Kant on Representing Negative States of Affairs

Topoi 39 (3):715-726 (2020)
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Abstract

In this paper, I investigate Kant’s view of the cognitive role of perceptions, judgements, and the three categories of Quality in representing negative states of affairs. The paper addresses the following problem. In his account of empirical cognition, Kant seems to limit the legitimate application of the categories to things perceptually available to us, or, more generally, to positive cases. However, Kant also seems to hold that negative states of affairs, such as the absence of a thing, cannot be perceived. This raises the question of how we can represent and make warranted empirical judgements about cases that lack positive instances given in perception. At worst, Kant’s view would imply that thoughts about negative cases are ‘empty’. In order to avoid such a consequence, I wish to draw attention to Kant’s holistic way of thinking. In particular, I shall argue that perception is a process-like temporal phenomenon, and that experience itself is not strictly about the here and now. The paper shows that the cognitive contribution of the categories, according to Kant, is most explicit in representing negative states of affairs, which requires overcoming the main limitation of sense perception, namely the incapacity of negative representation. Even so, positive representation can be seen cognitively primary for Kant.

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Hemmo Laiho
University of Turku

Citations of this work

Concept Negation in Kant.Mark Siebel - 2021 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 25 (1):31-65.

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References found in this work

Critique of Pure Reason.I. Kant - 1787/1998 - Philosophy 59 (230):555-557.
Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view.Immanuel Kant - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Robert B. Louden.
Kant's Transcendental Idealism.Henry E. Allison - 1988 - Yale University Press.
Lectures on logic.Immanuel Kant (ed.) - 1992 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

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