## 1. Mental Faculties and Mental Representation



One of the goals of Kant's critical philosophy is to articulate
the conditions of the possibility of what he calls
"experience" (*Erfahrung*). As we'll see
below, Kant's use of the term is rather more technical than is
typically meant in English by talk of, e.g., a subject's
"experience" of the color red. Indeed, Kant sometimes
speaks of there being only a single or universal experience (A110,
A493/B521), which at least strongly suggests that he is not construing
experience in a purely subjective or phenomenological manner. Rather,
in talking of the conditions of "experience" in this way,
Kant is most obviously concerned with the conditions under which
objective empirical knowledge is possible--including knowledge
that Kant's thinks we actually have, such as is exemplified in
the sciences of mathematics and physics. Kant's hope is that by
articulating the conditions under which such knowledge is possible, he
will be able to indicate how it is that metaphysics itself could
become a science. He pursues this goal via an examination of those
features of the mind relevant to the conditions of
"experience" so construed. This amounts to an examination
of the conditions for "cognition" (*Erkenntnis*),
or the mind's "relation to an object" (B137). There
is some controversy about the best way to understand Kant's use
of this phrase, but for the moment we'll understand it as
involving relation to a possible object of experience, and as being a
necessary condition for the positive substantive knowledge
(*Wissen*) characteristic of a proper science (i.e., a
*Wissenschaft*).



At the most basic explanatory level, Kant conceives of the mind as
constituted by two fundamental capacities (*Fahigkeiten*),
or powers, which he labels "receptivity"
(*Receptivitat*) and "spontaneity"
(*Spontaneitat*). Receptivity, as the name suggests,
constitutes the mind's capacity to be affected, whether by
itself (i.e., one "part" or capacity of the mind affecting
another) or something else (i.e., something distinct from the mind).
For Kant, any exercise of the mind's receptive power essentially
requires some external prompting in order to engage in the production
of representations. In contrast, the power of spontaneity needs no
such prompting. It is able to initiate its activity from itself,
without any external influence.



Kant thus construes all mental activity either in terms of its
resulting from affection (receptivity) or from the mind's
self-prompted activity (spontaneity). From these two very general
aspects of the mind Kant then derives three basic cognitive faculties
(*Vermogen*), termed by Kant "sensibility"
(*Sinnlichkeit*), "understanding"
(*Verstand*), and "reason" (*Vernunft*).
These faculties characterize specific cognitive powers, none of which
is reducible to any of the others, and to each of which is assigned a
particular cognitive task and a specific kind of characteristic
representational output. In the case of sensibility the characteristic
representations are sensation (*Empfindung*) and intuition
(*Anschauung*). In the case of the understanding and reason (or
the 'intellect' more broadly), concepts
(*Begriffe*), judgment (*Urteil*), and inference
(*Schluss*).



Kant characterizes intuition in terms of two basic
characteristics--viz. immediacy (*Unmittelbarkeit*) and
particularity (*Einzelheit*) (cf. A19/B33, A68/B93; JL 9:91).
This is in contrast to the mediacy and generality
(*Allgemeinheit*) characteristic of conceptual representation
(A68/B93; JL 9:91). Kant's distinction between these two sorts
of representation might at first pass be taken as a kind of
phenomenological distinction between how things seem to a perceiving
subject independently of thought about what is so experienced, and
this is indeed how at least some interpreters have construed Kant
(e.g., Prichard 1909; Russell 1913; Broad 1978; Parsons 1992b).
However, as others have noted (e.g., Paton 1936: 98), Kant's
method for distinguishing the various contributions made by our
cognitive faculties proceeds not by appeal to phenomenology but rather
philosophical abstraction (e.g., A20-1/B34-5). Moreover, Kant at least
sometimes seems to deny that a representation (or its content) could
be present to consciousness at all--i.e., be something
"for" the subject--without conceptualization (e.g.,
A116-17, B132). Hence Kant seems concerned not so much with the
phenomenology of conceptual vs. non-conceptual experience as he is
with the role sense experience plays in facilitating cognition and
knowledge.



In discursive rational beings such as ourselves, intuition and concept
cooperate in the generation of what Kant calls
"cognition". Kant employs the term "cognition"
(*Erkenntnis*) in different ways (Smit 2000, 2009; Schafer
forthcoming-a, forthcoming-b; Gomes and Stephenson 2016; Tolley 2020;
Willaschek and Watkins 2020; Watkins and Willaschek 2017b). In the
'Stepladder' passage from the first *Critique* Kant
provides a very general definition of cognition as a conscious
representation of an object (A320/B376; see also JL 9:91). In this
sense both intuitions and concepts may be cognitions. Kant also has a
narrower sense of cognition "in the proper sense"
(A78/B103), which in finite discursive beings like us concerns only
those states that are the outcome of a synthesis of concepts and an
intuited manifold. Proper cognition satisfies three conditions: (i)
consciousness; (ii) "agreement"
(*Ubereinstimmung*) or truth-aptness; (iii) real
possibility. The consciousness condition is clearly stated in
Kant's "Stepladder" passage. Cognition must be a
conscious relation to an object. Kant indicates the
"agreement" or "conformity"
(*Ubereinstimmung*) of a cognition with its object in his
discussion of truth in the first *Critique*. He says that the
"nominal definition of truth, namely that it is the agreement of
cognition with its object, is here granted and presupposed"
(A58/B82). Since Kant allows for false cognition, his view must be
that representations that are cognitions are such as *to be
able* to agree or conform with their objects, and Kant construes
such agreement as truth. Kant regards judgment (i.e., a specific sort
of non-associative unity of concepts) as the bearer of truth, while
denying that intuition is the sort of thing that can be true or false
(see Heis 2013: 277-8; McLear 2016b). Finally, Kant construes
cognition as always needing to be of a really--i.e.,
metaphysically--possible subject matter. As Kant states in a
famous footnote in the B-preface of the first *Critique*:



> 
> 
> To *cognize* an object, it is required that I be able to prove
> its possibility (whether by the testimony of experience from its
> actuality or *a priori* through reason). (Bxxvin.)
> 
> 
> 



Proper cognition may be pure, as when synthesizing a manifold of pure
intuition (e.g., the pure intuition of space or time) with a concept
(e.g., the concept of space as discussed in the Metaphysical
Exposition of Space in the Transcendental Aesthetic). Proper cognition
may also be empirical, as when synthesizing an empirical intuition
(e.g., of touch or vision) with a concept. Kant often describes
empirical cognition as "experience" (*Erfahrung*;
see, e.g., B166, A176/B218, A189/B234), though empirical intuition and
concepts are also related in what Kant calls "perception"
(*Wahrnehmung*).



Kant takes the terms "intuition" (*Anschauung*),
"perception" (*Wahrnehmung*), and
"experience" (*Erfahrung*) to designate different
things (McLear 2014b: 771-772; Allais 2016: 2-5; Tolley
2016a: 86-91, 2019, 2020). For example, in the headings to the
first three chapters of the Principles of the first *Critique*
Kant distinguishes between the "Axioms of Intuition," the
"Anticipations of Perception," and the "Analogies of
Experience." If Kant weren't thinking that the terms
"intuition", "perception", and
"experience" designated distinct mental states, then it
would be difficult to understand why he ordered a central part of his
architectonic around them. All three are forms of representation of
objects. Insofar as each is a conscious representations of an object
they are all forms of "cognition" in the broad (though not
necessarily the "proper") sense of that term. Let's
look at each representational kind in a bit more detail.



Intuition is a relation to an "undetermined"
(*unbestimmt*) object or an "appearance"
(*Erscheinung*). Kant uses this phrase to characterize the
object of intuition both in the opening of the Transcendental
Aesthetic (A20/B34) in the first *Critique*, and in later
discussion in both the Analytic (A69/B94, B154, B163, A141/B180, B309)
and the Dialectic (A310/B367, B422n, A443/B471, A718/B746)). Though
interpretation of these texts is controversial, the sense in which the
object of intuition is "undetermined" seems to
specifically involve its lack of *conceptual* determination,
either explicitly in judgment (see, e.g., A69/B94) or via a rule of
"figurative" synthesis that guides the imagination (e.g.,
A141/B180).



Perception, like intuition, is also sometimes described as
representation of an undetermined object (e.g., B422n). However,
perception also involves a consciousness of the "manifold"
or "content" (*Inhalt*; more on this notion of
"content" below) of the intuition (A99, A119-20,
B160, B162, B202-3; Pr 4:300). What Kant means by this is not
entirely obvious. However, Kant is clear that perception necessarily
requires the activity of the imagination in combining together the
content of the intuition into what Kant calls an "image"
(*Bild*), which yields or constitutes consciousness of the
content of intuition itself (A120, B160; see Sellars 1978; Young 1988;
Allison 2015: 254-264; Matherne 2015; Tolley 2019, 2020). Kant
also indicates that in perception the "mathematical"
categories of quality and quantity are employed, though not the
relational or modal categories, which are constitutive of experience
only (A161-2/B201; see Allison 2015: 414-426).



Finally, "experience" (*Erfahrung*) involves the
combination or "synthesis" of these perceptions
(*Wahrnehmungen*) by the categories, particularly the
categories of relation (i.e., substance, cause, community). As Kant
puts it, "experience is cognition through connected perceptions
(*durch verknupfte Wahrnehmungen*)" (B161; cf. B218;
Pr 4:300). Experience is thus the most cognitively demanding and
sophisticated form of having a cognitive relation to an object.



Given these distinctions we'll next look at how to understand
the proper locus of debate concerning the intellect's
contribution to sense experience.


## 2. The Locus of Debate: Experience, Perception, or Intuition?



When inquiring about the nature of the relationship between the
intellect and sense experience it is important to keep in mind the
technical sense with which Kant uses various terms, as introduced
above. There are at least two reasons for doing so. First, to be as
clear as we can regarding Kant's understanding of his own
theory. Second, to avoid confusion regarding the relation between
Kant's conception of such terms and our modern Anglophone
tradition of use. This latter issue is especially significant since it
is not at all clear that Kant's conception of
"experience" admits of straightforward translation into
our modern notion. For example, Kant is clear that
"experience," in his sense of an "empirical
cognition" (*empirische Erkenntnis*), includes conceptual
synthesis, since such synthesis is what binds the various elements of
an empirical cognition together such that they are non-arbitrarily
connected (see, e.g., B12, B161, B201, B218, and B233). As a result,
all should concede that his usage of "experience"
(*Erfahrung*) and "empirical cognition"
(*empirische Erkenntnis*) typically is meant in a way that
assumes a cognitive contribution in the form of conceptual synthesis
by the understanding (Allais 2016: 4). Thus, and rather confusingly,
if there is a debate to be had concerning Kant's view of the
conceptual or intellectual character of "experience" in
its contemporary English sense of a kind of phenomenally conscious
state, it may well be located at somewhere other than the level of
"experience" in Kant's technical sense (though for
worries about our contemporary philosophical usage of
"experience" see Byrne 2009).



More controversial is the issue of whether "perception"
(*Wahrnehmung*) in Kant's technical sense constitutively
involves concepts or otherwise depends on conceptual synthesis. There
is at least some evidence for thinking it does. For example, Kant says
in the second version of the Transcendental Deduction, that "all
synthesis, through which even perception itself becomes possible,
stands under the categories" (B161). It may be that Kant's
use of "perception" (*Wahrnehmung*) here is largely
in line with preceding German usage (e.g., in Wolff, Baumgarten,
Meier, and Tetens) to mean the becoming conscious of a sensory
representation in the mind (alternatively, becoming conscious of that
which is presented via such representation), rather than either the
mere occurrence of such a representation, or the occurrence of a
judgment concerning the representation (Tolley 2016b, 2020). In this
way perception, as empirical consciousness of a representation (or
what is presented through it; B207) is intermediate between the mere
occurrence of an intuition in a subject's mind and experience or
empirical cognition, which Kant describes as involving judgment.
Kant's claim concerning perception in the Deduction could then
be read as a claim concerning how categorial synthesis is necessary
for empirical consciousness (perception) of the objects that are given
to the mind in intuition, prior to making any judgment (in experience)
concerning those objects.



However, Kant's position concerning perception, understood in
terms of conscious sensory representation, is complicated by various
remarks he makes concerning non-human animal (hereafter
"animal") consciousness. For example, in various
descriptions of the "ladder" of cognition in the logic
lectures, Kant allows that animals have representations with
consciousness and consciously discriminate between objects on that
basis. Moreover, Kant allows for such representational capacities in
animals even though, lacking an intellect, animals thereby fail to
have any capacity for cognition (at least in its narrow sense),
understanding, or comprehension (*Jasche Logik*
9:64-5; see also *Dohna-Wundlacken Logik* (c. 1792)
24:730-1; *Wiener Logik* (1780) 24:846; *Blomberg
Logik* (c. 1771) 24:132-3, 134-5, 136). Kant also says of
animals that they may be conscious of individual representations,
while lacking any consciousness of the "unity" of those
representations (letter to Herz, 26 May 1789, C 11:52). Such texts
suggest that animals are conscious of their representations but lack
any *self*-consciousness with respect to those representations
(Paton 1936: 332-5; Naragon 1990; Ameriks 2000: ch. 7; Allais
2009; McLear 2011; Tolley 2016a; Golob forthcoming). Moreover,
Kant's description of consciousness as necessary for making
distinctions, and as coming in degrees (B414-15), also suggests that
animals must be conscious of their representations to a degree
sufficient for explaining how they make the distinctions between
objects in their environment that they obviously do. However,
interpreting these texts, and the significance of Kant's remarks
on animals, remains contested (Kemp Smith 2003: lii-liv;
Grune 2014b: SS2; Fisher 2017; Land 2018; Leland 2018a,b;;
Callanan 2020). Thus it remains contested as to whether
perception, in Kant's sense, is possible without intellectual
capacities involving conceptual representation.



If there is some question whether perception is possible without an
intellect and conceptual capacities, the issue is even more fraught
with respect to intuition, and this is indeed where much of the
contemporary discussion has focused (e.g., Sellars 1968: ch. 1;
McDowell 1996; Hanna 2001: ch. 4; Hanna 2005; Ginsborg 2008; Allais
2009; Grune 2009; Friedman 2012; Tolley 2013; McLear 2015).
Moreover, since intuition is the most basic object-related
representation, if Kant construes intuition as inextricably linked
with conceptual representation then he would clearly also be committed
to thinking so of perception and experience. Conversely, however, if
Kant denies any intrinsic connection between intuition and
conceptualization he is nevertheless free to argue that conceptual
capacities play an important role at the level of perception or
experience.



In what follows this entry assumes that intuition and its faculty of
sensibility is the relevant locus of debate. It also assumes that
Kant's notion of intuition has some correlation with our
contemporary conception of what is described by the English term
"experience", though this entry will largely leave the
nature of that connection open in what follows. Given this locus of
discussion, the next section examines two frameworks within which to
think about the dependence of intuition on conceptualization.


## 3. Frame I: Conceptual Content



The reception of Kant's philosophy in the latter half of the
twentieth century (e.g., Sellars 1968; McDowell 1996; Hanna 2005;
Ginsborg 2006b; Haag 2007; Allais 2009) typically presents him as
either accepting or rejecting the view that experience has
"conceptual content." One way to frame this dispute is in
terms of the acceptance or rejection of the following statement of
'Conceptualism':



**Conceptualism:**
  

The 'content' (*Inhalt*) of an intuition is
conceptual, and constitutes its cognitive relation to a (putatively)
mind-independent object



Conceptualist readings of Kant thus claim that there is a relevant
sense in which (i) intuitions have content; (ii) the content of the
intuition is conceptual; (iii) it is this conceptual content that
constitutes or determines the cognitive relation of the intuition (as
a mental state) to a mind-independent object (or in the case of inner
sense, to the object that is oneself). According to the contrasting
position, 'Nonconceptualism':



**Nonconceptualism:**
  

The 'content' of an intuition is at least partly
nonconceptual, and is sufficient to constitute a cognitive relation to
a (putatively) mind-independent object



One caveat worth noting: the qualification concerning
"putatively" mind-independent objects is meant to allow
for hallucination and illusion (see Allais 2010, 2011a; Roche 2011;
Stephenson 2015, 2017; Grune 2017a; McLear 2017). This
qualification also provides leeway concerning exactly what is meant by
"mind-independent", especially since Kant's
articulation of Transcendental Idealism entails that finite beings
intuit (in some sense) mind-dependent appearances and not (in some
sense) mind-independent things as they are in themselves (Allais 2015;
see also the entry on Kant's
 transcendental idealism).



One might argue that Kant articulates an endorsement of Conceptualism
in SS17 of B-Deduction of the first *Critique*, where he
says that



> 
> 
> The understanding is, to speak generally, the faculty of cognitions.
> This consists in the determinate relation of given representations to
> an object. But an object is that in the concept of which the manifold
> of a given intuition is united. Now, all unification of
> representations requires the unity of consciousness in the synthesis
> of the same [i.e., the representations]. It follows that the unity of
> consciousness alone establishes [*ausmacht*] the relation of
> representations to an object, their objective validity, and thus their
> becoming cognitions. (B137; cf. A197/B242-3)
> 
> 
> 



The language used here has seemed to many to indicate that the unity
of consciousness achieved via categorial synthesis is necessary for
any cognitive relation to an object (e.g., Bird 1962: 130-131;
Guyer 1987: 11-24; Pereboom 2006: 160; Pereboom 2009; cf. Land
2012). Put another way, intuitions must have conceptual content if
they are to have cognitive relation to an object.



While there may be a variety of reasons for reading Kant as endorsing
Conceptualism, so understood, two stand out. The first is
philosophically motivated by the position that sense experience can
play a rational or justificatory role with respect to belief or
judgment only if such experience possesses conceptual content (see
 SS5.1
 for discussion). Second, many think that the only plausible way of
interpreting Kant's argument in the Transcendental Deduction of
the *Critique of Pure Reason* requires that he endorse
Conceptualism (see
 SS5.5
 for discussion).



Hence, interpreters endorsing some form or another of
'Nonconceptualism' typically take a contrasting stance
regarding Kant's position concerning either the justificatory
relationship between sense experience and belief or judgment, or the
proper interpretation of his argument in the Deduction.



However, the framing of the dispute between Conceptualism and
Nonconceptualism as one concerning conceptual content faces
straightforward interpretive challenges, independently of where one
stands as to the justificatory role of experience or the best way to
interpret the argument of the Deduction. These challenges concern each
element of the Conceptualist thesis. First
 (SS3.1),
 it seems that when close attention is paid to Kant's notion of
'content' (*Inhalt*) it cannot be the case that
intuitions have conceptual content. Second
 (SS3.2),
 Kant's conception of concepts as always employed in judgment
appears incompatible with the claim that concepts provide intuition
with cognitive relation to an object. Third
 (SS3.3),
 attempts to avoid these challenges by attributing a conception of
'content' to Kant in line with our contemporary notion of
*representational* content do not obviously cohere with his
view of the contribution of intuition to cognition. The next three
subsections detail these challenges. Again, it is important to note
that though these challenges are often raised by advocates of some
form or another of Nonconceptualism, the challenges themselves are
independent of any specific answer concerning, first, whether and how
intuition justifies judgment, and second, how Kant proceeds in the
argument of the Deduction. After discussing these three challenges to
the conceptual content frame regarding its plausibility as an
interpretation of Kant (this entry shall largely prescind from
discussing Conceptualism's independent philosophical
plausibility),
 SS4
 then examines an alternative way of framing the debate that does not
raise these concerns.


### 3.1 Relation to An Object



One straightforward challenge to the Conceptualism thesis comes from
close examination of Kant's conception of 'content'
(*Inhalt*), which he understands in terms of the relation of a
representation to an object (Tolley 2011, 2013). As we have see in
B137 above, Kant often construes the content of cognition in terms of
a relation to an object (see also B79, B83, B87), and he also says of
sensory intuition that it 



> 
> 
> contain[s] [*enthalten*] in its representation only the
> relation [*Verhaltniss*] of an object to the subject,
> and not that which is internal to the object in itself. (B67) 
> 
> 
> 



Moreover, Kant describes intuition and concept as having opposing
kinds of relation to the object they represent. Intuitions are
immediately related to their objects while concepts are only mediately
so related (B93; see also B33, B41, A109, B3767; Prolegomena, SS8
(4: 281); What Real Progress, 20: 266). This gives us the material for
the following argument.


1. The content of a cognition (whether intuition or concept) consists
in--i.e., is nothing but--a relation to an object
2. Concepts and intuitions relate to objects in different
ways--viz. mediately and immediately
3. [?] The content of intuition is different from the content of
concepts
4. Representations are individuated as to type--i.e., intuition
or concept--at least partly in virtue of their content
5. [?] Intuitions cannot have conceptual content



This argument, if sound, shows that intuition cannot be related to an
object (and thus have 'content') by virtue of a
*conceptual* content. Thus, one initial worry about
Conceptualism is that its framing of its position in terms of
'content' does not obviously cohere with how Kant thinks
of content. However, the above argument fails to show that concepts
(or conceptual synthesis, or the capacity for concept employment) do
not play any *other* role in the constitution of an
intuition's relation to an object--perhaps concepts are not
the contents of intuitions but are nevertheless necessary for an
intuition's having a relation to an object. Let's turn
then to discussion of how conceptual synthesis could constitute this
relation.


### 3.2 Concepts and Conceptual Synthesis



According to Conceptualism, the cognitive relation of an intuition to
an object is, in some sense, conceptual. A version of this claim is
seemingly articulated by Kant at B137, quoted above, in which it is a
synthesis by concepts that constitutes what Kant calls a
"determinate relation" (*bestimmten Beziehung*) to
an object. After first discussing what Kant means by
"synthesis" here we'll go on to address the
prospects and problems facing an account of intuition as dependent on
conceptual synthesis.



Kant distinguishes between two basic classes of mental processing. The
first is association, which is carried out by sensibility, and
specifically the imagination. Association is primarily a passive
process by which the mind comes to connect representations due to the
repeated exposure of the subject to certain kinds of regularities. One
might (e.g.) associate chicken soup with being ill, because one only
ever had chicken soup when one was ill. Association is thus capable of
engendering content-sensitive connections between a subject's
mental states, though such connections depend entirely on the local
and contingent circumstances in which the subject comes to have such
states. This is part of why Kant denies that association could ever
account for our ability to represent universality or necessity.



The second kind of mental processing is "combination"
(*Verbindung*) or "synthesis", carried out by the
intellect broadly conceived (i.e., the "higher" cognitive
faculties of understanding, judgment, and reason). Kant characterizes
synthesis as that activity by which the understanding "runs
through" and "gathers together" representations
given to it by sensibility in order to form concepts, judgments, and
ultimately, for any cognition (in its "proper" sense) at
all to take place (A77-8/B102-3). Synthesis is not something we are
always, or even typically, aware of doing. As Kant says, it is
"a blind though indispensable function of the soul...of
which we are only seldom even conscious (A78/B103)." Kant
typically contrasts synthesis with other ways in which representations
might be related, most importantly, by association (e.g., B139-40). In
contrast with association, synthesis is a fundamentally active
process, dependent upon the mind's spontaneity, and is the means
by which genuine judgment is possible. Moreover, at least by the time
of Kant's writing of the B-Deduction of the first
*Critique*, he is clear that judgments, as outcomes of
synthesis, are unique in our mental economy in that they are complex
representations that possess the capacity to be true or false. As
Kant's discussion in SS19 of the B-Deduction shows, a
judgment isn't simply a "representation of a relation
between two concepts" (B140), which doesn't rule out mere
association between concepts, but is rather a representation of an
objectively valid relationship in virtue of which the judgment may be
seen as an objective claim to truth (B142).



Synthesis is carried out by the unitary subject of representation on
representations that are either given to it in sensibility (i.e.,
intuition and/or sensation) or produced by it via the intellect (e.g.,
in an act of judgment). When synthesis is carried out on
representations forming the content of a concept or judgment, it is
called "intellectual" synthesis; when carried out by the
imagination on material provided by sensibility (i.e., on intuition
and sensation), it is called "figurative" synthesis
(B150-1). In the *Critique of Pure Reason* Kant discusses in
some depth the synthesis performed on representations provided by
sensibility, and discusses three central kinds of synthesis--viz.
apprehension, reproduction (or imagination), and recognition (or
conceptualization) (A98-110/B159-61). Though Kant discusses these
forms of synthesis in a way that suggests they are discrete types of
mental acts, it is also plausible that they always go together (Paton
1936: 271-272; Kemp Smith 2003: 245-246), or at least that
the first two forms must always occur together, with the third being
(perhaps) an optional addition (Brook 1997; Allais 2009).



Given that Kant distinguishes between intellectual and figurative
synthesis, what does it then mean to claim that an intuition
constitutively depends on conceptual synthesis for its relation to an
object?



Kant describes a concept as a "function"
(*Funktion*), which he characterizes as "the unity of the
act through which different representations are ordered under a common
one" (A68/B93). Concepts are merely "predicates of
possible judgments" (A69/B94) "grounded on the spontaneity
of thinking" and the faculty of understanding "can make no
other use of these concepts than that of judging by means of
them" (A68/B93).



From these passages we can conclude that concepts are (i)
actualizations of the spontaneity of (the power of) thought through
which (ii) different representations are ordered under a common one.
This ordering is carried out specifically by means of (iii) a
judgment. Hence, an act of conceptualization is an act of
subordinating one representation "under" another, as a
species (or the members thereof) is to its genus (or the members
thereof), and it is this subordination relation that is captured in
the cognitive activity of judging (Paton 1936: 285; Strawson 1966: 94;
Pippin 1982: 33; Longuenesse 1998: ch. 4; Engstrom 2019:
245-252).



How, on this view of conceptual activity in judgment, is the
conceptualization of sensory material in intuition supposed to work?
According to one prominent interpretation--call this
'judgmentalism' (Land 2015b)--intuition requires a
judgment on the part of the subject, that things are experientially
thus-and-so (Strawson 1970; Carl 1992: 165). However, this
interpretation of Kant generates some straightforward problems
(Grune 2009: SS2.2; Land 2015b). First, Kant's
conception of judgment seems to require predication (and in this sense
concepts are predicates of possible judgments). However, a sensible
synthesis carried out by concepts does not seem equivalent to the
making of a judgment, rather it seems that Kant has in mind something
like the formation of a sensory image (e.g., B154, B162). Indeed, in a
1791 letter Kant explicitly denies that intuitions are related to
objects via an act of judgment or, relatedly, by the subsumption of
the intuition under a concept (C 11:311). Second, Kant emphasizes that
there are two distinctively different kinds of synthesis--viz.
the "intellectual" synthesis generative of conceptual
judgment, and the "figurative" synthesis generative of
experience (in Kant's sense of "experience"; see
B151). If the judgmentalist view were correct, then it is difficult to
see how Kant could maintain such a distinction between varieties of
synthesis. Third, there is at least a *prima facie* circularity
to the judgmentalist account, which construes conceptual judgment as a
necessary condition of the generation of intuition, and Kant's
account of concept formation, which construes all concepts (even the a
priori categories) as the result of reflection, which itself
presupposes sensory intuition (Ginsborg 2006b; Grune 2009;
Anderson 2015: ch. 13).



Such problems have lead some (e.g., Sellars 1968; McDowell 1996;
Longuenesse 1998; Haag 2007; Grune 2009) to argue that the
dependence of intuition on conceptual representation must be
understood in a way other than that of application of a concept in
judgment (or the subordination of an intuition under a concept). This
entry examines below one way such an alternative view might proceed
(and challenges it faces) before discussing further extensions of it
in the context of the second way of framing the debate about the
relation between intuition and concept.


### 3.3 Concepts and Correctness Conditions



Conceptualism states that concepts or conceptual synthesis determine
the cognitive relation an intuition has to its object. How should we
understand this notion of a 'cognitive relation' to the
object? Conceptualism typically understands this in terms of the
correctness conditions possessed by the intuition and in virtue of
which the intuition represents a (putatively) mind-independent object
and its properties (Sellars 1968: ch. 1; McDowell 1996; Ginsborg
2008). This constitutes the attribution to Kant, in more or less
explicit terms, of what is now called the 'Content View',
which, in contemporary terms, understands perceptual experience to
present or convey information about a subject's environment to
the subject of that experience in virtue of the experience's
having content (Siegel 2010: SS1; 2011: ch. 2). Thus, according to the Content
View, part of what it is for a mental state to count as an
*objective* experience is that it can be evaluated for its
correctness, and the conditions of its correctness are determined by
its content.



It is important that the content attributed to a sensory state by the
Content View requires more than the state's merely being
non-arbitrarily *associated* with a representational content.
For one might plausibly agree that there are non-arbitrary conditions
for associating experiences with particular correctness conditions,
without thereby thinking that experience is something that is had in
virtue of a relation to a content that sets such a correctness
condition. It is this 'in virtue of' claim that I take to
be the distinctive claim of the Content View.



What does it mean to say that a sensory experience has
'content' in the sense relevant to the Content View?
Contemporary philosophy typically construes the phrase "mental
content" as referring to that thing which fulfills a certain set
of functional roles--namely, it is that which (i) may be the
object of different cognitive states within the same subject (e.g., of
belief and desire), (ii) which may be the object of the same (or a
different) cognitive state in other subjects (e.g., that you and I
might be able to believe the same thing and thus communicate), and
(iii) which has veridicality conditions (e.g., that which you and I
both believe is true or both perceive correctly) (see, e.g., Frege
1956; McGinn 1982; Searle 1983; Fodor 1987; Peacocke 1992; McDowell
1996; Heck 2000, 2007; Byrne 2005; McGrath 2005 [2014]; Hanks 2009;
Chalmers 2011).



Typically, when contemporary philosophers ask about the content of a
mental state, they are asking about something which is supposed to
fulfil these three roles. The traditional satisfier for this
functional specification is an abstract entity--a proposition.
According to this propositionalist view I might, e.g., both see
*that there is snow on Mt Washington* and (thereby) believe
*that there is snow on Mt Washington*. Moreover, you and I may
both see *that there is snow on Mt Washington*, and the
contents of our visual experiences may well be accurate. In any case,
whether the satisfier of these functional roles for mental content is
a proposition or something else, it must be the kind of thing to which
a mental state can be related, and in virtue of which a sensory state
counts as an experience of something (typically, something in the
experiencer's environment).



Sticking with the propositional notion of content, for simplicity, we
can also note the different kinds of "vehicles" through
which that content can be conveyed. For example a particular token
sentence "There is snow on Mt. Washington" conveys the
content *there is snow on Mt. Washington*. But there may be
other vehicles for such content as well, including mental vehicles,
such as the act of judging that *there is snow on Mt.
Washington*, or the event of seeing that *there is snow on Mt.
Washington*. For the purposes of our toy example, all of these
different vehicles convey the same abstract propositional content,
which sets the correctness conditions for each instance.



Hence, in asking whether it is correct to understand Kant as endorsing
the Content View, we first need to know whether it is even coherent to
ascribe to him a notion of "content", conceptual or not
(and irrespective of whether he would use the corresponding German
word "*Inhalt*" for this notion), in the terms set
out above.



It seems highly plausible that Kant did accept the existence of
content as it is functionally specified above. This is his notion of a
"judgment" (*Urteil*). The vehicles for judgment
are mental states--"representations"
(*Vorstellungen*). Judgments (or equivalently for Kant,
thoughts) are the product of "relating" representations,
in the act of judging, in one consciousness (Prol SS22, 4:304; cf.
JL SS17, 9:101; V-Lo/Wiener, 24:928)



In addition to serving as the content of psychological vehicles (i.e.,
mental states) and the bearers of truth, Kant also considers
judgements to be the objects of different epistemic attitudes. For
example, he distinguishes between varieties of
"holding-for-true" or "assent"
(*Furwahrhalten*) in the Canon of Pure Reason at the end
of the First *Critique* (A820/B848; see Stevenson 2003;
Chignell 2007b; Pasternack 2014).



Hence, Kant seems to acknowledge the existence of content in the
relevant sense. There is something--judgement--that is
carried or expressed by psychological states, which can be the object
of different epistemic attitudes, and which is the bearer of truth and
falsity. Furthermore, since judgements are constituted by concepts,
Kant obviously accepts that at least some mental states--i.e.,
acts of judging--have conceptual content.



The next question is whether Kant allows that any other mental state
is *also* a bearer of conceptual 'content' in the
relevant sense. Plausibly, Kant's conception of
'*experience*' (*Erfahrung*), insofar as
this is a mental state, possesses conceptual content in some sense.
Since Kant often characterizes experience as a complex state
consisting of both intuition and judgment, it may be that experience
possesses conceptual content simply in virtue of being partly
constituted by a conceptual judgment. It is somewhat less clear, given
the discussion above, whether there is conceptual content in what Kant
calls "perception" (*Wahrnehmung*). But since
intuition is the primary locus of the contemporary debate, our
question here is whether the Content View is true of intuition.



Some advocates of Conceptualism (e.g., McDowell 1996, 1998; Ginsborg
2006b; Grune 2009: 53-71) think that it is at least
partially constitutive of intuition that it have correctness
conditions. However, this view is also shared by nonconceptualist
interpreters (e.g., Hanna 2005). In this way, both Conceptualism and
Nonconceptualism typically agree that an intuition's cognitive
relation to an object depends on correctness conditions constituting
its 'content' (in the contemporary sense), but disagree as
to whether that content is conceptual.But, if Kant rejects the Content
View, and so rejects the claim that it is in virtue of having content
that intuition counts as related to an object, a central means for
framing the dispute between Conceptualism and Nonconceptualism's
understanding of intuition is undermined.



Why think that Kant rejects the Content View? McLear (2016b) provides
three arguments against the applicability of the Content View to
Kant's conception of intuition:


1. Kant denies that illusion/hallucination is to be explained by
appeal to veridicality conditions of intuitive representation.
2. Kant holds that a state's possession of correctness
conditions requires combination, which can only occur via acts of the
understanding.
3. Kant's "modal condition" on cognition requires
that sense experience contribute something over and above a
correctness condition to the "proof" of the real
possibility of a represented object.



According to the first argument, Kant denies that error due to
hallucination or illusion may be traced to misrepresentation by
intuition. As Kant says, 



> 
> 
> truth and illusion are not in the object in so far as it is intuited,
> but are in the judgment made about the object in so far as it is
> thought. (A293-4/B350) 
> 
> 
> 



This would be a surprising thing to say if Kant endorsed the Content
View, for one of the central reasons for endorsing the Content View
stems from the straightforward manner in which misleading experience
(i.e., illusion and hallucination) is explained by erroneous
representational content in the experience.



The second argument points out the connection Kant draws between
possession of a correctness condition and combination or synthesis. As
Kant says at the beginning of the B-edition of the Transcendental
Deduction, 



> 
> 
> a manifold's combination as such can never come to us through
> the senses; nor, therefore, can it already be part of what is
> contained in the pure form of sensible intuition. (B129-30) 
> 
> 
> 



Hence, correctness conditions must depend on the intellect, and cannot
be given as part of sensible intuition. If the first argument gives us
reason to doubt that intuition can have 'content' in the
sense required by the Content View, the second argument explains
why--viz. only intellectual representations can have
'content' in the relevant sense.



Finally, the third argument presses the claim that the cognitive
contribution of intuition lies not in the possession of correctness
conditions concerning some perceived object, but rather in the
contribution the intuition makes to proving the real possibility of
the object, as is required for cognition (Bxxvi). Intuition, in
relating a cognizer to an actual being, provides the ground necessary
to prove its real possibility as an object of thought, and thereby
provides the ground necessary for its cognition (more on this point in
 SS5.8
 below).



Gomes (2017a) raises further considerations against the applicability
of the Content View to intuition--viz. that (i) representational
content is inherently general in a way that is in marked tension with
Kant's characterization of intuition as the way in which the
mind represents particulars (A19/B33; A68/B93; A320/B376-7; JL 9:91);
(ii) proper consideration of Kant's argument in the Fourth
Paralogism and Refutation of Idealism militates against the Content
View.



In Gomes' first argument, he appeals to a conception of
representational content as "specificational" and thus as
requiring 



> 
> 
> a selection from amongst the ways the world could be in order to fix
> the way which determines the truth conditions for the representational
> state. (Gomes 2017a: 545; see also McLear 2016b: 129-130) 
> 
> 
> 



The particularity of intuition seems to be such that it singularly and
immediately relates us to particular objects without adverting to
general marks common to all such objects, and which are constitutive
of conceptual representation (A19/B33).



In Gomes' second argument, he points out that Kant rejects any
interpretation of the relation of intuition to its object solely in
terms of the intuition as the causal result of the inferred
object's effect on the subject's senses. Kant instead
claims that in perceptual experience I have "an immediate
consciousness of the existence of other things outside me"
(B276). Gomes elucidates how this point has been picked up and
developed in contemporary literature on the nature of perceptual
experience (Gomes 2017a: 549; see also Child 1994: 147-149;
Campbell 2002: 132-133).



If McLear and Gomes are correct much of the contemporary debate
concerning Kant's conception of the content of intuition has
presupposed a notion of "content" that Kant rejects.
Recall that Conceptualist readings of Kant claim that there is a
relevant sense in which (i) intuitions have content; (ii) the content
of the intuition is conceptual; (iii) it is this conceptual content
that constitutes or determines the cognitive relation of the intuition
(as a mental state or act) to a mind-independent object (or in the
case of inner sense, to the object that is oneself). It was seen above
that (ii) is problematic because intuition plausibly lacks conceptual
content in Kant's sense of the term "content"
(*Inhalt*). With regard to (iii) the standard conception of an
intuition's cognitive relation to an object as requiring
judgment is also problematic. This might seem to indicate that
Conceptualism is false and Nonconceptualism true. However, if Kant
also rejects (i), and so the idea that intuitions have content in the
sense required by the Content View, then even
*Non*conceptualist readings of Kant that construe Kant's
nonconceptualism in terms of an intuition's having a
nonconceptual representational content (e.g., Hanna 2005) are going to
be problematic, because that content is still understood in terms of a
version of the rejected Content View.



If these points are all correct then there is a danger that the
dispute between Conceptualism and Nonconceptualism has simply failed
to connect with Kant's views. The next section examines an
alternative frame from that of the content-centric one. This
alternative frames the dispute in terms of the presence or absence of
particular kinds of cognitive abilities and the dependence relations
that may or may not hold between such abilities and the occurrence or
generation of intuition. An advantage of this frame is that it avoids
the challenges raised above to the claims constituting the first
frame.


## 4. Frame II: Dependence on the Intellect



The alternative frame for understanding the relation between intuition
(and ultimately perception and experience as well) and concept eschews
any focus on representational content per se. Instead, it frames the
debate in terms of various cognitive abilities a subject might
possesses and the way in which intuition is or is not dependent upon
such abilities either for its generation or for the kind of structure
it possesses.


### 4.1 Intellectualism & Sensibilism



The alternative frame distinguishes two broad camps, each of which
construes these dependence conditions differently (see McLear 2015,
2016a; Gomes 2017a). On the one side is "Intellectualism"
(see, e.g., McDowell 1996; Longuenesse 1998; Grune 2009; Friedman
2015; Conant 2016; Indregard forthcoming) and on the other is
"Nonintellectualism" or "Sensibilism" (Rohs
2001; Hanna 2005; McLear 2015; Allais 2015: 148ff, 2017a; Tolley
2019).



**Intellectualism:** the generation of intuition is at
least partly dependent on the intellect.



**Sensibilism:** at least some intuitions are generated
independently of the intellect itself



According to Sensibilism at least some objective sensory states,
including the "pure" representations of space and time,
possess structure which is not the product of the activity of the
"intellect" so construed, and so do not depend for their
structure or unity on the pure apperceptive power or downstream
manifestations of that power in conceptualization, judgment, or
inference.



Here, as above, "intellect" is understood as the generic
term for the "higher" cognitive faculties which include
understanding, judgment, and reason. Kant often characterizes these
faculties as "spontaneous" or essentially
"active", in contrast to the "receptive" or
essentially "passive" character of sensibility (e.g.,
A50-1/B74-5). How exactly these distinctions should be understood is
controversial. Part of the problem comes in determining how to
construe activity of the mind that is not overtly
"conceptual", in the sense that it does not consist in
application of concepts in judgment, but nevertheless still involves a
rule-governed synthesis, or is otherwise dependent on a spontaneous
power for combining representations that is not present in sensibility
(B129-30). There does not yet seem to be a settled consensus on
this point.



However, one potential means of explaining what "dependence on
the intellect" comes to is dependence on the power of (pure)
apperception. Kant consistently characterizes the power of
apperception and the unity it brings about as the
"original" or unconditioned condition of all employment of
concepts, including the categories (B131, B133-4n, A401-2). Indeed,
Kant explicitly states that "the possibility of the logical form
of all cognition necessarily rests on the relationship to this
apperception as a faculty" (A117n) and that even the
"possibility of the understanding itself" rests on the
pure unity of consciousness made possible by the power of apperception
(B137; see also *Metaphysik Mrongovius* 29:889
(1782-1783)).



Kant does occasionally say that the actualization of the apperceptive
power, in the synthetic unity of understanding, depends on the use of
the categories (e.g., B145-6). This might make Kant's account
seem circular, with the understanding depending on apperception which
in turn depends on the understanding, as the faculty of synthesis. But
Kant can hold that while the power or faculty of pure apperception is
distinct from any of its actualizations, when it is so actualized it
entails a synthetic combination via the categories (B143, B144). Thus
the fact that apperception does not occur without the categorial
synthesis doesn't mean that apperception is grounded in such
synthesis. This way Kant can both say that the understanding is made
possible by the power of apperception, and that apperception (as
actualized unity) depends on--in the sense that it cannot
actualize without--conceptual/categorial synthesis.



This dependence of the understanding (and hence the logical form of
all cognition) on the power of apperception contrasts with the
receptive faculty of sensibility, whose activities, at least in their
generic conception, are not defined as depending on the existence of
an apperceptive power capable of bringing about such a unity of
consciousness. Thus to say that the generation of intuition is at
least partially dependent on the intellect is, on the current
proposal, to say one of two things. Either, that the intuition depends
on the exercise of the power or capacity for apperception itself, or
that intuition depends on the exercise of one or more capacities whose
possibility rests on the pure power of apperception. This allows for
significant flexibility in the way in which the Intellectualist might
express their position, while still providing unity to the overall
approach.



According to this framing, Sensibilism and Intellectualism can agree
that sensing and thinking involve distinct (and distinctive) cognitive
abilities. In this regard, Sensibilism is not to be confused with a
crude empiricism. Moreover, both Sensibilism and Intellectualism
explain the generation and structure of representations or mental
states at least partly in terms of the relevant cognitive capacity or
faculty. The key difference is that Intellectualism construes the
structure and generation of intuitive representations as dependent not
only on sensibility but also on some intellectual capacity. For the
Intellectualist, the only representations which do not admit of this
dependence are the simple sensations that are the supposed initial
product of sensibility (e.g., the sensations of "sheer
receptivity" in Sellars 1968: ch. 1).


### 4.2 Benefits of Reframing the Debate in Terms of Intellectual Dependence



Proponents of the second frame have argued that there are a variety of
benefits of recasting the concept-intuition debate in this way. First,
it avoids requiring any attribution to Kant of the controversial
assumption that intuition essentially has a correctness condition that
could be the object of epistemic attitudes. Of course, a proponent of
Intellectualism might argue to the conclusion that intuitions
essentially have correctness conditions as a result of their
generation by acts of synthesis. But such a position would be an
outcome of the Intellectualist's argument, rather than as an
assumption thereof.



Second, the framework allows for a wide plurality of nevertheless
related ways in which intuition, perception, and experience might
depend on (or be independent from) the intellect. For example,
intuition might depend on a *pre-conceptual* pure apperceptive
power to unify one's representations (e.g., Waxman 2014), while
perception depends on the recognition of what is so unified in a
concept, though not yet in an explicit judgment (e.g., Gomes 2017a),
and experience on the predication of that concept in an act of
judgment (e.g., Strawson 1970). Now, instead of thinking of this
series as three distinct positions, two of which are
"conceptualist", and one of which is
"judgmentalist", we can construe them as each developments
of a single Intellectualist position. The Intellectualism/Sensibilism
frame thus provides a way of unifying a variety of different
approaches around a single central "bright line"
distinction (McLear 2015, 2016a; Gomes 2017a; Indregard
forthcoming).



Even with respect to the single issue of the generation of intuition,
we can see a plurality of ways in which an Intellectualist view might
be developed, in increasing order of demandingness. First, we have
those that construe the dependence of intuition on the power of
apperception itself, prior to how that power is manifested in
discursive acts of conceptualization, judgment, and inference (e.g.,
Waxman 1991, 2014; Longuenesse 1998; Messina 2014; Friedman 2015).
Second, we have positions according to which intuition depends on the
application of a concept, but not in judgment (e.g., Grune 2009;
Land 2015a; McDowell 1998). Third, we have positions according to
which intuition depends on overt acts of judgment (e.g., Strawson
1970; Pippin 1982: 28). While there are obvious and important
differences between these views, they are all united by a commitment
to construing intuition as the outcome of a process that depends upon
the intellectual capacity to unify one's mental states as one
and all states of single self-conscious individual.



Similarly, positions that might be grouped together as
"nonconceptualist" according to the first frame are, on
this frame, organized quite differently. For example, a variety of
interpreters reject the position that pure intuition depends on a
conceptual synthesis (e.g., Longuenesse 1998: ch. 8; Waxman 2014;
Allais 2015: ch. 7; McLear 2015; Friedman 2015; Golob 2016a).
According to the Conceptualism frame, one might thus think of these
positions as all in agreement concerning a basic (and controversial)
element of Kant's view, and thus all as forms of
'Nonconceptualism'. However, these positions in fact
radically *disagree* concerning whether intuition is dependent
on the intellect. Their disagreement hinges on the issue of the
dependence of intuition on intellectual acts *per se* rather
than on conceptual content or conceptual synthesis (for further
discussion see
 SS5
 below). So, according to the second frame, interpreters who consider
intuition to depend on *non*conceptual but still
*intellectual* acts (e.g., Longuenesse 1998; Waxman 2014;
Indregard forthcoming) will be put on the Intellectualist side while
those who reject such dependence (e.g., Allais 2015; McLear 2015) will
be put on the Nonintellectualist or Sensibilist side. Within
Sensibilism there may be significant differences between how different
interpreters construe the manner in which intuition gives an object
for cognition, or in the manner in which perception and experience are
generated from mental acts performed on intuition (compare, e.g.,
Allais 2017a and Tolley 2019), but all will agree on the fundamental
point that intuition may be generated independently of any
intellectual act.



Intellectualism thus captures much of what seems to have originally
motivated Conceptualism, but without appealing to problematic
conceptions of 'content', and allowing that there may be a
way that the intellect plays a role in sense experience apart from
overt conceptual judgment concerning that experience. Recall that two
motivations underlying the dispute between Conceptualism and
Nonconceptualism concerned, first the justificatory or broader
rational role of sense experience with respect to belief or judgment
and, second, the most plausible way of interpreting Kant's
argument in the Transcendental Deduction. These motivations remain
present in the dispute between Sensibilism and Intellectualism. Hence,
the substantive motivations of Conceptualism remain even if the
framing regarding representational content is dropped in favor of
focus on dependence on the intellect.



Thus, the division between Intellectualism and Sensibilism concerning
the dependence of intuition on the pure apperceptive power and/or
those intellectual capacities downstream from it captures a central
point (and perhaps *the* central point) of contention between
an otherwise large plurality of views, and in this way helps to
organize a dispute that might otherwise seem to lack unity. In the
next section we look at what have emerged as the most promising,
central, or stubborn points of dispute between these two camps.


## 5. Points of Dispute



This section canvasses eight different areas of dispute between
contemporary interpreters of Kant concerning the contributions of
sensibility and intellect to cognition. Each dispute is presented in
terms of the second, dependence, frame (i.e Intellectualism vs.
Sensibilism). However, proponents of the first, content, frame (i.e.,
Conceptualism vs. Nonconceptualism) will also see these different
areas of dispute as relevant, given that many of their concerns remain
in the motivation for holding one form or another of Intellectualism.
That said, particularly important points of discrepancy between the
two frames' approaches to the issues will be noted below.


### 5.1 Experience & Justification



A central reason for pursuing an Intellectualist reading of Kant is
that such a reading is taken (most notably by Sellars and McDowell) to
be the best or even only way to secure an explanation of how
perception can play a justificatory rather than merely causal role in
the adoption of empirical belief. If intuition is autonomous of
intellectual capacities, so the objection goes, it cannot play a
justificatory role in the acquisition or adoption of empirical belief.
Versions of this objection have often, since Wilfred Sellars'
famous paper (Sellars 1956, reprinted in Sellars 1963), gone under the
moniker of the "Myth of the Given" (McDowell 1996, 1998,
2007b, 2008). While it is not straightforward as to how Kant's
texts or arguments yield any substantive connection with the concerns
articulated by Sellars and McDowell, this entry examines three
possible ways of understanding such a connection.



The exact nature of objections to a supposedly mythical
"Given" vary, as do their putative connections to
Kant's arguments (Watkins 2008, 2012). One objection made by
Sellars is that justifiers for belief must have a compositional,
fact-like structure that mirrors the propositional structure of
belief. Sensory experiences (understood as sensations), on
Sellars' view, are particulars rather than facts and so cannot
play any justificatory role (Sellars 1963: 128; cf. BonJour 1985: ch.
4). Thus, the view goes, if the belief caused by an experience (such
as the belief you might have that there is a computer screen before
you) and thereby adopted by you is also to be justified by that
experience, then the experience itself must be able to function as a
premise in an argument for which the relevant belief is the
conclusion. This is the "premise principle," as it has
been called in contemporary epistemology (Pryor 2005). Acceptance of
the premise principle thus plays a significant role in motivating the
position that sensory experience without propositional (i.e.,
conceptual) content cannot justify belief.



A passage in Kant typically adduced in support of this point is the
"same function" passage at A79/B104-5 (e.g., Sellars
1968: 4-5; McDowell 2004: 79; Haag 2007: 150-151, 199, and
ch. 8; Kalderon 2011: 235-236; cf. Pippin 1982: 99-101;
Heidegger 1997: 45-46; Longuenesse 1998: 200; Grune 2009:
107-111). On this reading of Kant, sense experience would have
the requisite proposition-like structure, and thus be capable of
standing in justificatory relations to beliefs, only if the same
capacities that structure the contents of judgment for Kant (viz. the
logical forms) would also structure sensory experience (via
application of the categories). While such interpreters are surely
correct that Kant's aim, as exemplified in that passage, is to
show that the very same cognitive capacities that connect
representations in a mental act of judging are also in play in the
connection of representations in a sensory experience, it is not
obvious how the passage directly supports any argument concerning the
epistemic significance of sensory experience to empirical belief and
knowledge. What is particularly unclear is whether Kant endorses the
premise principle in the substantive manner required for the
Sellars/McDowell position. Hence, further work needs to be done to
show that Kant actually (or even counterfactually) endorses the
premise principle.



A second objection against the Given, which might also be attributed
to Kant, is that the mere occurrence of a sensory experience cannot
justify any particular belief that is the causal result of that
experience. Instead, sensory experience can only play its
justificatory role against a background of concepts possessed by the
experiencing subject (Sellars 1963: 170; McDowell 1998:
435-436). Though this position is often taken to support some
form of Intellectualism (e.g., McDowell 1996; Ginsborg 2006b), it is
also compatible with forms of Sensibilism that construe the conditions
for empirical knowledge as resting at least in part on the possession
of intellectual capacities, even if such capacities are not necessary
for perceptual intentionality as such (e.g., Hanna 2001: 46-65;
2005: 256-257; Bird 2006: 193-207; Watkins 2008, 2012;
Allais 2009: 392-394; Tolley 2013: 125-127; McLear 2015:
98-106, 2020a; Golob 2016a, forthcoming).



Third, both Sellars and McDowell claim that it is simply a mistake to
think that mental states that are purely the upshot of causal
interactions with the world could themselves stand as reasons for
empirical belief. Sellars (1963) remarks that such a mistake is
"of a piece with the so-called 'naturalistic
fallacy' in ethics" (146). Sellars himself gives no clear
argument for this claim. McDowell focuses on the distinction between
the kind of mental state for which its bearer is in some way
responsible, such as a belief, and the kind of state that simply
happens to one, like a headache (McDowell 1996: chs. 1-2; 1998:
433-434; 2004: 80-85; cf. Engstrom 2006: 8-13). The
suggested parallel in an Intellectualist reading of Kant is that if
intellectual capacities are necessary for the occurrence of perceptual
experience, then experience is not merely something that causally
happens to the subject but rather is something for which the subject
herself is at least partially responsible, in much the same way that
she is responsible for her endorsement in belief of the content of a
propositional judgment. It is certainly a centrally held tenet of
Kant's critical view that the intellect, including understanding
and reason, actively contributes to the content of cognition and the
acquisition of knowledge (Paton 1947: 218; Pippin 1987; Allison 1990,
1996: chs. 4, 7 and 9; Willaschek 2006; McLear 2020b). As Kant
famously says,



> 
> 
> [O]ne cannot possibly think of a reason that would consciously receive
> direction from any other quarter with respect to its judgments; since
> the subject would then attribute the determination of his judgment,
> not to his reason but to an impulse. Reason must regard itself as the
> author of its principles independently of alien influences.
> (*Groundwork* 4:448)
> 
> 
> 



But it is not at all clear whether appreciation of this point requires
Intellectualism. For example, perhaps sensory experiences do not
themselves stand as reasons on Kant's view, but rather provide
*access* to the reasons or evidence for holding a particular
belief (McLear 2016a: SS8.5), knowledge of the successful
reference of the concepts constituting the content of that belief
(McLear 2016b: 127-134), or reference *uberhaupt*
(Allais 2015: ch. 11). Moreover, if Kant does not accept the premise
principle or something like it then there is even more potential for
Sensibilism to maneuver.


### 5.2 Non-rational Minds



In the discussion of perception in
 SS2
 we saw that the case of non-rational animals raises a variety of
interpretive challenges. But the animal case also raises special
challenges for Intellectualism, for it is not clear how
Intellectualism is compatible with attributing representations of
*any sort* to non-rational beings.



Kant is extremely clear on the point that non-rational animals lack an
intellect, in the sense that they lack the capacity for use of the
first-person concept, and with it any of the 'higher'
cognitive faculties of understanding, judgment, or reason (*An*
7:127; LM 28:277 (c. 1777-80); LA 25:1215 (c. 1784/5)). Hence,
if one were to deny that, according to Kant, sensibility alone is
capable of producing mental states that were cognitively significant
in character, then it would seem that any animal that lacks a faculty
of understanding, and thus the capacity for any intellectual or
conceptual synthesis, would thereby lack not only a capacity for
thought but also any capacity for perceptual experience. The mental
lives of non-rational animals would thus, at best, consist of
essentially unconscious, non-cognitive sensory states that causally
correlate with changes in the animal's environment. It is not
clear that we should characterize such states as representations, in
Kant's sense, at all.



Aside from what we now consider to be a straightforwardly false
characterization of the cognitive capacities of animals, this
non-cognitive reading faces textual hurdles. Kant claims that animals
enjoy mental representations, and that postulating such
representations is necessary for explaining sophisticated animal
behavior. Kant is on record in various places as saying that animals
have sensory representations of their environment (CPJ 5:464; cf. An
7:212), that they have intuitions (LM 28:449 (c. 1784/85); LM 28:594
(c. 1790/91); LL 24:702 (c. 1792); OP 21:82), and that they are
acquainted with objects though they do not cognize them (JL
9:64-5; see also *Notes on Logic* 16:342-4 (c.
mid/late 1760s); LL 24:845ff (c. 1780-1); LL 24:730-1 (c.
1792)). However, interpretation of these texts, and others, is not
uncontested (e.g., Fisher 2017; van den Berg 2018; see also the
sources cited in
 SS2
 above). It is also not entirely clear that Kant's views on this
matter remain consistent throughout his career, with some arguing that
at least his pre-critical views are clearly incompatible with a
cognitivist position regarding animal minds (Leland 2018a,b).



If it is correct to read Kant as at least entertaining the possibility
of a cognitivist position regarding animal minds, then Intellectualism
faces a challenge. Intellectualism construes Kant as claiming that
synthetic acts carried out by the intellect are necessary for the
cognitive standing of a mental state. But if this is correct
then--on the cognitivist reading of the animal mind--Kant is
contradicting fundamental elements of his own position in crediting
intuitions (or their possibility) to non-rational animals. In contrast
Sensibilism has no problem accommodating the possibility that animals
have representations of their environment, and that these
representations are (potentially) conscious and thus count as
intuitions.



One way of replying to this challenge that may not require endorsing
non-cognitivism with respect to animal minds is to allow that
non-rational minds may well have some way of representing the world,
but posit that rational minds constitute an *altogether different
kind* of mind than their non-rational counterparts. On this view,
rational and non-rational animality are conceived as two completely
different species of animality whose generic similarity does not
require that there share any of the same fundamental mental capacities
(Herder 1772 [2002: 81-87]; Hegel 1830/1991: SS2; McDowell
1996: ch. 6; Boyle 2012, 2016, 2017; Conant 2016; Land 2018). On this
view, "rational" does not specify some characteristic
among others of a creature, but rather its "distinctive manner
of having characteristics" (Boyle 2012: 410). Thus rationality
"transforms" the manner in which a rational creature has
other kinds of mental state (e.g., experience and desire) and is not
merely added to an otherwise independently characterizable stock of
the creature's mental powers.



Moreover, according to its proponents, a central reason for holding
this "transformative" view of rationality is that it is
the only way to explain how sensory experience and desire can play
properly rationalizing roles in our cognition and action (Boyle 2016;
see also
 SS5.1).
 And since rational and non-rational minds are construed as radically
different, this view allows that non-rational minds might have their
own sorts of (non-rational) intuitive representations, thus avoiding
any attribution of contradictory claims to Kant.


### 5.3 The 'Blindness' of Intuition



Perhaps the most obvious objection to the Sensibilist reading of
intuition as autonomous from the intellect stems from Kant's
famous statement that



> 
> 
> Intuition and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all our
> cognition [*Erkenntnis*] ... Thoughts without content
> [*Inhalt*] are empty, intuitions without concepts are
> blind... The understanding is not capable of intuiting anything,
> and the senses are not capable of thinking anything. Only from their
> unification can cognition arise. (A50-51/B74-75)
> 
> 
> 



The so-called "blindness" problem raises two issues:
first, that intuitions without concepts or conceptual synthesis are
not intentional states (George 1981; Pereboom 1988; Grune 2009)
and so cannot provide the mind with relation to an object and, second,
that we cannot even *identify* the cognitive contribution made
by sensory experience independent of its conceptualization
(Falkenstein 1995; McDowell 1996: 51; Pippin 2005; cf. Bird 2006: ch.
7.2).



Concerning the first point, one question is whether Kant is really
concerned with the conditions of intentionality *per se* (Van
Cleve 1999: 95-97), or merely with the conditions under which a
certain kind of rational relation to objects is possible, one that
could support rational cognition and the acquisition of scientific
knowledge. On this latter reading Kant's talk of "relation
to an object" takes on a specific and technical significance
that should not be confused with intentionality *per se* (Hanna
2005; Allais 2015: ch. 7; McLear 2020a). There is no settled
consensus on this issue, but the fact that intuition is
"blind" does not seem to entail the strong position that
intuition fails to provide *any* awareness of a
mind-independent object.



Allais (2009: 393-4; 2015: ch. 7) has argued against both the
first and second points, pointing out that if we take Kant's
definition of intuition (and likewise of concepts) seriously, then we
must be able to identify an independent contribution of sensibility to
cognition--viz. singular and immediate representation of an
object--lest we fail to make sense of Kant's division
between intuition and concept (cf. Kolb 1986; Falkenstein 1995: 63).
Relatedly, others have remarked on the oddness of denying the
possibility of articulating the distinct contribution made by
sensibility given that Kant goes so far as to organize the structure
of argument in the first *Critique* around the distinction
between those contributions made by sensibility (the Transcendental
Aesthetic) and those made by the understanding (the Transcendental
Logic, and in particular, the Analytic) (e.g., Bird 2006: 127; but cf.
Bauer 2012; Conant 2016). The claim of "blindness," it is
thus argued, should not be interpreted as so extreme as to render
unintelligible fundamental aspects of Kant's architectonic, or
of his repeated statements concerning the individual cognitive roles
of the faculties of sensibility and understanding.



On an alternative and much weaker conception of the blindness problem,
the "blindness" of intuition might well only concern the
difficulties involved in articulating the nature of sensory content
without drawing on concepts in the process of providing the
articulation. As Bird (2006: 129-130) notes however, this can be
conceded without thereby admitting that there is no sensory content
(or positive cognitive contribution) independent of conceptual
articulation.


### 5.4 Mathematical Construction



There has been extensive discussion of the non-conceptuality of
intuition in the secondary literature on Kant's philosophy of
mathematics. For example, Michael Friedman has argued that the
expressive limitations of the prevailing logic in Kant's time
required the postulation of intuition as a form of singular,
non-conceptual representation (Friedman 1992: ch. 2). Charles Parsons
(1964, 1992a) and Emily Carson (1997, 1999) have argued that space
must be given in a phenomenological manner as an original,
non-conceptual representation in order that we be able to demonstrate
the real possibility of constructed mathematical objects as required
for geometric knowledge (cf. Shabel 2010: 100-102). All of this
at least suggests that Kant's conception of mathematical
construction includes an important nonconceptual element.



Ultimately, however, there are difficulties in assessing whether
Kant's philosophy of mathematics can be decisive for the debate
concerning the dependence of intuition on the intellect. One issue is
that the sense in which intuition must be nonconceptual in accounting
for mathematical knowledge is not obviously incompatible with claiming
that intuitions themselves (including pure intuition; see
 SS5.6
 below) are dependent upon a conceptually guided synthesis (e.g., Land
2014). A second issue is that one might agree that intuitions are in
some sense "nonconceptual" while holding that the pure
forms of intuition (as discussed in the relevant Metaphysical
Expositions in the Transcendental Aesthetic) are themselves generated
by a non- or pre-conceptual synthesis by the intellect, or the
imagination as a function thereof (e.g., Waxman 1991; Longuenesse
1998: ch. 8; Friedman 2012, 2015, 2019). Such views are forms of
Intellectualism even if they reject the claim that intuition, in
making synthetic a priori knowledge in mathematics possible, possesses
conceptual content or is otherwise conceptually dependent.



Hence, the sense in which the dependence relation alluded to by Kant
in claiming that mathematical principles are "derived
from" (A160/B199) pure intuition is one that seems open to both
Intellectualist and Sensibilist interpretations (cf. Shabel 2017).
Thus it is unclear whether mathematical considerations could be
decisive in adjudicating the debate between Intellectualism and
Sensibilism.


### 5.5 The Transcendental Deduction



The argument of the Transcendental Deduction, and its relation to the
Transcendental Aesthetic (and thus to Kant's philosophy of
Mathematics), is a central area of dispute between Sensibilism and
Intellectualism (Waxman 1991; Longuenesse 1998; Allais 2016:
SS1.5; Golob 2016b; Allais 2017b). Critics charge that Sensibilism
at best renders ineffectual Kant's apparent strategy for
demonstrating the legitimacy of the categories in the argument of the
Transcendental Deduction and at worst shows Kant to be totally
confused in his argumentative strategy (Ginsborg 2008: 68-69;
Griffith 2012; Gomes 2014; Land 2015a; cf. Hegel 1977: 69-72;
Pippin 1989: 29-31; Keller 1998: 107-112, 254; McDowell
2004, 2007a). However, since interpretation of the argument of the
Deduction is at least as controversial as any claim made by either
side of the dispute, dialectical traction on the basis of the text of
the Deduction itself is difficult to come by.



The basic approach required by Intellectualism sees Kant's
strategy for legitimating the categories, however else the details are
construed, as culminating in the argument that even the pure
intuitions of space and time (i.e., the representations that are the
topic of their respective Metaphysical Expositions in the
Transcendental Aesthetic) depend for their generation on intellectual,
though not obviously conceptual, activity.



Intellectualism interprets Kant as providing this argument in a
notoriously difficult footnote in SS26:



> 
> 
> Space, presented as object (as we are actually required to represent
> it in geometry), contains more than [the] mere form of
> intuition--viz. it contains also the gathering together
> [*Zusammenfassung*] of the manifold given according to the form
> of sensibility, in an intuitive representation--so that the form
> of intuition gives us merely a manifold, but formal intuition gives us
> unity of representation. In the Transcendental Aesthetic I had merely
> included this unity with sensibility, wanting only to point out that
> it precedes any concept. But this unity indeed presupposes a synthesis
> which does not belong to the senses, through which all concepts of
> space and time first become possible. For through this unity (inasmuch
> as understanding determines sensibility), space or time is first given
> as intuitions, and hence, the unity of this intuition belongs a priori
> to space and time, and not to the concept of understanding (SS24).
> (B160-1, note)
> 
> 
> 



Lorne Falkenstein describes this footnote as "so obscure that it
can be made to serve the needs of any interpretation whatsoever"
because the text is "close enough to exhibiting a contradiction
that it makes it possible to get virtually any conclusion one pleases
out of the passage with only minor effort" (Falkenstein 1995:
91).



Despite the difficulties presented by the text, the Intellectualist
takes the very intelligibility of Kant's strategy in the
Deduction to hinge on the dependence of pure intuition on the
intellect (Cohen 1871, 1907; Longuenesse 1998: ch. 8; Dufour 2003;
Ginsborg 2008: 69; Bowman 2011: 421; Grune 2011: 465-466;
Friedman 2015; McDowell 2016: 318; Conant 2016: 110). The idea here is
that, by making the pure intuitions of space and time themselves
depend on intellectual activity, along with some further connection of
that intellectual activity to categorial synthesis, Kant assures his
desired conclusion for the Deduction overall--viz. that any
possible empirical intuition must depend on the categories and thus
that all possible objects of empirical intuition must fall under the
categories. The Intellectualist thus construes any approach to reading
the Deduction that doesn't posit such a dependence relation as
rendering the argument there hopeless and Kant's strategy deeply
confused. Of note here is the fact that when Kant says that the unity
of intuition "precedes any concept" one might plausibly
read him as endorsing a form of Nonconceptualism--viz. that the
pure intuitions are prior to any conceptual content. However, this
nonceptualist point is compatible with Intellectualism since it is
possible that the unity of intuition lacks conceptual content but is
nevertheless dependent on the intellect in some other sense (e.g.,
Waxman 1991, 2014; Longuenesse 1998; Messina 2014; Freidman 2015;
Indregard forthcoming).



One issue for the Intellectualist interpretation is that it seems to
make the success conditions of the Deduction too easy. If Kant's
project in the Deduction is to show that all intuition, or perhaps
more generally "everything that may ever come before our
senses" (B160) must stand under the categories (Guyer 2010a;
Allison 2015: 407-408), then it cannot be the case the intuition
is defined in terms of its dependence on the intellect. If intuition
were so defined, it would be unclear why anything more than a trivial
inference would be needed to show that intuition depends on the
intellect. To avoid this Intellectualism must advocate either for a
reading of "intuition" that allows for at least two
different senses of the term (Sellars 1968: ch. 1) or a
"re-reading" of Kant's initial presentation of the
nature of sensibility and the intuitions it provides (Longuenesse
1998: ch. 8; Bauer 2012; Conant 2016).



Certainly, very basic aspects of the argument of the Deduction, even
such as its method and aims (beyond, in some sense, showing the
legitimacy of the categories), much less the details and cogency of
its specific arguments, are open to significant dispute (e.g., Henrich
1989; Pereboom 1995; Hatfield 2003; Guyer 2010a; Allais 2015: ch. 11).
Such dispute naturally includes whether Kant's strategy in the
Deduction might well be intelligible in some fashion that does not
presuppose or otherwise require Intellectualism. For example,
according to various Sensibilist readings, the Deduction might be
concerned with conditions governing referential thought (Allais 2015:
ch. 11) or the representation of a privileged set of spatial and
temporal relations beyond those required for objective representation
in its most primitive form (Golob 2016b), or the conditions for
relating particular property instantiations to some underlying entity
(McLear 2015: SS3; 2020a). In each such case, the Deduction
is intelligible as attempting to legitimize the categories without
adverting to Intellectualism.



The Sensibilist case for an alternative reading of the Deduction is
abetted by a significant problem with the Intellectualist proposal
that the pure intuitions depend on an intellectual unity. This will be
examined in the next subsection.


### 5.6 Intellectual Activity & The Unity of Space & Time



The problem with construing the pure forms of intuition as the product
of acts of synthesis is that Kant's characterization of the
mereological structure of a representation produced by such a
synthesis is at odds with his characterization of the mereological
structure of the pure intuitions. One version or other of this point
has been noted by a variety of scholars (Wilson 1975; Aquila 1994;
Falkenstein 1995: 139; Mohr 1998: 112-113; Aquila 2001; Bell
2001; Fichant 2004; Banham 2005: ch.6; Messina 2014; McLear 2015;
Allison 2015, 410ff; Onof and Schulting 2015; Guyer 2018; Roche 2018).
Here, in brief, is the most straightforward version of the argument
challenging Intellectualism:


1. The structure of pure intuition (or its content) is one according
to which the parts of the representation are determined by the
whole
2. The structure of a representation that depends for its generation
on an act of synthesis is one according to which the whole is
determined by its parts
3. [?] The pure representations of space and time cannot be
dependent on synthetic acts for their generation.



The evidence for premise (1) comes in part from the third argument in
the Metaphysical Exposition of space (fourth in the case of time):



> 
> 
> [I]f one speaks of many spaces, one understands by that only parts of
> one and the same unique space. And these parts cannot as it were
> precede the single all-encompassing space as its components (from
> which its composition would be possible), but rather are only thought
> in it. It is essentially single [*einig*]; the manifold in it,
> thus also the general concept of spaces in general, rests merely on
> limitations. (A24-5/B39)
> 
> 
> 



Evidence for premise (2) comes in consideration of both Kant's
positive characterization of our intellectual activity (this is meant
to include the activity of the productive imagination) and his
contrast of our intellectual forms of representation with God's
intuitive intellect.



Kant characterizes our intellectual activity as
'discursive' to denote the manner in which the
understanding acts--viz. moving to and fro, from part to
part--rather than merely as a synonym for
'conceptual', 'linguistic', or
'rational'. It is this notion he means to indicate in his
talk of "running through" and "gathering
together" (A99) representations.



It is this activity of moving from part to part in the connection of
representations that also informs Kant's general
characterization of synthesis:



> 
> 
> By synthesis in the most general sense, however, I understand the
> action of putting different representations together with each other
> and comprehending their manifoldness in one cognition. (A77/B103)
> 
> 
> 



Additional support for both premises comes in reflecting on the
mereological manner in which Kant contrasts our discursive intellect
with God's intuitive intellect:



> 
> 
> [W]e can also conceive of an understanding which, since it is not
> discursive like ours but is intuitive, goes from the
> **synthetically universal** (of the intuition of a whole
> as such) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts, in
> which, therefore, and in whose representation of the whole, there is
> no **contingency** in the combination of the parts, in
> order to make possible a determinate form of the whole, which is
> needed by our understanding, which must progress from the parts, as
> universally conceived grounds, to the different possible forms, as
> consequences, that can be subsumed under it. (KU, 5:407)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, if the content of pure intuition is such that the (intuited)
whole is prior to its parts, and synthesis is a process that
essentially moves from part to part, resulting in the reverse
mereological relation, it cannot be the case that the pure intuitions
result from a synthesis.



Here an Intellectualist might deny that all 'higher'
cognitive activity should be understood as 'discursive' in
the above sense. Hence, a central issue concerns whether it makes
sense to say that there is a form of synthesis that is non-discursive
in a manner that does not threaten Kant's characterization of
the structure of pure intuition (Williams 2018). Now, it certainly is
possible for Intellectualism to defend a more limited claim,
concerning only empirical intuition (McLear 2015: 93-95;
Grune 2016). But such a restricted version gives up the
dialectically central motivation that Intellectualism, in claiming a
dependence of the pure forms of intuition on the intellect, is the
only means of making intelligible the argument of the Deduction. Thus,
retreat to a restricted form of Intellectualism claiming merely that
particular empirical intuitions depend on the intellect undermines one
of the central pillars sustaining the Intellectualist interpretation
(McLear 2015: 94).


### 5.7 Imagination, Perception, and Images



Kant famously describes the imagination (*Einbildungskraft*) as
a necessary ingredient of perception itself (A120n). This claim has
played an important role in several contemporary interpretations of
Kant's theory of experience, in both his sense (Young 1988,
1992; Makkreel 1990; Gibbons 2002; Kneller 2007; Horstmann 2018;
Tolley 2019) and in our modern English sense (see Strawson 1970;
Sellars 1978; Matherne 2015).



There are at least three important questions regarding the Imagination
that are of particular note with respect to the debate between
Intellectualism and Sensibilism. First, how imagination is to be
understood as a faculty--i.e., as spontaneous or receptive, as
sensory or intellectual (Hanna 2008: 62). Second, whether imaginative
activity is a form of mental activity that does not require synthesis
in the "part-to-whole" sense (see especially Waxman 1991,
2014; Land 2014; Williams 2018). Third, whether the role of
imagination in the formation of images, and the necessary role of such
image formation in cognition (A121) indicates a way in which an
Intellectualist conception of *perception* (as opposed to
intuition) might find a plausible footing (Matherne 2015; Gomes 2017a;
Stephenson 2017; Tolley 2019).



Discussion of imagination's role in perception (in Kant's
sense) and image formation is an area which could stand further
attention. In particular, it seems clear that Kant conceives of images
as, in some sense, sensory representations. But what kind of sensory
representations? Are they intuitions? If so, how do images differ from
'immediately given' intuitions? If, as Kant sometimes
suggests (e.g., A120-1), image formation is a necessary intermediate
stage between given sensory states and constructed intellectual
states, how might the structure or content of an image possess
features that make it more than a "mere" sensory state,
while being nevertheless different from judgment (Tracz 2020)?
Moreover, in what sense does image formation require a
"schema" and in what sense does such schematization
present an intermediary between the sensible and the intellectual?
Kant's notion of a schema is itself much contested, but it seems
clearly relevant to the case of perception (Longuenesse 2000;
Grune 2009; Dunlop 2012; Williams 2012; Matherne 2015; Tolley
2019).


### 5.8 Modality & Cognition



As we saw in
 SS1,
 Kant uses the term 'cognition' (*Erkenntnis*) in
different ways. But the sense of "proper cognition" is
often that with which he is most concerned, as it marks out the way in
which both stems of our cognitive capacity (i.e., sensibility and
intellect) must cooperate for cognition, and ultimately substantive
scientific knowledge, of objects to occur.



Kant construes such cognition as always of a really--i.e.,
metaphysically--possible subject matter. As Kant states in a
famous footnote in the B-preface of the first *Critique*:



> 
> 
> To *cognize* an object, it is required that I be able to prove
> its possibility (whether by the testimony of experience from its
> actuality or *a priori* through reason). But I can
> *think* whatever I like, as long as I do not contradict myself,
> i.e., as long as my concept is a possible thought, even if I cannot
> give any assurance whether or not there is a corresponding object
> somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities. But in order to
> ascribe objective validity to such a concept (real possibility, for
> the first sort of possibility was merely logical) something more is
> required. (Bxxvi, note)
> 
> 
> 



In finite discursive beings the structure of thought is governed
ultimately by the rule of non-contradiction, and in this way concerns
what is logically possible. But an analysis of the contents and laws
of thought tells us nothing as to whether there really could be an
object such as the thought specifies. Thus the real possibility of an
object for theoretical cognition can only be determined from an actual
ground provided via experience or via a priori transcendental
reflection (Chignell 2010; McLear 2016a). And as Kant goes on to note,
the "more" that is required for a thought to achieve
cognition need not always come from theoretical sources, as there may
be practical sources of cognition as well (Chignell 2007a; Kain 2010;
Schafer forthcoming-b).



A challenge for Intellectualism is to explain how the modal condition
on cognition may be satisfied if intuition is itself the outcome of
some synthetic intellectual process (Gomes and Stephenson 2016; McLear
2016b: SS4.3; 2016a: SS8.5; cf. Parsons 1964, 1992b; Carson
1997). There are at least two issues here. The first is that it seems
that such intellectual processes could supply only logical as opposed
to "real" representational constraints. The second (and
related issue) is that Kant's emphasis on the "the
testimony of experience from [the object's] actuality" is
at least some evidence for thinking that intuition--as the
sensory component of empirical cognition or
"experience"--provides the needed "real"
constraint on cognition by giving proof of the real possibility of the
subject matter of cognition. This real constraint intuition provides
via its presentation of some *actuality* that grounds this
possibility.



Replies to these two challenges dispute the emphasis on the actuality
of what is presented through intuition, and instead interpret the
modal condition fairly weakly, as saying simply that a really possible
object must be one that can have spatio-temporal structure (Gomes and
Stephenson 2016: SS3.4.1; Grune 2017a), and so the
'proof' provided through experience is compatible with the
non-actuality of the object of experience. According to this proposal,
every object of experience or intuition conforms to the conceptual
formal conditions of experience, namely the categories, because every
intuition is generated by a synthesis that takes place in accordance
with the categories. Thus, every intuition, regardless of whether the
object it represents is actual or not, conforms to the formal
conditions of experience, and is therefore the representation of an
object that is really possible.



McLear (2016a) has argued against such a response in two ways. First,
if the representations of space and time, as Intellectualism typically
argues, are dependent on the intellect, then it is unclear how space
and time operate as formal but "real" constraints,
independent of the intellect, on what is really possible. Second, any
Intellectualist position that construes the modal condition as
satisfied merely by the formal conditions of experience commits itself
to at least two problematic positions. First, imagined and
hallucinated experiences will count as cognitions (cf. Beck 1978).
Second, Kant's emphasis on actuality in the Bxxvi note, quoted
above, is left unexplained.



However, a corresponding challenge for the Sensibilist position lies
in explaining how intuitions could be relations to actualities even in
the "pure" case of the intuitions of space and
time--i.e., those a priori intuitions whose features are
described in their respective Metaphysical Expositions of space and
time in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant is quite clear that the
pure intuitions are intuitions of "*ens
imaginaria*" or imaginary beings (see Amphiboly, A291/B347).
As imaginary beings, they do not exist. If that is correct then it
cannot be the case that intuition *as such* is existentially
dependent on its relata, since a priori intuitions are certainly
intuitions, and they lack existing relata. So it would seem that
either it is false to construe intuitions as always relations to
actualities or Kant is inconsistent in his treatment of intuition
across pure and empirical cases.



Here, however, the Sensibilist can pursue a strategy of distinguishing
actuality from existence (Stang 2016a: 34 and 322; McLear 2017: 91
n10). Kant makes two explicit discussions of this point.
First he is reported as having explicitly distinguished the concept of
actuality (*Wirklichkeit*) from existence (*Existenz*)
in a lecture from the mid 1790s (*Metaphysik K3*,
29:986). Second, in *reflexion* R6324, 18:647 (between 1790 and
1793), Kant specifically names time and space as actual but not
existing things.



If Sensibilism can make good on the plausibility of a distinction
between actuality and existence then it can interpret all intuition as
a relation to an actuality, even if not always to an *existent*
actuality, and thus give a straightforward explanation of why
intuition in especially suited to satisfying the modal condition on
cognition.


## 6. Conclusion



This article has examined the ongoing interpretive debate concerning
Kant's conception of the contribution of the sensible and
intellectual faculties of the mind to a subject's sensory
experience of the world around it. Two central motivations of the
debate are, on the one hand, philosophical concerns about the
epistemological relationship between sensory experience (broadly
construed) and empirical judgment or belief, and on the other hand,
interpretive questions concerning Kant's conception of the
cognitive role of intuition and his strategy of argument in the
Transcendental Deduction. We have seen that there are multiple ways of
framing the debate, and that even basic issues, such as the central
locus of dispute (whether it be intuition, perception, or experience)
admit of multiple approaches. Moreover, we saw that the framing of the
dispute in terms of conceptual content yields various problems, and
perhaps in part because of such problems current debate seems to have
coalesced (either implicitly or explicitly) around an alternative
frame--viz. whether the generation of intuition depends on, or is
otherwise an expression of, intellectual capacities of one sort or
another. Resolution of this question requires navigation of some of
the thorniest and most contentious areas of Kant's philosophy.
For this reason, at least, it seems unlikely that we will soon see any
widespread convergence on an answer.