Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T22:52:34.005Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant’s Better-than-Terrible Argument in the Anticipations of Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2020

David Landy
David Landy*
Affiliation:
San Francisco State University
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars working on Kant’s Anticipations of Perception generally attribute to him an argument that invalidly infers that objects have degrees of intensive magnitude from the premise that sensations do. I argue that this rests on an incorrect disambiguation of Kant’s use of Empfindung (sensation) as referring to the mental states that are our sensings, rather than the objects that are thereby sensed. Kant’s real argument runs as follows. The difference between a representation of an empty region of space and/or time and a representation of that same region as occupied by an object entails that, in addition to their extensive magnitude, objects must be represented as having a matter variable in intensive magnitude. Since it is the presence of sensation (sensing) in a cognition that marks the difference between representing only the extensive magnitude of the object and the object as a whole, it is sensation that represents its intensive magnitude.

Keywords

Anticipations of Perceptionintensive magnitudesensationperceptionmattercontinuity
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 77 - 101
Check for updates
Copyright
© Kantian Review, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aquila, Richard (1982) ‘Is Sensation the Material of Appearances?’. In Gram, Moltke (ed.), Interpreting Kant (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press), 11–29.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jonathan (1966) Kant’s Analytic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Buroker, Jill Vance (2006) Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511809545CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falkenstein, Lorne (1995) Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Giovanelli, Marco (2011) Reality and Negation: Kant’s Principle of the Anticipations of Perception. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-94-007-0065-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1987) Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511624766CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jankowiak, Tim (2013) ‘Kant’s Argument for the Principle of Intensive Magnitudes’. Kantian Review, 18(3), 387–412.10.1017/S1369415413000162CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998). Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511804649CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2005) Notes and Fragments. Ed. Guyer, Paul, trans. Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer and Frederick Rauscher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511498756CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landy, David (2015) Kant’s Inferentialism: The Case Against Hume. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315691602CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. Peter, H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Nolan, Lawrence (ed.) (2011) Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and Ongoing Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199556151.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Ralph C. S. (1978) Kant. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Wang, Weijia (2018) ‘Kant’s Argument for the Principle of Anticipations of Perception’. Philosophical Forum, 49(1), 61–81.10.1111/phil.12179CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, Daniel (2011) Reality and Impenetrability in Kant’s Philosophy of Nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar