Kant’s Transcendental Deductions of the Categories
In my dissertation I examine the account Kant provides, in the Transcendental Deduction, of our relation to the world as thinkers. Kant is often read as presenting an indirect model of this relation, with our thought acting upon content given independently through the senses. I argue that this model is flawed, both as a reading of Kant and as a philosophical account in its own right. By way of a close examination of the first and second edition versions of the Deduction—and consideration of Kant’s reasons for rewriting this central argument—I show that Kant actually rejects this indirect model, correctly seeing it as leading inevitably to skepticism. Instead he defends a direct model of our relation to the sensible world, one in which objects are given to us through a conceptually-shaped sensibility. Properly understood, Kant’s account in the Deduction is very relevant to contemporary topics in epistemology and can be invoked in addressing skepticism regarding perception and the intentionality of thought.
Abstract
It is tempting to think that the content of our perceptions must be outside the sphere of our conceptual activity. Perceptual content, after all, is meant to provide a constraint on this activity—by revealing how things are in the world outside our thought. But, at the same time, it is difficult to see how our thought can be constrained by something that is given to our senses without any conceptual determination. Sellars famously identifies this dilemma as resulting from a “myth of the given.” And as he notes, Kant is one of the first philosophers to identify and address this particular dilemma. In my dissertation I offer a reading of Kant’s treatment of this topic in the Transcendental Deduction. I see Kant as asserting a tight interconnection between our sensible and intellectual powers, such that the content of our intuitions are necessarily concept-laden. This account, I claim, provides a plausible explanation of our cognitive relation to the world.
Although I am defending a reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories, the title of my dissertation refers to Deductions in the plural. This is significant, for I arrive at my understanding of the Deduction by way of a novel account of the relation between two versions of the Deduction. I claim that Kant establishes his position very differently in the original Deduction and in the rewritten version of the second edition. In the first version, Kant distinguishes two sides of his argument: an Objective and a Subjective Deduction. The latter has generally been understood as Kant’s regrettable and speculative foray into the field of transcendental psychology, but my examination of the credentials on which this received reading rests reveals that it has little sound textual support. On the contrary, I show that, properly understood, the Subjective Deduction supports the main argument of the Objective side. On my reading, the Objective Deduction proves that the categories of the understanding must be involved in our sensible experience of objects, where this implies the tight integration of our sensible and intellectual faculties. But one might well doubt the possibility of this integration, given the seeming independence of these faculties. Kant addresses this doubt in the Subjective Deduction, but he does so by means of an oddly indirect method. That is, rather than directly presenting a positive account of the relation of these faculties, I take him instead to be arguing that neither sensibility nor understanding can function independently of the other in experience, leaving their necessary connection as the only possibility. I try to bring out, however, that this indirect approach is not entirely satisfactory on Kant’s own terms, as he himself acknowledges; and the lack of a positive account in the first edition encouraged misunderstandings of his position. I go on to show how the deficiency in the first version of the Deduction that my reading highlights allows us to identify precisely why Kant rewrote the Deduction for the new edition of the Critique in the manner he did. This time Kant presents a direct argument for the connection of our faculties, one that is designed to block exactly the misreading of the Critique that the original version of the Deduction encouraged. By appealing to the formal character of our sensibility, he is able to show that if this faculty was not already conceptually-shaped by the understanding, experience would not be possible.
In my dissertation I draw several conclusions from this comparison of the two versions of the Deduction. First, although it is often suggested that the second edition Deduction represents a radical change in Kant’s position, my account shows that this is not the case. In both versions Kant defends the same necessary connection between sensibility and the understanding. The second version simply offers a more direct and convincing account of their relation. My account thus supports Kant’s own claim that the two Deductions are not fundamentally different in aim. Second, the comparison of the two Deductions helps elucidate Kant’s general purpose in the Deduction, for it reveals that in both versions Kant’s central concern is to explain the possibility of experience by appeal to the tight integration of our sensible and intellectual powers. This Kantian strategy has deeply influenced the work of recent analytical philosophers such as Sellars and McDowell, suggesting that Kant’s Deduction remains quite relevant to contemporary attempts to understand our cognitive relation to the world. In my dissertation I aim to provide a reading of the Deduction that makes perspicuous how it is that Kant’s work can continue to be relevant in this way.