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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
An account of judgment ought to explain the fact that a judgment is, or may be, about some object. A judgment may be about some object if it contains some part, or term, which is related to the object, on the one hand, and related to- ‘combined with’ — the other parts of the judgment, on the other, in such a way that the whole judgment is consequently about that object. The relation of that term to the object may be called ‘reference.’ (If the judgment is analyzed into intuition and concept, then it is the relation whereby the intuition is of whatever it may be of.) It is the relation of ‘reference’ that might make a judgment ‘objective,’ and make it be about one or another particular object; and it is the relation combining the referring term (perception, intuition) with another term (concept, predicate) that makes the whole thing a judgment; that is, that makes the whole thing represent something as being true of the object referred to.
1 I would like to thank Robert Almeder, David Blumenfeld, James Humber, and the referees of this journal for their comments on this paper. I would also like to thank Dennis Stampe, for his comments on this, and from whom I have learned much about Kant.
2 This terminology assumes an analogy between the judgment itself and its linguistic expression in an utterance in which some expression literally refers to some object or other.
3 Kant, Immanuel The Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Smith, N.K. (New York: St. Martin's 1964.)Google Scholar, A 68/B93, 105. Hereafter, reference to this work will be cited in the text, abbreviating The Critique of Pure Reason as CPR.
4 See CPR A50/B75, 93, A93/B125, 126.
5 See also CPR B165, 173.
6 Hanna, Robert ‘Kant's Theory of Empirical Judgment and Modem Semantics,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (1990), 345Google Scholar
7 Thompson, Manley ‘Singular Terms and Intuitions in Kant's Epistemology,’ Review of Metaphysics 26 (1972) 314-43Google Scholar
8 Kant, Immanuel Lectures on Logic, Vienna Logic, 904, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Trans. Michael Young, J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992).Google Scholar Hereafter all references to the transcripts of Kant's Lectures on Logic will be made in the text.
9 See also Kant, Immanuel Logic. Trans. Hartman, Robert S. and Schwartz, Wolfgang (New York: Bobbs Merrill 1974) §1, n.2, 96.Google Scholar
10 Kant, Logic, 37-8; italics mine.Google Scholar
11 Strawson, P.F. ‘On Referring,’ Mind 59 (1950) 320-40CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 I am indebted here to a suggestion of one of the journal's referees about how to extend Kant's account beyond cases of direct perception.
13 See also CPR A320/B376.
14 Kant, Logic, 38–40Google Scholar
15 Cf. Blomberg, 235: ‘Experience is reflected sensation or sensation expressed through a judgment.’
16 One might try to argue that because the concepts in question are a priori, they do not apply to objects. But Kant goes to great lengths to establish their application to objects. (Whether he succeeds is another question.) My point is just that the mere fact that we must apply concepts to identify the objects given in intuition does not entail that the objects represented are themselves representations.
17 Kant, Immanuel Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Trans. Ellington, James (New York: Bobbs-Merrill 1970), 12Google Scholar
18 See 344-7. Hanna then argues that Kant's theory of abstraction — of intuitive and discursive Merkmal— is inadequate: it cannot adequately account for how to trace the concept back to the object from which it is derived (i.e. the object referred, to according to Hanna). Thus, he thinks Kant cannot account for reference to particulars (Hanna, 345-6 ). But if, as I have argued, Kant does not hold that the subject terms of such atomic empirical judgments are concepts or that concepts necessarily refer to what they are derived from, then the fact that Kant's doctrine of abstraction 'doesn't provide the wherewithal’ to trace the concept back to the object from which it is derived is of no consequence to the adequacy of Kant's theory of reference.
19 Hanna's interpretation is wrong for this reason as well: the concepts that are necessary in order for the representation to be about an object are pure concepts not empirical ones. Pure concepts are not derived from some object; they are original. Since Kant holds that it is pure concepts that are necessarily employed in the having of ‘perceptual’ representations (as distinguished from bare intuitions), he cannot hold, as Hanna maintains, that the referent of the representation is that object that the concept is derived from.
Finally, even if Hanna could show that, when referring, empirical concepts must be utilized in the synthesis of intuitions, Kant's view is not that in unifying intuitions as we do we come to have a certain empirical concept which then refers to what it was derived from. It is rather that the concept ‘serves as a rule’ to govern the synthesis of intuitions and, as a result of that, the representation is about an object —that object that those intuitions are the effect of. And, of course, one cannot both employ some concept (empirical or otherwise) to unify intuitions and in the same process or mental act derive that same concept. That would require that one use the concept to get the concept.
20 Strawson, Peter in Individuals (London: Methuen 1971), 15–31Google Scholar
21 Donnellan, in ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions,’ The Philosophical Review 65 (1966) 281–309;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kripke, in Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 Prichard, Kant's Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1909), 147Google Scholar
23 Prichard argues for such a view- that because the relation of the perception to the object fails to be a relation that could make the judgment apply to that object, in fact judgments are about the perception that serves as subject term. Prichard's argument fails to establish this.
24 Cf. Russell regarding the unity of the proposition: ‘Consider, for example, the proposition “A differs from B.” The constituents of this proposition, if we analyze it, appear to be only A, difference, B. Yet these constituents, thus placed side by side, do not reconstitute the proposition. The difference which occurs in the proposition actually relates A and B, whereas the difference after analysis is a notion which has no connection with A and B …. A proposition, in fact is essentially a unity, and when analysis has destroyed the unity, no enumeration of constituents will restore the proposition’ (Russell, B. The Principles of Mathematics (London: George, Allen, and Unwin 1900), § 5).Google Scholar
Enumerating the constituents just gives one a list, not a proposition. Bradley, of course, argued that accounting for the unity of judgment by enumerating constituents creates a regress, since there will always be some further constituent required to relate the things already enumerated.
25 It is worth noting that if subsumption were the relation between constituents in virtue of which the judgment represents something as being the case, as Hanna and Prichard suggest, Kant would not be observing that logicians have failed to specify that relation.
26 Where the judgment is comprised instead of two concepts, the relation of the judgment to the object is still less direct: the concept in the predicate term will represent the object via the concept which serves as subject term. And that subject concept will itself be related to an object through intuition.
Even when both of the constituents of judgment are concepts, they perform different functional roles in the judgment: whatever serves as subject term - whether a concept or intuition-functions to determine the object that the judgment is about; and the concept which serves as predicate term functions to make an attribution to that object.
27 Frege, Gottlob ‘Function and Concept’ in Translations of the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Trans. Geach, and Black, (Oxford: Blackwell Press 1966), 31; italics mine.Google Scholar
28 ‘The concept (as I understand the word) is predicative’ (Frege, in ‘Concept and Object’ in Translations of the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, 43).Google Scholar
29 Notice that, contrary to what many commentators have supposed, Kant cannot think that a statement or a judgment is a concept, no more than Frege did. (Concepts could only be one kind of constituent necessary to make a statement or judgment.) A concept is something which will, when it is used in a judgment, ‘relate to a representation of a determinate object'; that is, when it is supplied with an object by the intuition, a concept will serve to make an attribution to the object of that intuition. But, abstracted from its use in a judgment, a concept is just a predicate of a possible judgment, i.e., something which does not but which could come to make an attribution to a determinate object. Kant believes that a judgment, by itself, does make an attribution to a determinate object: but by his own definition of ‘concept' (complex or otherwise), a concept, by itself, cannot make an attribution to an object. Therefore, for Kant, a judgment cannot be a concept.
30 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. Pears, and McGuiness, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1961).Google Scholar Reference is to §2.151, 9.
31 I am indebted here to a referee for this journal.
32 Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Paton, H.J. (New York: Harper & Row 1964). Reference is to 4:412:80.Google Scholar
33 He says, ‘mere succession in my apprehension, if there be no rule determining the succession in relation to something that precedes, does not justify me in assuming any succession in the object. I render my subjective synthesis of apprehension objective only by reference to a rule in accordance with which the appearance in their succession, that is, as they happen, are determined by the preceding state. The experience of an event (i.e. of anything as happening) is itself possible only on this assumption' (CPR B242/ A197, 224; italics mine).
34 I am indebted here to this way of thinking of Kant's ‘representation of a representation of an object’ to Dennis Stampe.
35 The second sentence in this quotation is altered in the Preface to B to read: ‘But this permanent cannot be an intuition in me. For all grounds of determination of my existence which are to be met with in me are representations; and as representations themselves require a permanent distinct from them, in relation to which their change, and so my existence in time wherein they change, may be determined’ (CPR B xi, 36). Cf. also, ‘The representation of something permanent in existence is not the same as permanent representation. For though the representation of [something permanent] may be very transitory and variable like all our other representations … it yet refers to something permanent. This latter must therefore be an external thing distinct from all my representations ...’ (CPR B xli, 38).