Kant and the concept of an object

Abstract

Abstract“Object” is one of the most important concepts in Kant's philosophy. I argue that Kant's concept of an object involves a hitherto neglected distinction, between what I call the “quantificational” concept of an object (q‐object) and what I call the “representational” concept of an object (r‐object). I examine the relation between these two concepts and argue that there is a close connection, even in the case of q‐objects we cannot sensibly intuit (negative noumena) and the r‐objects of non‐sensible intuition (positive noumena). Even in the non‐sensible case, our only way of representing a concept as having non‐sensible instances (q‐objects) is by conceiving of a kind of intellect that would intuit those objects. We cannot know that such intuition or such objects are possible, but it is only by thinking of such intuition that we can think of such objects as instances of concepts (e.g., the concept “negative noumena”).