In this paper, I intend to show that it’s a serious mistake to construe the role of sensible representation in Kant’s work as a nonconceptual content (in the contemporary and technical sense of “content”), which, like a mental indexical would refer to what appears in space and time in the so-called de re form. The interpretation I advance and further support is this: without possessing a representational content, sensible representation must be understood as the basic epistemic relation between (...) the subject and the physical entities in space and time she is acquainted with. Immediate reference of sensible intuition to their respective objects is to be understood as a form of knowledge by acquaintance. I call my own interpretation relationalism. (shrink)

The debate between formalism and intuitionism has often been interpreted as a quarrel internal to the philosophy of mathematics. Such a reading nevertheless underestimates its epistemological scope. The respective positions of Hilbert, Brouwer, and Gödel in fact involve a more general question: what is an intelligible content, and under what conditions does a symbolic procedure become knowledge rather than a mere manipulation of signs? This article argues that Gödel’s incompleteness theorems should not be understood merely as a technical limitation of (...) formal systems. They bring to light a structure of thought that exceeds calculation, not because thought would stand outside it, but because it presupposes the articulation of three irreducible moments: a moment of intuitive and schematic apprehension, a moment of critical reworking, and a moment of communicable formalization. Formalization is indispensable; yet it is not sufficient to generate meaning, to account for discovery, or to secure reference. If formalization is not sufficient to produce meaning, illuminate discovery, and ground reference, then scientific discovery must be understood as a synthetic reconfiguration rather than as a simple sequential chain, the effectivity of a theory must be distinguished from the truth it aims at, and the question of artificial intelligence must be reconsidered on new grounds. What artificial systems still lack is not combinatorial complexity, but the concrete inscription of their statements within an experience of the world, and the reflexivity that allows a subject to relate to its own operations as to something that concerns it. Thought thus appears as a circulation between several levels of meaning, and not as the mere execution of rules within a closed universe. This article refers to a broader project entitled Philosophy of Meaning, by the same author, available on PhilPapers. -/- Keywords: Gödel, Hilbert, Brouwer, Kant, Popper, Turing, schematism, scientific discovery, meaning, artificial intelligence, reflexivity, effectivity. (shrink)

In Section 41 of Feuerbach’s Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, three forms of sensible intuition are discussed, which attracted the attention of Marx and Engels and is centrally reflected in their co-authored work The German Ideology. Among these, the references to “higher philosophical intuition” and “the highest intuition” in The German Ideology have sparked lively debate among Chinese scholars. Through a comparative analysis of the texts of Marx, Engels, and Feuerbach, we find that “higher (...) philosophical intuition” is Marx and Engels’ generalization of the highest form of sensible intuition in Feuerbach, specifically referring to the intuition of art, religion, and thought as pointed out by Feuerbach himself in Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. Marx and Engels’ method of observing the external world did not discard intuition; rather, their transcendence over Feuerbach’s sensible intuition lies in their establishment of: an empirical intuition rooted in historical materialism, an active intuition grounded in practical materialism, and a dialectical intuition imbued with materialist dialectics. (shrink)

본 논문의 목적은 공간이 감성적 직관의 형식이면서 동시에 순수직관이라는 칸트의 견해를 명료하게 하는 것이다. 이는 칸트의 공간론에서 제기되는 해석상의 난점을 검토하고 해결 방안을 제시하는 방식으로 이뤄진다. 첫째, 감성학에서는 공간이 감성적 직관의 형식인 동시에 순수직관표상으로 규정되지만, 분석학에서는 감성적 직관의 형식이 잡다를 제공하여 종합된 결과가 공간에 대한 순수직관표상이라고 설명되어 두 서술이 상충하는 것처럼 보인다. 이에 대해 본 논문은 두 진술이 서로 다른 층위에서 제시된 것임을 밝히고, 분석학이 감성학을 보완하는 방식으로 이해될 수 있음을 논증한다. 둘째, 직관은 일반적으로 외부 대상의 촉발을 필요로 하지만 공간은 (...) 외부 대상이 아니므로 공간에 대한 직관표상을 어떻게 얻을 수 있는지의 문제가 있다. 본 논문은 감성학에서는 추상 과정을 통해서, 분석학에서는 마음의 선험적 조성(Beschaffenheit)이 자기-전개됨으로써 공간에 대한 순수직관이 가능하다는 해석을 제시한다. 셋째, 『순수이성비판』에서 “공간 자체를 직관할 수 없다”라는 다수의 진술은, 공간을 순수직관으로 규정하는 견해와 상충하는 것처럼 보인다. 이에 대해 본 논문은 감성학에서는 전체 공간이 무매개적으로 직관된다고 보지 않으며, 분석학은 공간이 상상력의 산물임을 명확히 하므로 상충이 생기지 않는다는 것을 보인다. (shrink)

I develop a view of perception that does justice to Price's intuition that all sensory experience acquaints us with sensible qualities like colour and shape. Contrary to the received opinion, I argue that we can respect this intuition while insisting that ordinary perception puts us in direct contact with the mind-independent world. In other words, Price's intuition is compatible with naïve realism. Both hallucinations and ordinary perceptions acquaint us with instances of the same kinds of (...) class='Hi'>sensible qualities. While the instances in hallucination are mind-dependent, those in veridical perception are not. The latter are ontologically over-determined —they have their existence guaranteed both in virtue of having a material bearer and in virtue of being perceived by a mind. Such over-determined instances are mind-independent—they can continue to exist unperceived, because, in addition to the minds that perceive them, their existence is guaranteed by the material objects that are their bearers. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a dimension of human consciousness which allows for a pre-intentional and non-cognitive intuition of sensibility. A sensibility which allows for the vulnerability of the human other is by nature characterized by passivity and receptivity. Moreover, sensibility invokes the significance of relating to the human other in an affective way of being touched by his or her pain and suffering. This capacity of being distressed by the distress of another person opens up for ethical (...) responsibility and even in a fundamental sense is a presupposition for full-fledged clinical knowledge in medical care and health care. (shrink)

Le débat entre formalisme et intuitionnisme a souvent été interprété comme une querelle interne à la philosophie des mathématiques. Une telle lecture en sous-estime pourtant la portée épistémologique. Les positions respectives de Hilbert, de Brouwer et de Gödel engagent en réalité une question plus générale : qu’est-ce qu’un contenu intelligible, et à quelles conditions une procédure symbolique devient-elle connaissance plutôt que simple manipulation de signes ? L’article soutient que les théorèmes d’incomplétude de Gödel ne valent pas seulement comme limitation technique (...) des systèmes formels. Ils mettent au jour une structure de la pensée qui excède le calcul, non pas parce qu’elle s’y opposerait extérieurement, mais parce qu’elle suppose l’articulation de trois moments irréductibles : un moment de saisissement intuitif et schématique, un moment de reprise critique, un moment de formalisation communicable. La formalisation est indispensable, pourtant elle ne suffit pas à engendrer le sens, à rendre compte de la découverte ni à assurer la référence. Si la formalisation ne suffit pas à produire le sens, à éclairer la découverte et à fonder la référence, alors la découverte scientifique doit être comprise comme une reconfiguration synthétique plutôt que comme un simple enchaînement séquentiel, l’effectivité d’une théorie doit être distinguée de la vérité qu’elle vise, et la question de l’intelligence artificielle doit être reprise sur de nouvelles bases. Ce qui manque encore aux systèmes artificiels n’est pas la complexité combinatoire, mais l’inscription concrète de leurs énoncés dans une expérience du monde et la réflexivité qui permet à un sujet de se rapporter à ses propres opérations comme à quelque chose qui le concerne. La pensée apparaît ainsi comme circulation entre plusieurs étages de signification, et non comme simple exécution de règles dans un univers clos. Cet article renvoie à un projet plus global, intitulé Philosophie de la Signification, du même auteur, disponible sur PhilPapers. -/- Mots-clés : Gödel, Hilbert, Brouwer, Kant, Popper, Turing, schématisme, découverte scientifique, signification, intelligence artificielle, réflexivité, effectivité. (shrink)

This chapter presents and defends an emotionist theory known as sensibility theory. It argues that sensibility theories can explain some central folk intuitions about the nature of morality. However, sensibility theories face a number of serious objections. In the second part of this chapter, ten objections that can be found in the literature are discussed. It is argued that a properly formulated sensibility theory has resources to overcome each of these. Sensibility theory offers one way of accommodating the evidence that (...) moral judgement is affect-laden. This is one of its main advantages, but it is not the only approach that ties moral judgements to emotions. Emotivism, for example, can boast the same. To motivate the adoption of sensibility theory, we need to show that it has other advantages. One attraction is that sensibility theory accommodates the evidence used to support moral intuitionism without taking on any of the baggage. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to work toward an account of how sensibility and understanding combine in perceptual judgments, with the emphasis on the role of sensibility in both the justification of such judgments and the explanation of how it is possible for them to apply to an objective world. I argue that in themselves sensory intuitions function as (animal level) beliefs about the environment, and that these beliefs have the status of perceptual judgments to the extent to (...) which they are embedded in and engaged with the high-level patterns of consciousness and reasoning characteristic of full-blown human judgment. In terms of this account, sensibility is seamlessly integrated with understanding in perceptual judgments. This does not, however, imply that its contribution to perceptual judgments cannot be separated analytically, for in my terms the basic justification and objective reference of perceptual judgments are directly inherited from the sensory intuitions (functioning as sensory beliefs) which constitute those judgments. I conclude by showing how this account can be used to undermine John McDowell’s claim that any attempt to assign a separable contribution to sensibility cannot avoid the Myth of the Given. (shrink)

“내용없는 사고들은 공허하고, 개념들이 없는 직관은 맹목적이다.”(KrV A51=B75)라는 테제로 잘 알려진 것처럼, 대상을 인식하려면 직관과 개념이 모두 필요하다는 것이 칸트의 인식론적 견해라고 여겨진다. 그러나 몇몇 연구자들은 칸트의 인식론에서도 “개념없는 직관(Anschauung ohne Begriffe)” 즉 지성의 활동과 개념을 수반하지 않는 직관이 가능하다고 여긴다. 이러한 배경에서 본 논문은 경험적 직관에서 개념의 역할, 특히 감성적 종합에서 범주의 역할을 명료히 함으로써 칸트에서 개념 없는 직관이 가능한지 밝히는 것을 목적으로 한다. 이를 위해 경험적 직관을 시공간 상에서 배경과 구별되는 개별자에 대한 표상으로 규정하고, B판 연역을 중심으로 경험적 (...) 직관에서 개념이 어떤 역할을 하는지 살핀다. 원전을 검토하는 과정에서 개별자를 지각하는 것에는 시공간이라는 감성의 형식만으로도 충분하다는 한나(Robert Hanna)와 앨레이스(Lucy Allais)의 해석의 문제점을 밝혀, 칸트의 인식론에 따르면 범주라는 대상 일반의 개념이 동반되어야만 통일된 시공간 표상과 개별자 표상이 가능하다는 것을 해명한다. 그 결과 칸트의 인식론에서는 개념없는 직관의 가능성이 뒷받침될 수 없다. (shrink)

Both parties in the active philosophical debate concerning the conceptual character of perception trace their roots back to Kant's account of sensible intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason. This striking fact can be attributed to Kant's tendency both to assert and to deny the involvement of our conceptual capacities in sensible intuition. He appears to waver between these two positions in different passages, and can thus seem thoroughly confused on this issue. But this is not, (...) in fact, the case, for, as I will argue, the appearance of contradiction in his account stems from the failure of some commentators to pay sufficient attention to Kant's developmental approach to philosophy. Although he begins by asserting the independence of intuition, Kant proceeds from this nonconceptualist starting point to reveal a deeper connection between intuitions and concepts. On this reading, Kant's seemingly conflicting claims are actually the result of a careful and deliberate strategy for gradually convincing his readers of the conceptual nature of perception. (shrink)

Pleasures and pains play an important role for Berkeley, not just in motivating action, but also by providing knowledge of the physical world in which we act. This chapter considers the parallels that Berkeley draws between sensible quality perceptions and pleasures/pains. Importantly, Berkeley holds that we can have intuitive or demonstrative knowledge of the existence and nature of the physical world on the basis of our sensory perceptions. His parallel analysis of pleasures and pains thus surprisingly implies that these, (...) too, can provide us with intuitive or demonstrative knowledge of the physical world. Taking pleasures and pains to have an epistemic and cognitive function allows us to reread certain Berkeleyan texts in ways that are illuminating. This includes texts on the laws of nature, which enable us to regulate actions precisely because knowledge of the natural laws involves generalizing over regularities of sensory perceptions, which include pleasures/pains. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy of mathematics presents two fundamental problems of interpretation: (1) Kant claims that mathematical truths or “judgments” are synthetic a priori; and (2) Kant maintains that intuition is required for generating and/or understanding mathematical statements. Both of these problems arise for us because of developments in mathematics since Kant. In particular, the axiomatization of geometry--Kant’s paradigm of mathematical thinking--has made it seem to some commentators as, for example, Russell, that both (1) and (2) are false (Russell 1919, p. (...) 145).2 If virtually all of mathematics, including geometry, is axiomatizable, it would seem that mathematics results in analytic judgments that are totally independent of sensibility, the source, according to Kant, of intuition. In this paper I will address both of these difficulties. I shall argue that Kant’s understanding of both “synthetic” and “intuition” make his position immune to these criticisms. (shrink)

Kant holds that the human cognitive power is divided into two "stems", understanding and sensibility. This doctrine has seemed objectionably dualistic to many critics, who see these stems as distinct parts, each able on its own to produce representations, which must somehow interact, determining or constraining one another, in order to secure the fit, requisite for cognition, between concept and intuition. This reading cannot be squared, however, with what Kant actually says about theoretical cognition and the way understanding and (...) sensibility cooperate in it. Such cognition, as Kant conceives of it, satisfies two conditions: it has unity, and it depends on the existence of its object. The first of these conditions entails that the cognitive power must lie in spontaneity, or understanding, while the second implies that this spontaneity depends on receptivity, or sensibility, to be the cognitive power that it is. Consideration of how these capacities must be conceived as cooperating in cognition reveals them to be related, not as interacting parts, but as form and matter. Such a conception of their relation may at first glance seem to be merely another version of dualistic thinking; in fact, however, a proper appreciation of it eliminates the appearance of dualism and helps allay an associated concern that Kant's distinction would taint our cognition with an unacceptable subjectivism. (shrink)

According to Kant, the axioms of intuition, i.e. space and time, must provide an organization of the sensory experience. However, this first orderliness of empirical sensations seems to depend on a kind of faculty pertaining to subjectivity, rather than to the encounter of these same intuitions with the real properties of phenomena. Starting from an analysis of some very significant developments in mathematical and theoretical physics in the last decades, in which intuition played an important role, we argue (...) that nevertheless intuition comes into play in a fundamentally different way to that which Kant had foreseen: in the form of a formal or “categorical” yet not sensible intuition. We show further that the statement that our space is mathematically three-dimensional and locally Euclidean by no means follows from a supposed a priori nature of the sensible or subjective space as Kant claimed. In fact, the three-dimensional space can bear many different geometrical and topological structures, as particularly the mathematical results of Milnor, Smale, Thurston and Donaldson demonstrated. On the other hand, it has been stressed that even the phenomenological or perceptual space, and especially the visual system, carries a very rich geometrical organization whose structure is essentially non-Euclidean. Finally, we argue that in order to grasp the meaning of abstract geometric objects, as n-dimensional spaces, connections on a manifold, fiber spaces, module spaces, knotted spaces and so forth, where sensible intuition is essentially lacking and where therefore another type of mathematical idealization intervenes, we need to develop a new form of intuition. (shrink)

Kant holds that the human cognitive power is divided into two “stems”, understanding and sensibility. This doctrine has seemed objectionably dualistic to many critics, who see these stems as distinct parts, each able on its own to produce representations, which must somehow interact, determining or constraining one another, in order to secure the fit, requisite for cognition, between concept and intuition. This reading cannot be squared, however, with what Kant actually says about theoretical cognition and the way understanding and (...) sensibility cooperate in it. Such cognition, as Kant conceives of it, satisfies two conditions: it has unity, and it depends on the existence of its object. The first of these conditions entails that the cognitive power must lie in spontaneity, or understanding, while the second implies that this spontaneity depends on receptivity, or sensibility, to be the cognitive power that it is. Consideration of how these capacities must be conceived as cooperating in cognition reveals them to be related, not as interacting parts, but as form and matter. Such a conception of their relation may at first glance seem to be merely another version of dualistic thinking; in fact, however, a proper appreciation of it eliminates the appearance of dualism and helps allay an associated concern that Kant's distinction would taint our cognition with an unacceptable subjectivism. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo tiene como objetivo principal estudiar el esquema husserliano de superposición de actos, que establece la fundamentación de toda experiencia predicativa en la antepredicativa, y, más precisamente, analizar el momento atencional que vincula ambos niveles de nuestras vivencias. De acuerdo con esto, el presente texto dispone de tres partes. En primer orden, estudiaré la distinción entre intuición sensible y categorial desarrollada por este filósofo en la sexta de sus Investigaciones lógicas. En segundo orden, y siguiendo los comentarios (...) que Dieter Lohmar hace de esta doctrina, revisaré con detención la función que juega el fenómeno de la atención en dicha teoría. Para finalizar, abordaré la distinción entre experiencia pre-predicativa y predicativa tal como la presenta Husserl en Experiencia y juicio bajo el contexto de su filosofía genética. (shrink)

Many contemporary scholars argue that Schelling’s version of intellectual intuition retains certain central features of the Kantian and Fichtean conceptions. One of the common claims is that, as with Kant and Fichte, Schelling’s intellectual intuition is the power of the subject’s productive understanding. However, we show that for the Schelling of the Identitätsphilosophie period, intellectual intuition is the power not of an understanding that intuits, or a productive intellect, but of a receptive and penetrating sensibility that understands.

Chapter 3 is the first of six on sensibility and its relation to the understanding. Its focus is sensation, intuition, and appearance. It also examines why Kant deemed pure intuition necessary to sensibility as such, without regard to the conceptual and cognitive uses to which it may be put. To this end, it is argued that given sensations alone, nothing like a unified sensibility would be possible, i.e., there would be no capacity to represent all possible affections of (...) sense as a single, homogeneous manifold, united in one and the same consciousness. Pure intuition is therefore just as essential to sensibility as sense affections because only it can provide for such a _unity of sensibility_, a unity that proves to be nothing else than a prediscursive, precategorial expression of the original synthetic unity of apperception. (shrink)

Kant describes intellectual intuition as a kind of non-sensible intuition that creates its objects and provides knowledge of them as noumena. Although he precludes intellectual intuition from the human mind, Reinhold attributes it to the human mind. Pioneering research has already shown that Reinhold deviates from Kant in this way to explain the possibility of a priori self-cognition. It has also already shown that Fichte follows Reinhold by deviating from Kant in the same way. Yet, other (...) aspects of Reinhold’s doctrine of intellectual intuition remain largely overlooked. Among the few Reinhold scholars who study it, the extant view is that intellectual intuition does not yield cognition of an absolute knower, and that only Fichte makes this assertion. However, this view ignores Reinhold’s claim that I must attribute all my representations to an absolute knower to explain the unity of experience. In this paper, I argue that we must take this claim seriously, and I show that, for Reinhold, my cognition of myself as an absolute knower in intellectual intuition enables me to attribute all my representations to myself as such a knower, and he does so prior to Fichte. (shrink)

In his Philosophy of Mind, Hegel treats human sensibility differently in the sections on anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. With the recent revival of Hegel’s work, there has been a lively debate about how to understand the progression from more primitive to more sophisticated human capacities. This paper differentiates three influential readings to that effect – the animals-first, the emancipatory, and the rational-first reading – and argues that they risk misconstruing mental development as a transition from one category of capacities to (...) the other. The transition is rendered in terms of either accumulation, emancipation, or maturation. But this basic picture confuses the capacities characterizing us as a kind of animal, a kind of consciousness, and a conceptually self-conscious being. This paper explains how anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology articulate complementary, but irreducible categories of human capacities. The apparently more basic capacities are abstractable aspects of those that come later in the order of presentation. The distinct kinds of capacities do not stand separately on a three-step ladder of mental development but are aspects of one singular and synchronous development of the human mind. Their particular development is mutually dependent on each other but can be properly accounted for only in distinctive categorial terms. (shrink)

There is much to admire in Rafe McGregor's new book: its analytical clarity and precision, depth and systematicity in argumentation, width of the material covered, sharpness of his vision, illuminative power of his examples. I share his concern for the future of aesthetic education within the dominant context of neoliberal imperative, and I am inspired by his dedication to invigorate humanists' battle for preservation of the practices we so deeply believe in. I agree with his overall intuition regarding the (...) ethical dimension of narratives, and I am equally convinced of their capacity to provide understanding, though less optimistic regarding their capacity to decrease our inhumanity. I take his dedication to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transcendence and SensibilityAffection, Sensation, and Nonintentional ConsciousnessIrina Poleshchuk (bio)Over the years, the question of sensibility has largely been discussed in a variety of discourses developed in the humanities and has gained attention in psychology and the cognitive sciences. Sensibility has been seen as a constituent part of subjectivity, endowing subjectivity with meanings developed in different layers of subjective and inter-subjective life, but also as setting new horizons of ethical (...) becoming. In this context, Emmanuel Levinas represents a unique philosophical approach: sensibility reveals the core of the ethical encounter with the other person, including traumatic experience and ethical gift of this intersubjective encounter. The ethical event starts from sensibility and from the radicality on which the face-to-face relation is built, but it also results from the sensible life of subjectivity. I address here a famous line in Levinas’s Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence: “Only a subject that eats can be for-the-other” (OB 74). In its hunger, and in its constant search for the means of feeding itself, subjectivity is for the first time disclosed as a vulnerable and affected self. This vulnerability [End Page 1] is different in its nature from the vulnerability provoked by the appeal of the other. The satisfaction of needs, the ability to enjoy food, to enjoy laboring to acquire it, but also the memory of the pain caused by hunger all indicate fundamental levels of vulnerability whereby the self is exposed to the affection of the otherness. In the following sections of Otherwise than Being, Levinas moves further toward disclosing a sensible subjectivity endowed with transcendence. Sensibility becomes structured as the other-in-the-same, where the trace of the other is exactly transcendence impregnating subjectivity. Here, being affected by the other, the vulnerable and the sensible self takes its crucial forms: it is pure passivity, it is an ultimate exposure, and it is nonintentional. These modalities of sensibility are to indicate ethical mapping of subjectivity where responsibility for the other eventually becomes irreversible.To approach the novelty of sensibility as the central component of the face-to-face relation, I elucidate the function and meaning of mechanisms enabling subjectivity to be structured as the other-in-the-same. The face-to-face relation is, first of all, an experience of the affective trace left by the appeal of the other. Thus, my goal is to explicate how this affection, manifested as the address of the other, is embedded in Levinas’s reading of sensuous intuition and how the affection enlightens an ethical sensibility at the level of nonintentional consciousness and passivity. Beginning with Husserl’s view of hyletic data, I discuss the work of affection and sensation in intentional consciousness and how these feelings participate in constructing sensibility. I analyze the importance of Levinas’s innovative idea of nonintentional consciousness, leading up to the concept of passivity, which acts as the host of transcendence or, in other words, of the other-in-the-same. Finally, I turn to the phenomenon of two sensibilities and provide an interpretation of their structures and their role in building face-to-face relations.Sensation and AffectionThe first step toward unraveling sensibility is to address Urhyle. Urhyle plays an essential role in the dimension of affection, sensation, [End Page 2] and sensibility. In his earlier works, Levinas addresses hyle and, to some extent, follows Husserl’s reflections on Urhyle and affection. A discussion of Urhyle will help to elucidate Levinasian logic.For Husserl, Urhyle is “a foreign core in me” (Ichfremdekern).1 Being something foreign within consciousness, Urhyle indicates a core within consciousness, which leads to a constitutive bifurcation of the self and of the nonself. The appearance of Urhyle is indirect: it is not constitutive, it does not constitute itself, but rather Urhyle structures the constitution of the self. How can Urhyle be shown? Affected consciousness or sensible data is the first strange or alien content within the self, affecting and exciting the self as nonconsciousness (Unbewüßtsein) on the level of original hyletic (Urhyle) preconsciousness and allowing primary sensibility to grow, which apparently becomes a content of the self.2 Consciousness is, first of all... (shrink)

Show more ▾ There are various dichotomies in Kant’s philosophy: sensibility vs. rationality, nature vs. freedom, cognition vs. morality, noumenon vs. phenomenon, among others. There are also different ways of mediating these dichotomies, which is the systematic undertaking of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. One of the most important concepts in this work is the sublime, which exemplifies the connections between the different dichotomies; this fact means the concept’s construction is full of tension. On the one hand, as (...) a pure reflection of aesthetic judgment the sublime must be without interest or purpose, but on the other hand it is “based on the concept of reason” (KU AA:292). On the one hand, the sublime “represents merely the subjective play of the powers of the mind (imagination and reason) as harmonious” (KU AA5:258), but on the other hand, reason “exercises dominion over sensibility” and the imagination is “purposively determined in accordance with a law” of reason (KU AA5:268f). Taking into account these problems concerning the essential definition the sublime, this paper will first illustrate how the sublime embodies the a priori principle of aesthetic judgment through contrasting the judgment of the sublime with the judgment of taste in order to establish a basic logical frame for the judgment of the sublime. Second, this paper redefines the boundary between the mathematically and dynamically sublime in order to reveal both the coexistence of contemplation and movement within the sublime and the unrevealed function of reason and imagination. Finally, contrasting the sublime with moral feeling, this paper elaborates the turning-structure (from sensibility to rationality and from object-intuition to idea-exhibition) of the sublime. (shrink)

This paper investigates the possibility of understanding the rudimentary elements of clinical sensitivity by investigating the works of Edmund Husserl and Emmanuel Levinas on sensibility. Husserl's theory of intentionality offers significant reflections on the role of pre-reflective and affective intuition as a condition for intentionality and reflective consciousness. These early works of Husserl, in particular his works on the constitution of phenomenological time and subjective time-consciousness, prove to be an important basis for Levinas’ works on an ethics of alterity (...) and infinite responsibility for the other person. In fact, it is difficult to understand the core of Levinasian ethics, of vulnerability as proximity, of ethical sensitivity as passivity and a suffering for the suffering of another, without understanding the influence from Husserl's work. Crucially, the paper will, on the basis of Levinasian ethics, establish an understanding of sensibility as vulnerability and receptivity that is fundamental also for understanding significant intuitions in clinical nursing. Clinical sensitivity and carefulness in nursing are shaped by the concrete and also bodily expressions of vulnerabilities in a receptivity that is pre-reflective and pre-ontological. (shrink)

3. One of the most striking features of Kant’s epistemology is his insistence on the need for a sharp distinction between sensibility and understanding. “Our knowledge,” he tells us, “springs from two fundamental sources of mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations, the second is the power of knowing an object through these representations. Intuitions and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge….” In spite of this radical difference in role, both sensibility and understanding are construed (...) as, in a broad and ill-defined sense, faculties of representation. It is this, perhaps, which leads him to suggest that they may “spring from a common, but to us unknown, root.”. (shrink)

McDowell’s “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2008, 2009) attempts to reconcile two claims: 1) what we most fundamentally experience is a fundamental level of invariable simple objects and their sensible properties; experience of these objects and properties is the ultimate ground of our knowledge of the world; 2) experience is through-and-through conceptually structured. This leads McDowell to endorsing the incoherent notion of intuitional content – necessary and thus irrevisable basic empirical conceptually structured contents or empirical categories. The notion (...) requires the necessity and irrevisability of purely formal concepts and the on-going responsiveness to experience of empirical concepts. This reveals a dilemma: If the fundamental objects of experience are invariable then they cannot have empirically conceptual form; for revisability is a mark of the empirically conceptual. But purely formal concepts cannot give us the fundamental empirical structure of the world. The dilemma forces us to choose between claiming that the fundamental objects of experience are invariable and claiming that they are conceptually formed. I conclude by briefly describing how Kant successfully faces the challenge of accounting for the most fundamental invariable level of objects of experience without yielding to the myth of the given. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically review several interpretations of Kantian sensible intuition. The first interpretation is the recent construal of Kantian sensible intuition as a mental analogue of a direct referential term. The second is the old, widespread assumption that Kantian intuitions do not refer to mind-independent entities, such as bodies and their physical properties, unless they are brought under categories. The third is the assumption that, by referring to mind-independent entities, sensible (...) intuitions represent objectively in the sense that they represent in a relative, perspective-independent manner. The fourth is the construal of Kantian sensible intuitions as non-conceptual content. In this paper, I support the alternative view that Kantian sensible representation is to be seen as iconic de re presentation of objects without representational content. (shrink)

L’essai vise à reconstruire dans l’ Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale de Croce de 1902 la relation complexe entre les concepts d’intuition, d’expression et de sensibilité. Pour Croce, l’activité esthétique semble toujours osciller entre une forme de connaissance et une productivité qui trouve dans la matérialité du médium expressif (en particulier l’art) sa propre façon d’apparaître au niveau sensible.

This paper investigates the possibility of understanding the rudimentary elements of clinical sensitivity by investigating the works of Edmund Husserl and Emmanuel Levinas on sensibility. Husserl's theory of intentionality offers significant reflections on the role of pre‐reflective and affective intuition as a condition for intentionality and reflective consciousness. These early works of Husserl, in particular his works on the constitution of phenomenological time and subjective time‐consciousness, prove to be an important basis for Levinas’ works on an ethics of alterity (...) and infinite responsibility for the other person. In fact, it is difficult to understand the core of Levinasian ethics, of vulnerability as proximity, of ethical sensitivity as passivity and a suffering for the suffering of another, without understanding the influence from Husserl's work. Crucially, the paper will, on the basis of Levinasian ethics, establish an understanding of sensibility as vulnerability and receptivity that is fundamental also for understanding significant intuitions in clinical nursing. Clinical sensitivity and carefulness in nursing are shaped by the concrete and also bodily expressions of vulnerabilities in a receptivity that is pre‐reflective and pre‐ontological. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a weak understanding of intuitions as beliefs that do not result from more familiar sources, but that the person currently holds simply because the proposition believed seems true to the person upon due consideration. Nearly all moral inquiry makes significant use of moral intuitions. Reflective equilibrium is perhaps the most sophisticated intuitionistic approach to moral inquiry. It modifies the usual understanding of reflective equilibrium by arguing that inquirers must not merely mold their moral intuitions into a (...) coherent system via a process of mutual adjustment, but must also strive to enhance their competence at making moral judgments. It then considers and rejects an argument for the reliability of moral intuitions that takes them to provide evidence regarding our own moral concepts. Finally, it defends reflective equilibrium by arguing that there is no sensible alternative to accepting the intuitions we have after full reflection, which is, in essence, what reflective equilibrium does. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to properly situate and contrast McDowell’s and Sellars’ views on intuitional content and relate them to their corresponding views on the myth of the Given. Although McDowell’s and Sellars’ views on what McDowell calls ‘intuitional’ content seem at first strikingly similar, at a deeper level they are radically different. It will be suggested that this divergence is intimately related to their different understanding of what the myth of the Given consists in and how it (...) should be best avoided. It will also be argued that certain McDowell-inspired objections against the viability of the Sellarsian concept of the Categorial Given actually misconstrue the place of this notion in Sellars’ system. If the myth of the Categorial Given can be considered as a genuine version of the Myth then McDowell’s account of intuitional content does indeed fall prey to it. I shall further argue that a McDowell-inspired objection against Sellars to the effect that his account of proper sensibles compromises the openness of intuitional content to the world ultimately fails, and, finally, I shall suggest that Sellars’ views on proper sensibles and intuitional content provide a more promising account of the way our thought and experience can be rationally open to the world itself than McDowell’s position. (shrink)

This article argues that Heidegger’s appropriation of Husserl’s categorial intuition is essential for his interpretation of Kant’s concepts of intuition and form of intuition. First, I analyze the two aspects of Heidegger’s interpretation of Husserl’s categorial intuition that are relevant to his reading of Kant, namely, his understanding of categorial intuition as fundamentally intertwined with sensible intuition and his understanding of the correlate of such an intuiting as already unthematically coapprehended in sensible (...) intuition. Second, I show that Heidegger incorporates these two aspects into his reading of Kant’s concept of intuition as a “thinking intuition” and into his interpretation of the Kantian “form of intuition” as something unthematically intuited in every experience. (shrink)

The author examines Kant’s transcendental doctrine of space and time in order to find out possible anthropological connotations of the German philosopher’s topology. The analysis allows us to draw the following conclusions: 1) the anthropological features of space and time significantly correct the transcendental understanding of space and time as forms of sensual intuition; 2) the anthropological connotations of the forms of space and time make it impossible to have both noumenal, intellectual intuition of things and intuition (...) based on a different topology, on configurations of the world that are different from those familiar to humans; 3) Kant’s achievement is his work «Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science» (1786), which demonstrates the effectiveness of the transcendental method, in particular transcendental aesthetics, in substantiating the natural sciences (physics) of the time, which made it possible to prove the close connection of the natural sciences with the transcendental conditions of experience. (shrink)

The conception of the paper is connected with bringing forward the reflection of Leon Petrażycki on intuitive law. For this purpose I analyze the genesis and dynamics of this phenomenon on the cultural-historical level, as well as with reference to issues belonging to the scope of positive law. In addition, I broaden the research field with the range of problems touching on intuitionism, morality, and also independent ethics of Janusz Kotarbinski. The starting point of the methodological optics I assume is (...) constituted by the multi-aspectual transformations surrounding us in the sphere of axiology. Hence, if the pedagogical aspects are taken into account, it seems to me justified to undertake some actions in order to search for the logically consistent, sensible and universal solutions, which can become an ethical guide-post for the contemporary human being. (shrink)

The article deals with Wilfrid Sellars’ interpretation of Kant’s concept of intuition. The author demonstrates that Sellars’ two-aspect view follows both basic Kantian distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, and his division of the cognitive capacities. Meanwhile, on the ground of unifying intensional semantics and productive imagination, Sellars completes Kantian model of cognition by eliminating the sharp opposition between passive sensibility and active reason. Thus Sellars makes the mechanism of transcendental logic unified in the context of modal logic. (...) The author argues that such approach would be successful if guided by a principal rejection of the idea of pure synthesis as well as the hard version of apriorism. In general, the conceptualistic-and-categorial treatment of intuition helps to (a) overcome contradictory predicates problem, (b) bring together Critical philosophy and Scientific Realism. Also, using the Kantian doctrine of double affection, it (c) makes possible to describe the theory of meaning as a part of the theory of truth. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a novel interpretation of the role of the understanding in generating the unity of space and time. On the account I propose, we must distinguish between the unity that belongs to determinate spaces and times – which is a result of category-guided synthesis and which is Kant’s primary focus in §26 of the B-Deduction, including the famous B160–1n – and the unity that belongs to space and time themselves as all-encompassing structures. Non-conceptualist readers of Kant (...) have argued that this latter unity cannot be the product of categorial synthesis. While they are correct that this unity is not the product of any particular act of category-guided synthesis, I argue that conceptualists are right to nevertheless attribute this unity to the understanding. I argue that it is a result of what we can think of as the ‘original’ synthesis of understanding and sensibility themselves – it is a synthesis, moreover, in which the whole is logically prior to the parts. (shrink)

This commentary considers Robert Pippin's treatment of Hegel’s attempt to overcome Kant’s account of the distinction between (and necessary togetherness of) conceptual and intuitional representation. Pippin reads Hegel as committed to Kant’s discursivity thesis, namely, that thought is mediate and general, and thus reliant on sensible intuition for singular immediate contents – a position broadly in line with Wilfrid Sellars’ famous portrayal of Hegel as “that great foe of immediacy.” It is suggested, however, that such a reading makes (...) it difficult to provide an account of the concept/intuition distinction in Hegel that is not, at bottom, Kantian. Attention to the preservation of a certain Schellingean moment in Hegel’s mature thinking—the maintenance of a form of intellectual intuition—perhaps provides resources for an understanding of Hegel’s distinctively post-Kantian understanding of the relation between immediacy and mediation. In my view, intellectual intuition understood as the immediacy of thought is central to the Science of Logic’s attempt to generalise Kant’s distinction between (and claim for the togetherness of) concept and intuition as a logical relation, not one limited to sensibly conditioned cognition. (shrink)

By transcendental aesthetic, Kant means “the science of all principles of a priori sensibility” (A 21/B 35). These, he argues, are the laws that properly direct our judgments of taste (B 35 – 36 fn.), i.e. our aesthetic judgments as we ordinarily understand that notion in the context of contemporary art. Thus the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled the Transcendental Aesthetic, enumerates the necessary presuppositions of, among other things, our ability to make empirical judgments about particular (...) works of art. These presuppositions are sensible rather than intellectual because on Kant's view, all intellection that considers objects of any kind, whether abstract or concrete, must at base connect to actual, material objects with which we come into direct contact; and this we can do only through sensibility (A 19/B 33). Thus the following discussion explores what Kant claims must be true of us in order to make the sorts of aesthetic judgments we make, rather than any particular class or quality of aesthetic judgments itself. On Kant's view, what must be true of us in order to make aesthetic judgments is not different from what must be true of us in order to make any other kind of judgment about empirical objects. This last point is worth emphasizing, in order to correct an interpretation of Kant's account of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment that wrongly reads Kant as claiming that aesthetic judgments do not have to satisfy the same basic requirements of judgment that any other kind of judgment also must satisfy, such as the synthetic subsumption of such objects under certain necessary and hard-wired concepts of understanding, the internal coherence of such judgments with other, non-aesthetic ones of a more abstract and comprehensive character, the unified consciousness within which such judgments are intelligibly made, and the like. Of course Kant recognizes the special character of aesthetic judgments and unpacks it in the... (shrink)

Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an ‘intellectual intuition’ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kant's epistemic (...) achievement and what were taken to be the outstanding problems of freedom's relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to ‘intellectual intuition’. Part three begins with Kant's subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goethe's contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between intuition and concept in Kant in light of John McDowell's neo-Kantian position that intuitions are concept-laden.2 The focus is on Kant's twofold pronouncement that thoughts without content are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind. I show that intuitions as singular representations are not instances of passive data intake but the result of synthetic unification of the given manifold of the senses by the power of the imagination under the guidance of the (...) understanding. Against McDowell I argue that the amenability of intuitions to conceptual determination is not due some pre-existing, absolute conceptuality of the real but to the "work of the subject."3 On a more programmatic level, this paper seeks to demonstrate the limitations of a selective appropriation of Kant and the philosophical potential of a more comprehensive and thorough consideration of his work. Section 1 addresses the unique balance in Kant's philosophy between the work on particular problems and the orientation toward a systematic whole. Section 2 outlines McDowell's take on the Kantian distinction between intuition and concept in the context of the Kant readings by Sellars and Strawson. Section 3 exposes McDowell's relapse into the Myth of the Given. Section 4 proposes a reading of Kant's theoretical philosophy as an epistemology of metaphysical cognition. Section 5 details Kant's original account of sensible intuition in the Inaugural-Dissertation of 1770. Section 6 presents the transition from the manifold of the senses to the synthesis in the imagination and the unification through the categories in the Critique of pure reason . Section 7 addresses Kant's formalism in epistemology and metaphysics.Esse artigo examina a relação entre intuição e conceito em Kant à luz da posição neokantiana de John McDowell de que intuições estão conceitualmente "carregadas". 1 O foco é sobre o duplo pronunciamento de Kant, segundo o qual pensamentos sem conteúdo são vazios e intuições sem conceitos são cegas. Mostro que intuições como representações singuares não são casos de introdução passiva de dados, mas o resultado da unificação sintética do múltiplo dado dos sentidos pelo poder da imaginação sob a orientação do entendimento. Contra McDowell, defendo que a amabilidade das intuições para com a determinação conceitual não é devida a alguma conceitualidade pré-existente, absoluta do real, mas ao "trabalho do sujeito".2 Num nível mais programático, o presente artigo visa demonstrar as limitações de uma apropriação seletiva de Kant e o potencial filosófico de uma análise mais abrangente e aprofundada de sua obra. A seção 1 aborda o equilíbrio único na filosofia de Kant entre o trabalho com problemas particulares e a orientação em direção a um todo sistemático. A seção 2 descreve a posição de McDowell acerca da distinção kantiana entre intuição e conceito no contexto das leituras de Kant por Sellars e Strawson. A seção 3 expõe a reincidência de McDowell no "mito do dado". A seção 4 propõe uma leitura da filosofia teórica de Kant como uma epistemologia do conhecimento metafísico. A seção 5 detalha a explicação original de Kant sobre a intuição sensível na "Dissertação de 1770". A seção 6 apresenta a transição do múltiplo dos sentidos para a síntese na imaginação e para a unificação por meio das categorias na Crítica da razão pura . A seção 7 aborda o formalismo de Kant na epistemologia e na metafísica. (shrink)

Moral and political philosophers commonly appeal to moral “intuitions” at crucial points in their reasoning. This chapter considers recent challenges to this practice—here referred to as “the Method”—based in empirical studies of moral intuitions. It contends that such studies do not justify radical or revisionary conclusions about the Method. A method is aimed at achieving certain goals. The key issue is the nature of the goals in relation to which the Method is to be evaluated. This chapter argues that the (...) relevant goal is not the “realist goal” of discovering the truth about moral and political matters. The central point is that, the chapter argues, the systematic philosophical study of moral and political questions would be worthwhile even if it turned out that moral realism cannot be vindicated or that the Method cannot be vindicated in relation to the realist goal. If this is correct, then the goal relative to which it is crucial to vindicate the Method is not the realist goal. A Rawlsian view is more plausible, according to which the relevant goal is to “characterize our moral sensibility” as it would be in “reflective equilibrium.” It turns out, however, that this Rawlsian view has some, perhaps unwelcome, deflationary implications. (shrink)

Moral and political philosophers commonly appeal to moral “intuitions” at crucial points in their reasoning. This chapter considers recent challenges to this practice—here referred to as “the Method”—based in empirical studies of moral intuitions. It contends that such studies do not justify radical or revisionary conclusions about the Method. A method is aimed at achieving certain goals. The key issue is the nature of the goals in relation to which the Method is to be evaluated. This chapter argues that the (...) relevant goal is not the “realist goal” of discovering the truth about moral and political matters. The central point is that, the chapter argues, the systematic philosophical study of moral and political questions would be worthwhile even if it turned out that moral realism cannot be vindicated or that the Method cannot be vindicated in relation to the realist goal. If this is correct, then the goal relative to which it is crucial to vindicate the Method is not the realist goal. A Rawlsian view is more plausible, according to which the relevant goal is to “characterize our moral sensibility” as it would be in “reflective equilibrium.” It turns out, however, that this Rawlsian view has some, perhaps unwelcome, deflationary implications. (shrink)

Based on a Lived Experience Description written by an experienced nurse in Denmark, this article offers an ontological and existential‐phenomenological exploration of aesthetic dimensions of excellence in nursing. In the research of Patricia Benner and colleagues, excellence in nursing is described as a matter of intuitive pattern recognition based on clinical experience and narrative understanding. In this article, and based on phenomenological reflections and philosophical inspirations from the Danish philosopher Dorthe Jørgensen and the French philosopher Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, I suggest an (...) extended understanding of excellence in nursing, and I argue that the work and research of Benner seem to overlook ontological and aesthetic aspects of excellence in nursing. This article argues that aesthetic aspects of excellence in nursing can be comprehended as moments where nurses sense a surplus of meaning and moments where the nurse and the patient share and are subjected to communal and unfolding life phenomena. Aesthetic dimensions of being in nursing can, from an ontological approach, best be described as similar to the way human beings listen to a piece of music or to how artists try to give a voice to the world: as a resonant way of being and becoming within the moment. (shrink)

Are the pure intuitions of space and time, for Kant, dependent upon the understanding's activity? This paper defends the recently popular Self-Affection Thesis : namely, that the pure intuitions require an activity of self-affection—an influence of the understanding on the inner sense. Two systematic objections to this thesis have been raised: The Independence objection claims that SAT undermines the independence of sensibility; the Compatibility objection claims that certain features of space and time are incompatible with being the products of the (...) understanding's activity. I show that the resources to rebut these objections can be found in Kant's account of causal influence. (shrink)