Was Kant a Nonconceptualist?

Author(s): Hannah Ginsborg

Source: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition
, Vol. 137, No. 1, Selected Papers from the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division,
2007 Meeting (Jan., 2008), pp. 65-77
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40208780
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Philos Stud (2008) 137:65-77

DOI 10.1007/sl 1098-007-9163-3

Was Kant a nonconceptualist?

Hannah Ginsborg

Publishedonline: 17 October2007
SpringerScience+BusinessMedia B.V. 2007

Abstract I criticize recent nonconceptualistreadings of Kant's account of perception on the groundsthatthe strategyof the Deductionrequiresthatunderstanding
be involved in the synthesis of imagination responsible for the intentionalityof
perceptual experience. I offer an interpretationof the role of understandingin
perceptual experience as the consciousness of normativity in the association of
one's representations.This leads to a readingof Kantwhich is conceptualist,but in a
way which accommodatesconsiderationsfavoring nonconceptualism,in particular
the primitivecharacterof perceptualexperience relative to thought and judgment.
Keywords Kant Perception Nonconceptualcontent Intentionality
Normativity
Kant says in the Introductionto the Critique of Pure Reason that there are "two
stems of humancognition," namely sensibility, "throughwhich objects are given to
us," and understanding,"throughwhich they are thought"(A15/B29). Althoughhe
mentions there that sensibility and understanding"may perhaps spring from a
common...root" (ibid.), much of the discussion in the early parts of the Critique
conveys the impressionthat they are independentfaculties, each responsiblefor a
distinctaspect of cognition. Sensibilityprovidesus with intuitionsof objects, thatis,
singularrepresentationswhich relate immediatelyto objects. Understanding,on the
otherhand,enablesus to thinkof the objects which are therebygiven to us as falling
undergeneralconcepts, and hence to makejudgmentsaboutthem. As Kantputs it in
the TranscendentalLogic, these two capacities "cannotexchange their functions":
the understandingcannotintuitand the senses cannotthink(A51/B75). The fact that
they are both requiredfor cognition is, he says, no reason for confounding their
H. Ginsborg(El)
Departmentof Philosophy,University of California,Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2390, USA
e-mail: ginsborg@berkeley.edu

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66

H. Ginsborg

contributions; it is, on the contrary, a reason for carefully separating and

distinguishing the one from the other. Kant goes on in the Transcendental Logic
to suggest that his account of the a priori elements of cognition should be seen as
structured in a way which corresponds to this distinction. In the Aesthetic he had
dealt with those elements of cognition - the pure intuitions of space and time which have their origin solely in sensibility. Now, he says, he will "separate out
from our cognition that part of thought which has its origin solely in understanding"
(A62/B87). The implication is that the discussion of the pure intuitions in the
Aesthetic and that of the pure concepts of understanding in the Logic can proceed
independently of each other: one is concerned with "the rules of sensibility," the
other with the "rules of understanding" (A52/B76).
But this apparently clear-cut distinction is quickly complicated by Kant's
introduction of the notion of synthesis, an act of combining or unifying the sensory
manifold which he ascribes to the power of imagination. For imagination seems to
have affinities both with sensibility and with understanding, suggesting that their
functions, of intuition and thought respectively, cannot after all be so neatly
separated. On the one hand, Kant says, "imagination... belongs to sensibility"
(B151). The synthesis of imagination is needed in order for us to form perceptual
images of objects (A 120), and thus is a "necessary ingredient" in the perception of
objects (A120n). This suggests, at least on the face of it, that synthesis is required
for objects to be "given to us" perceptually, at least if there is more to an object's
being given to us than its merely causing sensations in us. Moreover Kant makes
clear that the pure intuitions of space and time which he describes in the Aesthetic
as conditions of the empirical intuition of objects depend on an imaginative
synthesis which is responsible for their unity (B160n). Synthesis thus appears to be
implicated in the having of intuitions, both empirical and pure. On the other hand,
and indeed often in the very same passages, Kant seems to treat imagination as
simply a manifestation of understanding. For example, just after saying that
imagination belongs to sensibility, he claims that its synthesis is an expression of
spontaneity, and that it is an effect of understanding on sensibility (B152). All
combination, he says, including combination of the manifold of intuition, is an act
of the understanding (B130): the spontaneity which "under the title of imagination...
brings combination into the manifold of intuition" is one and the same with the
spontaneity of understanding (B162n). Correspondingly, the pure representations of
space and time, rather than being independent conditions of sensibility, appear to be
structured by the operations of understanding. Thus, referring to the imaginative
synthesis which is responsible for the unity of the intuitions of space and time, Kant
describes it as a matter of "understanding determining sensibility" (B160n).
One way of responding to this complication is simply to assimilate imagination
to understanding. This approach is taken by Sellars, for whom imagination, at least
in the role presently under discussion, just is "the understanding functioning in a
special way" (1968, p. 4). On this approach, the intuitions through which objects are
perceptually given to us "constitute a special class of representations of the
understanding" (1968, p. 9) and thus have conceptual content. There are in addition
nonconceptual "impressions of sheer receptivity" (1968, p. 8) which are due to
sensibility independent of understanding, and which "[provide] the 'brute fact' or
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Was Kant a nonconceptualist?

67

constraining element of perceptual experience" (1968, p. 9), but these are to be

distinguished from intuitive representations proper (1968, p. 28). For Sellars, then,
the distinction between sensibility and understanding is preserved, but intuitions, at
least in the most central Kantian sense, are due to understanding as well as to
sensibility. John McDowell follows Sellars in taking intuitions to be representations
with conceptual content. But he takes a more radical line than Sellars in denying
that there is any constraint on these representations from impressions of "sheer
receptivity." There is thus no role for sensibility independent of understanding:
"understanding is already implicated," he says, "in the deliverances of sensibility
themselves" (1994, p. 46). The only "deliverances of sensibility," for McDowell,
are intuitions in the primary sense, and, as for Sellars, these are conceptual
representations.1
Recent critics of McDowell's conceptualist reading- and here I have primarily in
mind Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais2 - have adopted a contrasting approach which
emphasizes Kant's initial distinction between sensibility and understanding, and
which assimilates imagination to the former rather than the latter. Hanna takes the
distinction between sensibility and understanding to capture the difference between
the "sub-rational or lower-level" cognitive powers of the mind, which we share
with animals, and the mind's "rational or higher-level cognitive powers" (2005,
p. 249). Sensibility, while passive relative to the understanding, is not "entirely
passive," because it "expresses" a "mental power for spontaneous synthesis or
mental processing" which is the "power of imagination" (ibid.). Although
imagination qualifies as spontaneous, its spontaneity is independent of that of the
understanding (2001, p. 37).3 Allais, while not explicitly ascribing imagination to
sensibility, shares Hanna' s commitment to the view that it operates independently
from understanding: a view which she supports with the claim that "synthesizing is
not the same as conceptualizing."4 The upshot for both Hanna and Allais is that
intuitions can be products of synthesis without being bearers of conceptual content.
Part of the appeal of nonconceptualism as a view in its own right is that it seems
to do better justice than conceptualism to what we might call the primitive character
of perception relative to thought and judgment. Conceptualism seems to get the
relation between conceptual activity on the one hand, and perception on the other,
the wrong way round. Surely, it might seem, I do not need to be able to entertain
thoughts involving the concept dog or apple in order to have apples or dogs
presented to me perceptually. On the contrary, it is precisely because I have
perceptions of dogs or apples that I come to be capable of entertaining thoughts with
the corresponding conceptual content. So it is tempting, especially for interpreters
For a recent and very clear statement of the view that intuitions are conceptually determined,see
Engstrom(2006, p. 17).
Hanna (2001, 2005); Allais (forthcoming). Watkins (forthcoming) also criticizes McDowell's
conceptualist reading of Kant, but along different lines which do not involve Kant's views on the
imagination.
3 Rohs
(2001) also defendsthe claim thatKantis committedto an "intuitivespontaneity."Rohs's view is
criticized in Wenzel (2005).
4
Allais, forthcoming.For support,Allais cites Michael Pendlebury'svery helpful articulationof the
contrastin his (1995).

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H. Ginsborg

who are sympathetic to Kant, to read his distinction between sensibility and
understanding as indicating support for this apparently more primitive character of
perception. That is, it is tempting to view sensibility, understood in a broad sense
which includes imagination, as responsible for perceptions whose content can be
entertained by us without any grasp of concepts.
I am sympathetic to many of the considerations which seem to support
nonconceptualism, and in particular to the idea that perception is more primitive
than thought. In this paper, though, I want to present two reasons for rejecting the
nonconceptualist reading of Kant.5 First, as I shall argue in Sect. I, the
nonconceptualist reading prevents us from doing justice to one of the central
projects of the Critique, that of showing that the categories are applicable to objects
given in experience. Second, as I shall argue in Sect. II, at least one of the
considerations apparently supporting nonconceptualism, that bearing on the
primitive character of perception, can be accommodated within a view which is,
broadly speaking, conceptualist.

I
I noted above that both Hanna and Allais interpret imagination, for Kant, as
functioning independently of understanding. This approach to imagination is, I
think, essential to a workable nonconceptualist strategy. For otherwise the only
candidates to be bearers of nonconceptual content are the sensible impressions
belonging to "sheer receptivity," that is, sense-impressions or sensations. And while
these clearly do not depend on concepts, it is implausible to view them as having
representational content in the sense that is at issue in the debate over nonconceptual
content. That debate, as Allais helpfully puts it, is about the possibility of intentional
content without concepts: whether we can have nonconceptual representations
which are object-directed, or which represent objects to us. So for a plausible
nonconceptualist interpretation of Kant, it is not enough to show that Kant allows
the possibility of some kind of sensory awareness prior to any imaginative synthesis.
Rather the defender of the nonconceptualist reading has to show that human
imagination can produce perceptual images of objects in which those objects are
intentionally represented without being brought under concepts.
What, then, is the evidence that Kant takes imagination to function independently
of concepts? Allais develops her point that "synthesizing is not the same as
conceptualizing" by appeal initially to a passage at A78/B103 where Kant says that
"synthesis is in general the mere effect of the imagination" and that the task of
understanding is to bring this synthesis to concepts. She then turns to Kant's
characterization of the "threefold synthesis" in the first edition deduction. Of the
three elements of this synthesis, that is apprehension, reproduction and recognition,
only recognition, she says, explicitly involves concepts; the other two are ascribed
5 I offer criticismsof the
nonconceptualistreadingas partof a more comprehensivediscussionof Kant's
account of experience in my (forthcoming).The present paper both draws on, and supplements,that
discussion.

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Was Kant a nonconceptualist?

69

to imagination. She acknowledges Kant's claim at B 129-130 that all combination,

and thus all synthesis, is an action of the understanding, but points out that most of
the time Kant attributes synthesis to imagination. The textual evidence here is not,
however, conclusive. For if the spontaneity of imagination is, as Kant says at
B162n., "one and the same with" the spontaneity of understanding, then Kant's
attribution of synthesis to imagination does not rule out that it may also be viewed
as an action of understanding.6 And while Kant does indeed describe the
understanding as bringing synthesis to concepts, he also suggests that concepts
are necessary for the unity of the manifold, and hence, it would seem a condition of
synthesis. He says at A 103 that without the synthesis of recognition in a concept
"the manifold of the representation would never form a whole" and that "a concept
is the unitary consciousness which unites the manifold... into one representation."7
Now the passages I have cited are not on their own sufficient to undermine the
nonconceptualist reading, for we might suppose that a charitable reading of Kant
requires us to overlook his identification of the spontaneity of imagination with that
of understanding.8 The problem I want to raise for the nonconceptualist reading is
not the mere fact that Kant makes this identification, and correspondingly takes
understanding to be required for perceptual synthesis, but rather that he needs to
make it if the strategy of the Transcendental Deduction is to have any hope of
success. For part of the aim of the deduction is to show that the pure concepts have
application to objects given to us in experience. And the idea that understanding is
required for perceptual synthesis seems to be an essential part of achieving this
aim.9 Kant says in 21 of the second edition Deduction that he will show "from the
way in which empirical intuition is given in sensibility that its unity is none other
than that which the category prescribes to the manifold of a given intuition in
general." Only by thus explaining "the a priori validity of the category in regard to
all objects of our senses," will "the aim of the deduction be fully attained." But his
strategy for showing that the unity of empirical intuition is "none other than" the
unity prescribed by the categories seems to depend on claiming that this unity is due
precisely to the spontaneity of understanding. He says at 26 that, "when through
apprehension, I make the empirical intuition of a house into a perception... I as it
were draw its form in accordance with the synthetic unity of space" (B162): this is
the unity which initially seemed to be due to sensibility in contrast to understanding.
But, he goes on, "this very same synthetic unity, when I abstract from the form of
space, has its origin in understanding" (ibid.). And he says in the footnote that in
this way he has shown "that the synthesis of apprehension must accord with the
synthesis of apperception" and that it is "one and the same spontaneity," under the
titles of imagination and understanding resoectivelv. which underlies both (B162n).
6 Cf. also B153: it is
understanding"under the title [Benennung] of a transcendentalsynthesis of
imagination"that determinesinner sense.
Kant's identification,emphasizedby McDowell, of the "functionwhich gives unity to the synthesis of
representationsin an intuition"with the "functionwhich gives unity to the differentrepresentationsin a
judgment"(A79/B104-105) can, I think, be read along similar lines.
As suggested by Rohs, who takes Kant's "limitationof spontaneityto understanding"in the second
edition to be simply a mistake (2001, pp. 222-223).
The same conclusion is defended in Wenzel (2005).

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H. Ginsborg

The central line of thought which I take to be expressed in the passages just
quoted is that the objective validity of the categories depends on their having a role
to play, not just in explicit judgment, but also in our perceptual apprehension of the
objects about which we judge.10 And this line of thought is, I think, essential to the
anti-Humean aspect of Kant's view in the Critique. Putting it very crudely, Hume
had denied that the concept or idea of causality had application in experience since,
he had pointed out, we have no sensory impression of necessary connexion. Kant's
strategy in response, again very crudely, is to claim that even though we have no
sensory impression corresponding to the concept of causality, causality as necessary
connexion nonetheless figures in the content of perception. It does so because
perceptual content is arrived at through a synthesis of sensible impressions which
accords with rules of the understanding, and one of these rules is, or corresponds to,
the concept of causality. Now it is hard to see, on the nonconceptualist reading, how
anything like this strategy is available to Kant. So the nonconceptualist reading
seems to leave Kant without a response to the Humean worry which he describes in
13, and which the Deduction is meant, at least in part, to address: that because
objects of sensible intuition might not conform to the conditions of the synthetic
unity of thought, the concept of cause might be "empty, null and meaningless"
(A90/B122).
My appeal to 13 here might seem surprising, since it is cited by both Hanna and
Allais to support the claim that understanding is precisely not required in order for
objects to be given to us in sensible intuition.11 What I described as Kant's
"Humean worry" arises in a context which Kant introduces by saying that "since
the categories of the understanding do not represent the conditions under which
objects are given in intuition, objects can appear to us without necessarily being
referred to the functions of understanding" (A89/B122); in related formulations
Kant goes on to say that "appearances can be given without functions of the
understanding" (ibid.), and that "appearances could be so constituted that
understanding does not find them in accordance with the conditions of its unity"
(A90/B123).12 It is this possibility which generates the "difficulty... of how
"subjective conditions of thought should have objective validity" (A89/B122) which
Kant goes on to characterize in connection with the concept of cause. But the
possibility that sensibility could present us with appearances which are not governed
by the conditions of thought is presented in a context which abstracts from the role
of imagination in perception. Even though Kant's lead-in to the Deduction at 1314 comes after his introduction of the notion of imaginative synthesis in the
Metaphysical Deduction, it is still framed in terms of the simple division of labour
between sensibility and understanding presented in the Aesthetic and at the
beginning of the Transcendental Logic. Kant's strategy in the Deduction, as I
understand it, depends on the claim - initially introduced in the Metaphysical
Wenzel (2005) sees the same line of thoughtin a series of passages from the firstedition Deduction.
11 Allais
forthcoming;Hanna (2001, p. 199); Hanna(2005, pp. 259-260).
lz
Following Paton (1936, vol. I: 324n.), Allais emphasizes the contrastbetween the indicative "can"
[ko'nnen]in the first two formulations,and the subjunctive"could" [kdnnten]in the third.While I think
the contrastis worth noting, I do not think that it affects the point at issue.

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Was Kant a nonconceptualist?

71

Deduction, but presented anew in the argument of the Deduction itself - that the
presentation of appearances in perception requires a synthesis of imagination which
can be shown to depend on the understanding. If we abstract from the role of this
synthesis in perception then it does at least seem possible that appearances can be
presented to us independently of the conditions of understanding, but once we have
recognized the role of synthesis in perception, we are in a position to see that this
apparent possibility is illusory.

II
I have just been arguing that Kant is committed to a view on which perceptual
synthesis involves the exercise of understanding. If this is correct, then the
nonconceptualist reading is untenable. But I want now to propose that we can accept
conceptualism while still accommodating the considerations I mentioned earlier as
supporting the nonconceptualist view. I want to introduce this proposal by asking
the question: what is it for understanding to be required for perceptual synthesis?
Typically, this claim is assumed to imply that we need to grasp concepts, whether
pure or empirical, as a prior condition of being able to engage in perceptual
synthesis. On this assumption, Kant's claim that perceptual synthesis is due to the
spontaneity of understanding amounts to the claim that it consists in the application
of antecedently possessed concepts to whatever preconceptual material is presented
to us by sensibility. Only someone who already grasps the concept dog, and thus is
already capable of making explicit judgments like dogs have four legs or dogs are
furry, is capable, when confronted with a dog, of forming a perceptual image which
represents it as a dog. For the synthesis required for the formation of the image is
carried out, so to speak, under the guidance of that concept. It is the subject's grasp
of the concept dog, and hence her knowledge that dogs are four-legged and furry,
that enables her to include representations of four-leggedness and furriness in her
perceptual representation of the dog.
If this is how we interpret the claim that perceptual synthesis involves
understanding, then it is clear that it fails to do justice to the intuition I described
earlier regarding the "primitive" character of perception relative to thought and
judgment. But I want to claim that there is room for a less demanding conception of
what it is for understanding to be involved in perceptual synthesis, a conception
which does not require that any concepts be grasped antecedently to engaging in
synthesis. On this conception, to say that synthesis involves understanding is simply
to say that it involves a consciousness of normativity, or in other words, that in
perceptual synthesis the subject does not merely combine or associate her
representations, but, in so doing, takes herself to be doing so appropriately, or as
she ought. I want to claim that this consciousness of normativity is possible without
the subject's first having grasped any concept governing her synthesis, and, more
specifically, without her synthesis needing to be guided by any concept. So for
example she can synthesize her sensations so as to form a perceptual image of a dog,
and in so doing take herself to be synthesizing as she ought, without having
antecedently grasped the concept dog or any other concept, pure or empirical. And
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H. Ginsborg

this consciousness of normativity, I want to argue, captures what Kant means by the
involvement of understanding in perceptual synthesis, or, on my view equivalently,
the spontaneous character of this synthesis.13
To make this proposal clearer, it will help to have in view a specific model of the
imaginative activity which, for Kant, leads to the formation of a perceptual image.
Kant characterizes this activity of imagination, in the first edition deduction, as
involving "apprehension," in which the manifold is "run through and held
together" (A99) and "reproduction," in which previously entertained intuitions are
reproduced or recalled. This suggests, at a first approximation, that a perceptual
image is formed out of sense-impressions through the establishment of some set of
associative connections among them. The disparate sense-impressions caused in a
particular subject by, say, a red apple on a brown table, come to be unified in
specific ways both with one another (apprehension) and with other senseimpressions which the subject has received on previous occasions (reproduction).
The suggestion can be filled out by supposing that the impressions caused by
features of the apple's exterior - its red colour, its shininess, its roundish shapecome to be connected with one another, or "held together," in a way which
contributes to the apple's being picked out against the background against which it
is seen, and thus perceived in a way which registers its distinctness from the table.
These impressions, we might suppose, also lead the subject to recall previous
impressions of similar objects perceived on other occasions. The impressions caused
by the apple's red exterior prompt the reproduction of impressions of the white
interior of an apple, derived from the perception of apples which had been cut up or
bitten into. While the apple's white interior is not seen on the present occasion, it
nonetheless figures in the subject's perceptual image: the imagined whiteness of the
apple plays a role in the subject's perceptual experience of the intact apple and
contributes in particular to the apple's being seen as white on the inside and, more
specifically, as an apple.14
Now I take it that this model, as described so far, corresponds roughly to the
nonconceptualist approach to perceptual synthesis. For it depicts the formation of a
perceptual image with intentional content as the result of an imaginative process
which does not depend on the subject's possession of concepts corresponding to that
content. The subject does not need to recognize that she is seeing an apple, or more
minimally, that she is seeing something red, round and shiny, in order for her to
associate her impressions of redness, roundness and shininess so that they
collectively represent a single object, or for her to call to mind impressions of
whiteness derived from the insides of apples, so that the resulting image represents a
genuine apple as opposed to an apple-facade or a wax replica.15 No exercise of
understanding is required to bring about the unity among her sense-impressions
13 I defend and motivate this claim more

fully in my (forthcoming).
on
in Strawson(1970) and Sellars (1978), althoughboth of these
offered
drawing examples
see the process as depending on the subject's grasp of the correspondingconcepts. Pendlebury(1995)
develops a nonconceptualistversion of this kind of example in extremely helpful detail.
15 I am here
using "impression of redness" as shorthandfor "impression of the kind caused by
something's being red"; it should not be taken to imply that the impression as such has intentional
content.
14 Here I am

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Was Kant a nonconceptualist?

73

which constitutes them as a perceptual image with intentional content; instead the
process is a purely naturalistic one which can be understood on the lines of Hume's
association of ideas.16 But one might here wonder how it is that an associative
process of this purely naturalistic kind could introduce intentionality or objectdirectedness into the manifold of one's perceptual impressions. If the impressions
themselves lack intentional content, why should the mere fact that some of them are
retained in memory and called to mind on the occasion of having others be sufficient
to confer intentionality on the resulting aggregate? It is not hard to see why the
habitual association of sense-impressions of one kind with those of another should
influence a subject's behaviour with respect to what she perceives. That the
impressions of redness and shininess caused by the apple's exterior call to mind
previous impressions of whiteness and sweetness presumably contributes to an
explanation of why she might try to bite into the apple: an explanation which will in
principle apply no less to animal than to human subjects. What is less clear is why it
should account for the apple's becoming available as an object of cognition, so that
the subject is able not only to respond to it in a way which is sensitive to its being an
apple (or, more minimally, to its being red and shiny), but also to represent it as an
apple (or as red and shiny). The worry here, in more Kantian terms, is that the
relation of association is too external to bring about the kind of unity in the manifold
of intuitions which is needed if our sense-impressions are, collectively, to amount to
the representation of an object.
On my proposal, by contrast, the process of associating sensations which I have
described does not exhaust what is involved in perceptual synthesis. For in
perceptual synthesis, we not only associate representations in the ways I have
described, we associate them with a consciousness of normativity, that is, with a
consciousness of the appropriateness of what we are doing. When the impression
caused by the apple's exterior redness brings to mind an impression corresponding
to an apple's white interior, that impression comes to mind with a sense of its
appropriateness under the circumstances: I take it, in reproducing the latter
impression, that it ought to be reproduced under the present circumstances. It is
virtue of this consciousness of normativity in the association of our representations
that our perception has intentionality or object-directedness. For, very roughly, it is
this consciousness of normativity which secures what Kant calls the "element of
necessity [etwas von Notwendigkeit]" involved in "our thought of the relation of all
cognition to its object" (A 104). Our perception is intentionally directed towards
objects, as opposed to merely being causally elicited by them, in virtue of the
consciousness, accompanying each apprehended or reproduced sense-impression,
that it is normatively necessitated given the circumstances in which I have it. It is
precisely in virtue of that normative necessity, which is responsible for my taking
the impression of whiteness I reproduce as belonging with the impressions of
redness and roundness which have iust been caused in me, that my impressions,
16 It
might also be understood in terms of more recent psychological theories of how visual information is
processed. Allais, for example, cites the visual system's "binding" of information from different
processing streams as an instance of perceptual synthesis. It seems to me that this way of understanding
svnthesis is vulnerable to the same kind of worry that I go on to mention for the Humean model.

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H. Ginsborg

74

taken together, have the right kind of unity to count as impressions of - in the sense
of intentionally directed towards- an object.
It is an essential feature of this proposal that the consciousness of normativity
here does not presuppose any antecedent grasp of concepts. It is not that I first
conceive of what I am seeing as an apple, and then, on that basis, take an impression
of whiteness to be appropriate to the impressions that I am now having. Nor, to
consider a related possibility, do I first conceive of it as red, and then infer
accordingly that I ought to recall the impressions previously accompanying red
things. That I call to mind the particular impressions I do is a reflection of the same
natural dispositions to associate representations that characterize the imaginative
activity of animals. It is because of what we might, following Quine, call my innate
similarity space - a natural feature of my associative dispositions which is shared to
varying degrees with many of the higher animals that the impressions presently
caused by a particular red apple elicit the reproduction of impressions derived from
prior experiences of red things or apples, rather than experiences of an infinite range
of other objects which have properties in common with the particular apple now in
view. But that does not rule out, I want to claim, that my associations differ
fundamentally from those of animals in that they carry with them the consciousness
that I am associating my impressions as they ought to be associated. And I want to
claim also that it is precisely this consciousness of normativity which constitutes the
involvement of understanding in perceptual synthesis, and, relatedly, the conceptual
character of perceptual content.17 To the extent that impressions derived from the
perception of things which are red and round lead me consistently to reproduce
impressions derived from previous perceptual encounters with things that are red
and round, and to the extent that I reproduce these earlier impressions with the
consciousness of the appropriateness of what I am doing, I am, on the view here
proposed, subsuming these impressions under the concepts red and round.
Similarly, to the extent that being presented with an apple leads me to reliably
reproduce impressions previously made on me by apples, again with the
consciousness of normativity, I am bringing the apple under the concept apple}*
For what it is to conceptualize one's sense-impressions, on the view I am proposing
to ascribe to Kant, is just to associate them imaginatively in determinate ways with
the awareness that one is associating them as one ought. The consciousness of
normative necessity in these associations is responsible, as I have already suggested,
for the object-directed character of our perceptions; but insofar as our particular way
nf associating nresent with nast sense-imoressions on anv eiven occasion is sensitive
17 This has to be
emphasizedto distinguishmy view from a possible version of nonconceptualismwhich
would allow the kind of normativityI have been describing but deny that this entails that synthesis
requiresthe understandingor concepts. Allais describes this view as one on which "the way we preconceptuallysynthesize introducesnormativity,or proto-normativity,into the content of perceptionin a
way which makes it possible to bring the normativityof concepts to the content of perception"and she
cites my (1997) as an example. But the normativityI am invoking, both here and in the earlierarticle, is
the normativityof concepts.My point is not that synthesismakes possible a consciousnessof normativity
which allows for the applicationof concepts as a separate,and subsequent,cognitive step. Rather,as I go
on to claim in the text, the consciousness of normativityin the synthesis of the manifoldjust is the
applicationof concepts to the objects we represent.
18 For more discussion of this point, see my (2006a).

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Was Kant a nonconceptualist?

75

to the object's being of this or that particular kind, it is also responsible for the
object's being perceived as belonging to that kind, and thus for the object's being
brought under the corresponding concept.
The view I am proposing to ascribe to Kant is thus a form of conceptualism. To the
extent that our perception is intentionally directed towards objects, I am claiming, it
involves the application of concepts to those objects. But the view differs from the
stronger kind of conceptualism which the nonconceptualist finds objectionable. For it
does not suppose that the application of concepts in perception requires a grasp of
those concepts antecedent to the perceptions in which they figure. Rather, it is in virtue
of our having the perceptions we do that we count as applying, and a fortiori as
grasping, those concepts.19 My proposal thus respects the primitive character of
perception relative to thought by denying that we must possess the capacity to
entertain thoughts about, say, apples, as a prior condition of being able to perceive an
apple as such. It remains true, as on the conceptualist view as standardly understood,
that we cannot perceive something as an apple if we do not have the capacity to
entertain thoughts involving the concept apple. For I cannot perceive something as an
apple, on this view, without conceiving it to be an apple, and hence judging that it is an
apple. But my carrying out the synthesis through which I come to perceive it as an
apple is not guided by my antecedent recognition that, say, this is an apple and that
apples have white insides. Rather, I judge the thing to be an apple, and to have a white
inside, precisely in virtue of carrying out that synthesis.
I want to end by noting briefly how this view portrays the distinction between
sensibility and understanding. It does not deny that the distinction is a genuine one.
But it does not interpret it as the nonconceptualist does, by supposing that we can
isolate, within human cognition, actual representations that can be ascribed to
sensibility alone (where sensibility is understood in a broad sense which includes
imagination). Rather, to speak of sensibility in isolation from understanding is to
speak counterf actually: it is to speak of what would be left of human perceptual
experience if the synthesis of imagination did not involve the consciousness of
normativity. We would still have sensations, and we would associate them in more
or less the same patterns that we associate them now. But we would associate them
blindly, just as Kant takes animals to do, instead of with a consciousness that we
were associating them as we ought.
This is not to deny that sensibility makes a contribution to human cognition. On
the contrary, it is sensibility alone which is responsible for our perceptions' having
19 On

my version of conceptualism, then, concepts do not "restrict" or "limit" the contents of

perception.A subject's stock of concepts, rather,is determinedby which kinds of perceptions she is
capableof having:as she acquiresmore habitsof association,and thus becomes capableof a wider range
of perceptualexperiences,she therebycomes into possession of more concepts. It might be objectedthat
my version thus fails to count as a genuine form of conceptualism.According to Jose Bermudez, "the
import of placing a conceptual constrainton perceptualcontent is to capturethe idea that the type of
perceptualexperiencesa perceivercan have is determinedby the concepts he possesses... It follows from
this thatif we know whatconcepts a perceiverpossesses, we will be able to define what might be termeda
perceptual space limiting the colours, shapes, objects etc., that he can properly be described as
perceiving" (1998, p. 56; the operativeword here is "limiting").I try to addressthis objection, and the
related worry (raised in discussion by Robert Hanna) that the kind of view here ascribed to Kant is
conceptualistonly in a trivial sense, in my (2006b).

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76

H. Ginsborg

the particular representational contents that they do. What makes it the case that we
in fact associate sensations in the particular patterns that we do- grouping them in
ways that fit the concepts red and apple as opposed to nonstandard concepts like
grue and emerire - is something that we share with animals: it is a matter of our
natural dispositions to associate representations in one set of ways rather than
another. And the same indeed holds good for the higher-order patterns of association
corresponding to the pure concepts: for example, we share with animals a tendency
to reproduce representations in ways that are sensitive to the causal relations holding
among the objects which give rise to them, and to the status of those objects as
capable of undergoing changes while enduring through time. This is why - insofar
as our perceptual experience has representational content at all- we perceive things
not only as red and as apples, but also as substances, as having qualities, and as
standing in causal relations.20 But that our perceptual experience has representational content in the first place is not due to the particular ways that we associate our
representations, but rather to the consciousness of normativity in those associations.
So while the specific representational contents of our perceptions can be ascribed to
our sensibility, it is understanding which is responsible for these perceptions' having
representational content uberhaupt.
Acknowledgements This paper was presented as part of a symposium at the 2007 Pacific Division
Meeting of the APA. I am very gratefulto Jose Bermudezfor his commentson thatoccasion. Thanksalso
to Lucy Allais, Stephen Engstrom,and Eric Watkins for helpful discussion.

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20 This

attemptsto addressa worryBermudezraisedin his penetratingcommentsat the APA symposium

where this paperwas presented:if understandingis the bare consciousness of normativity,how can it be
responsiblefor the pureconcepts?I take it to be responsiblefor the pureconcepts in the same sense thatit
is responsible for empirical concepts: namely, by making the difference between an association of
representationsthat is determinedonly by external naturallaws, and an association of representations
which the subject representsas according with a normative rule. This is a controversialview which
deserves more defence that I can provide here.

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