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Perception and the Categories: A Conceptualist Reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
Author(s) -
Griffith Aaron M.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2010.00404.x
Subject(s) - intuition , philosophy , transcendental number , epistemology , conceptualism , sensibility , perception , content (measure theory) , reading (process) , linguistics , literature , mathematics , art , mathematical analysis
Philosophers interested in Kant's relevance to contemporary debates over the nature of mental content—notably Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais—have argued that Kant ought to be credited with being the original proponent of the existence of ‘nonconceptual content’. However, I think the ‘nonconceptualist’ interpretations that Hanna and Allais give do not show that Kant allowed for nonconceptual content as they construe it. I argue, on the basis of an analysis of certain sections of the A and B editions of the Transcendental Deduction, for a ‘conceptualist’ reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . My contention is that since Kant's notion of empirical intuition makes essential reference to the categories, it must be true for him that no empirical intuition can be given in sensibility independently of the understanding and its categories.