Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Some Remarks on Kant's Theory of Experience

Author(s): Wilfrid Sellars
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 64, No. 20, Sixty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the
American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Oct. 26, 1967), pp. 633-647
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2024460
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SYMPOSIUM:

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SYMPOSIUM: KANT
SOME REMARKS ON KANT'S THEORY OF EXPERIENCE

ANT never tires of telling us that Nature and the Spaceand

Time which are its forms exist as a system of "representations." Now a representation is either a representing or a
something represented. Does Kant mean that nature is a system of
representings? Or that it is a system of representeds? And, in any
case, what would the claim amount to?
Representings are "mental acts." Does Kant think of nature as a
system of mental acts? At one level the answer is clearly No. For,
although nature does include representings-thus, at least, the sensory
representings that are states of the empirical self-its primary constituents are material things and events, and Kant would agree with the
Cartesians that the idea that a material event could be a representing,
or, equivalently, that a mental act could have shape and size, is absurd.
In the second-edition Refutation of Idealism Kant clearly contrasts material objects and events with the sense impressions correlated with them in the history of the empirical self. The former are
extended and located in space; the latter are neither extended nor in
space,' though they do have temporal location. He argues that spatial
structures are as directly or intuitively represented as are the nonspatial states of the empirical self, thus attacking the view, lurking in
the Cartesian tradition, that the intuitive awareness involved in perceptual experience is an awareness of nonspatial sense impressions.
This thesis is by no means new to the Second Edition, though the
distinction between physical events and sense impressions is drawn in
a clearer and less misleading way.
Shall we then say that nature is a system, not of representings, but of
representeds? What would this mean? One's first reaction is to point
out that not everything in nature is represented, and that not everything which is represented as being in nature is in nature. To the
first of these objections the natural reply is to distinguish between
"actually represented" and "representable," and define nature as a
*

To be presented in an APA symposium on Kant, December 28, 1967.

1 Kant's treatment of sensation is notoriously inadequate and inept. From the

premise that sense impressions as mental states are neither literally extended nor in
physical space, he infers that they are in no sense spatial, i.e., that they in no way
have a structure which conforms to a geometrical axiomatics. The idea that sensations are "purely intensive magnitudes" has always made it difficult to understand
how sense impressions could have a meaningful connection with physical states of
affairs.

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system of representables. T'o the second the natural reply is that while
not everything which is represented as being in nature is in nature,
everything which is represented by a true representing as being in
nature is in nature. These considerations merge; for not every system
of empirical representables constitutes nature, but only that system
of empirical representables, the representings of which would be true.
The conception thus arises of nature as the system of those representable spatial and/or temporal states of affairs which did, do, or will
obtain, whether or not they were, are, or will be actually represented.
An actual representing is true if the state of affairs it represents belongs to this privileged set of representable states of affairs.
The trouble with this picture, as Kant saw, is not that it is false but
that it is so thin that it scarcely begins to illuminate the concept of
nature as the object of empirical knowledge. Yet unilluminating
though the idea may be that an empirical judging is true if the state of
affairs it represents is one which did, does, or will obtain, i.e., was, is,
or will be actual, it is the initial datum for analysis. Kant saw that this
truism must be submitted to the closest scrutiny if the specter of
skepticism is to be laid to rest. This scrutiny must aim at clarifying the
concepts of an empirical judging, of truth, of a state of affairs, and of
what it is for a state of affairs to obtain or be actual. This Kant proceeds to do with important, indeed, dramatic results.
The central theme of the Analytic is that unless one is clear about
what it is to judge, one is doomed to remain in the labyrinth of
traditional metaphysics. On the other hand, to be clear about what it
is to judge is to have Ariadne's thread is one's hand.
Now from the Kantian point of view, the above concepts pair up in
an interesting way: judging with state of affairs, and truth with actuality. Indeed to say that they pair up is to understate the closeness of
their relationships. For, Kant argues, in effect, that the pairs turn out,
on close examination, to be identities.
II

Before following through with this claim, we must take into account
another concept which ties them together and gives them point, that
of empirical knowledge. On any view there is the closest of connections between the concepts of knowledge and truth. The above remarks suggest that for Kant the connection between the concept of
empirical knowledge and the "category" of actuality is at least as
close. Indeed, as we shall see, the core of Kant's "epistemological turn"
is the claim that the distinction between epistemic and ontological
categories is an illusion. All so-called ontological categories are in
fact epistemic. They are "unified" by the concept of empirical

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knowledge because they are simply constituent moments of this one

complex concept, the articulation of which is the major task of the
constructive part of the Critique.
It is obvious to the beginning student that the truths of "transcendental logic" cannot themselves be "synthetic a priori." If they were,
then any transcendental demonstration that objects of empirical
knowledge conform to synthetic universal principles in the modality
of necessity would be question-begging. It must in a tough sense be an
analytic truth that objects of empirical knowledge conform to logically synthetic universal principles. It must, however, also be an
illuminating analytic truth, far removed from the trivialities established by the unpacking of 'body' into 'extended substance' and
'brother' into 'male sibling'.2
It is also obvious, on reflection, that Kant is not seeking to prove
that there is empirical knowledge, but only to show that the concept
is a coherent one and that it is such as to rule out the possibility that
there could be empirical knowledge not implicitly of the form 'such
and such a state of affairs belongs to a coherent system of states of
affairs of which my perceptual experiences are a part'. By showing
this, he undercuts both the skeptic and the "problematic idealist"
who, after taking as paradigms of empirical knowledge items that
seem to involve no intrinsic commitment to such a larger context,
raise the illegitimate question of how one can justifiably move from
these items to the larger context to which we believe them to belong.
Before developing these themes, we must take into account the
familiar fact that truth is a necessary but not sufficient condition for
knowledge. A judgment, to be a case of knowledge, not only must be
true; we must, in some sense, be justified in making it. The problem
posed is as old as the hills and as new as tomorrow. It is not my purpose to claim that Kant found all the essentials of the solution. He
did, however, show convincingly that certain traditional lines of
thought are blind alleys, and in so doing discovered the general lines
of a successful strategy.
The task of "transcendental logic" is to explicate the concept of a
mind that gains knowledge of the world of which it is a part. The
acquisition of knowledge by such a mind involves its being acted on
or "affected" by the objects it knows.3 There are, of course, any num2 Kant's discussion of philosophical method in the
concluding chapters of the
Critique shows that he was fully aware of these facts, and realized as well that
"transcendentallogic" as knowledge about knowledge could consist of analytic
knowledgeabout syntheticknowledge.
3 That it also involves action in relation to these objects-if only by changing
one's relative position-is a point to which he pays less attention than it deserves.

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ber of stages at which one can go wrong with respect to the structure
of Kant's thought-and Kant himself is not always a reliable guide
-but the sooner one makes a wrong choice of roads, the more difficult it is to get back on the right track. And the first major "choicepoint" concerns the concept of "receptivity." What is it, exactly, that
is brought about when our "receptivity" (inner or outer) is "affected"?
It has always been easy to answer, "impressions of sense," and to continue by construing these as nonconceptual states, states that belong
to the same family as tickles and aches, but differ in that unlike the
latter they are constituents of the perceptual experience of physical
things.
Even though there is an element of truth in this interpretation, its
total effect is to distort Kant's thought in a way that obscures its most
distinctive features. In the first place, it makes nonsense of the idea
that space is the form of outer receptivity. For sense impressions, being
mental states, are, for Kant, no more capable of being extended than
they were for Descartes. In the second place, it makes nonsense of the
idea of inner sense. For when Kant tells us that the contents of "inner
sense" come from "outer sense," this would mean, on the above interpretation, that certain extended (but not temporal) sensations "cause"
a further set of nonconceptual states (sensations) which are unextended though temporally related.
It is often taken for granted that Kant was clear about the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual mental states or representings. "Empirical intuitions" are interpreted as nonconceptual
and construed, on the above lines, as the epistemically more important
members of the sensation family. Actually the pattern of Kant's
thought stands out far more clearly if we interpret him as clear about
the difference between general conceptual representings (sortal and
attributive), on the one hand, and, on the other, intuition as a special
class of nongeneral conceptual representings, but add to this interpretation the idea that he was not clear about the difference between
intuitions in this sense and sensations. "Intuitive" representings
would consist of those conceptual representings of individuals
(roughly, individual concepts) which have the form illustrated by
this-line
as contrasted with
the line I drewyesterday
which is an individual concept having the form of a definite description.
Compare C. I. Lewis's treatment of this topic in the first chapter of An Analysis of
Knowledge and Valuation.

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Notice that the above line of interpretation enables us to make

sense of Kant's claim that "intuitions of a manifold" 4 have categorial
form; for there is an obvious sense in which
this-line
has the subject-predicate form, even though it is not a subject-predicate judgment. It is familiar fact that in the judgment
This book is red
the subject-predicate form enters twice, a fact which can be made
explicit by the paraphrase.
This is a book and it is red.
According to the above interpretation, the representings that are
brought about by the "affection" of "receptivity" would, as intuitions,
already be, in a broad sense, conceptual. To make this move, however,
is to give a radical reinterpretation to the concept of "receptivity"
and to the contrast between "receptivity" and "spontaneity." This can
be brought out by comparing Kant's conception of the affection of
receptivity by things in themselves with what I have elsewhere called
"language entry transitions." A language entry transition is an evoking, for example, of the response 'this is red' by a red object in sunlight from a person who knows the language to which this sentence
belongs. As an element in a rule-governed linguistic system the utterance is no mere conditioned response to the environment. Its occurrence is a function not only of the environment but of the conceptual
set of the perceiver. To know the language of perception is to be in a
position to let one's thoughts be guided by the world in a way that
contrasts with free association, with day-dreaming, and, more interestingly, with the coherent imaginings of the storyteller.
It is Kant's contention that the conceptual structures we develop in
perceptual experience under the influence of independent reality, are
of a piece with the conceptual structures we freely or spontaneously
develop in imagination. A useful parallel is provided by the difference
between counting objects and "counting" in that unconstrained way
(repeating the numbers) which is a rehearsing in imagination of actual
counting procedures. Another parallel is the difference between perceiving a triangle and imagining a particular triangle (which must
not be confused with "having a triangular image," whatever that is).
In receptivity we do the same sort of thing we do in the "spontaneity"
of imagination, but we do it as receptive to guidance by the objects
we come to represent.
4"Intuitions of a manifold" are to be contrasted with "manifolds of intuition"
(see, for example, B135). The lumping of manifolds of sense with the latter, though
a confusion, would at least keep them distinct from the intuitive representings
synthesized by the productive imagination.

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Kant claims, in other words, that the very same rule-governed conceptual activity that occurs in the free play of imagination constitutes
perceptual experience, when it is guided by independent reality. According to this interpretation, the "productive imagination" (which
is Kant's term for the faculty that generates intuitive representings of
the form 'this cube') provides the subject-terms of perceptual judgments; thus, for example
This cubeis a piece of ice.
III

According to the above interpretation Kant thinks of the products

of that peculiar blend of the passivity of sense and the spontaneity
of the understanding which is "receptivity" in the sense defined above
as consisting of representings of the form
this-,o
rather than full-fledged judgments. But, since it is clear that he thinks
of these representings as involving the categorial forms that occur in
full-fledged judgment, it will simplify matters if, for our present
purposes, we abstract from this special feature of his theory and suppose that, as in our linguistic model, it is perceptual judgments themselves which are evoked by the action of objects in our perceptual
capacities. We are thus enabled to focus our attention on Kant's
theory of what judgings are.
I shall begin by summarizing this theory as four closely related
theses:
1. Judgings are complex representings in a very special sense of 'complex', which distinguishes them from the mere co-occurrence of representings in the same mind at the same time, as when an association is
aroused. Kant believed, not without justification, that this distinction
was not clearly drawn by his predecessors-particularly David Hume.
2. Judgings have a variety of forms which Kant clearly conceives by
analogy with the logical forms of the statements that express them.
3. Not only do judgings have these forms; anything (with the exception
of intuitive representings) that has these forms is a judging.
4. To judge, for example, that snow is white is not just to represent
snow and represent white; it is to be committed to the idea that the
representable snow and the representable white belong together regardless of what anyone happens to think. It is, in other words, to be committed to the idea that representings that snow is white are (epistemically) correct and representings that snow is not white (epistemically)
incorrect. This thesis finds its clearest expression in section 19 of the
Second Edition Deduction, entitled "The Logical Form of All Judg-

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ments Consists in the Objective Unity of the Apperception of the

ConceptswhichThey Contain"(B141-142).
The first two theses need little if any elaboration. The third and
fourth, however, are of crucial importance to Kant's argument and
require a closer look. At first sight the statement that only judgings
have the forms that judgings have, may have the appearance of
tautology. But it is not a triviality, and, indeed, is the very heart of
the Critique.
It will be illuminating, I believe, to compare this thesis with its
counterpart in a linguistic version of the Kantian position, i.e., one
that speaks in terms of (meaningful) expressions rather than (conceptual) representations:
Statings have certain logical forms and everything which has these
formsis a stating.
The logical form of a stating is clearly not the empirical configuration
of the sentence it illustrates, though having an appropriate empirical
configuration is a necessary condition of the stating's having the logical form it does, in the language to which it belongs. For a stating to
have a certain logical form is for it to have certain logical powers, and,
if so, the idea that anything having this form must be a stating has the
ring of truth rather than paradox.
Kantian "categories" are concepts of logical form, where 'logical'
is to be taken in a broad sense, roughly equivalent to 'epistemic'. To
say of a judging that it has a certain logical form is to classify it and its
constituents with respect to their epistemic powers.
If judgings qua conceptual acts have "form," they also have "content." Of all the metaphors that philosophers have employed, this
is one of the most dangerous, and few have used it without to some
extent being taken in by it. The temptation is to think of the "content" of an act as an entity that is "contained" by it. But if the "form"
of a judging is the structure by virtue of which it is possessed of certain
generic logical or epistemic powers, surely the content must be the
character by virtue of which the act has specific modes of these generic
logical or epistemic powers.
Thus, a judging that Tom is tall would, in its generic character, be
a judging of the subject-predicate form. It is a judging that a certain
substance has a certain attribute. (These two ways of putting it are
equivalent.) If we focus our attention on the predicate we can characterize the judging more specifically as a judging that a certain substance has the attribute tall. Thus, just as to say that a judging is a
judging that a certain substance has a certain attribute is to say

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that the judging is of a certain generic kind (i.e., has certain generic
logical powers); so to say that a judging is a judging that a certain
substance is tall is to classify the judging as one of the such and such
is tall kind, i.e., to classify it in a way that ascribes to it the more
specific conceptual powers distinctive of the concept of being tall.
Indeed, for the judging to "contain the concept of being tall" is
nothing more nor less than for it to have these specific powers.5
Kant correctly concludes from the above that there is no such thing
as comparing a judging with an actual state of affairs and finding the
judging to be "correct" or "justified." For, according to the above
analysis, an "actual state of affairs," since it has judgmental form, is
simply a true species of judging, i.e., to use Peircean terminology, a
judging-type that it would be (epistemically) correct to token.6 Thus
"comparing a judging with a state of affairs" could only be comparing a judging with another judging of the same specific kind, and this
would no more be a verification than would checking one copy of
today's Times by reading another.
In evaluating the significance of this point, it should be borne in
mind that linguistic episodes have not only logical powers but also,
and necessarily, matter-of-factual characteristics, e.g., shape, size,
color, internal structure, and that they exhibit empirical uniformities
both among themselves and in relation to the environment in which
they occur. They can be compared as objects in nature with other
objects in nature with respect to their matter-of-factual characteristics.
I mention this, because the fact that we tend to think of conceptual
acts as having only logical form, as lacking matter-of-factual characteristics, i.e., as, to use Moore's expression, diaphanous, makes it difficult
to appreciate that the ultimate point of all the logical powers pertaining to conceptual activity in its epistemic orientation is to generate
conceptual structures which as objects in nature stand in certain
matter-of-factual relations to other objects in nature.7
5 The above remarks on categories and concepts can be construed as a commentary on the passage in the Paralogisms where Kant writes: "We now come to a
concept which was not included in the general list of transcendental concepts but
which must yet be counted as belonging to that list, without, however, in the
least altering it or declaring it defective. This is the concept or, if the term be
preferred, the judgment, 'I think.' As is easily seen, this is the vehicle of all concepts, and therefore also of transcendental concepts, and so is always included in the
conceiving of these latter, and is itself transcendental" (A341; B399).
6 Put in linguistic terms, an "actual state of affairs" is a true species of stating,
i.e., a stating-type that it would be epistemically correct to token.
7 The basic flaw in the Kantian system (as in that of Peirce) is in its inability to
do justice to this fact. The insight that logical form belongs only to conceptual
acts (i.e., belongs to "thoughts" rather than to "things") must be supplemented by
the insight that "thoughts" as well as "things" must have empirical form if they are

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IV

Aristotle seems to have thought of his categories as the most generic

sortal concepts that can occur in statements about the objects around
us. Thus
Tom is a substance

would belong to the same family of statements as

Tom is an animal

and would stand to the latter as

Tom is an animal

stands to
Tom is a man.

If one attempts to carry through this model with the other categories, one is led to postulate such puzzling entities as quality-individuals and (horrible dictu) relation-individuals to be the subjects of
statements of the form
. ..
. .

is a quality
.

is a relation.

Medieval logicians began the process of reinterpreting the categories that culminated in Kant's Critique, by recognizing that certain
statements (thus 'Man is a species') which seem to be about queer
entities in the world are actually statements that classify constituents
of conceptual acts. The insights of terminist logicians were largely
lost in the post-Cartesian period. Kant not only rediscovered these
insights, but extended them in such a way as to connect categories not
only with the logical forms in the narrowest sense (roughly, syntactical
powers) studied by formal logicians, but, to an extent not always
recognized, with the logical powers in a broader sense which are essential to a conceptual framework the employment of which generates
knowledge of matter of fact. Thus he thinks of the categories as
together constituting the concept of an object of empirical knowledge.
The extent to which this is so does not stand out in the Metaphysical
Deduction. It isn't until the Analytic of Principles, as has often been
pointed out, that one can grasp the full import of Kant's theory of
the categories. The conception of the categories as the most general
classifications of the logical powers that a conceptual system must have
in order to generate empirical knowledge is the heart of the Kantian
revolution.
It is, we have seen, in the literal sense a category mistake to construe
'substance', for example, as an object-language sortal word that differs
to mesh with each other in that way which is essential to empirical knowledge. I
have developed this point in Chapter 6 of Science, Perception and Reality (New
York: Humanities, 1963) and, more recently in Chapter 5 of Science and Metaphysics (New York, Humanities, 1967).

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from ordinary empirical predicates by being a summum genus. However, once the Kantian turn is taken, and substance-attribute is seen to
be a classification of judgings, it becomes possible to interpret at least
some categories as meta-conceptual summa genera, and to look for
the "differences" that generate their species. It is along these lines
that the obscure doctrine of the Schematism is to be understood.
Roughly, the schemata turn out to be specific differences, and the
schematized categories a classification of the epistemic powers of
judgings in so far as they pertain to events in time.
v

Once it is recognized that intuitive representings are, in a generic

sense, conceptual, though not sortal or attributive, other parts of the
Kantian system begin to fall into place. To intuit is to represent a
this, i.e., if I may so put it, to have a representing of the "this" kind.
But no representing is, so to speak, a sheer "this" representing. To suppose the contrary is to treat 'this' as a mere label devoid of any but the
most meager logical powers. Space and time are "forms of intuition,"
not by virtue of being attributes of or relations between things or
events in nature, but by virtue of the fact that the logical powers
distinctive of "this" representings are specified in terms of concepts
pertaining to relative location in space and time. The "transcendental" or epistemic function of spatiotemporal concepts as forms of
representing, must be distinguished from their empirical function in
matter-of-factual judgments about historical fact.
In linguistic terms this means roughly that spatiotemporal predicates are essential not only to object-language statements, but to the
metalinguistic statements that ascribe logical (epistemic) powers to
linguistic forms. It is a familiar, but important, fact that the logical
powers of demonstratives and tenses essentially involve the manner
of their occurrence in space and time, and, hence, the conceptual structure of space and time is built into their logical powers.
To be an intuitive representing is to represent something as located
in space or time, as being here and now with me as contrasted with
there and then. But, by the same token, it is to represent it as on the
way to being there and then and no longer with me now. We must
remember that, although time does not change in the sense that one
temporal system is replaced by another (there is only one time), it
does, moving image of eternity that it is, constantly change with respect to the A-characteristics of pastness, presentness, and futurity.
Now to be represented as having a location in space and time is to
be represented as an object, as something with respect to which there
is truth or falsity. It is sufficient to note that so to represent an item is

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to commit oneself to the idea that it is so located. In the Analogies

Kant argues, among other things, that such truth and falsity involves
the concept of Nature as the object par excellence of empirical knowledge (A129).
VI

Since a "this" representing is an object-of-knowledge representing,

intuitions have the form
this-object
But just as nothing is represented as a mere "this," for the conceptual
framework of space, time and of myself as confronted by this is involved, so nothing is represented in perception as merely
this (herenow) object
To make the obvious point, object is an epistemic concept, and we
experience objects in terms of empirical concepts. Thus, in giving an
example of an intuition, we should offer not
this object
but, say,
this cube
where the concept of a cube, unlike its pure geometrical counterpart,
is the concept of an object in nature. Kant seems to have taken for
granted that the intuitive representings must be absolutely determinate and that to represent an absolutely determinate cube, for example, is to "draw it in thought" (B138, B162, A102). This difficult
doctrine requires that the logical powers of the concept cube involve
not only the inferential powers characteristic of its role as the predicate of full-fledged judgment, but also the powers involved in "constructing" or "drawing" determinate "this-cube" representings in
accordance with a rule, and knowing that this is what one is doing.8
VII

To be able to have intuitive representings, then, is to have all the

conceptual apparatus involved in representing oneself as acquiring
empirical knowledge of a world one never made. We are a long way
from the Humean notion that merely by virtue of having a sense
impression one has as good a piece of knowledge as one can get;
not to mention the Cartesian notion that the intuitive knowledge of
one's present cogitationes is logically independent of any knowledge
of the context in which they occur. Some familiar Kantian theses follow as corollary from the above considerations:
8 One is struck by Brouwer's parallel point that to have temporal concepts is to be
able not only to make judgments involving temporal predicates but to "construct"
determinate representings of the form
this-after-that.
But I must leave the details of Kant's theory of intuitive conceptualization and how
it fits in with his theory of concepts as rules to another occasion.

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1. Having particularintuitions involveshaving the conceptualframeworkof

spaceand time. Hence the possessionof the lattercannot be accountedfor in
terms of the former. Kant infers that the ability to represent items as in
spaceand time is innate.
2. The fact that conceptshave categorialform undercutsany abstractionism
that derivesthem from nonconceptualrepresentations.As for forming conceptsand categoriesby abstractionfrom intuitive representingsof manifolds,
this makessense becausethe latter alreadyhave a conceptualand categorial
character.By confusingthe synopsisof sense (A97)with the intuitive representing of a manifold Locke mistakenlyconcluded that concepts and categories could be abstractedfrom sheersensibility.Kant infers that the frameworkof basicconceptand categoriesis innate.
3. Induction, the process of forming generalizations about objects and
events, presupposes the conceptual framework involved in thinking of
objects and events as located in space and time. Since any present event
will be a past event, it must,if it is to have truthand knowability,be inferentially as well as intuitively accessible.Since such inferential accessinvolves
laws of nature, the domain of objectsof empiricalknowledgemust conform
to knowable laws. The knowledge of these laws cannot be inductive, for,
as was pointed out above, induction presupposesknowable objects. The
knowledgeof these laws must be innate in the sense in which geometrywas
innate in Meno'sslave.
4. To conceiveof an event as occurringat a time is to commitoneself to the
idea that the concept of that event and the concept of that time belong togetherregardlessof what one happens to think. But there is nothing about
the sheer concept of a particulartime which requiresthat it be occupiedby
a certain event. The belonging must, Kant concludes,be a matter of the
temporallocation of the event relative to other events; and, as belonging,
be the inferability(in principle) of its occurrenceat that location from the
occurrenceof the eventsto whichit is thusrelated.
5. Associationof ideasis associationof concepts(not images),and hence presupposes and cannot account for the frameworkfeatures of a conceptual
structure.
6. Even our consciousnessof what is going on in our own mind is a conceptual responsewhich must be distinguishedfrom that which evokes the
response.Not even in this context does it make sense to speak of verifying
judgmentsby comparingthem with the actual state of affairsto which we
are responding.Kant tends to limit this point to the introspectionof sense
impressionsand other sensorystatesof the empiricalself. Thus he tells us in
A456that we have knowledge"bypure apperception"of our conceptualacts.
Indeed, he repeatedlyimplies that we have (or can have) an unproblematic
awarenessof all acts of spontaneityor synthesis9 (e.g., A108, B 130, B153).
9 It has often been noted that Kant'sreferencesto successiveacts of synthesis is
in prima facie conflictwith his dictum that everythingin time is appearance.This

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And in B430 he even seems to suggestthat in pure apperceptionthe mental

activity known and the knowing of it are somehow one and the same, a
thesiswhichis surelyinconsistentwith criticalprinciples.10
7. The applicationof the fourthCorollaryaboveto the specialcaseof sensory
statesof the empiricalself gives the coup de grdceto the problematicidealism of Descartes.For since the only inferability there is pertaining to the
occurrenceof sense impressionsconcernstheir law-likerelation to the stimulation of our sense organsby materialthings, the belonging togetherof the
individual concept of a particularsense impressionand the individual concept of a certain moment involves the distinction between material things
and the senseimpressionsthatrepresentthemin the empiricalself (B274ff).
VIII

Nature, we have said, is the system of actual basic empirical states of

affairs. There are two themes in Kant's account of what it is to be an
actual basic state of affairs:
(a) It is one the intuiting of which would be a correct intuiting. In
terms of our linguistic model, this amounts to saying that a true basic
statement is one which, in here-now form, as contrasted with the
there-then counterparts which make the same statement, would be a
correct "language entry transition" by a person appropriately located
with respect to the object.
(b) An actual basic state of affairs is one that is correctly inferable
from correct present intuitive representings. In terms of our linguistic
model, this amounts to saying that a true basic empirical statement
is one that is correctly derivable by means of true law-like statements
from true basic here-now statements.
Once again, it must be borne in mind that Kant's aim has not been
to prove that there is knowledge of the there-then, but to show, by
articulating the concept of empirical knowledge, that knowing the
here-now involves knowing it as an element in a system that includes
there-thens.
conflict, however, merely points up the extent to which Kant's system calls for a
distinction between Newtonian time as a form of nature and the successivenessinvolved in the activity by which the mind represents nature. The reference to
motionas a transcendentalconcept (as contrastedwith the motion of objects in
space) in B155 and the accompanying note is particularly important in this
connection.
10 Kant could insist that the knowledgegained by pure apperceptionis not knowledge of an objectby arguing that the mind qua rational, i.e. qua capable of
spontaneousconceptualactivity, is not a part of nature. In the terminologyof the
third Antinomy, its causalityis not caused.A rational being qua rational does not
have a nature in the sense in which, for example, gold and aquaregiahave natures.
Such naturesas rationalbeings have is a matterof abilities(and the "secondnature"
of habit) ratherthan causalproperties.

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Ix

It is often said today that Kant's Critique consists of important insights into the logical geography of our conceptual structure which
are obscured almost to the point of invisibility by a tedious and fictitious "transcendental psychology." Kant is said to postulate a mechanism consisting of empirically inaccessable mental processes which
"constructs" the world of experience out of sense impressions. If my
argument is correct, this criticism is misdirected. The true situation
can be seen by assessing the validity of a corresponding criticism directed against a linguistic version of Kant's position.
To construe the concepts of meaning, truth, and knowledge as
metalinguistic concepts pertaining to linguistic behavior (and dispositions to behave) involves construing the latter as governed by oughtto-be's which are actualized as uniformities by the training that transmits language from generation to generation. Thus, if logical and
(more broadly) epistemic categories-express general features of the
ought-to-be's (and corresponding uniformities) which are necessary
to the functioning of language as a cognitive instrument, epistemology, in this context, becomes the theory of this functioning-in short
transcendental linguistics.
Transcendental linguistics differs from empirical linguistics in
two ways: (1) it is concerned with language as conforming to epistemic
norms which are themselves formulated in the language; (2) it is general in the sense in which what Carnap describes as "general syntax"
is general; i.e., it is not limited to the epistemic functioning of historical languages in the actual world. It attempts to delineate the general
features that would be common to the epistemic functioning of any
language in any possible world. As I once put it, epistemology, in the
"new way of words" is the theory of what it is to be a language that is
about a world in which it is used." Far from being an accidental
excrescence, Kant's transcendental psychology is the heart of his system. He, too, seeks the general features any conceptual system must
have in order to generate knowledge of a world to which it belongs.
An essential requirement of the transmission of a language from
generation to generation is that its mature users be able to identify
both extra-linguistic items and the utterances that are correct responses to them. This mobilizes the familiar fact, stressed in the last
paragraph of sec. III above, that, in addition to their logical powers,
linguistic expressions have an empirical character as items in the
"1"Realism and the New Way of Words,"Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, viii, 4 (June 1948); reprinted, with alterations, in Readings and Philosophical Analysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949).

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world. We can ascertain, for example, that a person does in point of

fact respond as he ought to red objects in sunlight by uttering or
being disposed to utter 'this is red'. Again, we can ascertain that, other
things being equal, he is not disposed to enlarge, as he ought not,
utterances of 'it is raining' into 'it is raining and it is not raining'.
Kant's agnosticism, however, if taken seriously-i.e., construed as
the view that we have no determinate concepts of how things are in
themselves-means that no conceptual response can be evaluated, in
the above manner, as correct or incorrect. Rules of the form
(Ceterisparibus)one ought to respondto (pitemswith conceptualactsof
kind C.
could never be rules in accordance with which people criticize conceptual responses; for, on his official view, the esse of any item to which
any empirical predicate applies is already to be a conceptual response,
not something that is responded to. To put it bluntly, only God could
envisage the ought-to-be's in terms of which our conceptual responses
are to be criticized.
But, although any contemporary Kantian must take seriously the
critique of agnosticism implicit in the preceding remarks, its force
would have been obscured by the innatist features of Kant's transcendental "inner-linguistics." For him there is no problem concerning
the cultural transmission of basic conceptual abilities. There is, in his
system, no place for this role of the ought-to-be's of language entry
transitions. Thus Kant is in a position to grant that empirical knowledge involves a uniformity of conceptual response to extra-conceptual
items and even that extra-conceptual items conform to general laws,12
without granting that the character of the items to which we conceptually respond, or the laws to which God knows them to conform,
are accessible to finite minds.
We could expect Kant to say that, if there is empirical knowledge,
there must be such uniformities (once again, he is not attempting to
prove that there is empirical knowledge, but to articulate its structure)
and that, in the absence of particular reasons for thinking that something has gone wrong, we are entitled to suppose that our conceptual
machinery is functioning properly.
WILFRID SELLARS

University of Pittsburgh
12 This idea is implicit in the transcendentalprinciple of the affinity of the
manifold of sense and finds its explicit formulationin B164, where Kant in a little
noted passagewrote that "things in themselveswould necessarily"[i.e. as a necessary truth of transcendentallogic (WS)]" apart from any understanding that
knows them, conform to laws of their own." We are led to think of the Newtonian
frameworkof the world as we experience it as a projection of a system of laws to
which things in themselvesconformand which areknown only to God.