| Kant’s famous slogan:’Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind’in his Critique of Pure Reason, is heavily borrowed by the contemporary analytic philosophers, especially by the Pittsburgh School, whose representatives are Wilfrid Sellars, John McDowell and so on. They reconstruct their claims that the content of perceptual experience is conceptual, which specifically based on the slogan’intuitions without concepts are blind’. For example, Richard Rorty have showed that the fundamental thought which runs through Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is Kant’s:’intuitions without concepts are blind’. And McDowell proposed that all of experience is conceptual in his Mind and World, regarding Kant’s the same slogan as his theoretical basis. So, some scholar said that in his slogan,’Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind,’Kant sums up the doctrine of conceptualism. Sellars and McDowell even have taken a stance against non-conceptualism on basis of it, and make a strong conceptualist reading of Kant. Then, Kant is introduced into the background of contemporary analytic philosophy, especially is involved with the core issues about whether the content of perceptual experience is conceptual or not.At the meantime, McDowell’s strong conceptualist reading of Kant brings about some discussions about whether Kant is conceptualist or not, especially from Kantian scholarship. The important Kant scholars are Robert Hanna, Lucy Allais, Hannah Ginsborg and so on. They all turn their eyes on the same thesis, for Kant’s sake, they make different readings of Kant. So the focal point of the issues between conceptualist reading and non-conceptualist readings of Kant is how to understand the very thesis, whether Kant allowed the’blind’intuitions or not? If he did, how can the ’blind’intuitions has epistemological role? Then, this lead us to Kant’s theory of intuition, and the interaction between the both sides in turn provides the new perspective and possibility to revisit it. So, revisiting Kant’s theory of intuition not only can further the Kantian research, but also can advance the development of analytic philosophy.The main purpose of the first chapter is to introduce the analytic background of revisiting Kant’s theory of intuition, to clarify that analytic philosophers pay a lot of attention on Kant, for their own sake. Notice that there are two levels here:first level is the debate between conceptualism and non-conceptualism in the analytic philosophy sphere. According to the answer to the issues about whether the content of perceptual experience is conceptual or not, there formed two relatively opposing camp in the analytic philosophy, i.e. conceptualism and non-conceptualism. Roughly speaking, conceptualism is the view that the content of perceptual experience is conceptual, and the most important representative is John McDowell. By contrast, non-conceptualists argue that a contentful perceptual state can occur albeit the absence of all or some concepts that characterize the content. Therefore, the focal point of the issues between conceptualism and non-conceptualism is whether the content of perceptual experience is shaped by our conceptual capacities. The second level is the debate between the conceptualist reading and the non-conceptualist reading of Kant. McDowell’s strong conceptualist reading of Kant bring about some different reading of Kant from Kantian scholarship.According to McDowell, there shouldn’t be ’blind’ intuitions in Kant’s philosophy if he could adhere to his proper insight in epistemology, because of the slogan’ intuitions without concepts are blind’ means that there is inseparability between concepts and intuitions, while ’blind’ intuitions as unstructured manifold of sensation will inevitably fall into the Myth of the Given. Hanna and Allais also admit the very inseparability, but they think the inseparability is only suitable to ’make objectively valid judgment’ or ’cognition’, outside the special context, there must be ’blind’ intuitions. For Hanna, the ’blind’ intuitions means objectively valid non-conceptual intuition, they are the mental or representational content of some perceptual acts or states whose semantic structure and psychological function are necessarily distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content, and the content of such perceptual acts or states is essentially non-conceptual content. And Allais thinks’blind’intuitions are presented us with particulars, according to the definition, role and status of intuitions in Kant’s epistemology. Hanna and Allais think that McDowell confuses intuition with sensation, regarding it as a sensationalist understanding of Kant’s intuitions. And these are argued in the second chapter.The focal point of the issues between the conceptualist reading and non-conceptualist reading eventually concentrate on the question, whether the objects are perceptually given to us through concepts or not. According to Transcendental Deduction, McDowell thinks that the content of intuitions is shaped by the conceptual capacity, intuitions and judgment share the same content, we can not perceive any objects without concepts. While the strong non-conceptualist reading of Kant show that intuition presents us with particulars independently of the application of concept, it is the a priori and intuitive (non-conceptual)representation of space (and time) that plays this role, that enables us to be presented with outer appearances, which based on the Transcendent Aesthetic. The two readings have advantages and disadvantages, the non-conceptualist readings give us a plausible interpretation of the role of perception in cognition, by it does not accord with the fundamental standpoint of Kantian epistemology. Contrary to it, the conceptualist readings can provide a plausible interpretation of Kantian epistemology, but can not deal with the perception in proper way. Thus, the two sides enlarge the contradictions in Kant’s epistemology. And revisiting the theory of synthesis and imagination power which can show how intuitions and concepts co-operate, is necessary for clarifying the debates. From this point of view, Hannah Ginsborg provides a possible way out. She sublates the two opposing standpoints, She stresses the logical priority of perceptual experience, and the former experience and the current experience make up a horizon, and by this, the objects are brought under the concepts, and this is decided by our consciousness of normativity. And these are the main purport of the third chapter.The final chapter is devoted to discussing whether the two readings of Kant can accord with Kant’s metaphysics. Although McDowell sees Kant as a possible way out, he regrets for Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, which makes Kant fall into the Myth of the Given. So, McDowell wants to separate Kant’s insights in epistemology from transcendental idealism, and make the naturalism of second nature to take place of it, in order to get a coherent Kantian conceptualism. Contrary to this, Kant scholars adhere to a naive perceptual realism and regard Kant as a empirical realist.In fact, it is very difficult to make a coherent interpretation of Kant’s theory of intuition, and the problem in his theory of intuitions can not be settled by Kant himself. The current discussions provide a new way. McDowell wants to radicalize Kant, by appealing to Hegel, through reducing the world to experience, and conceptualizing experience, and tracing the source of the concepts back to human social practice, letting the world opens itself to us by language. Thus, McDowell makes the relationship between man and world transit from Kantian static epistemological to dynamic ontological. However, denying the logical priority of perceptual experience, his theory could not be coherent. And the method of phenomenology which is expressed by Ginsborg’s solution, would be an alternative way. |
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