Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T20:46:13.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, Non-Conceptualism, and the Fitness-for-Purpose Objection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2018

Robert Watt
Robert Watt*
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
*
Email: rbw28@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The subject of this article is a powerful objection to the non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. Part of the purpose of the deduction is to refute the sort of scepticism according to which there are no objects of empirical intuition that instantiate the categories. But if the non-conceptualist interpretation is correct, it does not follow from what Kant is arguing in the transcendental deduction that this sort of scepticism is false. This article explains and assesses a number of possible responses to this objection.

Keywords

non-conceptualismtranscendental deductionfitness-for-purposetranscendental arguments
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 65 - 88
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allais, Lucy (2009) ‘Kant, Non-Conceptual Content, and the Representation of Space’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 47 (3), 383–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allais, Lucy (2015) Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Allais, Lucy (2017) ‘Synthesis and Binding’. In A. Gomes and A. Stephenson (eds), Kant and the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 25–45.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, Hannah (2006) ‘Kant and the Problem of Experience’. Philosophical Topics, 34 (1–2), 59–106.Google Scholar
Ginsborg, Hannah (2008) ‘Was Kant a Nonconceptualist?’ Philosophical Studies, 137 (1), 65–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomes, Anil (2010) ‘Is Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories Fit for Purpose?’ Kantian Review, 15 (2), 118–137.Google Scholar
Gomes, Anil (2014) ‘Kant on Perception: Naïve Realism, Non-Conceptualism, and the B-Deduction’. Philosophical Quarterly, 64 (254), 1–19.Google Scholar
Griffith, Aaron M. (2010) ‘Perception and the Categories: A Conceptualist Reading of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason ’. European Journal of Philosophy, 20 (2), 193–222.Google Scholar
Grüne, Stefanie (2011) ‘Is there a Gap in Kant’s B Deduction?’. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 19 (3), 465–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Robert (2005) ‘Kant and Nonconceptual Content’. European Journal of Philosophy, 13 (2), 247–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Robert (2008) ‘Kantian Non-Conceptualism’. Philosophical Studies, 137 (1), 41–64.Google Scholar
Hanna, Robert (2011) ‘Kant’s Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects, and the Gap in the B Deduction’. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 19 (3), 399–415.Google Scholar
Henrich, Dieter (1969) ‘The Proof-Structure of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction’. Review of Metaphysics, 22 (4), 640–659.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Tr. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, Béatrice (1998) Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Trans. C. Wolfe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McLear, Colin (2014) ‘The Kantian (Non)-Conceptualism Debate’. Philosophy Compass, 9 (11), 769–790.Google Scholar
McLear, Colin (2015) ‘Two Kinds of Unity in the Critique of Pure Reason ’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 53 (1), 79–110.Google Scholar
Moore, G. E. (2002) Commonplace Book; 1919–1953. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Onof, Christian, and Schulting, Dennis (2015) ‘Space as Form of Intuition and as Formal Intuition: On the Note to B160 in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason ’. Philosophical Review, 124 (4), 1–58.Google Scholar
Pereira, Sá Horacio de, Roberto ( forthcoming) ‘A Non-Conceptualist Reading of the B-Deduction’. Philosophical Studies.Google Scholar
Schulting, Dennis (2017) Kant’s Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stern, Robert (2000) Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism: Answering the Question of Justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, Robert (2008) ‘Kant’s Response to Skepticism’. In J. Greco (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp 265–285.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter (1966) The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen & Co.Google Scholar
Stroud, Barry (2000) Understanding Human Knowledge: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Van Cleve, James (1999) Problems from Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woozley, A. D. (1964) ‘Introduction’. In J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (abridged edition). London: Collins.Google Scholar