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Abstract: Hughes has recently argued that there is to be found in Kants epistemology an aesthetic constraint that makes for an objectivity of empirical knowledge-claims. The reading
that she defends leads to a rejection of an imposition-view of empirical concepts and the categories and to an affirmation of a realism in Kants theory of empirical knowledge. I am in
broad agreement with her thesis but disagree with her ultimate explanation of the ontology
of Kants objects of empirical knowledge. Hughes exposition and my reading wind their way
through both Kants epistemology and his theory of free beauty and of pure judgments of
taste.
Keywords: Epistemological Realism, Imposition, Beauty
Hughes in her recent work1 creates and sustains interest on several levels. She develops and defends the thesis that according to Kant, there is an aesthetic condition
met with in our empirical cognitions which provides a constraint on our cognitive
representations, including the use of forms such as the categories, forms which Kant
thinks of as legislated, prescribed, or contributed by a cognizing subject. This constraint is provided by what is given in our experiences. Hughes treats such constraint as an objectivity-making condition, a condition that is required for empirical
cognition in addition to those furnished by the forms of space and time and the categories (and with them, empirical concepts). The constraint in question is itself not
to be a contribution of the subject. Contributions that are of the subject are formal
structures that are necessary, but not sufficient, for cognition based on perception.
With her reading of Kant, Hughes is taking sides in the ever ongoing debate
concerning the nature and role of realism (in one sense or another of this term) in
the midst of his transcendental idealism. She proposes that in the Critique of Pure
Reason2 there is already to be found a consistent and defensible realism of a par1
2
Fiona Hughes: Kants Aesthetic Epistemology: Form and World. Edinburgh 2007.
And not just in Kants post-Critical period. Jeffrey Edwards, with his recent Substance,
Force, and the Possibility of Knowledge (Berkeley 2000), is one of a growing number of
Kant interpreters who have traced the development of Kants thoughts regarding realism
from the first Critique to the Opus postumum. Also see Kenneth R. Westphal: Affinity,
Idealism, and Naturalism: The Stability of Cinnabar and the Possibility of Experience, in
Kant-Studien 88, 1997, 139189, for realist constraint of Hughes variety in evidence in
part of the Critique of Pure Reason; as well as his Kants Transcendental Proof of Realism
(Cambridge 2004). Westphals studies are remarkably detailed and sensitive, and I have
learned from him and from Edwards.
DOI 10.1515/KANT.2011.015
203
ticular kind. (She also believes, however, that Kants view is not wholly and distinctly developed until the Critique of Judgment.) The realism in question pertains
to the role and nature of what is given in, or given as part of, the matter of or in
sensation,3 a material condition that is at work in addition to the aforementioned
formal conditions. (As far as Kants transcendental idealism is concerned, Hughes
interprets such idealism as ontological, regarding no more and no less than the
metaphysical status of forms in the official sense of his notions of form.4)
Our author characterizes the material condition in question as aesthetic. An
important duality of meaning attaches to the term aesthetic, as she is well aware.
As was already the case in Baumgarten, Kant uses the term to mean perceptual
or pertaining to perception and then also develops a theory of aesthetics (in
the sense of aesthetic familiar to us today). He does not do so in the manner of
Baumgarten but nonetheless in close linkage with perception theory. Both senses
of the term are essential for Hughes reading: as we shall see, aesthetic constraint
is perceptual constraint intimately connected with beauty.
Hughes develops her positive thesis against the background of the so-called
imposition theory, popular in some quarters as a reading of Kants first-Critique
talk of various forms and of their legislation and use (even when the resultant
view is then rejected on philosophical grounds).5 Our author describes the imposition theory of forms as having the consequence that our cognizing mind somehow
produces the objects of our empirical cognition. Objects are said here to be only
objects for us: no access (of any sort?) to an extra-mental world is allowed.6 She
takes imposition-theory to be bad subjectivism and a bad reading of Kant since it
fails to capture his views about constraint and objectivity.
In her reading of Kant, Hughes turns to an examination of the relation between
the work done by four faculties which are essentially involved in our empirical
cognition. Three of the four faculties are obvious: they are the senses (passive
receptivity but also subject to the forms of space and time), the imagination
(assigned more than one task by Kant), and the understanding (cognitive discur3
I say matter of or in sensation because it is not always clear, in Kants writings and
in those of some of his interpreters, whether what is meant is matter corresponding to
sensation or sensation (or an element of sensation) itself. The latter sense will turn out to
be crucial.
There is considerable justification for such a reading. At KrV, B 41, for example, Kant not
only holds space to be a form but also nothing but a form of some of our representations
and he often appears to be of the opinion that such ontological idealism of form constitutes transcendental idealism. But the latter, all considered, need not be understood in this
fashion. See note 37, where I distinguish, contrary to Hughes, between metaphysical and
transcendental realism and mention a conception of transcendental idealism which has
such idealism be eminently compatible with metaphysical realism, even if space and the
like were to be taken to be metaphysically real.
For example, by Paul Guyer in his Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge 1987).
He believes proper realism to be incompatible with the main orientation of the first
Critique. Hughes discusses Guyer.
Hughes provides a good statement of such an interpretation in Chapter 1 of her work.
I shall criticize her own conception of the extra-mental towards the end of my discussion,
without, however, disagreeing with her rejection of impositionalism.
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sivity). The fourth faculty is that of reflection or reflective judgment (also assigned
more than one crucial task by Kant but, at bottom, not itself cognitive discursivity, in Kants restricted sense of cognition). The role of this fourth faculty has
not always been appreciated although of late there has been an upturn of interest
once again (e.g., in some discussions of cognitive concepts as functions and of
what Kant refers to as the formal purposiveness of nature or of our cognitive concepts).7 Explicit teleological judgments are good examples of reflective judgments
and so are pure judgments of taste. (A fifth faculty, that of reason, is intertwined
with that of reflection, but we can set this aside.)
Hughes provides us with highly detailed discussions of the relations between
these faculties, their work, their fit and their cooperation. (The realism to be
defended turns on such fit and cooperation.) She characterizes this cooperation
and the special roles of the imagination and of reflective judgment as the subject
matter of Kants Subjective Deduction writ large. Kants overall discussion begins
with his mention of a Subjective Deduction in the Preface to the first edition of
the Critique of Pure Reason, continues in his account of the distinction between
matter and form of empirical intuition and in his explanation of three-fold synthesis and figurative synthesis, and continues further still in the Chapter on the
Schematism and the rest of the Analytic of Principles. (Imagination will be involved in more than one way in all of this.) The project according to her then sees
its completion in accounts of reflection, of formal purposiveness and of a special
aesthetic and subjective purposiveness, connected essentially with an account of
common sense and the Deduction of pure judgments of taste, all in the Critique of
Judgment and its two Introductions.
The focus of attention in much of this is on how the various activities (but also
the passive features of the senses) that go into cognitive judgment are possible and
compossible. There are to be found in the literature sensitive discussions of the
importance of the Subjective Deduction,8 of the relation between independent
input provided by the senses and the imagination and regimentation by the understanding,9 and of the need for perceptual constraint, cooperation and harmony,10
but it is a great merit of Hughes work to be presenting the enormous scope of
Kants analysis in one breadth, presenting his rather scattered discussion as part of
one, crucial whole. Hughes comprehensive grasp already makes her book one of
lasting interest and value.
Taking it for granted (at least for the sake of argument) that space and time and
conceptual structure (all forms) are no more than contributions of our cognizing
7
10
Among other recent work, see Henry Allisons Kants Theory of Taste (Cambridge 2001),
chapters 1 and 68, which Hughes takes up. She herself furnishes a good description of
formal purposiveness. See my discussion below.
Robert P. Wolffs still very useful Kants Theory of Mental Activity (Cambridge, Mass.
1963) comes to mind.
J. Michael Young has provided us with many an insight here. See in particular his Kants
View of Imagination, in: Kant-Studien 79, 1988, 140164.
Harmony is of course a central topic in interpretations addressing Kants conception of
(free) beauty.
205
mind, necessary for the possibility of empirical cognition, Hughes task (and
Kants, if she is correct) is to account, at the same time, for the presence and
nature of presentations that are presentations of or in sensation and that are to be
a further necessary condition, a material condition not due to any contributions
or activities of the mind. The givenness of sensations (due to affection) and the nature of these sensations are to yield the desired constraint (and enabling condition), rejecting impositionalism.
In short, the presentations of sensation are to make for an empirical guidedness
of our use of cognitive representations. But it may not be apparent how this can
be so and Kant himself does not make it easy to see. Indeed, so Hughes claims,
matters do not really become properly clear until the Critique of Judgment with
its discussion of subjective purposiveness. Until then, Kant often makes it look as
if whatever guidedness may be present comes itself about on the strength only of
concepts, rules, or conditions introduced by us, a view that defeats the very possibility of the constraint that is at stake.
For example, in the opening section of the Transcendental Deduction in the
B-edition of the Critique of Pure Reason,11 Kant denies that any (sort of) combination (or relation) can be met with in the presentations of the senses themselves
and he repeatedly seems to be of the opinion that the very possibility of there being
any combination and affinity12 depends, specifically, on transcendental apperception and the latters unity, or on the (veridical) use of cognitive concepts or rules.13
I believe that a number of issues need to be sorted out here. First of all, if it
nonetheless is to be correct that sensations provide the desired condition, they do
need to have natures and these natures will need to consist of combination, affinity,
and regularity independent of concepts or the latters use.14 (In sensation, combination and the like would be passively offered, in contrast to the forms of space
and time which according to Hughes are themselves an ordering process or activity
and in contrast to the form of generality which is part of the content that constitutes discursive concepts as well as in contrast to the categories which in turn order
empirical concepts in cognitive contexts. Form in all of these cases in one way or
another is order and is part of the content or else form of the content of our cognitive activities.) But it is the very possibility of combination etc. in sensation itself
that Kant is denying in important places. Secondly, his recurring belief that combination, affinity, and the like always depend on transcendental unity may be due
to a confusion between this unity requiring the former and its being the (one and
only) condition bringing about such features. (This is an unflattering explanation,
to be sure.) The fact of the matter, rather, is supposed to be that it is transcendental
unity of apperception that depends on combination and affinity in sensation, a ma11
12
13
14
KrV, B 129131.
We can speak here indifferently of combination, connection, regularity, and affinity and
generality since all are cases of relations or of relatedness. (Think of affinity and generality of sensory concepts as similarity relations.)
Westphals paper, cited above, provides an excellent treatment of this matter. See 176 ff.
Westphal, ibid., is of help here. He stresses the concept-independence required of sensation.
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17
18
207
ities or regularities between present and some subsequent courses of manifolds (in
light, for example, of the schema of the permanent in time). Productive imagination will be engaged here as part of the present apprehension of the manifold.
(All of this should be congenial, I believe, to Hughes overall approach.) Such
schematizing arranging is performed on the strength of some concept and its exposition consisting of sensory concepts (synthesis of recognition of perceptual
content in a concept).19 (It is also important to see that the productive imagination
here does not introduce novelty. Rather, imagination engages in the sort of anticipation I have suggested in full grasp of present perceptual content. If this were not
the case, it would be a puzzle why we are focusing on the work of the imagination
and its relation to the understanding when the given problem concerns presentations of the senses. Hughes readers will want to know why there is talk about sensory givenness and about imagination as mediator between empirical intuition
and understanding and about cooperation between imagination and understanding. The answer is that we are talking here throughout about sensation-cum-imagination and its work and relation to the understanding.)
In short, in cognitive situations we, as it were, always catch ourselves already
using and applying concepts. Such an activist conception of all cognitive synthesis
may seem to deepen the mystery of independent sensory input. Hughes certainly
describes matters very well when she alludes to a hegemony or dominance of the
understanding over the imagination in situations in which we are cognitively employed. But at the same time, the anticipations which I spoke of a moment ago evidently need to be fulfilled if there is to be good perceptual warrant needed for successful empirical cognition, and it should be the case that they at bottom will be
fulfilled (when they are) by perceptual manifolds themselves. The active arranging
of these manifolds crucially involves a structuring of our anticipations, conceptually represented. Such representation of combinations and regularities should
need as a necessary condition of success satisfaction by the manifolds themselves.
This satisfaction would require the latter to possess a structure of their own.
Following her extensive discussion of synthesis in the Deduction in both editions of the Critique of Pure Reason (including a look at the objective side of
the Deductions), our author takes up next the Chapter on Schematism and the imaginations role in schematization as described there (with the imagination mediating as mentioned a moment ago). She continues to do so with a view towards a
relation between intuition and understanding that is to tell against impositionalism. She finds some additional encouragement for her reading in Kants further
discussions in the Analytic of Principles. The Anticipations of Perception is a good
19
I am relying here on Carl J. Posys exemplary discussions of Kants views concerning perceptual warrant and conceptual guidance of cognitive synthesis, of the anticipatory
nature of experience, and of the role of productive imagination. Among his articles,
see Transcendental Idealism and Causality: An Interpretation of Kants Argument in the
Second Analogy, in: Kant on Causality, Freedom, and Objectivity (Minneapolis 1984,
reissued 2008), 2041; and Where Have All the Objects Gone?, in: The B-Deduction,
The Southern Journal of Philosophy XXV, Supplement 1987, 1736.
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example.20 The designated topic of this section of the first Critique is that intensive measurability of (some) qualities is an a priori (formal) requirement for empirical cognition but Kant here also tells us that the particular matter of empirical
intuition, that is, sensation, is always to be given or awaited. Hughes argues that
the Second Analogy and the Second Postulate,21 among further sections, prove
helpful as well. The Second Postulate, for example, speaks of empirical actuality
as requiring an accordance with sensation as a material condition (as well as with
formal conditions). Still, all told, not all is as clear as we would wish in Kants
first-Critique account of the presentations and role of sensation.
I find myself basically in agreement with Hughes reading of the just-mentioned
sections of the first Critique.22 She herself then continues by arguing, in an interesting and compelling fashion, that Kants final considered account of the work
done by the perceptual manifold and of the relation between that labor and that of
our concepts or rules fully comes into focus in his third-Critique account of work
done by reflective judgment (including reflective judgments use of imagination)
and in his theory of pure judgments of taste (specifically, judgments of beauty).
The deep structure of synthesis, Hughes tells us, is finally accounted for in the
course of Kants analysis and defense of judgments of beauty, as follows.23 In judgments of this sort, we are once again engaged in perceptual encounters but,
appropriately so, find ourselves not using any cognitive concepts, and this in a
fashion reveals the sought-after possibility of the contribution by perceptual
manifolds themselves in cognitive contexts. She argues that a judgment of beauty,
itself wholly subjective, by means of exemplary exhibition indicates the very
possibility of fit between the faculties of imagination and understanding.24
Such exemplary exhibition is the promised link between empirical cognition
and beauty. Beauty itself, so Hughes shows as part of her account of the Deduction of pure judgments of taste in the Critique of Judgment,25 is a particular
heightened degree of a more general cooperation between the two faculties, such
general cooperation being present in all cases of successful empirical cognition.
Beauty is such a degree in the absence of any concept application even only intended. (This is the free harmony of the two faculties). A judgment of beauty
reveals what is presented in empirical intuition to be, in her words, open to the
general possibility of (cognitive) synthesis or the possibility of applying concepts
but it itself does so without any concept in view.26
I take all of this to mean that in a judgment of this sort our perceptual encounter
(of beauty) is once again intrinsically intertwined with anticipation of continuity,
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
209
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discussion hence assigns important tasks to reflective judgments in behalf of cognitive ones. What is more, Hughes reaches her results concerning exemplary exhibition of the possibility of fit via a good discussion of formal purposiveness now
understood as a systematic order on the level of diversity of empirical forms or
concepts (a formal purposiveness of our systems of concepts as a tool for concept
application, given the possibility of fit.)28 This provides yet another task for reflective in behalf of cognitive judgments, rounding off her overall discussion of the
role of judgments of the former sort.
I have disregarded this latter detail and indeed many others unearthed by
Hughes in her complex work while adding a detail or two to her descriptions. But
I trust I have presented the gist of her view accurately enough. I find Hughes discussion of the Subjective Deduction in the third Critique and of what leads up to
it to be both a plausible account of Kants progressive refinement of his own
thinking about the matters involved and (although incomplete as an explanation)
an interesting and overall creditable argument for the possibility of aesthetic constraint on the formal structures which he takes to be contributed by us, hence an
argument against an impositionalist reading, as difficult as this may initially have
seemed.29
But I beg to differ concerning Hughes ontology of objects. She buys into an
Allisonian non-ontological reading of Kants conception of things as they are in
themselves.30 Encouraged, I think, by this, our author takes empirical objects or
objects of empirical cognition to be no more than objects existing in space and she
takes being in space to make for an independent existence. Hughes objects are
the objects of the Refutation of Material Idealism (whose existence proof she
banks on).31 But the Refutation itself does not establish the existence of ontologically independent entities (given Kants views on space). My basic objection is that
Allisons way of generating a conception of things as they are in themselves does
not succeed. (For example, it does not account for the possession of properties
on the part of such things. But Kant believes they do have properties.)32 Things as
28
29
30
31
32
Ibid.
If I have a reservation concerning Hughes treatment, it would concern the use of the form
of space. Like the form of time, that of space is to be an ordering process for sensations,
but I think it is not good enough to be told, as we are in her Chapter 6, Section V, that the
form of space is a form for what is material or that it is intimately bound up with what is
material. When discussing figurative synthesis and the Axiom of Intuition, Hughes speaks
of an iterative synthesis. I take this to mean iterative synthesis of homogeneous space but
I cannot tell whether she means to be distinguishing between metric and topological properties of space and how constraints of sensation are to play a role here (if they are). All
told, what does Hughes take to be the conditions of use of, say, topological concepts?
For Henry Allisons basic view here, see his Kants Transcendental Idealism (New Haven
1983), chapters 1, 2, and 11.
Hughes, op. cit., chapter 3.
Compare KrV, B 306. These are to be properties not cognizable by us. At the same time,
abstracting from a property in our representation of an entity is not to represent that entity as not having the property in question. This provides yet another reason for rejecting
Allisons reading. For a good discussion of these difficulties, see Robert Howell, Kants
Transcendental Deduction (Dordrecht 1992), 2023.
211
they are in themselves are not ways of considering things and objects, all told,
are more than what is in space.
A related feature telling against on Allisonian reading is that the forms of space
and time are (according to Hughes herself)33 introduced upon occasion of sensation, the result of affection. But what grounds affection? This is a question she
takes up.34 But, I submit, metaphysical realism (again) needs to come into the picture, contrary to Hughes claim that empirical realism is the only realism Kant can
consistently hold. She argues that an Allisonian conception of transcendental
matter will do when it comes to accounting for the ground of affection but I do
not believe that this is so.35 Given receptivity, metaphysically real things as they
are in themselves (and according to Kant not cognizable as they are in themselves)
are the ground of affection. They bring about affection, hence sensation with
its own possibility of combination etc., to be then in turn spatially and temporally
ordered. In Hughes scheme of things, in contrast, the sensory given emerges at
best as a wholly unexplained brute fact, despite her efforts to the contrary. (At its
worst, the objects which are to be responsible for sensations turn out to be for her
no more than some kind of construct out of the very material that is given in these
sensations.)
If my objections are on target, some irony attaches to Hughes interpretation of
Kants ontology: she shows how to rescue him from an impositionalist reading but
then herself fails to allow for, and to explain, his true commitment to the existence
of the properly extra-mental, a commitment which does hold that objects are indeed more than just objects for us.36
A metaphysically realist reading should hold that we cognize ontologically independent things (when we do) as they appear in empirical intuition. Reference,
truth, and cognition in Kant need to be sorted out from such a perspective, if they
can be.37 Despite both exegetical and philosophical difficulties with such an ap33
34
35
36
37
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proach I believe that Hughes, for the reasons I have given, herself misses out on
the truly extra-mental world. I do not believe, however, that this affects her way
with an activity-independent (material) structure of perceptual manifolds themselves.
My intermittent criticisms and emendations in no way detract from my admiration for Hughes work. With her patient discussion of Kants accounts of sensation, imagination, and our use of concepts, and her analyses of the tasks of reflective judgment and of the final task of the Subjective Deduction in the third
Critique, she has taken important steps towards clarifying a crucial issue in Kants
epistemology. Empirical cognition emerges as a task and an achievement since the
cooperation of the faculties turns out to include that of an aesthetic constraint and
enabling condition independent of our activities. Hughes book is a valuable contribution to the literature and very much deserves a wide readership.
could be metaphysically real without thereby forcing a rejection of epistemological idealism.) Westphal, in contrast, believes cognizable truth to be correspondentist and he takes
Kant to be driven to hold (eventually) that it is the ontologically independent ground of
sensation which is the target of empirical cognition. He hence holds that Kant is a metaphysical realist and eventually a transcendental realist as well (in the sense of transcendental realism I have alluded to). Hughes believes she is avoiding metaphysical realism on
the strength of her Allisonian interpretation of things as they are in themselves. She and
Posys (but also Westphals) metaphysical realist disagree on the metaphysics of objects.
In the context of Posys reading, we can disambiguate the notion of the material given
to or in sensation as follows. (Compare note 3, above). It is the given in sensation, features
of regularity etc. of sensations themselves, which provides a justificatory condition for
empirical cognition (in light of, for example, the dynamical categories). At the same time,
there being a properly ontologically independent ground of sensations, itself possessed of
properties, constitutes an in-principle explanatory (but not justificatory) condition (a condition, however, not itself a matter for our cognition). Westphal agrees that preconceptual
material constraint on the part of sensations (in addition to our use of the categories in
our cognitive syntheses) is required for empirical cognition. Both Posy and Westphal agree
with Hughes in this regard.
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