This chapter focuses on mystical experience. It considers especially the late medieval mystical accounts of and about women, which are particularly rich in their experiential and affective dimensions. The chapter shows that mystical experience lives within the tension of uniqueness and exemplarity, setting the individual apart from the community while also often arising out of its shared life and perceived to serve and inspire it. Mystical experience is also characterized by the paradox between extensive practices of preparation and recognizable patterns of experience on the one hand and the sense of the givenness of the experience on the other. Mystical experience is frequently abundant and overwhelming, marked by intense affect and emotion, displayed in bodily fashion, full of rich sensory impressions, and combining suffering and ecstasy, sometimes in the same experience. In all these respects, mystical experience displays a phenomenality of excess and saturation.

I reconstruct the preliminary arguments of the Transcendental Aesthetic, which provide the criteria of on which Kant’s central arguments will turn. Kant characterizes intuition as (i) object-giving, (ii) immediate, (iii) affection-dependent representation containing (iv) a matter of sensation that can be distinguished from (v) an a priori form. I explain Kant’s curiously teleological claim that all thought “aims at” intuition in terms of his “baseline conception” of intuition as providing nonintellectual grounds of truth: This is what it means for intuition to be object-giving. I then argue that Kant’s theory of discursive marks entails that object-giving representations must be immediate. Further, the intuition paired with a discursive intellect must be receptive (i.e. affection dependent). These claims can be justified via pure apperception. What cannot be is Kant’s characterization of intuition as sensible. But I show that Kant’s form/matter distinction and his subsequent arguments require only the receptivity of intuition, not its sensory embodiment. The chief doctrines of the Aesthetic can be justified via pure apperception, as part of a top-down approach to intuition.

The final two Metaphysical Expositions argue that our original representation of space must be intuitive. I draw some surprising connections between Kant’s discussion and Leibniz’s account of the continuum. These connections indicate that the point of Kant’s analysis of <space> is to show that our original representation of space is infinitely complex in content. Since no discursive representation can be infinitely complex, our concept <space> cannot derive its content from discursive spontaneity. Its content must rather be given to the mind in order to be thought at all and thus originates in receptive intuition. Kant’s argument does not hinge on the singularity or holistic structure of space, as many hold, but on its infinite complexity and consequent givenness. I develop a novel account of the discursivity of conceptual representation that preserves the validity of Kant’s argument, defend Kant’s account of the infinity of space against prominent objections, and finally indicate how Kant’s argument entails the singularity of intuition (rather than presupposing it).

I provide a Stufenleiter of human intuition that systematizes Kant’s discussions. Starting with intuition überhaupt, as object-giving representation, I distinguish spontaneous from receptive intuition. I divide receptive intuition into sensible and non-sensible; and divide sensible intuition into inner and outer sense, under which our human varieties of temporal and spatial intuition fall as instances (not species). This chapter offers detailed accounts of givenness and of cognitive spontaneity (the other differentia are addressed in Chapter 8). I argue that givenness, the fundamental criterion of intuition überhaupt, involves securing both (i) the existence of the object and (ii) thought’s cognitive access to it. One might worry that these functions could come apart. I address this worry by developing a novel interpretation of spontaneity and its opposite, receptivity. As applied to representations, I argue, these notions are fundamentally epistemic and explanatory. This is why the functions cannot come apart and why a representation that performs one function spontaneously (or, as the case may be, receptively) must also perform the other spontaneously (or receptively).

This chapter examines typical uses of referring expressions in spontaneous discourse by building on the concept of context of situation and considering how parameters of register establish a framework for reference variation. We formulate a way to capture distinctions between what we can claim about typical referring expressions which approximate spontaneous production as compared to typical referring expressions when more planning and revising are involved. Focussing specifically on mode of production, our account of spontaneous reference is first situated by contextual parameters, and then described using evidence from examples attested in spontaneous discourse. This spontaneous vs planned distinction is useful for the study of reference, but we argue against a strict division. Typical reference in spontaneous discourse is shown to rely on highly accessible and in focus referents, which makes it easier for acts of reference to be successful and which reduces the cognitive load of the speaker and addressee.

This chapter unpacks the complex stitching that makes up the reference tapestry by reviewing theories of indefiniteness and definiteness and by examining the complex issues of in-/definiteness. The chapter argues that definiteness is a speaker-centred concept, including whether the speaker expects the addressee able to share a sufficiently similar conceptualisation of the referent and that the entire discourse event contributes to the establishment of an entity as definite or not. For this reason, we argue for the separation of reference (function) from the expression (form). An indefinite expression (form) can be used for definite reference (function) and a definite expression (form) can be used for indefinite reference (function). There is no one-to-one relationship between the lexicogrammatical realisation of the expression and its function in an act of reference. The chapter includes discussion of various types of referential choice including lexical expressions, pronouns, and proper names.