Abstract
I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition (and beyond) allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique (and beyond), and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of (empirical, mathematical, philosophical) forms.
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Notes
There has also long been a worry that Kant simply does not use ‘cognition’ in anything like a univocal sense (cf. Kemp Smith 1918, p. 79; Hanna 2001: 18n13, pp. 202–203; Chignell 2014: §C; Watkins and Willaschek 2017). As I hope will emerge in what follows, Kant seems to be working with a surprisingly unified conception of cognition and carefully and systematically distinguishes cognition from other mental phenomena (including its constituents).
Kant’s disproportionate attention to Erkenntnis over Wissen had been obscured by Norman Kemp-Smith’s 1929 English translation, which (as in his previous Kemp Smith 1918) uses ‘knowledge’ (and ‘know’) to render both ‘Erkenntnis’ (and its cognates) as well as ‘Wissen’. Interestingly, John Richardson’s 1819 translation of Jäsche’s 1800 edition of Kant’s Logic often opts for ‘cognition’ (though not uniformly), a practice thankfully followed (though unfortunately, also not uniformly) by the more recent, now-standard Cambridge translations of Kant’s works.
Compare Reinhold’s claim (already in the late 1780s) that Kant’s critical analysis of human cognition must be preceded by a more general and more ‘elementary’ theory of representation and its relation to consciousness (cf. Ameriks 2000: Part II).
For a further development of an interpretation of Kant’s cognitive psychology along these lines which tries to show its consequences for our understanding Kant’s account of appearances and his idealism, see Tolley (forthcoming-a) and cf. Tolley (2013).
Note here that what is being ‘comprehended’ is a representation, rather than the object represented.
Kant takes this to imply that, as used by our ‘discursive’ understanding in human cognition, concepts themselves are representations that ‘never relate to an object immediately, but only to some other representation of it’ (B93; my ital.). The contrasting ‘immediate’ cognition would only be possible for an understanding that would itself be ‘intuitive’ and so not dependent upon a separate capacity (sensibility) for immediate representations of objects, but generative of its objects directly in its acts (cf. B145; B72). Our own intuitions, while immediate, do not suffice for cognition (cf. Sects. 4.1 and 5 below).
As will emerge below, this coming to consciousness itself requires still further mental activity beyond merely having a representation. This is performed by our ‘imagination [Einbildungskraft]’, which brings about the ‘synthesis’ of representations to allow for their ‘apprehension’, ‘reproduction’, and ‘association’ (cf. A99–102).
I have added the lettering, here and throughout the remainder of the essay, for ease of cross-reference.
In this period, the German ‘wahrnehmen’ has the sense of ‘becoming-aware’ (or more literally: ‘taking up with awareness’) of something—first and foremost, the taking up of a mental representation of something; for discussion of the pre-Kantian use of this term in this sense by Baumgarten and Tetens, see Tolley (forthcoming-b).
In the corresponding Reflexion, ‘understanding’ seems to be assigned (along with ‘cognizing’) to the understanding; cf. 16:343.
It also helps to bring more sharply to the fore the often-elided distinction that Kant makes between apperception, as the capacity for consciousness, and understanding, as the capacity for cognition. The understanding is the capacity, not for apperception per se, but for representing ‘the unity of apperception’ by ‘bringing’ the representations of which we are conscious (i.e., that we apperceive) ‘to concepts’ (cf. B103). (I return to this point below).
We will return to the contrast between mere thinking and cognizing below (cf. Sect. 4.2).
For a thorough and helpful treatment of the transcendental deduction which also seeks to highlight some of the key steps in the genetic structure I am foregrounding here, see Allison (2015). For informative discussion of the various ‘syntheses’ Kant identifies in this deduction, see Kitcher (1990), Waxman (1991), and Longuenesse (1998).
Compare: ‘by the synthesis of apprehension I understand the composition [Zusammensetzung] of the manifold in an empirical intuition, through which perception, i.e., empirical consciousness of it (as appearance), becomes possible’ (B160). In one of the Reflexionen corresponding to this passage, Kant directly associates [b] ‘to perceive (represent with consciousness)’ with the Anthropology’s terminology: ‘to apprehend (grasp) [apprehendere (fassen)]’ (16:343).
Compare: ‘what is first given [in intuition] is [a] appearance, which, if it is combined with consciousness [mit Bewußtsein], is [b] perception’ (A120).
At times Kant thus extends the meaning of both ‘perception’ and ‘apprehension’ to cover not just [b] the initial ‘simple’ becoming-conscious of an individual sensory content, but also [c] the more complex consciousness of the unity of that results from the synthesis of simple perceptions (via reproduction and association) in image-formation—i.e., to cover everything in between [a] mere sensation and intuition and [d] cognition. This broader use is at work, for example, in Kant’s oft-cited claim that ‘imagination is a necessary ingredient in perception itself’ (A120n; my ital.), which would make little sense if ‘perception’ here also meant that ‘upon which’ the activity of imagination is ‘immediately exercised’ (A120; cf. 7:128).
It is worth emphasizing, first, that Kant here (e.g., at A120n) claims only that imagination is involved in perception, and only in this technical sense of the act of forming images out of appearances—not that the imagination is involved in intuition or the mere having of an appearance (pace Gomes 2014, p. 8, and McLear 2016: §5.1.2, #9). Secondly, Kant’s embrace of images, rather than e.g., substances, as the immediate objects of perception—and hence, his embrace of images as a necessary transitional object of consciousness on the road to achieving cognition in experience—would seem to speak fairly directly against more recent ‘direct realist’ interpretations of Kant’s account of intuition, perception, and experience itself (as in Allais 2015 and McLear 2016). For helpful discussion of Kant on images, see Makkreel (1990) and Matherne (2015).
Recall Kant’s description of ‘thinking’ as ‘the act of relating [beziehen] a given intuition to an object’ (B304).
For a discussion of important further aspects of Kant’s account of counting, arithmetic, and representation in pure intuition, see Sutherland (2008).
The B-edition again emphasizes that this final ‘unity of consciousness’ of these representations in a concept of the further object is ‘that which alone makes out [ausmacht] the relation of representations to an object’ for our mind, such that, ‘consequently, they become cognitions’ (B137; my ital.). This is also what is behind Kant’s claim that the relevant object cognized in experience is ‘that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united’ (B137). Note that Kant does not say either that the object in question is the manifold itself or that it is the concept. Note also, however, that Kant does not claim that the object is the result of the uniting of a manifold in a concept, as if the relevant synthesis brought the object into existence. Kant has rejected this idea already at the outset of the Deduction, emphasizing that the synthesis which constitutes experience ‘does not bring forth [hervorbringt] its object as far as its existence is concerned’; rather, it only serves to ‘determine [bestimmen]’ the object, in relation to its sensible representations, via its concept, so as to make cognition of it possible (B125; my ital.). This should point us away from more radical ‘constructivist’ interpretations of the objects of experience (empirical cognition), and toward a decidedly more realistic construal, as in Ameriks (2012) and cf. Tolley (forthcoming-a).
As noted above, my analysis is therefore meant to help foreground an oft-overlooked distinction between apperception per se and ‘the unity of apperception’, where the latter consists in a further representation of the former (via concepts). This distinction parallels (grammatically and conceptually) other distinctions Kant draws between, e.g., intuition per se and ‘the unity of intuition’, and between experience and ‘the unity of experience’, among others. In each case, the former picks out something which exists prior to and independently of the latter, while the latter consists in something composed out of (cases of) the former. (Only the unity of apperception is said to be (or depend on) the understanding (cf. A119).)
One particularly striking case is in Part II of Kant’s Prolegomena, i.e., the Part which corresponds to the Critique’s Analytic. There Kant claims that at the ‘basis’ of experience lies both [a] intuition ‘which belongs solely to the senses’—or rather, and more specifically, [b] ‘an intuition of which I am conscious, i.e., perception (perceptio)’—as well as ‘judgment’, which ‘pertains merely to the understanding’ (4:300). Initially, however, I judge only in such a way that [c] ‘I merely compare [vergleiche] the perceptions and combine them in a consciousness of my state’, so as to make a ‘judgment of perception’, which consists in a ‘connection of perceptions within my mental state’—but crucially ‘without relation [Beziehung] to the object’ which this state itself represents (4:300; my ital.). (For this reason, Kant says such a judgment ‘has only subjective validity’ (ibid.).) To become conscious of an object ‘through’ these perceptions—or, as Kant again here describes it, [d] to ‘cognize’ the object—I must judge not merely about my own mental state, but judge through these states about the object that this state represents, to form a ‘judgment of experience’ (4:298–9).
In fact, this distinction among the principles simply extends a parallel distinction among the pure concepts (‘categories’) that Kant had introduced in passing already much earlier. The categories themselves also ‘can be analyzed into two divisions’, such that the first two ‘mathematical’ kinds of categories (quantity, quality) ‘are directed [gerichtet] at objects of intuition’, whereas the second two ‘dynamical’ kinds of categories (relation, modality) ‘are directed at the existence of these objects (either in relation to one another or to the understanding)’ (B110; my ital.; cf. B692). The significance of this crucial differentiation can be seen perhaps especially in relation to the Analogies of Experience, which depend precisely upon our being able to draw a distinction between being conscious of the subjective order ‘in’ our perceptions (sensory representations, appearances) and cognizing the distinct objective order ‘in’ the ‘existent’ objects (bodies and our own soul) represented by, and not identical with, these perceptions (‘apprehensions’; B235). This again puts considerable pressure on the familiar idea that, for Kant, the object of experience ‘is nothing but the sum of these representations’ (Allison 2004, p. 234)—as should Kant’s own explicit claim (noted above) that experience ‘does not bring forth [hervorbringt] its object as far as its existence is concerned’ (B125; my ital.), despite the fact that experience does ‘bring forth’ a representation of the object. For a more (ontologically speaking) realist interpretation of the objects at issue in the Analogies, compare Watkins (2005, pp. 199–217). Smit (2000, p. 240f) rightly recognizes Kant’s own argument for a distinction in cognition between mediating representation and object, but does not yet connect it with this progression of technical terms involved in the Analytic. Van Cleve (1999, p. 74f) presents an interesting case of an interpretive recognition that many of the conceptual differences I am highlighting here should be in play in Kant’s discussion of these topics, but without any apparent recognition that Kant himself deploys technical terms to capture just such distinctions.
Compare the first sentence of the A-edition: ‘experience is without doubt the first product that our understanding brings forth as it works on the raw material of sensible sensations [sinnliche Empfindungen]’ (A1; my ital.). That these first uses of ‘experience’ maintain consistency with the wide array of texts cited above (which sharply distinguish experience from sensation, intuition, perception, etc.) speak against earlier claims by C.I. Lewis and Lewis White Beck (recently endorsed by Guyer (1987, p. 79f) and Van Cleve (1999, p. 73f)), that Kant uses ‘experience’ here (and elsewhere) in two different senses, the first of which simply identifies it with sensations. (This suggests that we should also view with caution Van Cleve’s proposal that ‘experience’ throughout the Critique might have as many as eight different senses (cf. Van Cleve 1999, p. 74).)
Compare B149, B342; see also 7:140, 20:273. Recall as well that Kant characterizes our understanding in particular (the capacity for concepts) as ‘the capacity for cognitions’ (B137).
There is also one passage from Jäsche’s 1800 edition Kant’s lectures on logic which might also be read in this way (cf. 9:91), along with several of Kant’s unpublished (and often quite fragmentary) Reflexionen (cf. 16:86, 88, 538).
This might also be suggested by Kant’s use of the Latin ‘vel’ (inclusive disjunction) rather than ‘aut’ (exclusive disjunction).
Once in focus, the structural parallel of the Stufenleiter to the progression of ‘grades’ we met with above can be seen to continue even beyond the step to cognition (cf. B377), as Kant’s ‘ladder’ here goes on to climb, first, to the understanding’s use of ‘pure concepts’ (to [e] further ‘understand’ experience), and then to reason’s use of ideas to ‘go beyond the possibility of experience’ (i.e., to gain [f] insight and [g] comprehension of the conditions of the objects of experiences).
It might be objected that this breaks the stylistic continuity of the passage, since after ‘either intuition or concept’ Kant might be read as going on to then divide concepts in particular into further species: either empirical, or pure; either pure from understanding, or pure from reason—rather than noting the progression from cognition to understanding, insight, and finally comprehension. I agree that this is a possible reading of the remainder of the passage and it is therefore possible also to see the further context as itself providing some reason to consider the sentence itself as identifying species of the previous ‘step’. To repeat, however: my aim here is not to show that the species reading of this sentence itself is impossible, but only that it is not necessary. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.)
See Schafer (forthcoming) and cf. Kemp Smith (1918, p. 214).
We think of this individual according to a set of features (being ‘the sum-total of all reality’, ‘the unlimited’, ‘the all’, etc.; cf. B603f) that Kant thinks sufficiently distinguishes it from every other object. Another example might be the fundamental moral principle (law): there is only one individual such principle, to which we can (and must) successfully refer and are conscious of in thinking in a highly discriminatory way, presumably not on the basis of any intuition of this law or principle (though see discussion in the footnotes to Sect. 6 below).
It can of course make us aware of the concept of existence, the concept of a real relation to an existent object, etc; it can also make us aware of a representational (or intentional) relation to some object or other (i.e., whatever object we are thinking about), including one which happens in fact to exist.
Compare: sensation is that ‘by which one only can be conscious that the subject is affected, and which one relates to an object in general’ (B207–8; my ital.); sensation is ‘that in general which corresponds to’ our concept of reality (B182; cf. B207–18). On this ‘representational’ function of sensation, see Jankowiak (2014).
While we have focused on real existence or actuality, it is worth noting that Kant officially extends the scope of cognizing to include objects whose sensations we are not presently or currently (‘actually’) perceiving, but whose (possible) sensations we can nevertheless demonstrate through reasoning to ‘agree with the formal conditions of experience (with respect to intuitions and concepts)’, and in this way can be shown to be really possible as sensations. Kant takes this to amount to cognizing the object of these possible sensations as an object of possible experience (B265). This suffices to demonstrate what Kant elsewhere calls the ‘real possibility’ of the object in question, beyond the merely logical possibility of its concept (cf. Bxxvi-fn). Hence, though (as we have seen) his emphasis in the Analytic is largely on cognizing the ‘existence’ in relation to appearances, Kant is actually working with a broader notion of ‘reality’ which includes both actuality and real possibility (cf. Bxxvi-fn). Compare Chignell (2014).
There is the important further question here as to whether this ‘object = X’ is something which has a way of being ‘in itself’, and should thus also be considered to be a ‘thing in itself’ with (so-called) ‘noumenal’ reality or existence. Though I cannot hope to argue for it here, I find accounts along the lines of Ameriks (2012) to be the most convincing, that Kant believes that the objects of experience, and hence of empirical cognition (i.e., physical bodies, our own soul) do also have a way of being ‘in themselves’, even if we cannot cognize this aspect in anything other than the most indirect and ‘indeterminate’ way. Note that a view along these lines would still allow for appearances to belong to a distinct world from these objects, and so is not a two-aspect account of appearances themselves—though it may be a two-aspect account about features of the objects of these appearances. (Thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me to clarify this point.)
That is, either its actuality or even its real possibility (cf. previous note). Now, at this point it might be wondered whether, in making me ‘conscious [bewußt]’ of a real relation to an object, cognition itself now is being understood in decidedly epistemic terms after all, such that cognizing an object might now have turned out simply to consist in its being ‘known [gewußt]’ by me that the object in question is real. In fact, in one passage Kant himself might seem to suggest as much, writing that ‘to cognize an object, it is required that I be able to prove [beweisen] its possibility (whether by the testimony [Zeugniß] of experience from its actuality [Wirklichkeit] or apriori through reason)’ (Bxxvi-fn). (Thanks to the anonymous referees for raising this as a worry for my account.) As the passage continues, however, it seems that Kant does not actually mean to be specifying the conditions for the, as it were, first-order cognizing of X, but rather conditions for the second-order claim to cognize X, insofar as he makes clear that what is at issue is what is ‘required to ascribe [beilegen] objective validity to a concept’ (ibid.). For further discussion of a first-order/second-order distinction along these lines (between what is required for cognizing X vs. what is required to legitimate the claim to (be able to) cognize X), see Watkins and Willaschek (2017).
For the ‘metaphysical’ priority of the pure intuition of space with respect to any specifically geometrical representation (let alone cognition), see 20:419f. This is manifest in the very ordering of the Aesthetic itself, which demonstrates (in the Metaphysical Exposition) that the ‘originary’ representation of space is an intuition (B37-40) prior to showing (in the Transcendental Exposition) that it thereby can function as a ‘source’ for apriori cognition for geometry—as opposed to its already being a cognition in its own right (B40–41, B55; cf. Shabel 2004). Here I disagree with Waxman (1991: cf. 219f) about the space of intuition depending on apprehension and imagination (and similarly reject his account of the apprehension-dependence of time; cf. 194f); compare Tolley (2016b); cf. as well Onof and Schulting (2014).
Compare: ‘the representation[s] of the object with which [geometry] occupies itself, are generated [erzeugt] in the mind completely apriori, [but] they would still not signify [bedeuten] anything at all if we could not always exhibit [darlegen] their significance in appearances (empirical objects)’ (B299) (Cf. Smit 2000: 244n–5n).
This further non-geometrical, philosophical knowledge is possible through the ‘deduction’ of the objective validity of both the pure intuition of space and the relevant pure concepts (e.g. of quantity) with respect to the experience of real objects (cf. B118f) (Note that Kant also speaks of the Aesthetic as providing an ‘explanation’ for geometry that ‘makes comprehensible’ its standing as cognition; cf. B41.)
Cf. Chignell (2014, p. 583n18). Chignell, however, seems to hold that analytic judgments cannot ever be viewed as cognitions, and that they can only give us cognition (or ‘knowledge’) of the contents of our concepts. This is hard to square with Kant’s consistent classification of them as providing apriori cognition (when the above conditions are met).
Here I disagree with Hanna (2001, pp. 93–94), who claims that some analytic propositions, and also mathematical propositions, have a ‘primitive objective validity’ on par with empirical cognition. I would classify them instead as apriori judgments whose status as objectively valid is ‘secondary’, due to their dependence on the further ‘deduction’ of their validity with respect to specifically empirical cognition.
Kant’s discussion of the falsity of the (apparently) ‘true’ analytic proposition <a square circle is round> in Prolegomena §52b helps to bring out this further condition on such judgments actually yielding cognition of objects (cf. 4:341).
For this reason, the pure cognition from reason that is possible of the objects of its ideas is only specifiable through ‘analogy’ with the determinate cognition in experience itself—though it is still accorded the status of ‘cognition’ (cf. 4:357f). The ideas themselves thereby are demonstrated to relate at least indirectly to consciousness of sensation, by being related directly to the consciousness of the synthesis of experiences themselves – not to itself constitute another experience, but rather ‘to grasp together [zusammenfassen] all the actions of the understanding...into an absolute whole’ (B383), in order ‘to consider all cognition of experience as determined through an absolute totality of conditions’ (B384; my ital.).
In future work I will extend this genetic-developmental account to better foreground the precise differences between mere cognition as the activity of the understanding, from these higher grades or degrees of cognitive activity (insight, comprehension) as the activity of reason, understood as the capacity not for cognition per se but for ‘cognition from principles’ (B356-7). For now, let me simply note that the pure ‘rational cognitions’ in mathematics and philosophy might ultimately be better classified, not merely as cognitions, but rather as instances of one of these higher cognitive grades—more specifically: these pure judgments might count for Kant as instances of ‘having insight into [einsehen]’ or ‘comprehending [begreifen]’ their objects (cf. B121), insofar as they are either principles themselves (Grundsätze) or derived therefrom (as Lehrsätze; cf. B760–65). (Recall that it is only in the transition to insight and comprehension that Kant introduces the idea of ‘cognition through reason’, with ‘comprehension’ in particular involving cognition apriori (cf. 9:64–65).) Let me also note that I have left to the side two still further intermediary grades of cognitive activity, ones which lie beyond experience (empirical cognition) per se, but prior to insight and comprehension: ‘empirical thinking [empirisches Denken]’, whose ‘principles [Grundsätze]’ (viz. ‘postulates’) are presented subsequently to the analogies of experience (cf. B265), and ‘explanation [Erklärung]’, which Kant characterizes as involving our ‘tracing back to laws through which the object can be given in some possible experience’ (4:459). In the third Critique Kant seems to assign the possibility of explanation to the ‘power of judgment [Urteilskraft]’ (cf. 5:185, 360), which would also be a good candidate for which capacity is responsible for ‘empirical thinking’, insofar as the ‘Analytic of Principles’ as a whole is presented as a ‘canon for the power of judgment’ (B171).
Its importance did, however, impress itself upon Kant’s immediate successors; compare, e.g., the overall progression of ‘shapes’ of ‘consciousness’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology (cf. Förster (2012)).
As noted above, intuition and perception are often conflated; for other examples, see the references in Tolley (2013: §6) and in Tolley (forthcoming-a). Sometimes one or both of these are run together with experience, as in McDowell (1996). The distinction between [d] mere cognition of an object, and [f] having insight or [g] comprehending that object (cognizing ‘through reason’), has also been neglected; for a recent criticism of Engstrom (2009) in this regard, see Kain (2010b).
Though, for our discursive understanding, cognizing an object does paradigmatically take the form of judgment (cf. Sect. 2 above), this cognition can be false (cf. B82-3); even if true, it need not be held-true at all, as in ‘suspensio judicii’ (cf. 9:74f; 24:160f; 24:860)—let alone for objectively sufficient grounds, as may happen with respect to merely ‘historical cognition’ (cf. B846f) or as happens in relation to the cognitions that may be involved in opinion and belief (cf. B848f).
We do ‘relate’ to the law through the practical ‘feeling’ (hence, sensory representation) of ‘respect’, though this arises from our (pure) consciousness of the law (cf. 4:401n; 6:399f), rather than feeling itself being the immediate object of consciousness which we then use to first recognize the law. (For possible neglected connections to intuition in this vicinity, however, see Kain 2010a, p. 224).
I would like to thank to audiences at UCSD, UC Irvine, University of Toronto, University of Miami, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Ohio State University, and Universidad National Autónomia de México, for their valuable feedback on presentations of earlier versions of this material. I would also like to thank Lucy Allais, Stefanie Grüne, Tim Jankowiak, Samantha Matherne, Colin McLear, Tobias Rosefeldt, Karl Schafer, Lisa Shabel, Nick Stang, Eric Watkins, and Marcus Willaschek for their constructive criticism of previous drafts. Finally, a special thanks to the very helpful comments given by anonymous referees at Synthese.
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Kant’s works are cited according to the standard Akademie Ausgabe (Berlin: 1900–) volume and page number; except in the case of the first Critique, which is cited according to the standard A- and/or B-edition pagination. I have consulted and often followed the Cambridge Edition of Kant’s works (Cambridge: 1991–), but I have modified the translations throughout.
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Tolley, C. Kant on the place of cognition in the progression of our representations. Synthese 197, 3215–3244 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1625-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1625-3