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Lorne Falkenstein, Kant's Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995. Pp. xxiii + 465.
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Lorne Falkenstein, Kant's Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995. Pp. xxiii + 465.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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References
1 Kitcher, Patricia Kant's Transcendental Psychology (New York: Oxfqrd University Press 1990)Google Scholar; Brook, Andrew Kant and the Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 There is also the Synthesis of Reproduction in the Imagination. It plays little role either in Falkenstein's account or in my comments — probably too little role.\
3 Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason. 1781/1787. Critique of Pure Reason. Ttrans. Smith, N. Kemp in 1927 as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan 1963)Google Scholar. Falkenstein quotes this passage, too, and discusses the Synthesis,of Apprehension briefly. However, he does not examine whether it might be a counter-example to his general thesis. His suggestion that it was deleted from the B-edition and therefore cannot be considered canonical is not altogether sound, incidentally. The passage was deleted but the notion of Synthesis of Apprehension most assuredly was not, and there is no reason to think that Kant changed his mind about its character (B-edition, §26). In fairness I must allow, however, that some of what Kant says about it there supports Falkenstein's general view.
4 Interestingly, Falkenstein worries that Kant himself backs into this problem without noticing it (68).
5 Falkenstein considers the relationship of Kant's early view of space and time in the Inaugural Dissertation to the Transcendental Deduction but not his own view (68-9).
6 As I argue elsewhere, this observation that we are aware of only intuitions of the present moment may also help to explain Kant's strange notion that ‘time … cannot be a determination of outer appearance’ (A33=B49; see A23=B37).
7 Brook, Andrew ‘Kant's A Priori Methods for Recognizing Necessary Truths,’ in The A Priori Revisited, Hanson, Philip and Hunter, Bruce eds., Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 18 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1992). 215–52Google Scholar.
8 The same argument holds, mutatis mutandis, for conceptual organization using the categories: there has to be something that resists some conceptualizations and facilitates others.
9 Falkenstein's own thoughts on the matter may be taking a similar direction (‘Response to Commentators,’ North American Kant Society/Canadian Philosophical Association Symposium on his book, Memorial University, June 3, 1997, and personal communications). As Falkenstein notes (110), Kant says nothing directly to the point, but Aquila is a recent commentator who urges that for Kant intuitions as they arrive already have something that allows their spatiotemporal placement. Unfortunately, supporting texts are scarce. However, if intuitions prior to our contribution provided no information useful for sorting them spatiotemporally and conceptually, the result would be some form of solipsistic relativism, about the farthest thing from Kant's mind (though the risk of solipsism is real on some versions of the unknowability thesis and seems nearby at some points in Falkenstein's analysis [316, for example)). In fact, contrary to Kant, this information may itself have to be temporal. As Falkenstein notes, Kant talks about becoming aware of intuitions only after they have been spatiotemporally organized; subject to synthesis, etc. (141).
10 In fact, Kant offers more than these four (or five) ways. He also maintains that intuitions are singular representations whereas products of the understanding can be common to a number of particulars. Falkenstein argues, convincingly to my mind, that this difference falls out of more basic differences between intuition and understanding and is not definitive in its own right. He also argues, again persuasively, that Kant equivocates over ‘intuition’ here. In any case, singular representations could clearly be the result of a lot of cognitive processing and so are not at all the kind of thing that Falkenstein needs.
11 Flanagan, O. makes a similar point about qualia: thoughts, etc., have qualia — there is something it is like to have them — just as much as visual experiences, dreams, etc. (Consciousness Reconsidered [Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1992), 67–8)Google Scholar.
12 Falkenstein's contrast between the physical and the cognitive is unfortunate; for any materialist, cognition will be just as physical as anything intuitional. This move does suggest that by ‘physical’ here Falkenstein means ‘sensible,’ however. (He tries to avoid begging the question of whether the cognitive is physical (119) but his terms belie his effort. The same is true of his attempt to treat the intuitional as physiological: all cognition is physiological for a materialist.)
13 Fodor, J. The Modularity of Mind (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 2D is a term coined by Marr, David (Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation of Visual Information [New York: W.H. Freeman 1982]Google Scholar) for an image of an object that has dimensionality but not the full range of three dimensional properties of a finished object.
15 This point also raises a question about whether reception and distribution of particular intuitions are intuitional processes as Falkenstein defines the latter. ‘If you believe that a certain output is already contained in the input to a processor … then you are what I call “an intuitionist”’ (7). By this definition, Kant was not an intuitionist about sensible intuition. I think that this is merely a terminological problem and will say no more about it.
16 Actually we can distinguish a third, too, though it is not relevant to Falkenstein's analysis:
3. What is immediately given to consciousness.
For Kant, these items would be the results of what is done to items of type 2. They are the immediately given of those things that are ‘something to me’ (A111, A116, A120, B131-2).
17 Falkenstein also takes me to task for advocating this reading (378 n.3;J make the claim in Kant and the Mind, 197, and elsewhere).
18 Dennett, D. Consciousness Explained (New York: Little, Brown 1991)Google Scholar
19 Falkenstein's reading is clarified and perhaps modified in ‘Response to Commentators,’ North American Kant Society/Canadian Philosophical Associaijon Symposium.
20 Falkenstein may have the Refutation of Idealism wrong when he says that Kant maintains in it that we are aware even of ourselves only as we appear but my views on it are controversial. See my ‘Realism in the Refutation of Idealism,’ Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1995) 313-20.
21 I would like to thank Lome Falkenstein, Robert Stainton and two anonymous referees for this journal for many helpful comments and suggestions. Lome Falkenstein's contribution has been particularly important. Given how hard I.push him on some issues, his willingness to push back again and again until I fina1ly got clear about what I wanted to say was exceptionally valuable.