent through the senses exists mind-independently. In the first step of the B-Deduction, this cognition in the narrow sense takes the form of the propositional thinking that the nonconceptually represented object of the sensible intuition exists objectively. In contrast, in the second step of the B-Deduction, this cognition in the narrow sense takes the form of the apprehension of what our human senses represent nonconceptually as existing objectively. (shrink)

The deduction of the categories lies undoubtedly at the very heart of Kant's theoretical philosophy and, for this reason, it is one of items in the philosophical canon that is greatly discussed and least agreed upon. In the modern and contemporary Western philosophical tradition as well as in Kant’s literature, the loci classici for its consideration are the 1781 and 1787 editions of the Critique of pure reason. In this paper, I aim at presenting and discussing an argument that Kant (...) advances in the Prolegomena and which is virtually ignored in the approach of the deduction of the categories. At first, an inquiry into the distinction between analytic and synthetic methods is carried out. After that, the difference between judgments of perception and judgments of experience is taken into account. Finally, the Prolegomena’s argument for the categories is brought into discussion. (shrink)

Each of Kant’s three Critiques offers an account of the nature of a mental faculty and arrives at this account by means of a procedure I call ‘faculty analysis’. Faculty analysis is often regarded as among the least defensible aspects of Kant’s position; as a consequence, philosophers seeking to inherit Kantian ideas tend to transpose them into a different methodological context. I argue that this is a mistake: in fact faculty analysis is a live option for philosophical inquiry today. My (...) argument is as follows: Faculty analysis is a live option for certain kinds of philosophical theories if so-called “agentialist” views about the nature of belief are correct. There are good reasons for thinking that such views are correct. So faculty analysis should not be dismissed out of hand. Since the first premise in this argument bears a lot of weight, a large part of the paper is devoted to clarifying and defending it, in part by arguing that Kant himself holds a version of agentialism about belief. (shrink)

Incongruent counterparts are pairs of objects which cannot be enclosed in the same spatial limits despite an exact similarity in magnitude, proportion, and relative position of their parts. Kant discerns in such objects, whose most familiar example is left and right hands, a “paradox” demanding “demotion of space and time to mere forms of our sensory intuition.” This paper aims at an adequate understanding of Kant’s enigmatic idealist argument from handed objects, as well as an understanding of its relation to (...) the other key supports of his idealism. The paper’s central finding is that Kant’s idealist argument from incongruent counterparts rests essentially on his theory of freedom. The surprising result sheds new light on deep and overlooked links among the pillars of transcendental idealism, pointing the way to a comprehensive and unified reading of Kant’s system of idealist arguments. (shrink)

For Kant, the human cognitive faculty has two sub-faculties: sensibility and the understanding. Each has pure forms which are necessary to us as humans: space and time for sensibility; the categories for the understanding. But Kant is careful to leave open the possibility of there being creatures like us, with both sensibility and understanding, who nevertheless have different pure forms of sensibility. They would be finite rational beings and discursive cognizers. But they would not be human. And this raises a (...) question about the pure forms of the understanding. Does Kant leave open the possibility of discursive cognizers who have different categories? Even if other discursive cognizers might not sense like us, must they at least think like us? We argue that textual and systematic considerations do not determine the answers to these questions and examine whether Kant thinks that the issue cannot be decided. Consideration of his wider views on the nature and limits of our knowledge of mind shows that Kant could indeed remain neutral on the issue but that the exact form his neutrality can take is subject to unexpected constraints. The result would be an important difference between what Kant says about discursive cognizers with other forms of sensibility and what he is in a position to say about discursive cognizers with other forms of understanding. Kantian humility here takes on a distinctive character. (shrink)

Kant's Radical Subjectivism. Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction.

Many scholars believe “On a New List of Categories” is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. The present essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by prescision. Then the article shall solicit aid from Peirce’s early and later writings to explain how the new way to list the categories can serve as a genealogy of signification: how the different types of term, proposition, and argument emerge in the process of reasoning as the different types (...) of signs. Thus, the genealogy of signification would then qualify as a phenomenology of logic as a science of semiotics. Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in illation: namely, uniparance, diaparance, and comparance. Then the three types of comparison will occasion three types of relative in different types of propositions: namely, concurrents, disquiparants, and equiparants. Finally, the three types of relative will occasion the different types of sign corresponding to the different types of term: namely, icons, indices, and symbols. With this classification, there is then an explanation of how the process of reasoning is a semiotic process with three forms of valid argument: namely, hypothesis, induction, and deduction. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest school, between (...) Kenntnis (roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and Erkenntnis (roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for Erkenntnis of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity. (shrink)

Famously, Kant describes space and time as infinite “given” magnitudes. An influential interpretative tradition reads this as a claim about phenomenological presence to the mind: in claiming that space and time are given, this reading holds, Kant means to claim that we have phenomenological access to space and time in our original intuitions of them. In this paper, I argue that we should instead understand givenness as a metaphysical notion. For Kant, space and time are ‘given’ in virtue of three (...) related facts: (i) they are necessary grounds of the existence of all other spatial and temporal possibilities; (ii) in virtue of being such grounds, they are metaphysically linked to all other represented spatiotemporal things; and (iii) as representations, space and time issue from the nature of our faculty of sensibility rather than from an arbitrary act of choice. Understanding givenness in this non-epistemological way helps us recover what is plausible in both ‘intellectualist’ and ‘anti-intellectualist’ readings of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Anti-intellectualists are correct that space and time are given in mere sensibility, but intellectualists are correct that we depend on the understanding for consciousness of space and time. (shrink)

In her new book, Alison Laywine applies the historical approach of her earlier book Kant’s Early Metaphysics and the Origins of the Critical Philosophy to the delicate philosophical task of...

Recent publications (Henrich, Seeberg) claim that Kant has been profoundly influenced by contemporary publications on juridical deductions. I try to show, that this cannot be right. The introductory note of the “Transcendental Deduction” (Critique of Pure Reason A 84) poses two questions: “quid facti?” and “quid juris?”. The first is answered by the demonstration of the possibility of relations between pure concepts and pure intuition und sensations, the second by the implicit refutation of David Hume. Kant and his interpreters sustain (...) the possibility of using juridical concepts, that are neither related to real juridical facts nor are only metaphers, but have a special philosophical signification. But what should that be? (shrink)

This work examines Kant’s remarkable decision to rewrite the core argument of the first Critique, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. I identify a two-part structure common to both versions: first establishing an essential role for the categories in unifying sensible intuitions; and then addressing a worry about how the connection between our faculties asserted in the first part is possible. I employ this structure to show how Kant rewrote the argument, focusing on Kant’s response to the concerns raised in (...) an early review by Johann Schultz. Schultz’s dissatisfaction with the original Deduction lies in its second part, and Kant’s subsequent revisions are focused on providing a better answer to this how-possible question. The new Deduction offers a more direct and convincing account of how our faculties work together to make experience possible. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new nonconceptual reading of the B-Deduction. As Hanna correctly remarks (Int J Philos Stud 19(3):399–415, 2011: 405), the word “cognition” (Erkenntnis/cognition) has, in both editions of the first Critique, a wide sense, meaning nonconceptual cognition, and a narrow meaning, in Kant’s own words “an objective perception” (A320/B377). To be sure, Kant assumes the first meaning to account for why the Deduction is unavoidable. If we take this meaning as a premise of the B-Deduction, then (...) there is a gap in the argument since the categories are certainly not conditions for non-conceptual cognition (Kantian nonconceptualism). Still, I believe it is not this wide meaning but rather the narrow one that figures in any premise of the B-Deduction. Thus, in the reading that I am proposing, categories are not conditions for representing something (I call this the intentionality thesis), or even conditions for representing something objectively (I call this the objectivity thesis). Instead, they are conditions for the recognition that what we represent through the senses exists mind-independently. In the first step of the B-Deduction, this cognition in the narrow sense takes the form of propositional thinking (transcendental apperception) that the nonconceptually represented object of the sensible intuition exists objectively. In contrast, in the second step of the B-Deduction, this cognition in the narrow sense takes the form of the apprehension (figurative synthesis) of what our human senses represent nonconceptually as existing objectively. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a critically review the recent nonconceptualist reading of the Kantian notion of sensible intuition. I raise two main objections. First, nonconceptualist readers fail to distinguish connected but different anti-intellectualist claims in the contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Second, I will argue that nonconceptual readings fail because Kantian intuitions do not possess a representational content of their own that can be veridical or falsidical in a similar way to how the content of (...) propositional attitudes are true of false. In this paper, I will support my own reading that sensible intuition is better seen as what Evans and McDowell have called a de re sense, whose main characteristic is object-dependence. In this sense, Kantian sensible intuitions can be seen as a sensible mode of donation of objects. In my reading, the Kantian opposition between intuitions and concepts is best seen as the opposition between the objectual de re perception of something and the propositional de dicto apperception that something is the case rather than the opposition between nonconceptual and conceptual contents. However, if Kantian sensible intuition is not a mental state with a nonconceptual content, it is certainly in the general anti-intellectualist neighborhood. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a critical review of the recent nonconceptualist reading of the Kantian notion of sensible intuition. I raise two main objections. First, nonconceptualist readers fail to distinguish connected but different anti-intellectualist claims in the contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Second, I will argue that nonconceptual readings fail because Kan- tian intuitions do not possess a representational content of their own that can be veridical or falsidical in a similar way to how the content of propositional (...) attitudes is true or false. In this paper, I will support my own reading that sensible intuition is better seen as what Evans and McDowell have called a de re sense, whose main characteristic is object dependence. In this sense, Kantian sensible intuitions can be seen as a sensible mode of donation of objects. In my reading, the Kantian opposition between intuitions and concepts is best seen as the opposition between the objectual de re perception of something and the propositional de dicto apperception that something is the case rather than the opposition between nonconceptual and conceptual contents. However, if Kantian sensible intuition is not a mental state with nonconceptual content, it is certainly in the general anti-intellectualist neighborhood. (shrink)

This brief paper is devoted to criticizing the widespread reading of Kant’s first Critique, according to which reference to subject-independent objects is “constituted” by higher-order cognitive abilities (concepts). Let us call this the “constitutional view.” In this paper, I argue that the constitutional reading confuses the un-Kantian problem of how we come to represent objects (which I call the intentionality thesis) with the quite different problem of how we cognize (erkennen) (which I call the “cognition thesis”) that we do represent (...) objects, that is, things that exist independently of the subject. (shrink)

In this article I respond to Sacha Golob's critique of my stance on Kantian nonconceptualism, objectivity, and animal perception of spatial particulars.

In this paper, I discuss the debate on Kant and nonconceptual content. Inspired by Kant’s account of the intimate relation between intuition and concepts, McDowell (1996) has forcefully argued that the relation between sensible content and concepts is such that sensible content does not severally contribute to cognition but always only in conjunction with concepts. This view is known as conceptualism. Recently, Kantians Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, among others, have brought against this view the charge that it neglects the (...) possibility of the existence of essentially nonconceptual content that is not conceptualised or subject to conceptualisation. Their critique of McDowell amounts to nonconceptualism. However, both views, conceptualist and nonconceptualist, share the assumption that intuition is synthesised content in Kant’s sense. My interest is not in the validity of the philosophical positions of conceptualism or nonconceptualism per se. I am particularly interested in the extent to which the views that McDowell and Hanna and Allais respectively advance are true to Kant, or can validly be seen as Kantian positions. I argue that although McDowell is right that intuition is only epistemically relevant in conjunction with concepts, Hanna and Allais are right with regard to the existence of essentially nonconceptual content (intuitions) independently of the functions of the understanding, but that they are wrong with regard to non-conceptualised intuition being synthesised content in Kant’s sense. Kantian conceptualists (Bowman 2011; Griffith 2012; Gomes 2014) have responded to the recent nonconceptualist offensive, with reference to A89ff./B122ff. (§13)—which, confusingly, the nonconceptualists also cite as evidence for their contrary reading—by arguing that the nonconceptualist view conflicts with the central goal of the Transcendental Deduction, namely, to argue that all intuitions are subject to the categories. I contend that the conceptualist reading of A89ff./B122ff. is unfounded, but also that the nonconceptualists are wrong to believe that intuitions as such refer strictly to objects independently of the functions of the understanding, and that they are mistaken about the relation between figurative synthesis and intellectual synthesis. I argue that Kant is a conceptualist, albeit not in the sense that standard conceptualists assume. Perceptual knowledge is always judgemental, though without this resulting in the standard conceptualist claim that, necessarily, all intuitions or all perceptions per se stand under the categories (strong conceptualism). I endorse the nonconceptualist view that, for Kant, perception per se, i.e. any mere or ‘blind’ intuition of objects (i.e. objects as indeterminate appearances) short of perceptual knowledge, does not necessarily stand under the categories. Perception is not yet perceptual knowledge. In this context, I point out the common failure in the literature on the Transcendental Deduction, both of the conceptualist and nonconceptualist stripe, to take account of the modal nature of Kant’s argument for the relation between intuition and concept insofar as cognition should arise from it. (shrink)

Are we really sure to correctly know what do we feel in front ofan artwork and to correctly verbalize it? How do we know what weappreciate and why we appreciate it? This paper deals with the problem ofintrospective opacity in aesthetics (that is, the unreliability of self-knowledge) in the light of traditional philosophical issues, but also of recentpsychological insights, according to which there are many instances ofmisleading intuition about one’s own mental processes, affective states orpreferences. Usually, it is assumed that (...) aesthetic statements are intuitivelyclear and self-evident. However, a long tradition in psychological researchhas called the idea of introspective transparency and the infallibility of self-knowledge into question (Wilson 2002). This topic has only recently beenrecognized as an interesting problem in aesthetics (Melchionne 2011, Irvin2014). In this paper I will discuss the main shortcomings in introspective self-knowledge, mostly referring to psychological findings. As a consequence, thedevelopment of a folk psychological account of aesthetic experience could beneeded, investigating how people develop intuitive and naïve theories abouttheir aesthetic reactions, taste, and feelings, distinct from a more objectiveand empirically grounded account of how judgment and preferences areactually formed in ourselves, even on a neurobiological level. However, itwill also be argued that bypassing the individual judgment and his expressedchoices in favor of allegedly more objective levels of description would notbe an innocent step to take. (shrink)

I critically examine one central line of reasoning in Mario Caimi's book »Kant's B Deduction« (Cambridge Publishing, 2014).

Does inner sense, like outer sense, provide inner sensations or, in other words, a sensory manifold of its own? Advocates of the disparity thesis on inner and outer sense claim that it does not. This interpretation, which is dominant in the preexisting literature, leads to several inconsistencies when applied to Kant’s doctrine of inner experience. Yet, while so, the parity thesis, which is the contrasting view, is also unable to provide a convincing interpretation of inner sensations. In this paper, I (...) argue that this deadlock can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of inner sense shared by both sides. Drawing upon an analysis of the notion of obscure representations, I offer an alternative interpretation of inner sense with a special regard to self-affection, apprehension, and attention. From this basis, I will infer that outer sense delivers sensory content that is initially and intrinsically unaccompanied by phenomenal consciousness; inner sense contributes by endowing such content with phenomenal consciousness. Therefore, phenomenal qualities can be regarded as the sensory manifold of inner sense. This alternative interpretation solves the long-standing dispute concerning inner sensations and would further illuminate Kant’s notion of inner experience. (shrink)

There is little doubt that Salomon Maimon was both highly respected by, and highly influential upon, his contemporaries; indeed, Kant himself referred to Maimon as the best of his critics. The appraisal and reformulation of the Kantian project detailed in Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy played a significant role in determining the criteria of success for post-Kantian philosophy, and was thus crucial to the early development of German Idealism. Key aspects of Maimon’s transcendental philosophy remain, however, relatively obscure. In particular, (...) it remains unclear to what degree Maimon’s skepticism is internal to the Kantian framework, and how this skepticism is related to Maimon’s so-called dogmatic rationalism. The central aim of this project is to present Maimon’s as a distinct form of post-Kantian skepticism: one which poses significant problems for Kant’s theoretical project and which motivates a reformulation of the critical framework. In Kant’s eyes, pre-Kantian forms of skepticism are insufficiently critical insofar as they involve a commitment to transcendental realism. By contrast, I argue that Maimon’s skepticism does not involve a commitment to transcendental realism and that it strikes at the heart of Kant’s critical project insofar as it constitutes what I term ‘critical’ as opposed to merely ‘empirical’ skepticism. I further argue that Maimon’s rationalism provides the materials for a response to this form of skepticism. This thesis contributes to contemporary debates in the history of philosophy concerning the nature of Maimon’s coalition system and its relation to German Idealism, but also provides an alternative perspective on contemporary problems in the philosophy of perception concerning, in particular, the possibility of non-conceptual intentional content. (shrink)

I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be (...) confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition (and beyond) allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique (and beyond), and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of (empirical, mathematical, philosophical) forms. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, contrary to a widely influential account of Kant’s development in the “silent decade,” that key changes in his empirical and rational psychology throughout the 1770’s are traceable to changes in the scope he assigns to inner sense. Kant’s explicit inclusion of our access to the I or soul within the scope of inner sense in the early 1770’s (after its apparent exclusion in the Dissertation) yields a more robust empirical psychology. Given the Wolffian character of (...) Kant’s pre-Critical conception rational psychology, this in turn provides a firmer foundation for the rational cognition of the soul, as exemplified in Kant’s treatment in the ML1 notes. Even so, I contend that Kant’s eventual rejection of the pretenses of rational psychology to offer cognition of the soul likewise has its basis in his later exclusion of any access to the I from the scope of inner sense, which also reveals a previously unnoticed continuity between his pre-Critical and Critical conceptions of rational psychology. (shrink)