Kant and the problem of intentionality

This study is an investigation of Kant's empirical realism as a response to the problem of intentionality. The former is the thesis that what we are related to in perception are the empirically mind-independent objects all around us in the spatio-temporal world. The latter is the problem of how thoughts come to have objective purport---how they come to represent states of the world.;I argue that Kant has a sophisticated theory of how our `faculty of cognition' puts us, as subject's of thought, in direct contact with the objective world. This theory shows us how intentionality is possible by showing us how thought is normatively constrained by the external world in perception. I articulate the theory by examining some of Kant's transcendental proofs in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic. I claim that these proofs demonstrate that there are universal and necessary constraints on how our faculty of cognition operates. These constraints guarantee that the problem of intentionality is solved. Such transcendental proofs thus justify our taking ourselves to be engaged in the ongoing process of knowledgeably adjusting a view of the world under the auspices of rational criticism. In other words, the a priori forms of cognition that Kant argues we possess, allow us to see the latter process as justified. For if we made no contact in thinking at all with the world, it would be hard to see such justification as warranted.