Abstract

Kant holds that “on the basis of their actions” we can infer that “animals act in accordance with representations” (Critique of the Power of Judgment, 5: 464, fn.). Animals, like humans, have the powers of sensibility, imagination and choice, but lack the human powers of understanding, reason and free choice. They also lack first-person representation, consciousness, concepts and inner sense. Nevertheless, animals have an analog of reason that involves connections of representations that explain their behavior. Kant cannot call such connections beliefs because he identifies beliefs with judgments, but a present-day Kantian who distinguishes animal beliefs from judgments can do so. Kant’s examples of the types of things to which animals are responsive make it clear that he holds that they perceive—and, more generally, represent—Gibsonian affordances. Such affordances go beyond the information contained in an animal’s sensory impressions at any given moment, so their perceptual representation must involve what Kant calls synthesis of the imagination. But this does not imply that Kant thinks that human perception is like animal perception in the sense that it does not involve or depend upon concepts.