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Show Chapter II. Reason in the Structure of the Self 80 context for these ideas, not to represent them as what Kant actually meant (nor even, necessarily, what he should have meant). I shall say that an event, object, or state of affairs (henceforth a "thing") is rationally intelligible to us if we recognize it as an instance of some concept. This definition of rational intelligibility draws on Kant's analysis of theoretical reason as inherently subsumptive and as similar in operation to the synthetic function of the categories of the understanding. But I also argue below that rational intelligibility implies logical consistency, hence theoretical rationality in a much weaker and more widely acceptable sense. To recognize something is to perceive it as familiar, i.e. as the same as or similar to something you've perceived before. If something is in no respect like anything you've perceived before, then you cannot identify it at all. Does this imply that everything is rationally intelligible to us, since we recognize every thing as instantiating the concept of a thing? No, because the antecedent is false. From the fact that each thing does instantiate this concept, it does not follow that we invariably recognize this. In Chapter VII, below, I examine some of the ways in which our theories about the world may thwart our recognition of the blindingly obvious. As I use it here, the notion of recognition is a technical one, appropriated from Kant's account of concept-formation and -application. Briefly, Kant's idea is that we can identify something only if we have a concept of it; and can have a concept of it only if we can reproduce representations of it repeatedly in memory from moment to moment, and literally, re-cognize it at any given moment as the same as that which we cognized earlier, with respect to some property under the concept of which we subsume it. To do this is to conceive it as unified through time and so as an intentional object, with respect to 17 whatever the particular properties by which we identify it. To make something rationally intelligible, then, is to make sense of it as a discrete and unified thing; i.e. to conceive of it as independent of oneself as conceiving subject, by identifying it conceptually and thereby distinguishing it from oneself. In what follows I suggest the extent to which the requirements of theoretical reason must be satisfied in order for us to be able to do this. Given some thing t, what must be true of us in order for us to have a concept of the kind of thing t is? Minimally, we must distinguish t from other kinds of things, not-t, which it is not. To do this we must recognize t as having at least one property, P, that things like t have, e.g. three-dimensionality, and that those other kinds of things lack. In order to recognize t as having P, we must have a concept of P and recognize t as an instance of it; or we must be 17 I discuss Kant's view of basic concepts as rule-governed, judgmental functions for synthesizing representations of concrete particulars into intelligible categories of experience at ibid. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
