1.1 Introduction
As this volume attests, a lively debate has been taking place among Kant interpreters as to whether Kant’s position in the First Critique and other Critical works contains something like the contemporary notion of nonconceptual mental content. The aim of this chapter is to provide a survey of central moves in this debate. I do not claim to give an exhaustive account, or to refer to every paper on the topic, but rather to draw on papers that represent what seem to me to be central argumentative possibilities. It must be stated up front that I am far from a neutral surveyor of this debate: I have defended attributing a kind of nonconceptualism to Kant in a number of places.1 And my conclusion in this chapter is still both that Kant is committed to a kind of nonconceptualism and that a nonconceptualist reading of intuition must be our starting point in approaching central arguments such as the Transcendental Deduction of the categories (TD). However, conceptualists have put forward important arguments, which have changed my mind about some of the arguments and texts, and have made more precise (and perhaps more modest) exactly what I take Kant’s nonconceptualism to be. I suggest that whether Kant is a conceptualist about perception (as opposed to intuition) remains unresolved in the literature and requires further clarification of what he means by “perception”. Researching for this paper has again reminded me of what I take to be one of the major contributions to come out of this debate: lively dispute and clarification of key terms in Kant’s philosophy, such as intuition, sensation, perception, cognition and synthesis. As I argue, the debate about nonconceptualism is crucial for understanding the key question of the role of synthesis in TD. Despite ongoing disagreements, it seems to me that a reasonable amount of helpful common ground has been reached with respect to this.
Two questions one might ask immediately on entering this debate are, first, what is nonconceptual content, and, second, does Kant say anything explicitly about the issue? Answering the first question precisely requires detailed argument, so I shall start by answering it roughly, and then, in Sect. 1.2, shall look at basic textual evidence invoked by both sides of the debate. This will also help clarify how contemporary terminology does (and does not) map onto Kant’s terminology. The remainder of the chapter will look at the philosophical grounds for the various positions in the debate.
Most broadly, nonconceptual content is mental content that is independent of concepts. One crucial question here is whether being independent of concepts means content that actually is presented to us without any concepts being applied to it, or content that could be presented to us independently of whether or not we had the ability to apply concepts. As we shall see, some conceptualists argue that Kant thinks that there is not, in fact, any mental content presented to the consciousness of adult human beings that does not fall under concepts; this, however, does not show that all mental content is essentially conceptualised, since it does not show that there are no representations which could not be presented to us independently of conceptualising. I shall argue that debate about the question of whether Kant thinks there are mental representations that we do not in fact conceptualise is inconclusive, but that there are strong grounds for thinking that he holds there to be mental representations which do not depend on conceptualisation to play their role in cognition, and which could be presented to us independently of conceptualisation.
A further question is what is meant by “mental content”. In the contemporary debate about nonconceptual content what is at issue is often perceptual content. As we shall see, however, what Kant means by “perception” is disputable and it has been argued that he uses the word in a technical sense that does not straightforwardly map onto the contemporary debate.2 Further, much of the debate about nonconceptualism in Kant concerns his indisputably technical term “intuition”. Some writers use this term interchangeably with perception,3 but Kant, notably, does not (it is also importantly different from what he means by “sensation”). Kant introduces intuitions and concepts as two essentially distinct but mutually dependent ingredients of cognition. He holds that concepts are general and mediate representations that enable us to think objects, while intuitions are singular and immediate representations that give us objects (A320/B377; A19/B33; A50/B74; A713/B741; V-Lo/Wiener, 24:905; V-Met/Mron, 29:800, 888, 970–3). Concepts enable us to have general thoughts (A68/B93; A69/B94). Kant says repeatedly that the role intuitions play in cognition is that of giving us objects and that this is something thought can never do (A19/B33; A239/B298; A719/B747). The fact that Kant holds that intuitions are mental representations that are essentially distinct from concepts might seem to support attributing to him nonconceptual content. But, on the other hand, the fact that intuitions and concepts are together necessary for us to have cognition might seem to support denying that Kant has an account of nonconceptual content. Thus, in evaluating the attribution to Kant of nonconceptualism we need to consider how he understands intuitions and what their role in cognition is, how this relates to what he calls experience, perception, and cognition, and what the dependence relations are between the components of cognition.
In the contemporary debate about nonconceptual content a distinction is drawn between the nonconceptualist idea that there is mental content that is essentially distinct from conceptually structured content and the different nonconceptualist idea that a subject could have representational content while lacking the concepts needed to describe that content. I shall argue that there are grounds for thinking that, for Kant, intuitions are mental representations that are completely different in structure from conceptual mental content and which could play their role in cognition independently of being conceptualised.
It seems to me impossible to dispute that Kant is a conceptualist about cognition; he does not think we have or could have cognition without the application of concepts (A51–2/B75–6; A320/B377). Similarly, I think that the overwhelming evidence is that Kant does not think we could have what he calls “experience” without concepts, but this is simply because what he means by “experience” is empirical cognition (and not, for example, phenomenological consciousness).4 Whether or not Kant is a conceptualist about perception is less clear. As I shall show, conceptualists have clear texts to appeal to here. On the other hand, a few nonconceptualists have, it seems to me, given compelling reasons for caution here, based on seeing specifically what Kant means by “perception”, and that he may be using the word technically.5
I shall argue, in agreement with Colin McLear (2014b:772), that the debate about whether Kant has some kind of nonconceptualism really turns on what I have called conceptualism about intuition: whether Kant holds that intuitions are mental representations that could be presented to us whether or not we had the capacity to apply concepts.6 While preparing this chapter it struck me that if one were explaining the debate in Kant to a contemporary philosopher who was unfamiliar with it, he or she might expect the debate about nonconceptualism in Kant to concern whether the kind of representations intuitions are (singular, immediate representations that give us objects) is best understood as representations that present us with mental content. In fact, however, as we shall see, much of the debate concerns whether intuitions can in fact play their role of being singular and immediate representations that give us objects independently of their being conceptualised. The central debate, in other words, is not about whether intuitions have some kind of representational content but about whether intuitions are independent of concepts. My survey of the recent debate leaves me unconvinced by conceptualist arguments on this position. However, I shall argue that there are grounds for making significant concessions to the conceptualist. Conceptualists provide reasons for attributing to Kant the view that we are in fact presented with intuitions that are conceptualised; my argument is merely that he does not hold that intuitions are dependent on being conceptualised for their possibility—for their being intuitions. Further, some commentators on both sides of the debate have argued that it is unclear whether we should call what intuitions present us with “content”.7 Therefore, there is a sense in which the claim I hold to be indisputable—that intuitions do not depend on the application of concepts to be intuitions, and to play their role in cognition—might not be committed to nonconceptual content.
1.2 Things Kant Says Directly
If we ask whether there are any texts in which Kant explicitly expresses commitments with respect to this debate, we find a few which seem clear and indisputable, but that may seem to pull in different directions. In terms of claims made explicitly in the text, Kant asserts that perception depends on the application of concepts (in favour of conceptualism about perception) and that having objects presented to us in intuition does not (in favour of nonconceptualism about intuition). However, as we shall see, in both these cases opponents have responses as to why we should not read the texts as saying what appears to be explicitly asserted. I first discuss these texts and shall then go on to argue that most of the textual claims commentators have appealed to do not straightfo...