Kant’s Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects, and The Gap in the B Deduction

Abstract

This paper is about the nature of the relationship between (1) the doctrine of Non-Conceptualism about mental content, (2) Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, and (3) the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Categories, in the B (1787) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e., the B Deduction. Correspondingly, the main thesis of the paper is this: (1) and (2) yield serious problems for (3), yet, in exploring these two serious problems for the B Deduction, we also discover some deeply important and perhaps surprising philosophical facts about Kant’s theory of cognition and his metaphysics.

Keywords:

• Kant
• non-conceptualism
• transcendental Idealism
• transcendental Deduction
• freedom

Notes

1 For convenience I refer to Kant’s works infratextually in parentheses. The citations include both an abbreviation of the English title and the corresponding volume and page numbers in the standard “Akademie” edition of Kant’s works: Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlich Preussischen (now Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: G. Reimer [now de Gruyter], 1902–). For references to the first Critique, I follow the common practice of giving page numbers from the A (1781) and B (1787) German editions only. I generally follow the standard English translations from the German texts, but have occasionally modified them where appropriate. Here is a list of the abbreviations and English translations of the works cited: CPR – Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. CPrR – Critique of Practical Reason, trans. M. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 133–272. PC – Immanuel Kant: Philosophical Correspondence, 1759–99, trans. A. Zweig, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Prol – Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. J. Ellington, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1977. VL – ‘The Vienna Logic’, in Immanuel Kant: Lectures on Logic, trans. J. M. Young, Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1992, pp. 251–377.

2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1922/1981), p. 189, prop. 7.

3 T. Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 16–17.

4 See e.g., J. Bermúdez and A. Cahen, ‘Nonconceptual Mental Content’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition) [online], Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/content-nonconceptual/; G. Evans, Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1982), esp. chs. 4–6; and Y. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).

5 See, e.g. J. McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); J. McDowell, Having the World in View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); S. Sedivy, ‘Must Conceptually Informed Perceptual Experience Involve Non-conceptual Content?’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 26 (1996), pp. 413–31; and B. Brewer, Perception and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

6 B. Longuenesse, Kant and the Capacity to Judge, trans. C. Wolfe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 20, 108.

7 See R. Hanna, Kant, Science, and Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), ch. 5.

8 Y. Gunther, ‘Introduction’, in Y. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content, pp. 1–19, at p. 1.

9 R. Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. chs. 1, 2 and 4; R. Hanna, ‘Kant and Nonconceptual Content’, European Journal of Philosophy, 13 (2005), pp. 247–90; R. Hanna, ‘Kantian Non-Conceptualism’, Philosophical Studies, 137 (2008), pp. 41–64; and R. Hanna, Kant, Science, and Human Nature, ch. 2.

10 See ‘Kant’s Theory of Judgment’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition) [online], Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/kant-judgment/.

11 See e.g. W. Sellars, ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, in W. Sellars, Science, Perception, and Reality (New York: Humanities Press, 1963), pp. 127–96; W. Sellars Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968); and McDowell, Mind and World.

12 But see P. Kitcher, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

13 See McDowell, Having the World in View, chs. 1–3.

14 See Hanna, Kant, Science, and Human Nature, ch. 8; and R. Hanna, ‘Freedom, Teleology, and Rational Causation’, Kant Yearbook 1 (2009): pp. 99–142.