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Show Chapter II. Reason in the Structure of the Self 66 representations from those objects in themselves. We have synthesized and unified these representations into those very concepts which conjointly define what an object is. Thus there are certain concepts that always contain a direct and conceptually unmediated connection to the objects they denote, regardless of the particular character of those objects, namely those concepts which conjointly set the conditions something must satisfy in order to be an object of experience at all; these are the pure concepts, or categories, of the understanding. Kant enumerates these concepts in the Table of Categories at 1C, A 80/B 106. By contrast, general logic - the Table of Judgments at 1C, A 70/B 95 - cannot apply a priori to all objects of experience because they have no such content; they are mere forms of judgment. Judgment forms without content are nothing more than syntactical containers for the semantic content that denotational conceptual representations provide. Hence it is simply not true that "for Kant, any discussion of content must start with the contents of judgments, since anything else only has content insofar as it contributes to the contents of judgments" (MIE 80). At the most primitive cognitive level, things have content for Kant insofar as they contribute to the representational content of the concepts that denote them. Again the unsuspecting might jump to the conclusion that this makes Kant a representationalist - or, to use the older term, a correspondence theorist of truth á la Tarski. I do not think it does, because Kant expresses his misgivings about such a view at 1C, A 58/B 82. What he calls the nominal definition of truth as the agreement of knowledge with its object cannot be right, he argues, because it does not provide a general criterion of truth at all. Since each object is different, each true conceptual representation of it will have different content and a different relation to the object that makes that representation a true one. But a general criterion of truth would have to be satisfied by all such representations. Since what makes each such representation true is different in each case, no such general criterion can be given. He concludes that a criterion of truth that is both sufficient and general is impossible. Note that he is not denying that knowledge might agree with the objects it denotes. Nor is he denying that such agreement might constitute a semantic primitive in his analysis of intuition, concepts, and judgment. All he is denying is that a meaningful criterion of truth might be extracted from such agreement. If the agreement of knowledge with its object provides no leverage for a truth criterion, a fortiori it can provide no leverage for a representationalist truth criterion. Kant thinks a coherence theory of truth, aka inferentialism, is equally insufficient. If we abstract from the content of knowledge and consider merely its form, he says, we are left with the forms of logical judgment enumerated in the Table of Judgments at 1C, A 70/B 95. These certainly do supply universal © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
