Kant on Concepts, Intuitions and Sensible Synthesis

Abstract

Abstract For several years there has been a debate about whether Kantian intuitions have conceptual or non-conceptual content. Those who ascribe conceptual content to intuitions argue that for an intuition to be generated representations delivered by sensibility have to be synthesized by the understanding and that concepts have to be deployed in this act of synthesis. Defenders of the view that intuitions have non-conceptual content, by contrast, assume that a concept-involving synthesis is not a necessary condition for having an intuition, but for having a cognition and thus that having an intuition does not require deploying any concepts. In this chapter it is argued that Kant occupies a middle position between these two views. On the one hand, for Kant a concept-involving synthesis is indeed a presupposition for the production of intuitions. On the other hand, from this it does not follow that intuitions have conceptual content in the contemporary sense. This is because Kant distinguishes between different kinds of concepts, namely between obscure, clear, indistinct and distinct concepts. According to him, for a subject to synthesize sensible representations she only has to possess obscure concepts but does not have to possess clear or distinct ones. Yet, if one takes as a basis contemporary conceptions of concepts, then Kantian obscure concepts do not count as concepts at all. Thus, even though Kant claims that sensible synthesis requires possession of concepts, his position resembles the position of those contemporary philosophers who ascribe non-conceptual content to perceptions.