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Kant On Marks and The Immediacy of Intuition
Kant On Marks and The Immediacy of Intuition
2 (April 2000)
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distinction
mediate
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of contrast:
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relation
Kant
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ture.5
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to its object
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of
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senses
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to his notion of a
in the Stufenleiter, bringing
out their connection
In section
Kant's
really possible
object of thought.
3, I elucidate
definition
tion
of predication.
In section
4, I examine
Leibnizian
his pivotal,
concepyet almost
6For Hintikka's most detailed defense of this reading, see "On Kant's
Notion of Intuition (Anschauung)," in Kant'sFirst Critique,ed. T. Penelhum
and J. J. MacIntosh, (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1969), 38-53. The assumption that the relation of intuitions to objects can be understood on
the model of the reference of singular terms has not gone unchallenged.
See Manley Thompson's classic article, "Singular Terms and Intuitions in
Kant's Epistemology," Review of Metaphysics26 (1972) and Kirk Wilson,
"Kant on Intuition," PhilosophicalQuarterly25 (1975).
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there are intuitions that do not relate to objects by means of marks. Concepts, in contrast, relate to objects by means of marks as a matter of logical
necessity. Intuitions that do not relate to objects by means of marks would
an understandbe intuitions had by a being with intuitive understanding,
ing that does not cognize objects through concepts and thus does not
cognize things through marks (intuitive as well as discursive) at all. Kant's
notion of an intuitive understanding,
though notoriously difficult, is one
that plays a central role in his critical philosophy. Such an understanding
would be archetypal: it would create the things it cognizes, through its
cognition of them. It is thus akin to the kind of understanding
(at least of
created things) traditionally ascribed to God. I say a little more about
in section 3, as well as in note 48;
Kant's notion of intuitive understanding
one of the advantages of the account of marks developed in section 3 is
that it serves to clarify this notion.
12Any plausible reading of these notions needs to address complex and
still unresolved interpretive problems posed by a myriad of extremely difficult texts, and is thus apt to prove controversial. The one I offer is origand defense. In
inal, and consequently in need of extensive development
the present section, however, I will merely state the reading in outline,
citing a few crucial supporting passages. The outline should serve to orient
the reader for subsequent sections, which will provide, among other things,
the needed development
and defense of this reading.
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But at B 234-35 / A 189-90 Kant employs another term standardly translated with 'object'-' Gegenstand'.A Gegenstandin Kant's
sense is a thing insofar as it is consciously represented and so constitutes an Objekt.'5And a thing (Ding res) in the relevant sense is,
in turn, not just anything, but something real (etwas reales): something whose esse is not percipibut has its being, so that it can exist,
outside of being represented. Kant holds the Aristotelian view that
what makes something a thing is its being the subject of activity.
Numbers, figures, concepts-all on Kant's view are ideal, not (even
empirically) real.'6
Something that is not a Gegenstandcan be an Objektin the second
sense: for example, the geometric figure of which we are conscious
in doing geometry is, on Kant's view, not real, and so not a Gegenstand; however, it is an Objektthat one's geometric concepts and
intuitions designate. Moreover, Kant's remark that "appearances,
*14Note that the same material representational content-that common
to the sensation of pain and the concept of pain-can constitute different
representations, in Kant's sense of 'representation'. I will develop this point
further in section 4.
'5Keep in mind that B 234-35 / A 189-90 implies that a thing can be
an Objektin the first sense.
16I provide textual grounds for these readings of 'Dinge and 'Gegenstand'
in an unpublished manuscript, "What Can We Know about Things in
Themselves?" The connection between these two notions is evident in
Kant's claim that we can give content to our concepts of a Gegenstandonly
by relating them to contents given in our sensibility, where sensibility is
"the capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in
which we are affected by objects [Gegenstdnden]" (A 19 / B33); he makes
this claim, for example, at B147, in an important passage that I discuss in
note 20, below.
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insofar as they are, merely as representations, at the same time,
Gegenstdnde of consciousness, do not differ from their apprehension" implies that a Gegenstandcan be an Objektin merely the first
of the two senses Kant distinguishes. So considered appearances
are contained in consciousness "merely as representations" and
do not stand for an Objekt,so considered, appearances, like sensations, relate "only to the subject as a modification of its state."
What makes appearances so considered, nonetheless, Gegenstdnde
of consciousness is that in this consciousness we are conscious of
our own activity in uniting them.
Notice that in the StufenleiterKant contrasts concepts and intuitions in respect of the ways in which they relate to a Gegenstand,a
thing insofar as it constitutes an Objekt.Moreover, the Gegenstand
Kant has in mind is an Objektin the second sense, for it is the
Gegenstand to which an objective perception relates, and so the
Gegenstandit designates. In light of what we have seen about Kant's
use of these terms, I propose that a perception is objective, in the
sense of the Stufenleiter,if it is one in which the subject is conscious
of a content that she can predicate of a thing in cognizing it: it is
a representation that can make up the content of an act of cognizing a thing.'7 Unless I specify another sense, I will hereafter use
'object' to refer to a Gegenstandthat is an instance of an Objektin
the second sense.'8
We can clarify what makes a perception objective by looking at
Kant's conception of what it is to cognize (erkennen)a thing. In the
Logic he characterizes cognizing as a degree of the "objective content" of our cognition:
The third: kennen is to represent something in comparisonwith other
things in respect of identity as well as diversity.
The fourth: erkennen,kennenwith consciousness.
(Logic, Introduction?8; 9:64-65)
17Note that what makes any perception an objective one, is only the
possibilityof its constituting, perhaps only with other representations, a Gegenstand. In geometry, we employ the concept triangle to think, not about
a thing, but about the figure. This concept is, nonetheless, an objective
perception, because we can use it to think of a triangular thing.
18This sense seems close to the sense of 'object' that Strawson dubs
'weighty'; see The Bounds of Sense (New York: Routledge, 1989), 73. Strawson, however, does not distinguish Objektand Gegenstand,and so does not
specify that the sense he has in mind has the force of being ontologically
weighty.
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It may be surprising that Kant draws his distinction between concepts and intuitions as one between two species of objective perthat we can relate to things in cognizing
ceptions-perceptions
those things. After all, there are concepts (for instance, that of the
faculty of thought or the categorical form of judgment) that are
not concepts of a Gegenstand.But Kant often uses 'concept' in a
restrictive sense, on which a concept is a general representation
through which one can cognize, not just any subject matter, but a
thing. Indeed, more generally, throughout the first critique Kant
typically uses 'cognition' to refer to objective perception.20
Kant's account, the same holds of the consciousness had in cognitions that
are concepts, or even both "concepts and intuitions at the same time."
The cognition had in geometry is one in which one is conscious of an
objective content-the
content triangle, for instance, is one through which
one can be conscious of the identity of a body in an act of cognizing it.
But Kant is a conceptualist about geometric figures, and denies that figures
are things: not being possible existents, they cannot exist outside of being
represented
(see next note). Since in doing geometry one is concerned
merely with the figure, and not with triangular things, it follows that in
doing geometry one has cognition, despite not being conscious of objective
contents as objective contents.
20In the B edition Transcendental
Deduction we find a crucial case of
such usage, one concerning mathematical concepts:
Through the determination of pure intuition we can acquire a priori cognition
of objects [Gegenstdnden] (in mathematics), but only in regard to their form,
as appearances; whether there can be things which must be intuited in this
form, is still left undecided. Mathematical concepts are not, therefore, of themselves cognition, except on the supposition that there are things which allow
of being presented to us only in accordance with the form of that pure sensible
intuition. Now things in space and time are given only in so far as they are
perceptions (that is, representations accompanied by sensation)-therefore
only through empirical representation. Consequently, the pure concepts of understanding, even when they are applied to a priori intuitions, as in mathematics, yield cognition only in so far as these intuitions-and therefore indirectly by their means the pure concepts also-can be applied to empirical
intuitions. (B 147)
Kant uses 'cognition' in a sense in which mathematical concepts constitute
cognitions only in virtue of being contents that can be related to things in
are cognitions of objects. But
cognizing (and not mere thinking) them-so
it is only insofar as these a priori intuitions make up the form of empirical
intuitions (objective perceptions that relate to an object in an experience
of that object) that mathematical concepts constitute representations
of
things. This is why Kant makes it a condition of mathematical concepts
constituting cognitions that a priori intuitions are partially constitutive of
experience. Indeed, the second step of the B edition Deduction is, in part,
devoted to establishing that this condition holds-a
point I intend to develop elsewhere.
244
In the rest of the paper, I will follow Kant in using 'concept' and
'cognition' in this restrictive sense. A mark, in the sense with which
we will be concerned, is an identifying property through which we
can cognize a thing; Kant's notion of a mark, then, is that of a
property through which we can cognize, not just any subject matter, but things.2'
Before I turn to Kant's account of a mark, however, I need to
introduce a further distinction between two senses in which he
employs the term 'cognition'. What it is to cognize a thing in the
sense I have explicated thus far must be distinguished from an
epistemologically more restrictive sense on which the first critique
focuses. In particular, Kant holds that cognizing a thing requires
more than merely thinking of it (B xxvi n.). Merely thinking of a
thing requires only that one not contradict oneself in forming
Kant holds that the Objekteof pure intuition (geometric figures and numbers) are not things: they are ideal, and not real, because not capable of
existing outside of being represented. Mathematical concepts are predicable of Gegenstdnde,and so constitute cognitions, only in virtue of the fact
that the syntheses they signify are ones that proceed in accordance with
the axioms of intuition and the anticipations of perception. For, in according with these principles of pure understanding, mathematical concepts
constitute contents that are predicable, through the categories of quality
and quantity, of Gegenstdnde.Thus, Kant claims that mathematical concepts
do not, of themselves, constitute cognitions-that is to say, simply in virtue
of the use to which we put them in (pure) mathematics- "except insofar
as one presupposes that there are things that can be presented to us only
in accordance with the form of that pure intuition."
I am grateful to Tyler Burge for pointing out how I had been misreading
B 147. The present observations about Kant's conception of mathematical
concepts develop a point made originally by Thompson ("Singular Terms
and Intuitions in Kant's Epistemology," 338-39) and discussed instructively
by Parsons in his postscript to "Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic" (147-48).
Friedman puts this point as follows: the objective reality of mathematics
depends on the possibility of applied mathematics, and this possibility is
established not in mathematics, but a priori in transcendental philosophy,
through the arguments for the mathematical principles of the pure understanding (note: not empirically, on the grounds adduced in applying
mathematics in experience). See Friedman's Kant and the Exact Sciences
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 102. The first two chapters
of this book contain a lucid and insightful discussion of Kant's theory of
concepts and intuitions, as well as an important new interpretation of the
nature and motivation of Kant's theory of mathematical construction.
21See, for instance, Kant's remark in the introduction to the first critique that necessity and universality are marks of a priori cognition (B 3);
here 'mark' is used in the broader sense, which will not be in question in
the definitions we will be examining.
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when it is cognized, is the ground on which we are conscious to ourselves of it. (?115; 16:296-97)
The definition suggests that a mark is a property that can exist,
not just in a thing, but also in our cognition of that thing. Indeed,
it suggests that the characteristic function of a mark requires that
it be a property that can exist intentionally, as well as naturally.
Kant, too, adapting Meier's notion of a mark, thinks of cognition
as formal assimilation, and of marks as the mediating element in
this assimilation. This explains why, in the passages cited above,
Kant uses 'property' in such a way that a property of a thing can
make up "part of its cognition": those that can, by existing intentionally in our representation and being related to a thing in a
cognition, are marks. As his remark that every mark "can be considered as a representation in itself" indicates, he takes potential
intentional being in some kind of representation as essential to a
mark: to consider a property as a mark is to consider it, not in
itself, but as the content of a possible representing.26
In order to bring out the Leibnizian conception of predication
implicit in it, I want next to examine the Logic's second characterization of a mark: "a partial representation so far as it is considered
as ground of cognition of the whole representation." Consider first
260n Kant'sview,what makes a propertya markis our being able to be
conscious of it as a propertyof a thing, and it is only by way of its existing
in our representation that we are able to be conscious of it as such a
property.Moreover,marksmay be represented,without therebybeing registered in consciousness,so as to serve as grounds of cognition, as R 2275
makes clear: "In consciousness there are marks.But where marksare represented, there is not alwaysconsciousness" (16:296).
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The notion of a partial representation this characterization employs is also one of the representation of a thing, a representation
that as such is a part of this whole representation, not of just any
representation that contains it. And this characterization reflects a
Leibnizian conception of predication on which to predicate a representation of an object is to regard it as belonging to a possible
whole representation of that thing.
We can now begin to see why Kant specifies that a mark is "a
partial representation so far as it is considered as ground of cognition [Erkenntnisgrund]of the whole representation." As we saw,
Kant holds that we can consider a mark "as a representation in
itself"-that is, apart from the relation it bears to a thing as a part
of its possible whole representation. But to consider it in this way
is to consider it, not as a mark-and so as a content that is predicable of an object-but rather as a mere representation (see section 2). Moreover, what makes a partial representation a mark is
not merely its being a partial representation, a representation that
makes up part of the whole representation of a thing. To consider
a partial representation as a mark is to consider it as "ground of
cognition of the whole representation," and we can, according to
Kant, at least conceive of a mode of cognition in which a partial
representation does not serve as the ground of that cognition. An
critique. Having claimed that all synthetic judgments demand, in addition
to the concepts of the logical subject ("A") and the logical predicate
("B"), some third element ("X") on which its justification rests, Kant
writes:
In the case of empirical judgments, judgments of experience, there is no difficulty whatsoever in meeting this demand. This X is the complete experience
of the object which I think through the concept A-a concept which makes
up only one part of this experience. For though I do not include in the concept
of a body in general the predicate "weight," the concept nonetheless designates the complete experience through one of its parts; and to this part, as
belonging to it, I can therefore add other parts of the same experience. (A 8;
see B 12)
The "complete experience of the object" is a representation
that determines an object in respect of all possible predicates of appearances and
thus as a phenomenon.
On Kant's account, such an objective content
would be infinite and thus one that we, having finite minds, cannot have.
Our concept of such a "complete experience" is, thus, a problematic concept, an idea: its object (like that of the cosmological idea of the world)
cannot be given to us. Nonetheless,
Kant holds that this idea is our idea
of a thing as it appears, of a thing that is determined
in respect of all
possible predicates of appearances.
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256
(repre-
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sentation "insofar as it can be contained in various ones." In contrast, an intuition, as a representation predicable of only one object, is a representation insofar as it cannot be predicated of more
than one object.
Notice that Kant's characterizing a general representation as "a
representation insofar as it can be contained in more than one"
confirms the reading of R 2286 I have been developing. For this
characterization implies that if we abstract from the respective
forms of our concepts and intuitions and attend only to their matter, we can speak of the same partial representation (that is, an
objective content) as one that, in being contained in intuition,
constitutes an intuitive mark, and that, in being reflected, constitutes a discursive mark. Consider, too, R 2287, where, having stated
that "I[a]ll our concepts are marks and all thought representation
through them," Kant adds, "We speak here only of marks as concepts." Finally, the present reading accounts for Kant's describing
a representation as both a concept and an intuition (Logic, Introduction, ?5; 9:33): he has in mind a case in which we reflect on
an objective content that is contained in intuition, an intuitive
mark, so that it simultaneously also constitutes a discursive mark.
Indeed, to do so just is, on Kant's view, to subsume an intuition
under a concept: to recognize an intuitive mark as a singular instance of a discursive mark.
Most of Kant's commentators have entirely overlooked Kant's
distinction between intuitive and discursive marks. And, as a consequence, many give readings of his account of marks that, in effect, equate all marks with discursive ones.40 Moreover, among the
few who have noted the distinction, only one discusses it in any
detail, and none apply it to explicate Kant's contrast between intuitions and concepts.41 As we will now see, our understanding of
cognition, and that a concept's being a ground of cognition consists in its
containing things under itself in virtue of being contained in the whole
representation of those things.
40Robert Howell, for instance, holds that Kant identifies marks with general properties, in Kant's TranscendentalDeduction (Boston: Kluwer, 1992),
66. Allison presents Kant's account of the generation of concepts as a process whereby "impressions become transformed into marks" (Kant's TranscendentalIdealism,67). But what is distinctive about this process is precisely
that it produces discursive marks from intuitive ones.
41I know of three authors who note this distinction: Klaus Reich, The
Completenessof Kant's TableofJudgments,trans. Kneller and Losonsky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 37 (originally published in 1932);
259
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But in speaking of an intuition as referring to an object through "characteristics peculiar to that object alone," Thompson does not have intuitive
marks in mind. This becomes clear when he immediately goes on to remark: "But intuitions then appear to be simply concepts of a special sortindividual or singular rather than general concepts." Thompson thinks of
a mark through which an intuition refers to its object as "peculiar" to its
object not in being an individual proprietary to that object, but rather in
uniquely characterizing that object, so as to distinguish it qualitatively from
all other possible objects: only on this assumption would it make sense to
conclude that intuitions are singular concepts.
Now, as Thompson is well aware, this conclusion is antithetical to Kant's
most central critical tenets. It conflicts with his doctrine, propounded in
the Amphiboly, that, pace Locke and Leibniz, intuitions and concepts are
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notion of an intuitive mark commits Kant to the possibility of intuitions that relate to objects by means of marks. The immediacy
of an intuition's relation to an object, then, cannot consist in its
not relating to an object by means of marks; and the mediacy of a
concept's relation to an object cannot consist in its relating to an
object by means of marks.
In what, then, do the mediacy of concepts and the immediacy
of intuitions consist? Consider the following passage from the
Metaphysical Deduction of the first critique:
Since no representationother than intuition goes immediatelyto an
object, a concept is never related immediatelyto an object, but rather
to some other representationof the same [object] (be it an intuition
or itself already a concept). Judgment is therefore the mediate cognition of an object, that is, the representationof a representationof
it. (A 68 / B 93) 45
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an objective perception an empirical intuition is also what constitutes the relation that empirical intuition has to its object. Moreover, according to Kant's transcendental idealism, this relation that
empirical intuitions have to an object is what constitutes that object-the thing as it appears to which an empirical intuition relates.
Thus, what makes an objective perception an empirical intuition
is the sole ground on which it relates to an object. But this is just
to say that an empirical intuition relates to an object simply
through itself, and so immediately. This sketch explains the sense
in which an appearance is an intuitive mark, a synthetic part (R
2286): it is as a part of the whole possible representation generated
in synthesis that an appearance relates to an object as a ground of
its cognition (see sections 3 and 4) .49
6. Conclusion
I have argued that we ought to reject the standard minimal reading
of Kant's immediacy criterion for intuition. On this reading, the
immediacy of intuition consists in its not relating to its object
through marks. Commentators have uniformly adopted this reading, because they have overlooked Kant's distinction between intuitive and discursive marks. Intuitive marks are singular instances
of properties, as they are represented in, and make up the content
of, our intuitions. Discursive marks, in contrast, are general properties as they are represented in, and make up the content of, our
concepts. Once one sees that Kant makes this distinction, it becomes clear that our intuitions, on his view, relate to objects
through marks-in particular, through the intuitive marks that
make up their contents. For it is a consequence of his view of
indiscursive understanding that any of its cognitions-including
tuition-of a thing must be through marks. The immediacy of our
intuition does not, then, consist in its not relating to its object
through marks. It consists, rather, in the fact that its relation to its
object is not mediated by any further cognition of that object.
Universityof Arizona
49In other work, I develop this sketch of Kant'spositive conception of
the immediacyof intuition, showing how it illumines his accounts of pure
sensible intuition and intellectual intuition. In doing so, I clarifyhow, in
relation to the whole of possible human experience, empirical and pure
sensible intuitions relate to objects as grounds of their genuine cognition.
266