Abstract
Manifest reality is easily one of the best books in a long time on Kant’s transcendental idealism. So there is a great deal in Allais’s discussion to celebrate. But I want to focus here on two aspects of her views that I am not yet sure about: First, Allais’s understanding of the relationship between concepts and intuitions. And second, her characterization of the manner in which intuitions are object-dependent. I’ll close by making some general remarks about the significance of this for Allais’s understanding of the metaphysics of transcendental idealism.
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Notes
Of course, these moments should not necessarily be thought of in terms of a temporally extended process. Instead we are dealing with something like a decomposition of the constituent elements of cognition here.
Assuming, as Allais does, that such organization is possible in isolation from the activity of the understanding.
As would be true if the spatial–temporal organization of sensation itself requires a sensible synthesis that is guided by the categories in their guise as rules for sensible synthesis.
Allais often speaks as though we need to choose between her view and the view that intuitions are nothing but an "unorganized sensory mush”. (153) But, as this indicates, these are not the only options. Compare Land (2015).
To be clear, I’m not committing myself to a view about whether the spatial organization of sensation requires sensible synthesis. But for the sake of argument here, I’m willing to agree with Allais that it does not.
Allais (2015), 274, my emphasis. Compare 282 and 288.
Compare 284.
For the idea that some sort of a priori synthesis is required in order for us to make a distinction between the objective and the subjective aspects of our experience, see A104–5, A108–109.
B138, compare A79/B104–5. Given the distinction between concepts as rules for sensible synthesis and concepts as discursive representations, I don't think this needs to be viewed as a terribly “intellectualist” account of conscious perception of objects.
This, I take it, is part of what motivates Kant to make the claims he does about the relationship between the synthesis of the understanding and the unity of apperception. See A105, A108, A121, B139, 11:52, and, of course, the famous discussion at B160–161.
There are passages that might be taken to conflict with very moderate conceptualism—most notably a passage on A89–90/B122–23 that Allais discusses at some length. There Kant seems to claim that, “objects can indeed appear to us without necessarily having to be related to functions of the understanding” and that, even without the operations of the understanding, “Appearances would nonetheless offer objects to our intuition, for intuition by no means requires the functions of thinking”.
This is one of the more difficult passages in the first Critique, so all I want to note here is that it is very puzzling, even on Allais's reading. For example, in this passage, Kant seems to describe intuitions (in the sense at issue) as involving a synthesis that has objective validity. And elsewhere he claims that such synthesis is a product of the understanding—contrary to what this passage suggests. Moreover, he seems to say here that something could “be an object for us” without any contribution of the understanding. And this explicitly contradicts—using the same words—what he says later about this in the Deduction. Finally, the possibility he describes in this passage—i.e., that of appearances being “so constituted that the understanding would not find them in accord with the conditions of its unity” and everything lies “in confusion”—is not a case he would in the end treat as compatible with a genuine consciousness of objects.
Given all this, I think the parts of this passage in which Kant seems to be claiming that intuitions can make us conscious of objects without any contribution of the understanding should be taken to be raising a challenge to be answered in the Deduction—and not as expressions of Kant's considered views. This reading is quite natural given the language that Kant uses in this passage. For example, he says that “it is not clear,” it is “a priori doubtful,” and it “is not so easy seen”—all of which suggest that we should be cautious about taking this passage to be a full expression of Kant's views. But I agree with Allais that this is not an entirely happy reading of this passage. My point is simply that her view also sits awkwardly with it as well.
Compare, for example, Pautz (2009).
Although they would disagree about what exactly is essential to the existence of the intuition even in this case.
Compare Tolley (manuscript)’s discussion of actuality and real possibility.
As a result, the alternative view might be developed in a variety of ways—some more “representationalist” and some more “relationalist”. For example, such a view might treat a certain sort of acquaintance relation as primitive. Or it might try to explain it in other terms. For a more “representationalist” view of this general sort, see Watkins and Willashek (manuscript).
McLear (2014, 2016, manuscript). E.g. (following McLear):
We have two sorts of intuition: sensible intuition, for which the object must be represented as present, and an imagining as intuition without the presence of the object. The imagining, if one is conscious of it as such, can also be considered as inner sensible intuition. (18:619, although what is at issue here is a case in which we are conscious that we merely imagining, which is not the case of primary interest)
… whether one cannot be conscious that the one is an intuition of the senses, the other to be sure a sensible intuition, but only in an imagining, for which no object outside the representation is present. The answer is that consciousness can accompany all representations, hence even that of an imagining, which, together with its play, is itself an object of inner sense, and of which it must be possible to become conscious as such, since we really distinguish such things as inner representations, hence existing in time, from the intuition of the senses. (18:621).
McLear agrees with this point, but responds to it by attributing to Kant the view that these sorts of intuitions only seem to us to have spatial organization. Thus, for McLear, we are often mistaken about whether an intuition actually involves spatial structure. I don't find the attribution of such an error theory to Kant terribly attractive, but that's an issue for another time. For further discussion, see the exchange between McLear and Grüne in Critique.
Stephenson (2015).
McLear attempts to deal with this by noting that, on his reading, the inner intuition at issue is causally and doxastically related to outer objects in various ways. But that seems much weaker than what Kant says in this passage.
As Tolley (manuscript) notes, while Kant does claim “that an intuition is ‘a representation that would depend [abhängen] immediately on the presence [Gegenwart] of the object’,” the context of this quote strongly suggests “that Kant has in mind intuitions of sense rather than imagination”. Thus, while it may be that intuitions of sense are object-dependent in the sense Allais has in mind, this need not imply that all outer intuitions (including those of imagination) are object-dependent in this way.
Allais (2015), 299. Compare: "an idealism that limits spatio-temporal objects to our possible experience (or cognition) of them" (299).
Gomes (this volume) discusses this in greater detail.
"I argue that the idealism is a function of the role and nature of a priori intuition, and that the categories need not be seen as introducing further mind-structuring to the world." (18, compare 290).
For an attempt to use this line of thought in support of a two object reading, see Stang (2014). I disagree with both Stang and Allais insofar as I suspect that these points count against seeing Kant as committed to either view from a theoretical perspective.
Compare Gardner (1999).
References
All references to Kant’s work are to the Academy edition. The pagination of the references to the first Critique are the A/B pagination. In general, I’ve followed the translations from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant when possible.
Allais, L. (2015). Manifest reality: Kant’s idealism and his realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chignell, A. (2010). Real repugnance and belief about things in themselves. In J. Krueger & B. B. Lipscomb (Eds.), Kant’s moral metaphysics. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Gardner, S. (1999). Kant and the ‘critique of pure reason’. London: Routledge.
Grüne, S. (2009). Blinde anschauung. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
Land, T. (2015). Nonconceptualist readings of Kant and the transcendental deduction. Kantian Review, 20(1), 25–51.
Longuenesse, B. (1998). Kant and the capacity to judge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McLear, C. (manuscript). Concept, structure, and intuition.
McLear, C. (2014). The Kantian (non)-conceptualism debate. Philosophy Compass, 9(11), 769–790.
McLear, C. (2016). Kant on perceptual content. Mind, 125(497), 95–144.
Pautz, A. (2009). What are the contents of experiences? The Philosophical Quarterly, 59, 483–507.
Schafer, K. (forthcoming-a). Kant’s conception of cognition and our knowledge of things-in-themselves. In K. Schafer, N. Stang (Eds.), The sensible and intelligible worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schafer, K. (forthcoming-b). Practical cognition and knowledge of things-in-themselves. In D. Heide, E. Tiffant (Eds.), The idea of freedom: New essays on the interpretation and significance of Kant’s theory of freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stang, N. (2014). The non-identity of appearances and things in themselves. Noûs, 48(1), 106–136.
Stang, N. (2015). Kant’s modal metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stephenson, A. (2015). Kant on the object-dependence of intuition and hallucination. The Philosophical Quarterly, 65(260), 486–508.
Tolley, C. (manuscript). Kant on the place of cognition in the progression of our representations.
Watkins, E., & Willaschek, M. (manuscript). Kant’s account of cognition.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, first of all, to Lucy Allais for a wonderful book. Thanks also to the audience and fellow panelists at our session at the Pacific APA, and to Sean Greenberg, Colin McLear, Nick Stang, Andrew Stephenson for helpful comments and discussion.
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Schafer, K. Intuitions and objects in Allais’s manifest reality . Philos Stud 174, 1675–1686 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0839-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0839-4