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Empirical Cognition in the Transcendental Deduction: Kant’s Starting Point and his Humean Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2016

Curtis Sommerlatte
Curtis Sommerlatte*
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montréal
*
Email: curtis.sommerlatte@gmail.com
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Abstract

In this article, I argue that in the sense of greatest epistemological concern for Kant, empirical cognition is ‘rational sensory discrimination’: the identification or differentiation of sensory objects from each other (whether correctly or not), occurring through a capacity of forming judgements (whether correct or not). With this account of empirical cognition, I show how the Transcendental Deduction of the first Critique is most plausibly read as having as its fundamental assumption the thesis that we have empirical cognition, and I provide evidence that Kant understood Hume as granting this assumption.

Keywords

cognitionTranscendental DeductionHumeclaritydistinctness
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 437 - 463
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2016 

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