Kant on the original synthesis of understanding and sensibility

Abstract

In this paper, I propose a novel interpretation of the role of the understanding in generating the unity of space and time. On the account I propose, we must distinguish between the unity that belongs to determinate spaces and times which is a result of category-guided synthesis and which is Kant's primary focus in §26 of the B-Deduction, including the famous B160-1nand the unity that belongs to space and time themselves as all-encompassing structures. Non-conceptualist readers of Kant have argued that this latter unity cannot be the product of categorial synthesis. While they are correct that this unity is not the product of any particular act of category-guided synthesis, I argue that conceptualists are right to nevertheless attribute this unity to the understanding. I argue that it is a result of what we can think of as the 'original' synthesis of understanding and sensibility themselvesit is a synthesis, moreover, in which the whole is logically prior to the parts.

Kant’s Original Space and Time as Mere Grounds for Possibilities

“…3 In relation to certain topics, these camps align with those that are otherwise called Conceptualists and Non-Conceptualists (see e.g. Schulting 2015 andWilliams 2018), or those who favour a Synthesis and those who favour a Brute Given Reading (see Messina 2014). The reason I have chosen to adopt the proposed titles is (1) that certain intellectualists, to whom I will refer, adopt a position according to which the unities of space and time are produced by pre-conceptual synthesis, and (2) I take the debate to ultimately bear on the issue of whether the understanding (Verstand) and sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) can, in Kant's Transcendental Idealism, be understood as distinct faculties that make independent contributions to cognition.…”

“…The most devastating arguments against the categorial brand of intellectualism are now well rehearsed in the literature (cf. Messina 2014, McLear 2015, Onof and Schulting 2015, Williams 2018). One argument is that categorial intellectualism does not cohere well with Kant's text.…”

Kant, Animal Minds, and Conceptualism

“…The word "appearances" designates the objects of intuition, rather than some more demanding state such as judgment or experience (A20/B34; A34/B51; A35/B52), and this quotation describes a priori rules as a condition for objects being "given," not for some more demanding "relation to the object" (contra Allais 2015).26 The most serious motivation for denying that the intuitions of space and time are produced through synthesis is the argument that their whole-prior-to-part structure of mereological dependence is incompatible with being produced through synthesis (see McLear 2015). This merits further discussion, but see rebuttals byLand (2014),Williams (2018), and especiallyRosefeldt (Manuscript).27 In the light of this, there is good reason to read B160-61n as advancing the same position. Nonconceptualists have attempted to explain away B160-61n by claiming that it applies only to geometrical constructions, not to our most basic intuitions of space and time(Onof and Schulting, 2015).…”

The current status of research on Kant´s Transcendental Deduction

“…As James Conant, in his excellent programmatic recent essay (Conant 2016)-in my opinion, one of the best articles on the Deduction of the last twenty years or so-delineates in detail in terms of what he calls 'exegetical puzzles', there is, first, the issue of the relationship between the Transcendental Deduction and the Transcendental Aesthetic, secondly, the relation between the A-and B-Deduction, and thirdly, the relation between the so-called 'first' and 'second steps' of the B-Deduction. Some aspects of these 'puzzles' have recently been debated more intensely than before; for example, a spate of articles on Kant's notion of space in relation to the role of the understanding (Friedman 2012;Land 2014;Messina 2014;McLear 2015;Onof and Schulting 2015;Blomme 2017;Williams 2018;Roche 2018; see also Vinci 2015) have brought to light the difficulties in assessing the first exegetical puzzle. In addressing this puzzle in the context of interpreting the structure and argumentative thrust of the Deduction, the results of this newer research must be taken into account.…”