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Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, Non-Conceptualism, and the Fitness-for-Purpose Objection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2018

Robert Watt
Robert Watt*
Affiliation:
Cambridge University
*
Email: rbw28@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The subject of this article is a powerful objection to the non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. Part of the purpose of the deduction is to refute the sort of scepticism according to which there are no objects of empirical intuition that instantiate the categories. But if the non-conceptualist interpretation is correct, it does not follow from what Kant is arguing in the transcendental deduction that this sort of scepticism is false. This article explains and assesses a number of possible responses to this objection.

Keywords

non-conceptualismtranscendental deductionfitness-for-purposetranscendental arguments
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 65 - 88
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2018 

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