Introduction: Kant and Nonconceptual Content – Preliminary Remarks

Conceptualism is the view that cognizers can have mental representations of the world only if they possess the adequate concepts by means of which they can specify what they represent, i.e., the content of their worldly representations. By contrast, nonconceptualism is the view that mental representations of the world do not necessarily presuppose concepts by means of which the content of these representations can be specified, i.e., cognizers can have mental representations of the world that are nonconceptual. Hence, whereas conceptualism denies the possibility of nonconceptual mental representations of the world, nonconceptualism is not disputing that mental representations of the world can in principle involve concepts. However, according to nonconceptualism, cognizers in fact have nonconceptual mental representations of the world such that these representations bear phenomenality and intentionality. ¹ 6 Consequently, if conceptualism is true then nonconceptualism must be false, and vice versa. This incompatibility makes the current debate over conceptualism and nonconceptualism, which almost exclusively turned into a debate on the possibility of nonconceptual content, a fundamental controversy with far reaching philosophical consequences. For theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind are particularly interested in the make-up of our mental representations of the world since the range of conceptual capacities cognizers have, certainly has an impact on their mental representations of the world, on how sense perception is structured and how external world beliefs are justified. One of the most striking aspects in this context is the fact that many conceptualists and nonconceptualists alike refer to Kant as major authoritative reference point from which they start and develop their arguments. The appeal to Kant is not just an interesting historical flashback. It rather attempts to clarify the problem from a paradigmatic point of view and to pave the way for a robust answer to the question of whether or not there is nonconceptual content. Kant’s distinction between sensibility and understanding, or intuition and concept respectively, seems to offer the theoretical basis that is particularly apt to demonstrate what mental representation of the world amounts to. Both, conceptualists and nonconceptualists, have taken Kant’s well known claim ‘Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind’ (CPR A51/B 75) as their major landmark. For McDowell, who traces conceptualism directly back to Kant, intuition ‘already has conceptual content’ since sensibility is not just passive but an actualization of conceptual capacities. ² This understanding reflects Sellars’ influential idea of Kantian intuition as ‘Janus-faced’, i.e. as equally determined through sensibility and spontaneity. ³ Nonconceptualists, by contrast, emphasize that Kant’s empty thoughts and blind intuitions rather support the view that there is mental content that is nonconceptual since the cooperation of concept and intuition is indispensable only for cognition in the narrow transcendental sense of the word ‘cognition’, not for sense-perception as such. ⁴ Since the incompatibility of the conceptualist and nonconceptualist readings of Kant indicate a paradigm case, hopes have risen that the answer to the question of whether Kant is a conceptualist or a nonconceptualist might settle the contemporary controversy across the board. For this reason, to conceive of Kant as a conceptualist or a nonconceptualist is not merely a historical detail of Kant scholarship but an issue of systematic philosophical relevance. Even for Kant himself nonconceptualism is not a minor point. In a way the debate on whether or not Kant subscribes to nonconceptualism already originates in his semi-critical essay ‘Concerning the Ultimate Foundation of the Distinction of the Directions in Space’ (2003a [1768]). There he lays the foundation of his critical account of intuition and concept. For in order to claim that thoughts without content are empty, and intuitions without concepts are blind an argument is required that demonstrates the ultimate difference between intuition and concept, i.e. that intuition and concept are not of the same representational kind as Leibniz claims. In ‘Concerning the Ultimate Foundation’ Kant presents this argument against Leibniz’ view of intuition and concept as confused and distinct degrees of representation. Kant objects that the directions of space cannot fully be grasped merely by conceptual descriptions. For spatial directions are represented through intuition, and intuitional representation cannot be reduced to conceptual description. Unlike Leibniz maintained ‘the determinations of space are not consequences of the positions of the parts of matter relative to each other. On the contrary, the latter are the consequences of the former’. ⁵ From this reasoning Kant concludes that spatial representation, i.e., intuition, must be different from concept. In his Inaugural Dissertation On the form and principles of the sensible and the intelligible world (2003b [1770]) he specifies this critique of Leibniz arguing that neither sensibility can be defined in terms of confused cognition nor that understanding can be defined in terms of distinct cognition. For ‘sensitive representations can be very distinct and representations which belong to the understanding can be extremely confused’. ⁶ The distinction to be drawn rather is between intuition (sensibility) as repraesentatio singularis and concept (understanding) as repraesentatio universalis. Since intuition and concept are intrinsically different with respect to how cognizers have representations through them, they cannot be reduced to one another. In the first Critique Kant emphasizes that ‘intuition’ is that ‘representation that can be given prior to all thinking’ (CPR B 132). The reason why intuition can be given prior to thinking is that it is by nature independent of conceptual representation. Without explicitly mentioning the crucial arguments from his earlier works, ‘Concerning the Ultimate Foundation’ and ‘On the form and principles’, Kant, in the transcendental aesthetics, not only makes clear that ‘intuition’ is that ‘representation ... which can only be given through a single object’ (CPR A 32/B 47) but also that we must ‘think of every concept as a representation that is contained in an infinite set of different possible representations (as their common mark), which thus contains these under itself’. Therefore, since intuition as single representation contains representations ‘within itself’, e.g. representations of ‘components’ of space as limitations of ‘the single all-encompassing space’, it is intrinsically different from concept as universal representation (CPR A 25/B 39-40). Spelling out the basic differences between intuition and concept in detail, results in the following list: Intuition is (i) sensible, (ii) directly referential, (iii) singular, and (iv) independent of concept. Concept is (i) abstract or discursive, (ii) indirectly referential, (iii) universal, and (iv) independent of intuition. ⁷ The fact that the properties pertaining to intuition cannot be reduced to the properties pertaining to concept seems to make a strong case for Kant advocating nonconceptualism. For according to Kant sense-perception essentially contains intuition, and intuition is not reducible to concept. The articles collected in this issue aim at a substantial clarification of the controversy on whether or not Kant is a nonconceptualist. In both of his contributions Robert Hanna argues that we should conceive of Kant as a nonconceptualist. The approach Hanna takes is twofold. He not only presents a comprehensive analysis of the relevant Kantian texts but also very fruitfully relates his interpretation to the contemporary debate of conceptualism and nonconceptualism in theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind. In their articles, Brady Bowman, Terry Godlove, Stefanie Grüne, and Tobias Schlicht then critically discuss and weigh the pros and cons of Hanna’s arguments for Kantian nonconceptualism. All articles were initially presented at a workshop on Kant and nonconceptual content in May 2009 at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Luxembourg. Since then they have been substantially revised and extended. I am particularly grateful to Robert Hanna for his impressive presentation of four papers at the workshop, for his openness in discussion and for extensively exchanging his drafts of the articles with the commentators. I am also grateful to Brady Bowman, Terry Godlove, Stefanie Grüne, and Tobias Schlicht for their responses to Bob’s papers at the workshop and for working out written versions of their comments for publication. Last but not least I thank the editor of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Maria Baghramian, for publishing the articles as a special issue on Kant and nonconceptual content.

University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Notes

1 There is, of course, a great variety of specific versions of conceptualism and nonconceptualism. J. Bermúdez and A. Cahen (2011) give a helpful overview of refined definitions of both views.

2 J. McDowell, 1996: pp. 8, 24. See also H. Ginsborg, 2008.

3 W. Sellars, 1992: p. 2.

4 Among others R. Hanna, 2005: pp. 256–7.

5 I. Kant, 2003a: 371.

6 Kant, 2003b: 387. See also CPR A 43f/B 61 (Kant 1998). See D. H. Heidemann, forthcoming.

7 For details see Heidemann, 2002.