Three Essays on Kant

THE ROLE OF THE IMAGINATION IN KANT'S THEORY OF EXPERIENCE Wilfrid Sellars Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Categories: A Colloquium, edited by Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. (Pennsylvania State University, 1978), and appears here with the kind permission of Professor Johnstone. Edited in hypertext by Andrew Chrucky. 1. My aim in this paper is to give a sympathetic account of Kant's theory of the role played by what he calls the productive imagination in perceptual experience. My method, however, will not be that of textual exegesis and commentary, but rather that of constructing an ostensibly independent theory which will turn out, it just so happens, to contain the gist of the Kantian scheme. Proceeding in this way will enable me to avoid the tasks involved in coping with Kant's terminology, architectonic, and polemical orientation. By concentrating attention on the subject matter itself, this approach will make possible a relatively brief treatment of what would otherwise be a timeconsuming enterprise. 2. By referring to the theory I am about to construct as "ostensibly independent," I also mean to imply that although I shall stick reasonably close to what I think to be the truth, I shall not be above warping and slanting the argument to fit the role of a sympathetic interpretation of the Critique. The extent to which I succeed in capturing the spirit of Kant's thought must be measured by the degree to which it illuminates the letter of the text. 3. Our access to the external world and to the nature and variety of the objects (in a suitably broad sense) of which it consists is through perception. Phenomenological reflection on the structure of perceptual experience, therefore, should reveal the categories, the most generic kinds or classes, to which these objects belong, as well as the manner in which objects perceived and perceiving subjects come together in the perceptual act. 4. I shall therefore begin my reflections on Kantian themes with a careful account of the relevant features of perceptual (in point of fact, visual) experience. An initial survey will provide a framework of working distinctions which will subsequently be refined. These distinctions, in one form or another, are familiar tools of the philosopher's trade. It is the subsequent refinements that will lead into the arena of controversy. 5. In the first place there is the distinction between the act of seeing and the object seen. Visual experience presents itself as a direct awareness of a complex physical structure. It also presents itself as having a point of view, as perspectival. Opaque objects present themselves as endowed with facing colored surfaces. I do not mean by this that they present themselves as complex structures of color expanses (visual "sense data"), but rather that they present themselves as threedimensional physical objects which stand in such and such relations to each other and to the perceiver's body. 6. In the second place, there is the distinction, already alluded to, between the objects perceived and what they are perceived as. Thus in veridical perception occurring in optimum circumstances--I shall have nothing to say about illusions, misperceptions, or hallucinations--the object is not only, for example, a brick which is red and rectangular on the side facing me, it is seen as a brick which is red and rectangular on the facing side. How is this to be understood? 7. Traditionally a distinction was drawn between the visual object and the perceptual judgment about the object. The latter was construed as a special kind of occurrent believing. Occurrent acts of belief were, in their turn, construed as propositional in form; as having, so to speak, a syntactical form which parallels or is analogous to the syntactical form of the sentence which would express it in overt speech. Believings, so to speak, occur in Mentalese.

8. This suggested to some philosophers that to see a visual object as a brick with a red and rectangular facing surface consists in seeing the brick and believing it to be a brick with a red and rectangular facing surface: This is a brick which has a red and rectangular facing surface where the judgment has a demonstrative component analogous to the linguistic demonstrative, "this," in the sentence by which it would be expressed. 9. Now I think that there is something to the idea that seeing as involves an occurrent act of belief, but I also think that the standard account misconstrues the structure of the believing. Notice that the subject term of the judgment was exhibited above as a bare demonstrative, a sheer this, and that what the object is seen as was placed in explicitly predicative position, thus "is a brick which has a red and rectangular facing surface." 10. I submit, on the contrary, that correctly represented, a perceptual belief has the quite different form: This brick with a red and rectangular facing surface Notice that this is not a sentence but a complex demonstrative phrase. In other words, I suggest that in such a perceptually grounded judgment as This brick with a red and rectangular facing side is too large for the job at hand the perceptual belief proper is that tokening of a complex Mentalese demonstrative which is the grammatical subject of the judgment as a whole. This can be rephrased as a distinction between a perceptual taking and what is believed about what is taken. What is taken or, if I may so put it, believed in is represented by the complex demonstrative phrase; while that which is believed about the object is represented by the explicitly predicative phrase which follows. Perceptual takings, thus construed, provide the perceiver with perceptual subject-terms for judgments proper. 11. From this point of view, what the visual object is seen as is a matter of the content of the complex demonstrative Mentalese phrase. II 12. I shall prepare the way for the next major step in the argument by changing my example. Consider the visual perception of a red apple. Apples are red on the outside (have a red skin) but white inside. Other features of apples are relevant, but this will do to begin with. The initial point to be made about the apple is that we see it not only as having a red surface but as white inside. This, however, is just the beginning. Notice that the experience contains an actual quantity of red. By "actual quantity of red" I mean a quantity of red which is not merely believed to exist as did the Fountain of Youth for Ponce de Leon. The Fountain of Youth does not actually exist. By contrast, the quantity of red which is a constituent of the visual experience of the apple not only actually exists but is actually or, to use a familiar metaphor, bodily present in the experience. 13. But what of the volume of white apple flesh which the apple is seen as containing? Many philosophers would be tempted to say that it is present in the experience merely by virtue of being believed in. It has, of course, actual existence as a constituent of the apple, but, they would insist, it is not present in its actuality. Phenomenologists have long insisted that this would be a mistake. As they see it, an actual volume of white is present in the experience in a way which parallels the red. We experience the red as containing the white. 14. But if what is experienced is red-containing-white as red-containing-white, and if both the red and the white are actualities actually present, how are we to account for the fact that there is a legitimate sense in which we don't see the inside of the apple? To be sure, we see the apple as white inside, but we don't see the whiteness of the inside of the apple.

15. We must add another distinction, this time between what we see and what we see of what we see. The point is a delicate one to which justice must be done if we are not to be derailed. Thus when I see a closed book, the following are all typically true. (a) I see the book. (b) The book has pages inside. (c) I see the book as having pages inside. (d) I do not see the inside pages. (e) The book has a back cover. (f) I see the book as having a back cover. (g) I do not see the back cover. 16. How can a volume of white apple flesh be present as actuality in the visual experience if it is not seen? The answer should be obvious. It is present by virtue of being imagined. (Notice that to get where we have arrived, much more phenomenology must have been done than is explicitly being done on this occasion. We are drawing on a store of accumulated wisdom.) 17. But notice where this leads us. The actual volume of white is experienced as contained in the actual volume of red. Yet if the actuality of the white apple flesh consists in it being imagined, it must be dependent for its existence on the perceiver; it must, in a sense to be analyzed, be "in" the perceiver. 18. Before following up this point, it should be noticed that the same is true of the red of the other side of the apple. The apple is seen as having a red opposite side. Furthermore, the phenomenologist adds, the red of the opposite side is not merely believed in; it is bodily present in the experience. Like the white, not being seen, it is present in the experience by being imagined. 19. Notice that to say that it is present in the experience by virtue of being imagined is not to say that it is presented as imagined. The fruits of careful phenomenological description are not to be read from experience by one who runs. Red may present itself as red and white present itself as white; but sensations do not present themselves as sensations, nor images as images. Otherwise philosophy would be far easier than it is. 20. The phenomenologist now asks us to take into account a phenomenon frequently noted, but as frequently misinterpreted. Consider the snow seen on a distant mountain. It looks cool. Do we see the whiteness of the snow, but only believe in its coolth. Perhaps this is sometimes so; but surely not always. Sometimes actual coolth is present in the experience, as was the white inside the apple and the red on the opposite side. Once again, we do not see the coolth of the snow, but we see the snow as cool; and we experience the actual coolth as we experience the actual whiteness of the snow. An actual coolness is bodily present in the experience as is an actual volume of white. 21. Let us combine our results into one example. We see the cool red apple. We see it as red on the facing side, as red on the opposite side, and as containing a volume of cool white apple flesh. We do not see of the apple its opposite side, or its inside, or its internal whiteness, or its coolness, or its juiciness. But while these features are not seen, they are not merely believed in. These features are present in the object of perception as actualities. They are present by virtue of being imagined. 22. We must introduce a further refinement. We see an apple. We see it as an apple. Do we see of it its applehood? We see a copper penny. We see it as a copper penny. Do we see of it its consistingof-copperness? We see a lump of sugar. We see it as white and as soluble. We see of it its whiteness. Do we see of it its solubility? The answer to the last question is surely negative, as are the questions concerning applehood and copperness, and for the same reason. Aristotle would put it by saying that we see of objects only their occurrent proper and common sensible features. We do not see of objects their causal properties, though we see them as having them. 23. To draw the proper consequences of this we must distinguish between imagining and imaging, just as we distinguish between perceiving and sensing. Indeed the distinction to be drawn is essentially the same in both cases. Roughly imagining is an intimate blend of imaging and conceptualization, whereas perceiving is an intimate blend of sensing and imaging and

conceptualization. Thus, imagining a cool juicy red apple (as a cool juicy red apple) is a matter of (a) imaging a unified structure containing as aspects images of a volume of white, surrounded by red, and of mutually pervading volumes of juiciness and coolth, (b) conceptualizing this unified image-structure as a cool juicy red apple. Notice that the proper and common sensible features enter in both by virtue of being actual features of the image and by virtue of being items thought of or conceptualized. The applehood enters in only by virtue of being thought of (intentional inexistence). {1} 24. On the other hand, seeing a cool juicy red apple (as a cool juicy red apple) is a matter of (a) sensing-cum-imaging a unified structure containing as aspects images of a volume of white, a sensed half-apple shaped shell of red, and an image or a volume of juiciness pervaded by a volume of white; (b) conceptualizing this unified sense-image structure as a cool juicy red apple. Notice that the proper and common sensible features enter in both by virtue of being actual features of the sense image structure and by virtue of being items conceptualized and believed in. As before, the applehood enters in only by virtue of being thought of (believed in). III 25. The upshot of the preceding section is that perceptual consciousness involves the constructing of sense-image models of external objects. This construction is the work of the imagination responding to the stimulation of the retina. From this point on I shall speak of these models as image-models, because although the distinction between vivid and less vivid features of the model is important, it is less important than (and subordinate to) the perspectival feature of the model (its structure as point-of-viewish and as involving containing and contained features). 26. The most significant fact is that the construction is a unified process guided by a combination of sensory input on the one hand and background beliefs, memories, and expectations on the other. The complex of abilities included in this process is what Kant calls the "productive" as contrasted with the "reproductive" imagination. The former, as we shall see, by virtue of its kinship with both sensibility and understanding unifies into one experiencing the distinctive contributions of these two faculties. 27. Notice once again that although the objects of which we are directly aware in perceptual consciousness are image-models, we are not aware of them as image-models. It is by phenomenological reflection (aided by what Quine calls scientific lore) that we arrive at this theoretical interpretation of perceptual consciousness. 28. Notice also that the construction of image-models of objects in the environment goes hand in hand with the construction of an image-model of the perceiver's body, i.e., what is constructed in an image-model of oneself-in-one's environment. The perspectival character of the image model is one of its most pervasive and distinctive features. It constitutes a compelling reason for the thesis of the transcendental ideality of the image-model world. Image-models are "phenomenal objects." Their esse is to be representatives or proxies. Their being is that of being complex patterns of sensory states constructed by the productive imagination. 29. Still more important is the fact that although the image-models are perspectival in character, the objects in terms of which they are conceptualized are not. Thus, apples are not perspectival in character. The concept of an apple is not the concept of a perspectival entity. Apples are seen from a point of view. Apples are imagined from a point of view. A spatial structure is imagined from a point of view. Yet the concept of a spatial structure, e.g., a pyramid, is not the concept of a point-ofviewish object. Thus we must distinguish carefully between objects, including oneself, as conceived by the productive imagination, on the one hand and the image-models constructed by the productive imagination, on the other. 30. We are now in a position to put the elements of visual perception which we have been distinguishing together.

31. In the first place, the productive imagination is a unique blend of a capacity to form images in accordance with a recipe, and a capacity to conceive of objects in a way which supplies the relevant recipes. Kant distinguished between the concept of a dog and the schema of a dog. The former together with the concept of a perceiver capable of changing his relation to his environment implies a family of recipes for constructing image models of perceiver-confronting-dog. 32. The best way to illustrate this is by a very simple example, for our perceptual experience does not begin with the perception of dogs and houses. The child does not yet have the resources for such experience. But though the child does not yet have the conceptual framework of dogs, houses, books, etc., he does, according to Kant, have an innate conceptual framework--a proto-theory, so to speak, of spatio-temporal physical objects capable of interacting with each other; objects--this is the crux of the matter--which are capable of generating visual inputs which vary in systematic ways with their relation to the body of a perceiver. 33. Consider the example of a perceiver who sees a pyramid and is walking around it, looking at it. The concept of a red pyramid standing in various relations to a perceiver entails a family of concepts pertaining to sequences of perspectival image-models of oneself-confronting-a-pyramid. This family can be called the schema of the concept of a pyramid. 34. Notice that the pyramid schema doesn't follow from the concept of a pyramid alone. It follows from the complex concept of pyramid in such-and-such relations to a perceiver. This accounts for the fact that whereas the concept of a pyramid is not a point-of-viewish concept, the associated schemas concern sequences of perspectival models of a pyramid. 35. It is in terms of these considerations that Kant's distinction{2} between (a) the concept of an object, (b) the schema of the concept, and (c) an image of the object, as well as his explication of the distinction between a house as object and the successive manifold in the apprehension of a house is to be understood. "The object is that in the appearance which contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension."{3} 36. To sum up, the productive imagination generates both the complex demonstrative conceptualization This red pyramid facing me edgewise and the simultaneous{4} image-model, which is a point-of-viewish image of oneself confronting a red pyramid facing one edgewise. We are now in a position to understand Kant's distinction between the productive and the reproductive imaginations.{5} The principle of the reproductive imagination is the "association of ideas"; more exactly, the association of objects. The connection between the associated items is contingent, and dependent on the happenstances of experience. As an association of objects it presupposes the constitution of objects by the productive imagination. And the principle of such constitution is not happenstance, but conformity to the recipe--schemata derived from concepts. We are also in a position to understand the precise sense in which the productive imagination mediates between "the two extremes, . . . sensibility and understanding . . ." (A124) and is ". . . an action of the understanding on the sensibility" (B152). IV 37. In the preceding section of the paper I emphasized a distinction between what we perceive the object as and what we perceive of the object. I related this distinction to the distinction between the complex demonstrative thought component and the complex-image component of the perceptual experience. I now want to do this in a more systematic way and to relate it to Kant's theory of categories. 38. The basic idea Is that what we perceive of the object in visual perception consists of those features which actually belong to the image-model, i.e., its proper and common-sensible qualities

and relations. Also its perspectival structure. On the other hand, what we perceive the object as is a matter of the conceptual content of the complex demonstrative thought. I pointed out that the sensible features belong in both contexts. Thus the phrase "cube of pink (from a certain point of view)" refers both to an actual feature of the image-model and (in second intention) a component of the conceptual center of the demonstrative thought. Thus, 39. Now I emphasized that we do not perceive of the object its causal properties. What we see of it are its occurrent sensible feature. This can now be generalized as follows. We do not perceive of the object its character as a substance having attributes, its character as belonging with other substances in a system of interacting substances, its character as conforming to laws of nature. In short, we do not perceive of the object what might be called "categorial" features. For the image construct does not have categorial features. It has an empirical structure which we can specify by using words which stand for perceptible qualities and relations. But it does not have logical structure; not-ness, or-ness, all-ness, some-ness are not features of the image-model. They are feature of judgment. More generally we can say that the image-model does not have grammatical structure. (It will be remembered that we are construing mental judgments as analogous to sentences. A judgment, we said, is, as it were, a Mentalese sentence episode. And, of course, Kant's categories are grammatical classifications. They classify the grammatical structures and functions of Mentalese. 40. Thus the category of substance-attribute is the structure 'S is P', the form of subject-attribute judgment. The category of causality is the form 'X implies Y'. The category of actuality is the form 'that-p is true'. More accurately, the categories are these forms or functions specialized to thought about spatio-temporal object. 41. In the preceding section we were concerned with the distinction between concepts of empirical object and the schemata of these concepts, i.e., the rules for image-model sequences which are determined by the concept of object-in-various-successive-relations-to-perceiver. But Kant also uses the term schema in connection with the categories. The categories do not specify imagemodels. There is no image of causality as there is an image of a house. Yet they do have in their own way schemata, i.e., rules specified in terms of abstract concepts pertaining to perceptible features of the world. Thus the schema for causality is the concept of uniform sequence throughout all space and time. 42. The Humean concept could be said to have images in an extended sense. Thus a person in a thunderstorm who experiences a finite stretch of lightning-thunder uniformity could be said to have experiences an image of causality. Kant, of course, does not say this, and I introduce it only to show that this new use of "schema" is not completely foreign to the previous one. 43. The schematized category of causality, then, is the ground-consequence category where the ground (antecedent) concerns the occurrence of one kind of event, K1, at t and the consequence concerns the occurrence of another kind event, K2, at t + (delta t). Since the ground is an event being of kind K1 it must be true that whenever K1 occurs, K2 also occurs. 44. The categories are in first instance simply identical with the forms of judgment, a point which must be grasped if traditional puzzles about the metaphysical deduction of the categories are to be avoided. These forms of thought would be involved in thinking about any subject matter from perceptual objects to metaphysics and mathematics. 45. The so-called pure categories are these forms of thought specialized to thought about objects (matter-of-factual systems) in general. Such objects need not be spatio-temporal, as are the objects of human experience. The full-blooded categories with which Kant is concerned in the Critique are the pure categories, specialized in their turn to thought about spatio-temporal objects. The relation of the forms of thought to the pure categories is that of genera to species, as is the relation of the pure categories to schematized categories. V

46. Let me conclude with some remarks on Kant's concept of an intuition. Consider the statements This is a pyramid This pyramid is made of stone The first has the explicit grammatical form of a sentence. So does the second. But notice that the grammatical form of a sentence is lurking in the subject of the second sentence. From the standpoint of transformational grammar we would think of it as derived from the deep structure. This is a pyramid and it is made of stone 47. One might be tempted to think of "this" as a pure demonstrative having no other conceptual content than that involved in being a demonstrative. Kant does think of an act of intuition as a demonstrative thought, a Mentalese "this." However he does not think of this Mentalese demonstrative as a bare Mentalese "this." An example of an act of intuition would be the Mentalese counterpart of This cube facing me edgewise. where this is not to be understood as, so to speak, a Mentalese paraphrase of This is a cube which faces me edgewise. 48. The role of an intuition is a basic and important one. It is the role of bringing a particular object before the mind for its consideration. Thus, though there is a close relationship between This cube facing me edgewise . . . and This is a cube which faces me edgewise. the former is an irreducible kind of representation. It is a demonstrative representation which has conceptual content and grammatical form. As noted above it contains the form and content of the judgment "This is a cube." 49. Thus for Kant intuitions are complex demonstrative thoughts which have implicit grammatical (and hence categorial) form. 50. However thin--as in the case of the child--the intuitive representation may be from the standpoint of the empirical concept involved, it nevertheless contains in embryo the concept of a physical object now, over there, interacting with other objects in a system which includes me. It embodies a proto-theory of a world which contains perceivers of objects in that world. (The reader should ponder A127-8.) 51. Kant emphasizes the difference between intuitions on the one hand and sensations and images on the other. He emphasizes that it is intuitions and not sensations or images which contain categorial form. When he speaks of synthesis in connection with perception, he has two things in mind: (1) the construction of image-models (2) the formation of intuitive representations (complex demonstratives) There is also the synthesis which is the formation of the explicit judgment, thus (3) (This cubical substance) is a piece of ice 52. Since intuitions have categorial form, we can find categorial form in them. In this sense we can arrive at categorial concepts by abstracting from experience--but only because experience contains intuitions which have categorical form. We cannot abstract the categories from sensations or images.

53. To sum up. Kant's categories are forms and functions of judgment. They are grammatical summa genera. From Kant's point of view, Aristotle's theory of categories was a failure because, failing to distinguish between intuition and image-model, his list of categories is haphazard (though guided obscurely by grammatical intuitions); and Aristotle confuses them with generic concepts of entities in the world. There is a legitimate place for a theory of such concepts. But it must be carefully distinguished from the grammar of thought. [Return to Main Page] NOTES {1} The essential point is that the experience involves the actual rather than merely believed in existence of the volume of white. The phenomenologist thinks of this volume as an image-volume of white. A tough-minded contemporary might insist that while the actuality is a three-dimensional neuro-physiological process of the kind correlated with stimulation by white objects, it need not be construed as an image in a more traditional sense. Nothing in the argument of this paper hinges on this controversy. One can think of the neuro-physiological process as occasionally generating image-samples of white. On the other hand, when we look, not at an opaque object but, for example, at a pink ice cube, the neuro-physiological process involves the actual existence of a volume of sensory pink. [Back] {2} A140ff.; B179ff. That Kant does not emphasize the role of the concept of the perceiver's body and sense organs in determining the rules of the successive apprehension of the manifold of an object (e.g., a house) is, presumably, to be accounted for by the fact that the concept of the perceiving subject and its faculties is a constant factor in the generation of all object-schemata. The source of the difference between different object-schemata is the difference between the objectconcepts involved (e.g., house, dog, etc.). The reader should ponder Kant's examples of the house and the ship in explaining the distinction between subjective and objective succession (A192; B237). [Back] {3} A191; B236. For a more detailed explication of this Kantian thesis, which plays a central role in the transcendental deduction--most explicitly in the first edition (A104, A120)--see my paper, "Kant's Transcendental Idealism," Proceedings of the International Kant Congress, Ottawa, 1976. [Back] {4} A momentary image-model is, of course, an abstraction from the image-model sequence which realized the schema for a particular sequence of relations between perceiver and object. [Back] {5} See A120-4. The discussion of the role of the productive imagination in the second edition transcendental deduction is very abstract and emphasizes the self-consciousness involved in the construction and awareness of perceptual representations (but see B138; B150ff.). The specifics were left to the Analytic of Principles, where the account coincides with the first edition.[Back]

Is There a Synthetic A Priori? Wilfrid Sellars Published in American Philosophers at Work: The Philosophic Scene in the United States, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: Criterion Books, 1956): 135-159. A revision of a paper published in the Philosophy of Science, 1953. (The paper has been further revised for inclusion in the present volume.) Introduction. A Divergent Usage: C. I. Lewis. Linguistic Rules and Ordinary Usage. Explicit and Implicit Definition. Implicit Definition: X Traditional Defense. Implicit Definition: The Attack Continued. Concept Empiricism: The Conservative Approach. Concept Empiricism, Syntactics, Semantics and Pragmatics. Conceptual Status and Implicit Definition. The Synthetic A Priori: A Terminological Decision. 1. Introduction. A survey of the literature on the problem of the synthetic a priori soon reveals that the term "analytic" is used in a narrower and a broader sense. In the narrower sense, a proposition is analytic if it is either a truth of logic or is logically true. By saying of a proposition that it is logically true, I mean, roughly, and with an eye on the problem of the relation of logical categories to natural languages, that when defined terms are replaced by their definientia, it becomes a substitution instance of a truth of logic. And a truth of logic can be adequately characterized for present purposes as a proposition which occurs in the body of Principia Mathematica, or which would properly occur in a vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage of this already monumental work. If we now agree to extend the convenient phrase "logically true" to cover truths of logic as well as propositions which are logically true in the sense just defined, we can say that an analytic proposition in the narrower sense is a proposition which is logically true. On the other hand, we find many philosophers using the term "analytic" in the sense of true by virtue of the meanings of the terms involved. These philosophers seem, for the most part, to be under the impression that this sense of "analytic" coincides with that defined above. And if "p is logically true" did entail and were entailed by "p is true by virtue of its terms," little damage would result from this ambiguity. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as will be argued in a later section of this paper. Indeed, the more interesting examples given by these philosophers of propositions which are analytic in their sense turn out on examination not to be logically true. From which it follows that unless they are mistaken in applying their own criteria, "analytic" in their sense can not be logically equivalent to "analytic" in the sense defined above. That true by virtue of the meanings of the terms involved is indeed a broader sense of "analytic" than logically true -- broader in that it has a greater denotation -- will be a central theme of this paper. To avoid possible misunderstanding, let me make it clear that I shall use the term "analytic" only in the first or narrower of the two senses distinguished above, and that where I want to refer to the views of philosophers who use the term in the broader sense, I shall make the appropriate translation of "analytic" into "true by virtue of the meanings involved." Accordingly, "synthetic" will be used to mean neither logically true nor logically false, and the question under discussion becomes: Are there propositions which are a priori yet not logically true? To answer this question even provisionally, we must next decide on a meaning for "a priori." Here the going is more difficult, and we shall have to be content with a rather schematic discussion.

By and large, philosophers have given (or have believed themselves to give) four different but closely related senses to this phrase. In the first place we have Kant's joint criteria of universality and, necessity. The propositions traditionally characterized as a priori, with the possible exception of the proposition "God exists" (in the context of the ontological argument) have been universal propositions -- a priori knowledge about individuals presupposing a minor premise of subsumption. Now when he explicates the criterion of universality, Kant makes it clear that it is intended to exclude such universal judgments as are true merely as a matter of fact, so that universality merges with the criterion of necessity. If our knowledge that all A is B is to be a priori, it must be correct to say "All A must be B." But while we should all agree that a person cannot properly be said to know a priori that all A is B unless he can also be said to know that all A is necessarily B -- so that knowing that all A is necessarily B is a necessary condition of knowing a priori that all A is B -- it does not, at least at first sight, seem to be a sufficient condition. There is no immediate appearance of contradiction in the statement, "It is highly probable that all A is necessarily B." so that there would seem to be no absurdity in speaking of knowing a posteriori that all A must be B, though just what account might be given of such knowledge is another, and extremely perplexing, matter to which we shall return at the conclusion of our argument. This brings us to the second of the four interpretations of apriority. According to this approach, we have a priori knowledge that all A is B. when we know for certain that all A is B. If we ask what is meant by "knowing for certain," we are told that this is not a mere matter of feeling confident that all A is B. It must be reasonable to assert "All A is B" where this reasonableness is not grounded on knowledge that on such and such evidence e is probable that all A is B, nor on an argument of which one of the premises is of this form. Furthermore, not only must it be reasonable to assert "All A is B" but it must in some sense be asserted because it is reasonable. In traditional terminology, knowing for certain is contrasted with both probable opinion and taking for granted. This second approach leads smoothly and easily into the third and fourth explications of apriority. The third arises by scarcely more than a minor reformulation of what we have just said. For to say that the reasonableness of asserting "All A is B" does not rest on knowledge of the form "It is probable on e that all X is Y" is but a pedantic way of saying that the reasonableness of asserting "All A is B" does not rest on, or is independent of experience. And according to the third approach, our knowledge that all A is B is a priori, if it is independent of experience. But if the reasonableness of asserting "All A is B" doesn't rest on experience, on what does it rest? The answer to this question brings us to the fourth approach. This reasonableness, we are told, rests solely on a correct understanding of the meanings of the terms involved. In short, a priori truth is truth ex vi terminorum. Now, in sketching these familiar explications of a priori knowledge of universal truths, as knowledge independent of experience, and as knowledge ex vi terminorum -- I have made it clear that to my way of thinking there is a general confluence of these four criteria, such that each, on reflection, leads to the others. Much more would have to be done before we could claim to have disentangled the various meanings which have traditionally been given to the term "a priori," and we shall have to return to this topic before this paper is complete. But schematic though the above discussion may be, it provides a useful background for a provisional choice of a sense of this term for the interpretation of the question: Is there a synthetic a priori? Accordingly, I shall select the fourth of the above criteria as the defining property of the a priori. Our question thus becomes, "Are there any universal propositions which, though they are not logically true, are true by virtue of the meanings of their terms?" 2. A Divergent Usage: C. I. Lewis. It will prove useful to contrast our provisional explication of the original question with what one gets if one adopts the conventions implicit in C. I. Lewis' use of the terms "synthetic" and "a priori." Since he appears to use "analytic" as we are using "a priori" and "a priori" to mean holding of all possible objects of experience, in his hands the question "Is there a synthetic a priori?" becomes

"Are there any universal propositions which, though they are not true by virtue of the meaning of their terms, hold of all possible objects of experience?" To this question Lewis answers "no." That he is correct in doing so becomes clear once it is realized that Lewis picks his meanings for both "analytic" and "a priori" from our list of four traditional criteria of a priori knowledge. In other words, if we are justified in speaking of a confluence of these criteria, and given Lewis' interpretation of the terms "synthetic" and "a priori," he is on solid ground in claiming that it is logically impossible that there be any propositions which are both synthetic and a priori. 3. Linguistic Rules and Ordinary Usage. I shall open the next stage of my argument by pointing out that the phrase "true by virtue of the meaning of its terms" can reasonably be said to have the same sense as "true by definition." This brings us face to face with a sticky issue. Human knowledge is presumably the sort of thing that finds its fitting expression in the ordinary usage of expressions in natural languages. Have we not therefore reached a point at which the horsehair couch is a more appropriate instrument of philosophical clarification than the neat dichotomies and tidy rule books of the professional logicians? I do not think so. Not, however, because I frown on philosophical therapeutics (on the contraryl), but because it seems to me that the successes achieved in recent decades by putting ordinary language on the couch were made possible by the brilliant use of tools developed in Principia Mathematica; and I believe that recent logical theory has developed new tools which have not yet been put to adequate use in the exploration of philosophical perplexities. Now I submit that the logician's concepts of formation rule, transformation rule and rule permitting the substitution of one expression for another, have legitimate application to natural languages. By this I mean not that it is possible for the logician to construct such rules for natural languages, but rather that rules of these types are embedded in natural languages themselves without any help from the logician. That the vague, fluctuating and ambiguous character of ordinary usage extends to these rules is, indeed, granted. But does not the same hold true with respect to the logician's concept of a sentence? or of a predicate? Yet we do not hesitate to discuss natural languages in these terms. I see no reason in the Heraclitean character of ordinary usage to reject what would seem to be the obvious implication of the fact that natural languages can be illuminated by confronting them with artificial languages obeying explicitly formulated rules of transformation and synonymity. Indeed, can we make sense of critical appraisals of linguistic phenomena as correct or incorrect by persons uncorrupted by scrutiny of esoteric rule books, without supposing that linguistic rules are embedded in ordinary usage? And the fact that rustics playing a game handed down for generations without benefit of Hoyle would be hard put to it to formulate a set of rules for the game, is surely not incompatible with the idea that when they play the game they do what they do because of the very rules they would find it so difficult to formulate! One wonders when philosophers will finally abandon the fiction that rules exist only in public utterance of phonemes or displays of printers ink. 4. Explicit and Implicit Definition. The purpose of the preceding section has been to restore some semblance of plausibility to the notion that the concepts analytic and true by definition can usefully be applied to natural languages. If we have succeeded we have shown that in the sense in which ordinary usage contains predicates, it may also be said to contain propositions which are analytic and true ex vi terminorum, and which can therefore be said to formulate analytic a priori knowledge. But a synthetic a priori proposition, on our account, is one that is both synthetic and true ex vi terminorum. Can there be such a thing? Now it is at once clear that the "definition," if such it can be called, by virtue of which a synthetic a priori proposition would be true ex vi terminorum cannot be explicit definition; for the a priori truth to which these give rise is analytic. If anything that has been called definition can serve this purpose, it is what, following Schlick, we shall call implicit definition -- to an examination of which we now turn.

In rough and ready terms, a number of predicates without explicit definition are said to be implicitly defined if they appear in a set of logically synthetic general propositions which are specified as axioms or primitive sentences by the rules of the language to which they belong. To say that these propositions are axioms or primitive sentences is to say that they are specified to be unconditionally assertable by syntactical rules of the language. This account is deliberately skeletal, and is intended to gain flesh from the argument which follows shortly. If we use the familiar illustration of a geometry, the following points may be noted: Neither the axioms nor the theorems are logically analytic, though the implicative proposition whose antecedent is the conjunction of the axioms, and whose consequent is one of the theorems, is logically analytic. If the geometry should be of the Euclidian type, then the theorem "The area of a triangle is l/2bh," which is logically synthetic, must not be confused with the proposition "The area of a Euclidean triangle is l/2bh," which is indeed an analytic proposition, but one which presupposes both the theorem, and an explicit definition of "Euclidean triangle" in terms which specify that an object doesn't belong to this category unless the axioms and therefore all their logical consequences hold of it.1 Similarly, the axiom "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points," which is logically synthetic, must not be confused with "A Euclidean straight line is the shortest distance between two points," which, though analytic, depends on an explicit definition of "Euclidean straight line." The nonlogical terms of an uninterpreted calculus should not be interpreted as variables. The interpretation of such a calculus by establishing translation rules correlating its nonlogical terms with expressions in actual use must not be confused with the assigning of values to variables. The postulates of a Euclidean geometry do not constitute an implicit definition of its nonlogical terms unless they are specified as unconditionally assertable (and hence as more than generalized material implications, equivalences, etc.) by the syntactical rules of the calculus. A deductive system can gain application either by translating its nonlogical terms into expressions in actual use, or by building it onto language in actual use by establishing rules of inference to take one from sentences in the calculus to sentences in actual use (and vice versa); or by a combination of (a) and (b) . But what of expressions which do not belong to a contrived calculus which has gained a use by being coordinated with a preexisting language? Does the notion of implicit definition have any application to them? Instead of dealing directly with this question, I shall wait until other dimensions of the problem have been brought into view. Perhaps the most common complaint against the idea of implicit definition is that a set of terms may be "implicitly defined" and yet have no "real" or extralinguistic meaning.2 "Implicit definition," it is argued, is a purely syntactical affair, and to expect it to give rise to extralinguistic meanings is as sensible as expecting a number of people to lift each other by their bootstraps. That this objection calls attention to an essential feature of meaningful language is doubtlessly true. But its force as an argument against the definitional character of implicit definition is somewhat less keenly felt when one realizes that when explicit definition is conceived in purely syntactical terms, exactly the same objection can be raised against it. Both explicit and implicit definition are matters of syntax. The difference is that whereas in the case of explicit definition the definiendum and the definientia are distinct, and the "giving extralinguistic meanings" -- however this is done -- to the definientia fixes the extralinguistic meaning of the definiendum; in the case of implicit definition the extralinguistic meaning must be "given" to all the predicates "simultaneously," as they are all both definienda and definientia rolled into one. A second objection points out that a set of predicates may be implicitly defined in terms of one another, and yet admit a multiplicity of real meanings.3 But, as before, the same is true of an explicitly defined term and its definientia. To the set consisting of "man," "rational" and "animal" could belong either the real meanings man, rational and animal, or the real meanings brother, male

and sibling. It may be granted that to the extent that the definientia themselves are explicitly defined in terms of other predicates, and the definientia of these in turn, and so on, the alternative real meanings capable of belonging to the terms in the chain are increasingly restricted. But it is by no means obvious that the terms in however long a definition chain couldn't possess any one of a number of sets of real meanings. In any event, to the fact that the syntactical structure of a chain of explicit definitions limits the number of alternative real meanings which can be possessed by the predicates in the chain, corresponds the fact that the number of possible "interpretations" of a set of implicitly defined terms can frequently be narrowed by adding a new axiom to the original set. In neither case would the utility of the definition seem to depend on its admitting only one set of real meanings. The purposes of unambiguous communication require only that where one and the same abstract syntactical structure is associated with two different sets of "extralinguistic meanings," this structure be embodied in two sets of visually and audibly different symbols. But the above is but prelude to the most searching of the objections to the notion of implicit definition. The objection is based on broad philosophical considerations, and takes us to the heart of our problem. Its point of departure is the above familiar distinction between the "linguistic meanings" of an implicitly defined set of predicates, and the "real meanings," the properties and relations, which are correlated with these predicates. As its first step it reminds us that what the implicit definition does is specify that certain sentences containing these predicates are unconditionally assertable. In other words, that we are authorized by the rules of the language to assert these sentences without either deriving them from other sentences, or establishing probability relations between them and observation sentences. But, the objection continues, even though the implicit definition may permit us unconditionally to assert certain sentences involving the predicates "A," "B," "C," etc., the truth of what we assert depends solely on the relation of the real meanings of these predicates to the world. Thus, even should there be a syntactical rule (implicit definition) authorizing us to assert "All A is B" unconditionally (and therefore to derive "x is B" from "x is A") might there not be an object which conforms to the real meaning of "A" without conforming to the real meaning of "B"? If this were the case, then as far as its real meaning was concerned, "All A is B" would be false, even though the rules of the language blandly authorized us to assert it. There would be a tension between what was authorized by the linguistic meanings of "A" and "B," and what was appropriate to their real meanings. On the other hand, the objection continues, no such contretemps can arise in the case of explicit definition, for it is not logically possible that something conform to the real meaning of "C" and yet not to the real meaning of "D" where "C" is explicitly defined in terms of "D." To this the objection adds that even though as a matter of fact all items which conform to the real meaning of "A" did conform to the real meaning of "B," we could nevertheless conceive of objects conforming to the real meaning of "A" but not that of "B." If, therefore, we were to adopt a syntactical rule authorizing us to derive "x is B" from "x is A," we should be tailoring the verbal clothing of our thought to be shorter than its reach. The objector grants that it might, in some circumstances, be sensible or convenient to adopt a language in which "x is B" is syntactically derivable from "x is A," even though something might conceivably exemplify the real meaning of "A" without exemplifying the real meaning of "B," provided that one were extremely confident on inductive grounds in the truth of the generalization "If anything exemplifies the real meaning of 'A' than it exemplifies the real meaning of 'B.'" But, he continues, it just wouldn't do to say that "All A is B" is true by virtue of the meaning of its terms. Implicit definition, he concludes, is a pale imitation of explicit definition, for it lacks the power to yield statements which are true by definition. 5. Implicit Definition: X Traditional Defense. Now the above is only one prong of the attack on implicit definition. But before we develop the other prong, we must take into account the classic counter to this first offensive. For the defenders are ready with an equally venerable reply.

It will have been noticed that lurking in the premises of the above critique was the idea that even should it be true that everything which exemplified the real meaning of "A" also exemplified the real meaning of "B," it would be so as a matter of fact. So that it would be conceivable that something might conform to that of "A" without conforming to that of "B." If pressed, the critics would give the following reason for this supposition. After all, they would say, since the statement "All A is B" is admittedly synthetic, it must be logically possible and hence possible and hence conceivable that something might exemplify the real meaning of "A" without exemplifying that of "B." It is here that the defense, clothed in the dignity of philosophia perennis, quietly adds that for "All A is B" to be synthetic yet true ex vi terminorum, it is not sufficient that "x is B" be syntactically derivable from "x is A", there must also be an extralinguistic or real connection between the real meaning of "A" and the real meaning of "B." In other words, given real meanings for "A," "B," "C," etc., an implicit definition of these predicates in terms of one another will be adequate only if to the syntactical derivations authorized by the definition, there correspond synthetic necessary connections between the properties which are the real meanings of these predicates. Indeed, the defense continues, it will be appropriate to give an implicit definition of these terms only to the extent that one apprehends these necessary connections. For only to this extent could we exclude, merely on the basis of what we mean by, say "A" and "B," the possibility that something might conform to the real meaning of "A" but not to that of "B." 6. Implicit Definition: The Attack Continued. The opposition to implicit definition now develops the second prong of its offensive, focusing attention on the notion of real or synthetic, necessary connection. It reveals itself to be an "empiricist" opposition, claiming that this notion is incompatible with the most elementary principles of the empiricist tradition. Historically, the characteristic doctrines of empiricism have been grounded in a theory, or better a type of theory, of concept formation. Theories of this type form a spectrum which at one end touches and is easily confused with a radically different approach (to be developed at the close of our argument) which can also with some justice claim the title "empiricism" though it is committed to few if any of the dogmas associated with this term. Let us begin by reflecting on the consequences for our problem of a characteristic (if somewhat oversimplified) formulation of what we shall call concept empiricism. It goes as follows: Concepts of qualities and relations are formed from particulars. We can, indeed, have concepts of qualities and relations of which we have encountered no instances; but only if these concepts "consist" of concepts which have been formed from instances. Now, from this theory, together with certain appropriate assumptions concerning the composition of concepts, it follows that we can have no concepts of universals which are not satisfied by particulars. "Satisfied by particulars" here means "would be satisfied by particulars if satisfied at all." In this sense the property Centaur is satisfied by particulars, even though it actually has no instances. The implication of concept empiricism with respect to the concept of real connection is immediate and murderous. There is no such concept. Yet here we must be careful. It is sometimes thought that when Hume and his followers are criticizing rationalistic discourse about necessary connections, their application of concept empiricism consists in pointing out that they find no instances of necessary connection among sensibly experienced particulars, and predict that we shall find none. If this were the heart of the matter, the obvious comeback would be "You are either looking in the wrong place, or are necessary-connection-blind." The truth, of course, is that if there is such a thing as necessary connection, it is a relation satisfied by universals (a relation whose terms are universals), and not by particulars. Thus, for the concept empiricist, our failure to have such a concept is not a mere matter of failing to find any particulars which exemplify it; we couldn't find particulars which exemplify it.

It should be noted that unqualified concept empiricism equally entails that we have no concept of logical necessity, not to mention conjunction, disjunction, negation and class-membership, though concept empiricists have not been quite as assiduous in pointing this out as they have been in scoffing at real connection. And even should the concept empiricist seek to define logical necessity in psychological terms, or, perhaps, give an emotivist analysis of such terms as "necessary" and "must," denying them cognitive meaning, he can scarcely treat such useful terms as "and," "or," "not," and "is a member of" in either of these ways. Sooner or later he is led to distinguish between two types of cognitively meaningful expression: those which "have extralinguistic meaning," e.g. "red," and "centaur"; and those which, while they do not "have extra linguistic meaning," have a legitimate (and indeed indispensable) syntactical function in language. But more of this later. For the moment it is sufficient to note that whatever else he may be committed to, the concept empiricist can have no truck with a relation of real connection between extralinguistic or real meanings. As a result, if he has any use at all for the phrase "implicit definition," it can mean nothing more to him than the building of empirical generalizations of which we are highly confident into the very syntactical structure of our language. The concept empiricist is thus in a position to return to the first prong of the attack on the notion of implicit definition by insisting once again, this time on explicit empiricist grounds, that even should an "implicit definition" authorize us to derive "x is B" from "x is A" at the linguistic level, it nevertheless cannot prevent us from conceiving of something which exemplifies the real meaning of "A" without exemplifying that of "B." 7. Concept Empiricism: The Conservative Approach. The moral of the argument to date is that only if concept empiricism is rejected is it possible to hold that there are nonlogically true propositions which are true ex vi terminorum. There are many to whom this would be the end of the matter, as they find some version of concept empiricism to be beyond dispute. Indeed, there was a time, not too long ago, when I myself was a convinced concept empiricist -- though I was not as aware of its implications and presuppositions as I should have been. For a number of years, however, I have been a renegade, and in the following pages I shall indicate some of the considerations which led me to abandon concept empiricism, as well as the resulting changes in my interpretation of the synthetic a priori. In the preceding section it sufficed for our purposes to introduce concept empiricism by means of a studiously vague formulation. We must now call attention to the fact that the phrase denotes two radically different lines of thought which agree, however, in concluding that the basic concepts in terms of which all genuine concepts are defined are concepts of qualities and relations exemplified by particulars in what is called "the given" or "immediate experience." In its more traditional and conservative form, concept empiricism distinguishes sharply between the intellectual awareness of qualities and relations, and the formulation of this awareness by the use of symbols. In short, it accepts without question a venerable but, at present, unfashionable distinction between thought and its expression in language (or, as it is sometimes put, between "real thinking" and "symbolic thinking"). Thus the concept empiricist of this brand conceives of such symbols as "red" and "between" as acquiring meaning by virtue of becoming associated with such abstract entities as redness and between-ness, the association being mediated by our awareness of these entities. His attention is thus focused on the question, "How, and in what circumstances, do we become aware of abstract entities?" Now it is characteristic of the concept empiricist to be convinced that an essential role in the process whereby we come to be aware of universals is played by particulars which exemplify these universals. In its more coherent form, the primary ground of this conviction seems to have been a metaphysical conviction to the effect that abstract entities exist only in rebus, that is, in particulars, so that only through particulars could mind enter into relations with them. This was usually coupled with the claim that our ability to be aware of even the most complex and recondite universal can be explained on the hypothesis that in the last analysis all awareness of universals is derived from the

awareness of instances, together with a more or less crude attempt to fill in the psychological details. In its classical form, concept empiricism can be dramatized as follows: A mind is about to learn the meaning of the word "red." The abstract entity in question is lurking in the manifold of sense. But so are many others. This one stands out clearly. Here! and here! No, that can't be it! Aha! a splendid specimen. By the methods of Mill! That must be what mother calls "red!" No one, of course, would recognize a theory of his own in such an absurd picture. Empiricism is notoriously a tough-minded theory, whereas the above is soft-headed. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that although most philosophers who call themselves empiricists would reject it out of hand, they fail to appreciate the extent to which it is part and parcel of the empiricist inheritance, as well as the extent to which some of the most characteristic dogmas of empiricism are expressions of the hold it still has on the empiricist imagination. This is not the occasion for a detailed discussion of this first main type of concept empiricism. Our present concern is rather with its underlying presupposition of a distinction between the pure awareness of an abstract entity on the one hand, and the linguistic or, in general, symbolic expression of this pure awareness on the other. That I regard this distinction as a mistake will scarcely cause surprise. The proposal to abandon it has lost its revolutionary ring. Once a radical innovation, the notion that thought is a "symbolic process" has become a commonplace, almost a truism. Unfortunately, as is the case with many contentions that have become truisms, its implications are no longer as passionately scrutinized as they were when it was new, and it is often combined with modes of theorizing with which it is radically incompatible. In view of the widespread acceptance of the thesis in question, there is little need to construct one more argument in its defense. Instead I shall concern myself with certain of its implications which bear on the synthetic a priori. Let us assume, then, that the situation which obtains when it is true to say that Jones is aware of a quality or relation or possibility or, even, a particular, can (in principle) be exhaustively described in terms of episodes and dispositions relating to the use of linguistic symbols4 (predicates, sentences, names, descriptions). Indeed, since the tidy, socially stabilized structures we call languages are continuous with more rudimentary conceptual mechanisms, let us assume that the above Jonesean situations can (in principle) be exhaustively described in terms of habits and dispositions relating to the use of symbols. Now, this assumption has an obvious implication of great importance for our problem. If what occurs when we are "aware of a universal" is the use of a symbol, it follows that learning to use a symbol cannot be based on the awareness of universals. In other words, we are committed to the abandonment of what has happily been called the metaphor of the mental eye, which is so deeply rooted in the grand tradition of western philosophy (and is one of the major points on which East Meets West) that its influence crops up where least expected. If we put this implication in a slightly different way, we immediately establish contact with a characteristic contention of Professor Lewis. All classification of objects, however confident and pre-emptory, is a venture, a venture which at no point finds its justification in a presymbolic vision of generic and specific hearts on the sleeves of the objects of experience. Classification resembles the grasping tentacles of an octopus, now tentative, now confident, rather than a salesman's selection of a suit for a customer after a glance at his build. I am afraid, however, that our agreement with Lewis is more shadow than substance. For while he writes in this manner of the interpretation of the given by means of concepts whose implications transcend the given, he also holds that the sensible appearances of things do wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that we do have a cognitive vision of these hearts which is direct, unlearned and incapable of error -- though we may make a slip in the expressive language by which these insights are properly formulated. In other words, the assumption to which we are committed requires us to extend to all classificatory consciousness whatever, the striking language in which Lewis describes our consciousness of objects. 8. Concept Empiricism, Syntactics, Semantics and Pragmatics.

We distinguished above between two radically different lines of thought which lead to the conclusions characteristic of concept empiricism. Of these we have taken a brief look at the first or mental eye variant. Before turning to the second, let one point out that although for analytical purposes we are drawing a sharp distinction between these two approaches, historically they have usually been blended into one confused argument. The concept empiricism we are now defining arose pari passu with the development of association theories of learning in psychology, and has felt as much at home in more recent behavioristic formulations as in the earlier (mentalistic) varieties of this psychological movement. In its traditional form, this second approach, although it agrees verbally with the more conservative form of concept empiricism that such words as "red" acquire meaning by becoming associated with universals (though it tends to stress classes rather than qualities and relations), insists that this association develops, unmediated by awareness of abstract entities, by the joint occurrence of instances of the word and instances of the characteristic in question. In other words, while it is redness that is associated with "red," the mechanism whereby this association is created does not involve awareness of redness, but only the joint occurrence in experience of instances of redness with tokens of "red." In this respect it differs radically from the first approach, for which the formation of the association involves awareness of the universal. In short, the concept empiricism which develops in this context, if it does not entirely escape from the metaphor of the mental eye, at least does not include abstract entities within its visual field. Now, if we do not limit ourselves to the account thus crudely sketched, but embrace in our view the more sophisticated theories of this general type, there is clearly something to them. A philosopher who rejects the mental eye approach and all its implications is indeed committed to the view that it is by the causal interplay of the individual and his physical and social environment, without benefit of a prehension of eternal objects, whether in re or extra rem, that concepts, meaningful symbols, arise. However, while there is indeed something to theories of the above type, they are guilty of a radical confusion, and are in large part responsible for the more implausible features of contemporary empiricism. Our first comment on the theory sketched above is a restatement and pressing of a point made earlier in this paper. It is simply that unqualified concept empiricism is patently incapable of accounting for many of our most familiar concepts, among others those of logic and mathematics. To remedy this defect, the theory is usually modified by introducing a radical dualism into its account of concepts and concept formation. The theory now recognizes a second mode of concept formation, namely the learning to use symbols in accordance with rules of logical syntax. The concepts of logic and mathematics are held to be symbols which gain meaning in this second way, rather than by association with empirical phenomena. It is even more important to note that even those terms, such as "red," which are supposed by the theory to gain meaning by association, share in the second mode of concept formation, for only by being used in accordance with rules of logical syntax can they perform the functions by virtue of which a concept is a concept. Clearly, then, the learning to use symbols in accordance with rules is a pervasive feature of concept formation. Up until now the rules we have considered in this paper have been syntactical rules, rules according to which assertable expressions are put together, and properly derived from one another. However, some proponents of the second approach to concept empiricism have been so impressed with the philosophical power of the concept of rule, that they have applied it to the association of a term with an extralinguistic class of objects, which association, as we have seen, is the core of their theory. Thus we find them characterizing the learning to use a language or system of concepts as the learning to use symbols in accordance with two types of rule: rules of syntax, relating symbols to other symbols; semantical rules, whereby basic factual terms acquire extralinguistic meaning. It takes but a moment, however, to show that this widespread manner of speaking involves a radical mistake. A rule is always a rule for doing something in some circumstance. And a rule is the sort of

thing that one follows. But following a rule entails recognizing that a circumstance is one to which the rule applies. If there were such a thing as a semantical rule by the adoption of which a descriptive term acquires meaning, it would presumably be of the form "Red objects are to be designated by the word 'red.' " But to recognize the circumstances in which this rule has application, one must already have the concept of red! Those who speak in this sense of semantical rules, therefore, are committed to the view that an awareness of abstract entities is a precondition of learning the intelligent use of symbols. Now, once the concept empiricist acknowledges the force of these considerations, he is committed to a revision of his theory which, in effect, changes its whole spirit and orientation, and, indeed, deprives it of many of the philosophical implications which are so dear to traditional empiricism. But before developing this point let us briefly review the fundamentals of concept formation as they appear in this new perspective. The learning of a language or conceptual frame involves the following logically (but by no means chronologically) distinguishable phases5: The acquisition of habits pertaining to the arranging of sounds and visible marks into patterns and sequences of patterns. The acquisition of these habits can be compared to the setting up that part of the wiring of a calculating machine which takes over once the "problem" has been "punched in."6 The acquisition of thing-word connections. This can be compared to the setting up of that part of the wiring of a calculating machine which permits the "punching in of information." These connections are a matter of being conditioned to respond to kinds of situation with kinds of verbal patterns, e.g. to respond to the presentation of a green object with "This is green"; it is not a matter of "learning to say '. . .' when one observes that the situation is thus-and-so." Observing that the situation is thusand-so already involves the use of a conceptual frame.7 Let us refer to these two dimensions of (descriptive) concept formation as the learning of intralinguistic moves and language entry transitions.8 Now, it might be thought that while a descriptive word like "red" wouldn't be a word unless it played the syntactical role of a predicate in intralinguistic moves, its possession of empirical meaning, indeed the fact that it is the word it is, is constituted by its role as a conditioned response to red things. And, indeed, there is a certain plausibility to the idea that to say of the German word "rot," for example, that it means red, is to say that this vocable is associated (by Germans) with red things. Certainly, if they did not (tend to) respond to red things with "rot," it could not be true that this German word means red. But, as we shall see, to grant the latter point is by no means to concede the former. Sentences of the form " 'Rot' means red" have had no less a hypnotic and disastrous effect on empiricists engaged in formulating theories of concept formation, than on the most naive mental oculists. Such sentences, which appear to present meaning as a tete-a-tete relation between a word and a universal, have been misinterpreted as entailing what might well be called a "matrimonial" theory of the meaning of primitive or undefined descriptive predicates according to which the fact that these terms have meaning is constituted by the fact that they are associated with (married to) classes of objects. Yet that these sentences entail no such consequences becomes obvious once we reflect that it is just as legitimate and, indeed, true to say "The German word 'und' means and" as it is to say "The German word 'rot' means red"; where it is clear that "und" gains its meaning not by a process of association with conjunction or a class of conjoined objects, but rather by coming to be used with other symbols in accordance with familiar syntactical rules. Let us examine the force of the form " '. . .' means --." Suppose Smith says, "When Schmidt says 'und' it means and." This statement clearly conveys the information that Schmidt has habits with respect to "und" which parallel his own (Smith's) with respect to "and." Yet it must not be assumed that if it is the business of a statement to convey information of a certain kind, this information must be asserted by the statement in the sense that a definitional unpacking of the statement would reveal it. "Jones ought to do A" conveys the information that Jones can do A; yet it is a mistake to suppose that a definitional unpacking of the former would reveal a sentence asserting the latter. Thus, Smith is not mentioning his habits, or the habits of English-speaking people generally, with respect to "and." He mentions the German vocable "und" but uses the English vocable "and." He uses it,

however, in a peculiar way, a way which is characteristic of semantical discourse. He presents us with an instance of the word itself, not a name of it, and, making use of the fact that we belong to the same language community, indicates to us that we have only to rehearse our use of "and" to appreciate the role of "und" on the other side of the Rhine.9 Now suppose Smith to say, 'When Schmidt says 'rot' it means red." Once again this statement conveys the information, i.e. in some sense implies, that Schmidt has habits with respect to a German word which parallel his own (Smith's) with respect to an English word. But whereas if one supposes that Smith's statement mentions habits, the fact that it mentions "rot" but uses "red" is naturally taken to imply that the habits in question are of the word-thing variety, we now see that the statement has no such implication. Smith's statement conveys the information that Schmidt has word-thing habits with respect to "rot" only in the course of conveying the global information that in all relevant respects Schmidt's habits with respect to "rot" parallel his own (Smith's) with respect to "red." Thus, instead of leading us to adopt a matrimonial theory of "the meaning relation between 'rot' and red," the explication of " 'rot' means red" makes it clear that this sentence is not a relation sentence at all, or, at least, that it is a relation sentence only in a purely grammatical sense of this term. For its business is not to describe "rot" and red as standing in a relation, but rather to convey the information characterized above.10 Now, the moral of all this is that we need no longer be hypnoized by the facile contrast between the "linguistic meaning" and the "real meaning" of a word. For to say that "rot" has real meaning, and, indeed, the real meaning red, is merely to convey the information that "rot" is the subject (beyond the Rhine) of a full-blooded set of habits sufficient to constitute it a word in actual use, and, indeed, a use which parallels our own use of "red." Consequently, to come to the point, if our use of "red" involves extralogical syntactical rules ("P-rules") as well as "L-rules," it follows that "rot" couldn't have the "real meaning" it does unless it, too, were subject to "P-rules" and, indeed, "P-rules" which parallel those obeyed by "red." I shall suppose, then, that the conceptual status of descriptive predicates can correctly be attributed to the fact that they are governed by rules of usage. These rules of usage include extralogical rules (about which we shall say more in a moment) as well as logical rules in the narrow sense (Carnap's L-rules). Those descriptive predicates which are conditioned responses to situations of the kind they are correctly said to mean, are called observation predicates. If a language did not contain observation predicates it would not be applied. Descriptive predicates other than observation predicates gain application through rules tying them to observation predicates. However, only if one supposes that for an undefined descriptive predicate to have descriptive meaning is for it to be associated with an extralinguistic class of objects, is one forced to hold that all primitive descriptive predicates are observation predicates. One can, indeed, say that all the other descriptive predicates of language must be "defined" in terms of observation predicates; but it would be a mistake to suppose that in every case these definitions will be explicit definitions. 9. Conceptual Status and Implicit Definition. The above dialectical examination of concept empiricism has been so designed as to bring me to the position I wish to defend, a position which, as I see it, represents a meeting of extremes, a synthesis of insights belonging to the two major traditions of Western philosophy, "Rationalism" and "Empiricism." Stated summarily, it claims that conceptual status, the conceptual status of descriptive as well as logical -- not to mention prescriptive -- predicates, is constituted, completely constituted, by syntactical rules. Notice that I am not saying that " 'rot' means red" is true merely by virtue of the intralinguistic moves proper to "rot" (in German). For " 'rot' means red" can be true only if in addition to conforming to syntactical rules paralleling the syntax of "red," it is applied by Germans to red objects, that is, if it has the same application as "red." Thus, the "conceptual status" of a predicate does not exhaust its "meaning." The rules on which I wish to focus attention are rules of inference.11 Of these there are two kinds, logical and extralogical (or "material") . I can best indicate the difference between them by saying that a logical rule of inference is one which

authorizes a logically valid argument, that is to say, an argument in which the set of descriptive terms involved occurs vacuously (to use Quine's happy phrase), in other words, can be replaced by any other set of descriptive terms of appropriate type, to obtain another valid argument. On the other hand, descriptive terms occur essentially in valid arguments authorized by extralogical rules. Let me now put my thesis by saying that the conceptual meaning of a descriptive term is constituted by what can be inferred from it in accordance with the logical and extralogical rules of inference of the language (conceptual frame) to which it belongs. (A technically more adequate formulation would put this in terms of the inferences that can be drawn from sentences in which the term appears.) Finally, let me make the same claim in still another way by pointing out that where "x is B" can be validly inferred from "x is A," the proposition "All A is B" is unconditionally assertable on the basis of the rules of the language. Our thesis, then, implies that every primitive descriptive predicate occurs in one or more logically synthetic propositions which are unconditionally assertable -- in short, true ex vi terminorum; or as it was put at the end of the preceding section, true by implicit definition. But a logically synthetic proposition which is true ex vi terminorum is, by the conventions adopted at the opening of the paper, a synthetic a priori proposition.12 10. The Synthetic A Priori: A Terminological Decision. If I had the courage of my definitions, then, it seems that I should proclaim myself a proponent of the synthetic a priori. Yet I feel uncomfortable. Is the synthetic a priori described above a real synthetic a priori? Would those who have fought and suffered fot the cause of the synthetic a priori (and one has only to speak to a "believer" to realize that it is a cause) welcome me to their ranks? I am afraid that the answer is No; that they would spurn my support and say that if this is all the synthetic a priori amounts to, it is not worth the name, and is probably a peculiar kind of a posteriori. It does not take long to discover the reasons for their discontent, and the results throw new light on a venerable controversy. At the beginning of the paper we considered four traditional criteria of a priori knowledge: It is knowledge of necessary truth; It is certain knowledge; It is knowledge independent of experience; It is knowledge of truth ex vi terminorum. We found it plausible to say that ultimately these four criteria coincide -- after which we moved into the detail of our argument. I want now to bring out a certain ambiguity in the second and third of these criteria, and by so doing, make clear that whether or not the position I have sketched is committed to a synthetic a priori is a matter for terminological decision. Consider, to begin with, the third criterion, namely, independent of experience. Let us suppose that in our language "All A is B" is one of the propositions which implicitly define the predicates "A" and "B" so that it is true ex vi terminorum that all A's are B. Using, as we do, this language or conceptual structure, we know that all A's must be B, that something which is not B cannot be A. This knowledge is independent of experience in the perfectly straightforward sense that it is a function of the very concepts with which we approach the world. As long as we continue to use these words in the same sense, continue, that is, to use the same concepts, we can never find an instance of A which fails to be B. But though in this sense our knowledge that all A's are B is independent of experience, there is another sense in which it most certainly does depend on experience. After all, the learning of a conceptual frame, the learning to use symbols in accordance with certain logical and extralogical rules is a psychological process essential elements of which are sensory stimuli together with the rewards and punishments which the environment (including the social environment) brings to our motivations. The conceptual frame we have developed is only one of a vast number of alternative frames any one of which we might have been brought to adopt by a more or less radical shift in the course of our environment. The claim that our conceptual frame is only one among many possible

conceptual frames, and that our adoption of it is to be explained in terms of learning theory rather than of insight into abstract entities, is what led our true-blue proponent of the synthetic a priori to say that our synthetic a priori is a peculiar kind of a posteriori. Next, a closely related remark on the second criterion, namely certainty. Let us suppose that a person has acquired a firmly embedded conceptual frame. In employing this frame, he will distinguish between those propositions which are certain, and those which are at best merely probable on the evidence. The former will coincide with propositions which, in his frame, are true ex vi terminorum. Notice, however, that when the learning process begins to bring about a modification of his conceptual frame, he will admit to being "uncertain" of even those propositions which, in that frame, are true ex vi terminorum. It is clear from this description that we are dealing with two different senses of the contrast between certainty and uncertainty. The first may be called the "intraconceptual," the second the "extraconceptual" sense. Thus, it makes good sense to say "I am uncertain about its being certain that all A's are B." Uncertainty in this second sense is not something that can be remedied by "paying closer attention to what we mean." It can be overcome (should this be desirable) only by more firmly learning to apply the conceptual system in question to experience, without hesitation or uneasiness. But is this the goal of wisdom? Not if we are correct in maintaining that to all conceptual structures there are alternatives; and that no conceptual frame carries the imprint "sterling" certifying it to be the conceptual frame to which all others, to the extent that they are "coherent," approximate. The essence of scientific wisdom consists in being uncertain2 about what is certain1, in a readiness to move (in circumstances the discussion of which belongs rather to a paper on Induction) from one conceptual frame to another. For not only can we be caused to modify our linguistic frame, we can deliberately modify it -- teach ourselves new habits -- and give reasons for doing so. It is the idea that because (in terms of our present use of "A" and "B") we have found all observed A's to be B, it would be reasonable to adopt "All A is B" as an unconditionally assertible sentence, which finds expression in "It is probable that all A is necessarily B."13 Now, the use of a conceptual frame is the awareness of a system of logical and extralogical necessities. The essence of scientific wisdom, therefore, lies in being tentative about what one takes to be extralogically necessary. In conclusion, if one means by synthetic a priori knowledge, knowledge which is logically synthetic, yet true ex vi terminorum, then indeed, there is synthetic a priori knowledge. If one means by it, synthetic knowledge to which there is no significant alternative, then synthetic a priori knowledge is a myth, a snare and a delusion. The question "Is there a synthetic a priori?" calls, therefore, for a decision, before it calls for an answer. What the decision should be, that is, which meaning (if any) should be attached to the term "a priori," it is by no means easy to say. Many factors are involved, by no means the least of which is a sense of belonging to one or other of the two major traditions of Western philosophy. If one's overall loyalty is to Sextus and to Hume, one will be moved to say "There is no synthetic a priori" and, hence, to choose a sense of "a priori" which will make this statement true. If one's heart beats with the rationalists, one will long to say "There is a synthetic a priori," and will make the corresponding terminological decision. If one is tired of philosophical shibboleths, and finds important insights on both sides of the fence, one will content oneself with pointing out that while every conceptual frame involves propositions which, though synthetic, are true ex vi terminorum, every conceptual frame is also but one among many which compete for adoption in the market place of experience. Notes 1. Unless I am much mistaken, C. I. Lewis thinks of his "categorial principles" as unquestionably analytic, because he thinks of them as analogous to "The area of a Euclidean triangle is 1/2 bh." Now, if he intends this analogy, then his categorial principles are indeed logically true. But then, if the above discussion is sound, must there not be a corresponding set of

propositions which are not logically true, and which contain a set of predicates which are not explicitly defined in terms of these propositions? predicates which correspond to "triangle" as occurring in Euclidean axioms, rather than to "Euclidean triangle?" 2. Let me make it clear from the beginning that my willingness to use the phrase "real or extralinguistic meaning" in building up the dialectical structure of my argument does not reflect an acceptance on my part of a Platonic or Meinongian metaphysics of meaning. My purpose in this paper is to explore the controversy over the synthetic a priori sympathetically and from within, in the conviction that the truth of the matter lies separated from itself in the opposing camps. Some light will be thrown on the status of "real meanings" by the discussion of " '. . .' means ---" in section 8 below. 3. See footnote 2 above. 4. It should not be assumed that in calling an event a symbol we are describing the event. We are rather serving notice that our discussion of the event will be in semantical terms. (For a more adequate formulation of the idea that thoughts are linguistic episodes, and are yet distinguishable from and expressed by overt linguistic episodes, see my essay "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1, published by the University of Minnesota Press, 1956.) 5. I leave out of account, as a topic too large to be introduced into this discussion, though of equal importance for the understanding of the nature of conceptual systems, the prescriptive or conduct guiding aspect of language. But see footnote 7 below. 6. Note that while the activation of these habits results in verbal behavior which conforms to syntactical rules, it cannot be the following of syntactical rules unless the subject has learned the prescriptive syntactical metalanguage which permits the formulation of these rules. For an elaboration of this point, see my paper, "Some Reflections on Language Games," Philosophy of Science, 1954. 7. Just as an intralinguistic move is not in the full sense an inference unless the subject not only conforms to, but follows, syntactical rules (though he may conceive them to be rules justifying the transition not from one linguistic expression to another, but from one thought to another); so a language entry transition is not in the full sense an observation unless the subject not only (in normal circumstances) tokens "This object is green" if and only if a green object is present to his senses, but is able to infer (in a pragmatic metalanguage) from "Jones uttered 'This object is green' (or the thought 'This object is green' occurred to Jones) at time t in place s in circumstances c" to "a green object was present to Jones' senses at t in s." For a more complete analysis of the role of a conceptual framework in seeing that p is the case, and of the relation between thoughts and overt linguistic behavior, see the essay referred to in footnote 4. 8. That the acquisition of a conceptual frame also involves language departure transitions, and that this notion is the key to the status of prescriptive discourse is argued in the paper on "language games" referred to in footnote 6. 9. Descriptive discourse, prescriptive discourse and semantical discourse are three different modes of speech. Nevertheless, by virtue of what is presupposed by their correct utterance, statements in one of these modes may convey information properly formulated in another mode. 10. The fact that such a statement as " 'rot' means red" conveys descriptive information about "rot" but does not describe it, undercuts the traditional problem of universals (and abstract entities generally). If one misunderstands the function of such statements, and supposes that " 'rot' means red" describes "rot" as standing in a relation to red, then, if one is anti-Platonist, one will be reluctant to use the semantical mode of speech, and will be particularly unwilling to allow an inference from " 'rot' means red" to "There is a quality which 'rot' means." Statements of the latter kind appear to make bold assertion of the factual existence of abstract entities which are suspected to infect the former. The truth of the matter is that the "There is a quality (relation, possibility, particular . . . .) . . ." of the latter is a purely logical device which has no connection with "factual existence." To say, "There is an obligation more stringent than promise keeping," is not to attribute

"factual existence" to obligations! [For an elaboration of this and related points, see my essay "Empiricism and Abstract Entities" in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, edited by P. A. Schilpp, Library of Living Philosophers, Open Court Publishing Co., Wilmette, Illinois, 1963. (added in SPR)] 11. A more detailed statement and defense of my thesis will be found in "Inference and Meaning," Mind, 1953. 12. Note that, strictly speaking, one can only say that a sentence of L is true ex vi terminorum, as one can only say that a sentence of L is true simpliciter, if one's own language contains a translation of these sentences, which will not be the case if expressions occurring in these sentences conform to different P-rules from those obeyed by their closest counterparts in one's own language. See "Some Reflections on Language Games," Philosophy of Science, Vol. 21, 1954, pp. 224ff. 13. For an account of induction which views it as a matter of having reasons for revising one's conceptual framework, which recognizes that to have reasons is to be in a conceptual framework, and which, in the spirit of the above analysis, denies that any conceptual framework is given, see "Some Reflections on Language Games," loc. cit., pp. 225ff. [In SPR, the following note is substituted: "For an account in the spirit of the above argument of the causal modalities and the nature and rationality of induction, see my essay on "Counterfactuals, Dispositions and the Causal Modalities" in Volume II of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, edited by Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven, Minneapolis, 1957."]

Kant's Transcendental Idealism by Wilfrid Sellars University of Pittsburgh Published in Collections of Philosophy 6 (1976): 165-181. [Note by editor: This surely must be one of the most difficult of Sellars' articles to find. I myself was unsuccessful in finding a copy until two years ago when both David Rosenthal and Willem deVries sent me copies of the typescript and published versions. There are minor differences between these. In this transcript, I have favored the typescript over the published version. Andrew Chrucky] 1. When Kant mobilizes the position which he calls 'transcendental idealism' to resolve the antinomies, he describes as the doctrine that "everything intuited in space and time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations which, in the manner in which they are represented, as extended beings or as series of alterations, have no independent existence outside our thoughts." He contrasts this thesis with that of the "realist, in the transcendental meaning of the term" who "treats these modifications of our sensibility as self-subsistant things, that is, treats mere representations as things in themselves" (A 490-1; B 518-9). 2. Since Kant calls his idealism 'transcendental' in order to indicate that it enables him to account for the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge concerning objects in space and time, he has, strictly speaking, no use for the term 'transcendental realism,' since on his account of synthetic a priori knowledge we could have no such knowledge of spatio-temporal objects if they were things themselves. Nor did realists, as he sees it, claim that their realism accounted for the existence of such knowledge, although at least some of them would have taken realism to be compatible with it. 3. The title of this essay is, of course, overly ambitious. In particular, it seems to promise as much discussion of 'transcendental' as of 'idealism.' My primary concern, however, is with the ontological aspects of Kant's idealism, and only incidentally (and by implication ) with epistemological issues concerning synthetic a priori knowledge. I note in passing, however, that since the ontological aspects of Kant's idealism concern in large part the ontology of mental states, and since, although epistemology is not psychology, it is mental states which are the proper subjects of epistemic appraisal, Kant's ontology of mental states is directly relevant to his epistemology and, consequently, to his transcendental philosophy. 4. I shall be primarily concerned with the views Kant expresses in the first edition. I am, however, in whole-hearted agreement with his claim that there is a fundamental identity between the views expressed in the two editions. In the Preface to the second edition (B xxxvii ff.) he explains the changes he has made as a matter of removing "difficulties and obscurity" which "not, perhaps, without my fault, may have given rise to misunderstandings," and of omitting or abridging, to make room for new material, "certain passages which, though not indeed essential to the completeness of the whole may yet be missed by many readers as otherwise helpful." He suggests that the "loss . . . can be remedied by consulting the first edition," thus implying that the deleted material coheres with the new material. As regards ''the propositions themselves and their proofs," however, he claims that he has ''found nothing to alter," a statement which he shortly repeats with even greater force by characterizing the new edition as altering absolutely nothing in the fundamentals of the propositions put forward or even in their proofs," though he does grant that this [he hopes] more intelligent exposition . . . "here and there departs so far from the previous method of treatment that mere interpolations could not be made to suffice" (B xlii). 5. It is surely implied by these claims that in Kant's eyes the refutation of idealism which was added in the second edition is not only compatible with the teachings of the first, but is implied by them. I think this is correct. The 'new' refutation simply applies the content of the Analytic of

Principles, and, in particular, the Analogies to the topic of idealism, an application which is present in, though not highlighted by, the first edition refutation. And when Kant explains why he has relocated the refutation in the Postulates of Empirical Thought, his reason is a good one rather than, as Bennett characterizes it, a "silly" one.1 Anyone who studies the fourth Paralogism must feel the awkwardness involved not only in classifying the theses of Rational Psychology in terms of 'relation,' 'quality,' 'quantity' and 'modality,' but, in particular, the treatment of problematic idealism as the modal counterpart of the substantiality, simplicity and personal identity of the soul. The relation of our knowledge of material things to our perceptual experiences is far more at home in a section devoted to the thesis that "that which is bound up with the material conditions of experience, that is, with sensation, is actual.'' For this bound-up-ness, when one spells it out does have an inferential aspect and therefore does lead naturally to the Cartesian problem. 6. I shall not, therefore, discuss the second edition refutation as such, since I hope to convince you that its familiar claims are indeed contained in the first edition, indeed in the first edition refutation itself. For in spite of its 'subjectivist' flavor, the latter contains a reference to and, indeed, a summary of the answer to the question "What is an object of representations?" raised first in the introductory passages of the first edition Transcendental Deduction, answered in highly schematic form, raised again is the Second Analogy, and this time given a fleshed-out answer which is repeated in the text of the second edition. And it is Kant's answer to this question which is central to the contrast he draws between his idealism and the idealisms he calls 'dogmatic' and 'problematic.' II 7. In the passage from the Dialectic with which I began, transcendental idealism is characterized directly as the view that "everything intuited in space and time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but appearances, that is mere representations which . . . have no independent existence outside our thoughts." It is characterized indirectly by its contrast with realism "in the transcendental sense," according to which these objects are "self-subsistant things," or "things in themselves." In a key footnote which occurs in the fourth Paralogism (A 375n) Kant writes We must give full credence to this paradoxical but correct proposition, that there is nothing in space save what is represented in it. For space is itself nothing but representation, and whatever is in it must therefore he contained in the representation. Nothing whatsoever is in space, save insofar as it is actually represented in it. It is a proposition which must indeed sound strange, that a thing can exist only in the representation of it, but in this case the objection falls, in as much as the things with which we are concerned are not things themselves, but appearances only, that is, representations. Kant here does not use the contrast between existence 'inside' or 'outside' our 'thoughts,' but it is clear that he is treating the relevant sense of 'representation' as equivalent to 'thought,' for he has just written that while "something which may be (in the transcendental sense) outside us" -- i.e. which exists in itself -- "is the cause of our outer intuitions . . . this is not the object of which we are thinking in the representations of matter and of corporeal things; for these are merely appearances, that is mere kinds of representation, which can never be met with save in us . . ." (A 372). It is clear that to 'represent' is here a case of to 'think' and that Kant, who is elaborating the definition he has just given of 'transcendental idealism' as the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being one and all representations only and not things in themselves (A 369) is introducing in his comments on this definition the formula of the later definition in the Dialectic according to which the objects of intuition "have no independent existence outside our thoughts." 8. Intuitions, in the relevant sense, are a species of 'thought' and when Kant says that appearances are ''mere kinds of representation", we certainly should not interpret this as meaning that appearances are mental acts of thinking. They are items which exist 'in' our thoughts, i.e. which

are, in an appropriate sense, representeds rather than acts of representing. And when he adds that "appearances are not to be met with save in us" this must, of course, be construed in terms of his distinction between the 'empirical' and the 'transcendental' senses of 'in us' and 'outside us.' 9. Now mental acts which are intuitings are not, of course judgings. But they are nevertheless thoughts. In the important classification of representations (vorstellungen) which Kant gives in an introductory passage of the Dialectic (A 319; B 376) Kant includes sensations as well as intuitions as representations. A sensation however is a "mere modification of the mind," whereas an intuition (though not a general concept) is an ''erkenntnis" ("Cognitio"). Its distinctive feature is that although, like a general concept, a cognitio, it is a singular one and does not refer to an object "mediately by means of a feature which several things may have in common" as do general concepts. 10. Kant holds the interesting and important view which I have explored elsewhere,2 that an 'intuition of a manifold' as contrasted with a sheer 'manifold of intuition' is an 'erkenntnis' which presents as much as does an Aristotelian 'phantasm' (tode-ti) as a this-such, though it is not a judgment of the form '(this) is (such).'3 In a paragraph (A 79; B 105) of the Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories, which can almost be described as the Transcendental Deduction and the Schematism in embryo, Kant tells us, in effect, that intuitions of manifolds contain the very categories which can be found m the general concepts which we apply to these intuitions (and which we have, indeed, by "analytic thinking", derived from them) (A 78-9). The same function which gives unity to the various representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition; and this unity, in its most general expression, we entitle the pure concept of the understanding. The same understanding through the same operations by which in concepts, by means of analytical unity, it produced the logical form of a judgment, also introduces a transcendental content into its representations, by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general. On this account we are entitled to call these representations pure concepts of the understanding, and to regard them as applying a priori to objects -- a conclusion which general logic is not in a position to establish. Thus singular judgments which express basic perceptions have the form (This-such) is so and so and the categories which are implicit in the general concept so and so can be true of the subject of the judgment, i.e. the object intuited, because the intuition of the this-such also contains the categories. 11. It is essential to see that intuition is a species of thought, for any sense-datum like approach makes essential features of Kant's theory of knowledge unintelligible, e.g. the Schematism. Thus the categories apply to intuitions, because, although the content of sensations does not contain the categories, the content of intuitions (of manifolds ) does. This is the point of Kant's problem about homogeneity and of his solution. III 12. Let us take seriously then, the thesis that intuitions of manifolds are thoughts. And let us apply to them the ontological categories which the Cartesian tradition, rooted in scholastic tradition had applied to thoughts. An adequate discussion would call for a whole cluster of distinctions in which themes from Husserl, the early Brentano, Meinong, and the later Brentano would be inextricably involved. I shall use a bare minimum of distinctions and resolutely avoid probing into the deeper metaphysical issues involved. 13. Descartes distinguishes between the act and the content aspects of thoughts. The content, of course, 'exists in' the act. And, of course, contents as contents exist only 'in' acts. On the other hand, there is a sense in which something which 'exists in' an act can also exist, to use Kant's phrase,

'outside' the act. In Descartes terminology, that which exists 'in' the act as its 'content' can have 'formal reality' in the world.4 14. The concept of 'existence in thought' is, of course, a metaphor. So, of course, is the idea that a thought is true if its content 'corresponds' to something actual in the world. In the Cartesian tradition, this account of truth holds both of thoughts of individuals and thoughts of states of affairs. Thus a thought of an individual is true if there corresponds to it an actual individual, i.e. if the individual exists not only 'in the thought' as its content, but in the actual world. Similarly, the thought of a state of affairs is true if there 'corresponds' to it an actual state of affairs, i.e. if the state of affairs which exists in the thought as its content, also exists in the actual world. 15. I have spoken of actuality where Descartes speaks of 'formal reality.' In Kant's terminology what Descartes means by 'formal reality,' and which Cartesians would equate with actuality, is 'existence in itself' or, to use the latinate term of the Prolegomena, existence 'per se.' Kant clearly accepts the Cartesian contrast between 'existence in thought' and 'existence per se,' -- so much so that he takes it for granted, as did most of his predecessors.5 16. One final terminological point: The content of the thought of an individual was considered to be, in an important sense, an object of the thought. Indeed the thought would have in this sense an object even if nothing in the actual world corresponded to it. Later philosophers drew tidy distinctions between 'immanent objects' and 'transcendent objects,' and we are all familiar with the intuitive appeal of these metaphors. Philosophical terminology consists largely of metaphor added to metaphor in the hope that the mixture will crystalize out into clear and distinct categories. 17. For Kant, then, an act of intuiting a manifold is a thinking of a this-such in space and/or time. The this-such is something that exists 'in' the act. The problem with which Kant is dealing can be characterized initially as that of whether individuals in space and/or time also have existence per se. Kant's answer, to anticipate, is that these intuited items exist only 'in' acts of intuition.6 That is, no items in space and/or time exists per se. He will nevertheless insist that some items which exist in acts of intuition are actual. This obviously requires a distinction between actuality and existence per se, which were conflated by his predecessors. IV 18. It will be useful to connect Kant's concept of the 'intuition of a manifold' with that strand of contemporary perception theory which operates with fairly traditional concepts of intentionality. A familiar notion is that of a perceptual taking. Perceptual takings are, so to speak, thinkings which are evoked in our minds by our environment or, in limiting cases, by abnormal states of our nervous system. Perceptual takings are usually thought to have propositional form. One takes there to be a cat on a mat. I suggest that what is taken is best expressed by a referring expression, thus 'this cat on this mat.' We should think of perceptual takings as providing subjects for propositional thought, rather than already having full-fledged propositional form. 19. Again, if we think of a taking as a special case of a believing, it is best to think of it as a 'believing in' rather than a 'believing that.' In a perceptual taking one believes in this cat on this mat, and may believe, for example, that this cat on this mat is a siamese. Thus construed, perceptual takings are in many respects the counterparts of Kant's 'intuitions of manifolds.' They represent thissuchs; and it is worth noting that although they are not explicitly propositional in form, they obviously contain propositional form in the sense in which 'that green table is broken' contains 'that table is green.' V 20. Little needs to be said at this stage of the argument about the 'problematic idealism' Kant attributes to Descartes. Problematic idealism regards the claim that material things and processes exist per se as a coherent one, but one which can be established only by an inference from our perceptual states; an inference from effect to cause. Mental states have a privileged position in that

they not only can have existence per se. but at is known, indeed 'directly' known, that some mental state exist per se. 21. Before looking at Kant's refutation of problematic idealism, it is worth pausing to ask: If this is 'problematic' idealism, what might 'dogmatic' idealism be? One would expect it to be the view that material objects in space and time could not have existence per se, i.e. that there was an absurdity or contradiction in the idea of the existence per se of material objects. Berkley certainly held this position, a fact which might strengthen the temptation to interpret dogmatic idealism along these lines. 22. It is also worth noting that Berkeley did not deny that in a sense we (and a fortiori God) can conceive of material objects in space and time, where by the phrase 'material objects' I mean, so to speak, Lockean objects and not patterns of actual and counterfactual perceptual experiences.7 Berkeley can be construed as holding that our actual and counterfactual perceptual experiences are grounded in God's plan to cause us to have those experiences we would have if (a metaphysical counterfactuai) there were material objects including human bodies with sense organs, and minds and bodies were able to interact. In less theological terms, this can be formulated as the view that what exists per se other than our minds is the causal ground of our actual and counterfactual perceptual experiences. 23. To return to the main line of argument, it is only too clear that if we mean by 'dogmatic idealism' with respect to material objeots the view that they cannot have existence per se, then Kant is a dogmatic idealist of the first water. Indeed as we have seen, Kant makes dogmatic idealism in this sense the very corner stone of his transcendental idealism. 24. What then does Kant mean by dogmatic idealism? And is any such view to be found in Berkeley? It should be clear that the only answer to the first question which satisfies the requirements of the argument to date is that Kant means by dogmatic idealism the view that nothing spatial can be actual, where actual does not mean 'exists per se.' Indeed Kant's own idealism, while denying that material objects exist per se, nevertheless insists that some at least of the spatial objects which exist 'in our thoughts' and, in particular, in our acts and intuitions, or perceptual takings, are, in the critical sense, actual. 25. But what of the second question? To what extent is Kant justified in attributing to Berkeley the view which he (Kant) would express by saying that no spatial items are actual?8 After all, if, as is often claimed, Kant in the first edition and on occasion in the second edition construes physical objects in terms of actual and counterfactual perceptual experiences, is he not in essential agreement with Berkeley?9 Vl 26. At this point we must retrace our steps in order to advance. My discussion of Descartes' ontology of mental acts was not only schematic but radically incomplete. For Descartes had two paradigms of what it is to be a mental state. Let me begin with the one I have neglected. Sensation is a mental state, though one in which the body is intimately involved, and his paradigm of a sensation is a feeling of pain.10 To us, the obvious feature of a feeling of pain is that a feeling of pain simply is a pain. The existence of a feeling of pain is identical with the existence of a pain. Much more would need to be said to nail this point down,11 but after all the analytic work has been done, the fact remains that a pain is a kind of feeling. If we put this by saying that a pain is a 'content' or 'object' of feelings, this should be regarded simply as a (misleading) paraphrase of the above. The danger arises from the fact that this usage would tend to assimilate feelings of pain to Descartes' second paradigm, the clear distinct thought of an object. It is in connecton with the latter that he elaborates the distinctions which were inherited by Kant. 27. It was obvious to Descartes that the mental state of thinking of a cube is not (at least in any ordinary sense of 'is') a cube. Thus, whereas a feeling of pain is a pain, a thinking of a cube is not a cube. Now in his systematic account of sensation, Descartes construes visual sensation on the model of pain. In terms of this paradigm, a sensation of red would be a case of red as a feeling of pain is a

case of pain. His construal, however, as Gassendi saw,12 confronted Descartes with a problem. Surely the colors we experience have shape. But if the colors we experience have shape, then, if they are sensations construed on the model of pain, mental states can have shape. To get experienced color and shape together, Descartes, it seems, must either give experienced colors the same status as shapes (deny that either can be a modification of the mind); give the shapes of experienced colors the same status as colors (admit that modifications of the mind can have shape, as Gassendi thought we should). 28. Descartes gives no clear account of the matter. His official account is that while the sensation of red as such is unextended, the shape we perceive, and which has existence 'in thought', is confusedly believed to be the shape of something which resembles the sensation of red. Such beliefs date from early childhood. They are confused, because nothing can be like a sensation of red without being a sensation of red, and hence a modification of the mind13. In effect, Descartes gives perceived red the status of believed in red, and by doing so gives it the existence 'in thought' which the shape also has. This move requires a distinction between the sensed red which we introspect, and which is not extended, and the perceived shaped red, which is a content rather than a modification of the mind. 29. Now Berkeley, as is well known, also assimilated color to pain. What, then, of shaped colors? When one feels a pain, there is an actual case of pain. When one senses a color, there is an actual case of color. But when the mind senses a triangle of red, is there an actual case of shape? When directly confronted with this question,14 Berkeley's answer is no. The shape exists only 'by way of idea,' and it is clear that here the operative conception is a Cartesian cogitatio of which the shape is a content in a sense which does not entail that a mental state has a shape. But though Berkeley gives this answer, he is simply not clear about the status of shapes, and what stands out is his assimilation of the status of shape to that of color and, ultimately, to that of pain.15 30. Now if Berkeley had consistently held that perceived shapes are not features of mental states, but have existence only 'in our thoughts' (in the Cartesian sense) he could nevertheless have argued ( perhaps on proto-Kantian grounds ) that no shapes have existence per se. Shapes would not exist 'outside the mind' in what Kant called the transcendental sense. They would exist only 'in' the mind, not as features of its states but as immanent objects. Berkeley, however, because of the slippery slope pain-color-shape, makes the quite different claim that shapes can not exist 'outside the mind' in the sense in which pains can not exist outside the mind. Even though he is not prepared to say in so many words that shapes are essentially features of mental states, he actually commits himself to this position. 31. Thus it is not unfair on Kant's part to attribute to Berkeley the view that the concept of shaped items which are not mental states is an incoherent one, as incoherent as would be the concept of a pain which was not a mental state. 32. Now it is as evident to Kant as it was to Descartes that neither space itself nor any spatial object can be a modification of the mind or of a mental state. Thus, while Kant denies that either space or any spatial object has existence per se, and argues that the idea that they do is an incoherent one, he also argues that the idea of shapes which are not features of mental states is itself a coherent one. Thus, if shapes which are not features of mental states do not exist per se it is not because shapes are essentially features of mental states, but because shapes belong in space, and neither space nor anything in space can exist in itself. 33. We can now begin to appreciate why in Kant's sense of the term Berkeley was a 'dogmatic idealist' and to interpret the following passage: Berkeley . . . maintains that space, with all the things of which it is the inseparable condition, is in itself impossible and he therefore regards the things in space as merely imaginary entities (B 274).

Given that Kant is clearly aware that on his own view neither space nor objects in space can exist in themselves, the gravamen of the charge against Berkeley must be that the latter's reason for holding this is such as to require, as his (Kant's) reasons do not, that ''things in space are merely imaginary entities." For, once again, Kant dearly has up his sleeve the view that material things, though they necessarily lack existence per se, which was the traditional concept of actuality, can in the critical sense be actual. On my interpretation Kant would be recognizbng that Berkeley's reason for rejecting the existence per se of space and spatial objects would be that shape and extension are essentially features of mental states. The concept of spatial items which are not mental states would be a figment of the philosophical imagination. They would be radically imaginary, not just imaginary in the empirical sense. 34. Kant obscures the justice of his characterization of Berkeley's position in the remark which follows, in which he claims that Dogmauc idealism is unavoidable if space be interpreted as a property that belongs to things in themselves. For in that case, space and everything to which it serves as a condition, is a non-entity (B 274). Here the direct connection with Berkeley is lost. But that is as it should be, for Kant is merely pointing out that one can arrive at the conclusion that the concept of actual spatial items other than mental states is incoherent by a route other than Berkeley's. For if space is a property which must belong to things in themselves, then, Kant has argued, there can be no such thing. Hence, given the classical interpretation of actuality as existence per se, it would follow that the concept of an actual spatial object is incoherent. And if the only alternative to hoping that space is a property of things in themselves were, as Berkeley thought it was, the view that spatial items are features of mental states, then the concept of actual spatial items which are not features of mental states would also be incoherent. We would be faced by a dilemma. Either space is by nature a thing in itself or a property of things in themselves or the spatial items which underlie our concepts of space and spatial items are (features of) mental states (sensations). On either alternative the concept of actual spatial items which are not mental states is incoherent. Kant has prepared the way for an escape through the horns of this dilemma. He points out that the argument of the Aesthetic enables him to avoid the view that space is either a thing in itself or a property of things in themselves without agreeing with Berkeley that the concept of spatial items which are not mental states is incoherent. 35. Yet even after he has established to his own satisfaction that the concept of an actual spatial item which is not a mental state is coherent, he still has to make the essential point that the concept of actuality does not coincide, as it traditionally did, with that of existence per se. 36. I take it to be clear, then, that Kant holds that no spatial item (notice the cautious use of the term 'item' as contrasted with the richer term 'object') is a mental state. It can, however, be argued that in the first edition and on occasion in the second edition Kant held that material objects are, to use an anachronistic turn of phrase, logical constructions out of mental states which, though not spatial, are representations of spatial items -- i.e. of which spatial items are the content or immanent oojects. After all, he does write that In our system, on the other hand, these external things, namely matter, are in all their configurations and alterations nothing but mere appearances, that is, representations in us, of the reality of which we are immediately conscious (A 371-2). I think that this interpretation is a mistake, though it must be confessed that because of his failure to make it clear when he is using 'representation' (and, in particular, 'intuition') in the sense of act of representing, and when he is using these terms in the sense of content represented, it has some initial plausibility.

37. The crux of the matter as Kant clearly saw is his account of what it is to be an object of acts of representing. He formulates this account schematically in a passage (A 104) which prepares the way for the first edition Transcendental Deduction, and develops it in a more full-bodied way in a key passage in the Second Analogy which occurs in both editions.16 38. Our primary concern is with perceptual acts or takings. But in the first passage referred to above, Kant makes his key point in a way which abstracts, as the passage in the Second Analogy does not, from essential aspects of perceptual takings. Nevertheless, the concepts for which Kant is preparing the way is that of rules for generating perceptual takings.17 39. The term 'rule' is a dangerous one, for it suggests deliberate activity or, at least, activity which would be deliberate if it weren't so hasty and, in the ordinary sense, thoughtless. Actually the most useful concept is that of a sequence of acts of representing which can reflectively be classified as conforming to a rule which is (at least in principle) graspable by thought. The rules in question must, according to Kant, be available, if one is to recognize that one's acts of representing belong together as an intelligible sequence.18 40. Now it might be thought that by introducing the concept of a rule-governed sequence of perceptual representings, i.e. acts of perceptual taking, I am giving hostages to the view that material objects consist of rule-conforming sequences of perceptual takings. That I am not is implied by the fact (which I hope to make clear) that even the most tough-minded transcendental realist grants that veridical perceptual takings have the coherence which Kant is attempting to clarify by the concept of rule-conforming sequences. Roughly, Kant's transcendental realist thinks of the perceiver as deriving these rules by induction from experience, whereas Kant thinks that induction itself presupposes an antecedent grasp of these rules. VII 41. We can now turn our attention to Kant's initial explanation of what it is to be an 'object of representations.' He asks us to consider the intuitive representation of a triangle. Here the rich implications of the concept of a perceptual taking are laid aside, for the moment, and we are given an explanation which could concern a construction in pure geometry. For the essential point he wants to make is that while the object of the intuitive representing is indeed a triangle, the triangle is not an existent per se, and that although the content triangle specifies sequences of representing which count as coming to represent a triangle, the object of the representing of a triangle is not the sequence of representings which culminate in the representing of the triangle. A triangle is neither a mental act of representing a triangle, nor is it a sequence of mental acts each of which represents a part of a triangle. 42. Before turning to the passage in the Second Analogy which is essentially a development of the passage on which I have been commenting but one which does take into account the specific character of perceptual takings, let me elaborate briefly on the triangle example in a way which will make for a smooth and easy transition. After all, Kant's account of 'drawing figures in thought' i.e. in pure intuition, is an idealised version, ascribed to the mind, of drawing figures on paper. Now if we take seriously the three-dimensionality of space, it strikes us that to represent a triangle in space is always to represent it from a point of view. Thus, what we represent is this equilateral triangle facing me straight on or this equilateral triangle at such and such an angle to my (metaphorical) line of sight 43. Now it is by no means an original idea on my part that intuitive representings of figures in three-dimensional space are essentially point-of-viewish. But its importance has been underestimated. For it means that we must distinguish between the figures -- which are not point-ofviewish -- and the total content of the representing of the figure, which total content is point-ofviewish, thus

equilateral tnansle facing me straight on Let me repeat. Equilateral triangles are not point of viewish, but they are, so to speak, intuited in perspective. The representing has a content which specifies a point of view. 44. Thus, the object of a representing of an equilateral triangle from a certain point of view is simply the equilateral triangle. But, according to Kant's position, according to which we 'construct' or 'draw' figures in space, the concept of an equilateral triangle must specify not only a sequence of representings in which we represent one line, then, continuing to represent that line represent another line at a sixty degree angle, then, continuing to represent these we represent the third side. It must also specify in an intelligible way what it means for two representings to be representings of an equilateral triangle from different points of view, i.e. representings which have the contents equilateral triangle face on equilateral triangle at such and such an angle to my 'line of sight' 45. The notion of representings which have contents of this form obviously builds on pervasive features of perceptual takings. I do not simply perceptually accept a house; the content of my perceptual acceptance is something like this house over there facing me left-edge-of-front-wise. 46. The point I am makung is simple, but it is so essentially a part of a larger story that I shall have to disguise the torn edges to put it across. When, in the Second Analogy, Kant says (A 191; B 236) that "the object is that in the appearance which contains the condition of this necessary rule of apprehension," he is commenting on the example of a house which he has just introduced: . . . immediately I unfold the transcendental meaning of my concepts of an object, I realize that the house is not a thing in itself but only an appearance that is a representation . . . (A 190-l; B 236). Here it is dear that he means by 'representation' something represented i.e. a content or immanent object of an act of representing. 47. Nevertheless, although he calls the house an appearance, where this clearly does not mean that the house is an act of representing, he does say that The appearance . . . is nothing but the sum of these representations (of apprehension) and it might be thought that Kant is characterizing the house as a sum of acts of representing. It is therefore important to note that he characterized the representations in question as ''that which lies in the successive apprehension." (A 191; B 236, emphasis mine) This must surely be his way of warning us that 'representation' here means represented rather than representing i.e. Kant is relating the content house to the contents of successive acts of apprehension. 48. Kant is answering the question 'in what sense is the house the object of successive acts of apprehension.' His negative answer is that it is not qua house in itself. The actuality of the house qua object is not its existence per se. What is his positive answer? As I see it, he is telling us that the house qua object is that aspect of the content of the perceptual takings which explains (together with certain other factors) the belonging together as state of the perceiver of certain perceptual takings (apprehendings). But that aspect of the content of these perceptual takings is simply the content house which they share, thus house over there left-front-edgewise to me house over there facing me left side of house over there facing me etc., etc. 49. As in the geometrical example, all the representings are reprersentings of a non-point-ofviewish object -- the house -- from a point of view, i.e. representings of house-from-a-certain-point-

of-view. It is, in this sense, that the house is the sum of the point of viewish appearances. But if the total content of a perceptual act is point-of-viewish, it is because it is the content of a perceptual act. Thus, while the content house is nod a point-of-viewish content, it explains (together with certain other factors) why such and such perceptual representings with contents which can be subsumed under the rubric house-from-such-and-such-a-point-of-view take place. Thus, the concept of a house as a perceptible object essentially involves a reference to perceptual acts, i.e. to the perceptual takings of a perceiver. 50. Nevertheless the concept of a house as perceptible object is not the concept of the sequences of perceptual takings (actual and counterfactual) which (together with other factors) it explains. To pull my points together in one sentence, The object of a perceptual representing of a house is the non-perspectival content house; yet as the sort of item that can be the object of a perceptual representing, it must provide rules for explaining (together with other factors) why such and such sequences of perceptual takings with perspectival contents were necessary. 51. It will have been noticed that I have written in several passages above that the content house is the source of rules which explain together with other factors why such and such sequences of perceptual takings were necessary. What do I mean by 'other factors'? The answer should be obvious, and peeks out from almost every page of the Analogies. House by itself can generate no explanation of the occurrence of a sequence of perceptual takings. It is only house in such and such relations to a perceiver which can do this. And this, obviously, means to a perceiver's body, and, of course to sense organs. The essential structure of the content of perceptual takings is not just house from a certain geometrical point of view but, to make a complicated point in a simple way house in front of my sightful eyes ship in water moving to the left of my sightful eyes. In my argument I have thinned out this mutual involvement of object, circumstances and embodied perceiver into a ghostly 'object from a point of view.' But Kant took seriously the fact that perceivers are embedded in a spatio-temporal system of interacting substances. In other words the doctrine of the double affection of the self, far from being a problematic feature of Kant's critical idealism is an essential feature of it, and is present in and, indeed, an essential feature of the argument of the Second Analogy.18 52. Kant denies that material things and processes exist per se, but he holds that in the critical sense they can be actual as contents which make an essential contribution to the explanation of the patterns in which perceptual experiences occur. But the deeper thrust of Kant's transcendental idealism is the thesis that the core of the knowable self is the self as perceiver of material things and events. And if it is relatively easy to see that the distinction between actual and non-actual material things and events is tied to the concept of an actual sequence of perceptual takings, it has (until recently) proved less easy to see that the distinction between actual and non-actual sequences of perceptual takings, i.e. between perceptual takings which are correctly and those which are incorrectly taken to have occurred in one's mental history, is tied to the concept of actual material things and events. 53. Kant saw that the concept of an object of perception contains a reference to the perceptual takings which are the criteria for its actuality. He also saw that the concept of a perceptual taking, as the taking of an object, contains a reference to material things and events which, if actual, would imply its own actuality. The actuality of perceptual takings and the actuality of material things and processes are not logically independent. And since, for Kant, the concept of matter-of-factual truth

concerns the agreement of what we represent with what is, in the critical sense, actual, rather than, as traditionally with what exists per se, he can pay his respects to what he calls "the nominal definition of truth" while giving it a radically new interpretation. Notes 1 Kant's Analytic, p. 166. 2 Science and Metaphysics, London and New York, 1968, Chapter 1. 3 One should also bear in mind Ockham's concept of a perceptual intuition, and his claim that God could bring it about that the object intuited not exist. 4 I have avoided Descartes use of the phrase 'objective reality' in connection with contents, since it has, of course, a quite different meaning in Kant and in contemporary philosophy. 5 Including the British Empiricists who, in the process of muddling through to important philosophical insights, muddied many classical distinctions. 6 A more complete discussion of this point would have to comment on those passages in which Kant allows that things in themselves are objects of perceptual intuitions. After all, if the latter contain the pure categories, and if the latter constitute 'the pure concept of an 'object' ["The pure concept of this transcendental object which . . . (concept) in all our knowledge is always one and the same" (A 109)], then things in themselves would 'correspond' (in the Cartesian sense) to intuitions, though not qua intuitions of spatio-temporal items. see A 490-l; B 518-9 quoted in the first paragraph; see also Science and Metaphysics pp. 42 ff. 7 I deliberately use this vaguer expression 'perceptual experiences' instead of 'perceptual takings,' since one of the essential differences between Kant and Berkeley concens the analysis of what it is to be a perceptual experience. 8 Notice that to pinpoint the issue I have retreated from the phrase 'material object' to 'spatial item.' 9 Notice once again that I deliberately used the vaguer phrase 'perceptual experience,' for in the last analysis everything will hinge on how this phase is interpreted. 10 Another paradigm is to be found in his use of 'sensation' in connection with seeming to see in the second meditation. But while there is clearly a close connection between sensing and seeming to see an object, they are not identical, nor does Descartes equate them m his developed philosophy of mind. 11 I have discussed this topic in "Metaphysics and the Concept of a Person," in The Logical Way of Doing Things, edited by Karel Lambert, New Haven, 1969 (reprinted as chapter XI in Essays in Philosophy and its History published by Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland, 1974). 12 Philosophical Works of Descartes, eds. Haldane and Ross, Dover, 1934. Vol. II, pp. 196-7. 13 Principles of Philosophy, LXVII-LXX. 14 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 49 (Fifth Objection). 15 A more penetrating account would demonstrate that Berkeley initially conceved of all 'perceptions' as in the 'understanding' a move which, by taking thoughts as the paradigm of mental states, constituted exactly that blurring of the distinction between sensibility and understanding so obviously present in Spinoza, Leibnitz and the Wolffians -- which Kant was to regard as a key philosophical error. 16 I have in mind the passage (A 190; B 235) introduced as follows: ". . . it is a question for deeper inquiry that the word 'object' ought to signify in respect of appearances when these are viewed not in so far as they are (as representations) objects, but only in so far as they stand for an object." 17 It might be helpful, here, to think of rules for generating sequences of acts of imagining which would be the counterparts of perceptual takings, if they had their source in outer sense. 18 An elaboration of this theme would require an exploration in detail of Kanl's conception of the transcendental unity of apperception as a necessary correlate of the intuition of objects.

19

As noted above (paragraph 22) even Berkeley came to see that the intelligibility of the patterns in which perceptual experiences occur involves the concept of embodied perceivers in a materia world. However, since he was convunced that material objects could not exist per se, he gave them existence in God's Understanding and Providence as essential features of his plan for causing us to have the experiences we do.