Sellars on Kantian intuitions

Abstract

this is quite another matter. (B) Although Sellars does not explicitly say so, the demonstrative expression "this" as it occurs in the judgement 'this is a cube' seems to represent an empirical intuition in virtue of its "obvious connection" with 'this cube'. And it must be said that the demonstrative pronoun would seem to be a plausible choice to represent an empirical intuition for it expresses singularity and possibly immediacy and we can be said to subsume it under a concept by attaching it to a predicate ("This is a red circle"). It seems simply to represent an indeterminate, or at least undetermined, object which has submitted to the conditions of sensibility and therefore to be an adequate representation of an empirical intuition. There are important difficulties associated with this view, however, and the seemingly ingenuous demonstrative conceals more than might at first appear. A minimal prerequisite of an expression which might represent an empirical intuition is, if it refers at all, that it refer to at least and at most one object, for Kant insists throughout the Critique on the singularity of intuitional representation.7 And in order that this be achieved by a demonstrative expression, as I have suggested, certain conditions must be fulfilled. Hence, "this" may be said to refer to at least and at most one object if, it is added: "as uttered by speaker P at place L and at time T". But the only condition which Kant places upon intuitional representation is that, in order to be such, it must have submitted to the forms of sensibility. The introduction of the coordinates of speaker, place, and time is an introduction of conceptual determinations of the intuitional representation. The demonstrative pronoun must therefore be discounted as a possible candidate for the linguistic representation of an empirical intuition. (C) It may be further argued against the possibility of representing an empirical intuition linguistically that an intuition, however empirically indeterminate, is at least categorially determinate; that is to say, is a least something.8 If it is possi7 Cf. A3zo, B376-77, A7I3/B74I8 Az5o: "All our representations, it is true, are referred by the understanding to some object." SELLARS ON KANTIAN INTUITIONS 4 I 5 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.254 on Sun, 04 Sep 2016 06:31:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ble to linguistically represent an intuition, the intuition will necessarily be represented as an object and will be seen, therefore, not merely to have submitted to the conditions of sensibility, but to the concept of an object in general. The expression "this", for example, represents an object, albeit empirically indeterminate, and cannot, therefore, represent an intuition for it already expresses a representation which has submitted to a minimal conceptual determination. Consider Sellars, however: "The view that before we can have representations of the form 'X is a cube' we must have representations of the form 'this cube' is a puzzling one." But this is only puzzling when the expression 'this cube' is said to represent an intuition, at least in the manner of referring to it, and I have been arguing against this. What ought to be said, a view to which Kant would subscribe, is that judgement is not possible without intuition and intuition cannot be represented apart from judgement. It is doubtful, in any case, that Kant would have accepted Sellars' formulation: "Before we can have judgement we must have intuition." Talk of having judgements and intuitions would certainly lead one to believe that we possess such "things". And the question here is whether an analytic device is being interpreted ontologically that is, whether the method of distinguishing elements is being mistaken for an interpretation which demands separating "things". In any case the point Sellars wishes to make here is that the expression 'this cube' is incomplete unless it forms part of a judgement such as 'this cube is a die'. It will be seen that this is a curious inversion of Frege's argument that the concept or propositional function 'X is a die' for example, is "incomplete" or "unsaturated" unless a value is found for the variable. And the trouble is that, as far as Sellars is concerned, there is no argument presented as to why it should be that a singular expression is incomplete or, indeed, precisely what this means.