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Kantian Appearances, Intentional Gegenstände, and Some Varieties of Phenomenalism
 
PIIS123456780010216-8-1
DOI10.18254/S271326680010216-8
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Richard Aquila 
Affiliation: University of Tennessee
Address: USA
Journal nameStudies in Transcendental Philosophy
EditionVolume 1 Issue 1
Abstract

The aim is to develop some new alternatives for a phenomenalistic reading of Kant. Although the concern is ultimately with empirically real objects, I begin with a reading of the Aesthetic and the notion of appearances as at least possibly of empirically real objects. Employing Husserlian terminology, I take these to be the “noematic correlate” of a fundamental mode of directedness borne by an (at least initially) purely aesthetic “noesis.” From here, and with a new reading of Kant’s discussion of the “transcendental object = X,” new possibilities open for a sense in which even a phenomenalistic Kant might – without regarding them as also existing in themselves – regard empirically real objects as more than mere “logical constructs” out of the Aesthetic’s “appearances.”

KeywordsKant, appearances, intentional Gegenstände, noesis/noema, phenomenalism, transcendental Gegenstand = X
Received21.06.2020
Publication date06.07.2020
Number of characters76959
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1 Kantian Appearances, Intentional Gegenstände,1 and Some Varieties of Phenomenalism 1. As Professor Katrechko emphasizes, the English term ‘object’ might be used to translate either Gegenstand or Objekt. One may discuss whether there is anything like a consistent distinction with regard to the latter in Kant. In any case, where the term is used outside of quotations from Kant, the term Gegenstand is used here to speak of “objects” in a purely “semantic” or “intentionalistic” sense. Its insertion into quotations from Kant is simply for the reader’s information, without presumption as to whether Kant might in that particular passage have something further in mind. To avoid confusion, I avoid using the English term ‘object’ in any other sense.
2 Introduction
3 After some preparation, I will propose a variety of ways of regarding Kant as a phenomenalist. This of course concerns the status of ordinary, empirically real things as “appearances.” But I will begin with Kant’s view of “appearances” as (on any occasion, at least possibly) appearances of ordinary things. Putting the point by way of some Husserlian terminology,2 I will be taking appearances in the sense in question (or perhaps, more strictly, appearance) to be a mere “noematic correlate” – correlate on the “Gegenstand” (or at least proto-Gegenstand) side of consciousness – of a fundamental mode of directedness borne by a type of “noesis” introduced in the Transcendental Aesthetic. Despite the fact that Kant presents the latter as a merely “receptive” aspect of cognition, it is therefore borne, as I take it, by a fundamental mode of mental “action.”3 2. This is not to say that Husserl read Kant in these terms. In what follows, I also use the term ‘consciousness’ in a sense broader than what Kant himself generally (but not exclusively) means by Bewusstsein.

3. That Kant has inherited no terminology apt for bringing out the special sort of “action” in question may be regarded as evidenced by his somewhat desperate use of the terms ‘space’ and ‘time’ to refer, not to anything like what we would normally associate with those terms, but rather precisely to something on the noetic side of the cognitive process. Indeed, in addition to using them to refer to a feature internal to the cognitive process – “essential property of our sensibility” (IV, 287) – he speaks of “space” and “time” as something by means of (vermittelst) which a certain cognitive (or proto-cognitive) upshot is achieved (A89/B121; IV, 283, 287, cf. 318). And we even encounter such formulations as that space is, or is nothing other than, “the Anschauung of mere form” or “the consciousness of one’s own receptivity for sensing” (emphasis added) or “of the real relation of myself a priori to other things”: respectively, (Refl. 4673) and “Leningrad Fragment” [Kant 2005, p. 155, 365].
4 What I take to be, in this respect, in question in the Aesthetic is a mode of directedness that is (a) of itself independent of the ontological status of its target/Gegenstand; and (b) constitutive of vehicles susceptible to both non-conceptual, but on that basis also conceptual, enrichment, and so of internal transformations constitutive of noematically correlative dimensions of meaning or sense. In turn, (c) regarding this mode of directedness as the a priori “form” of the mental vehicles in question, and so as in itself undetermined with respect to antecedent “content” in a mental state,4 this opens new possibilities not only with respect to a phenomenalistic view of empirical reality, but more specifically with respect to a view of it as comprised of merely “intentional Gegenstände,” as opposed to “logical constructs” out of such things. At the same time, it opens a new possibility for how Kant might be both a phenomenalist and a transcendental realist regarding empirically real things. Or as it might be better put from the noetic side: how the fundamental directedness underlying reference to empirically real things, even phenomenalistically construed, might also be regarded as some kind of directedness – even if without the possibility of actual reference – toward something existing in itself.5 4. In the relevant sense, even pure space and time are at most “content” in the sense of being noematic correlates of the possession of this form by a (or by an at least human) mental state. But see the preceding note.

5. I have previously argued point (b) in [Aquila, 2013] and point (c), though with less solid grounding, in [Aquila, 2016]. See also [Aquila, 2003] The following also seems to me still useful in some ways, although also perhaps unforgivably simplistic at some points: [Aquila, 1989]. (Point [a] has remained a constant throughout.)
5 I begin in section 1 with brief discussion of the Aesthetic, and then in section 2 introduce what I take to be a neglected possibility for Kantian phenomenalism. Section 3 is then the heart of the matter. In it, I argue that Kant’s notion of the transcendental Gegenstand = X is an attempt to express the need for a certain sort of intellectual transformation of the fundamental mode of directedness toward appearance introduced in the Aesthetic. In section 4 I apply the point to some varieties of phenomenalism.
6 1. “Subjective” Appearances as Intentional Gegenstände
7 As I will argue, the Aesthetic introduces the notion of mental states possessed, on a pre-intellectual level, of an irreducible intrinsic Gegenstand-directedness; or at least of such directedness as might, upon satisfaction of further conditions, be made into genuine “Gegenstand”-directedness. I will refer to this as “aesthetic directedness” and speak of the “pure” or a priori “form” of such directedness. This notion might seem troubling to some, so before turning to the Kantian text, I will try to forestall some initial misunderstandings.
8 First, as already suggested, I am not equating the notion of a mental directedness, in the absence of at least certain intellectual conditions, with that of genuine mental reference. But one may of course still be uneasy with the suggestion that, without any intellectual form or content, we might have states with some sort of mental “directedness”; or at least, as we might put it, directedness at least capable of becoming, under the appropriate conditions, “mental.” Here I simply note that there is no reason to regard intellect as the only possible source of cognitive enrichment for a state with the form of aesthetic directedness. Of course, even attempting to read Kant along anything like the line so far suggested, we are assuming that such a state (in the case of empirical Anschauung)6 might at least contain sensation as an ingredient. But given the cognitively minimal status of sensation in Kant, this will presumably not help those in the grip of the present unease. As I have argued elsewhere,7 however, there is reason to see Kant as having recognized the possibility, and indeed the need, for aesthetically directed states to contain, on a pre-intellectual level, and as ingredients as genuinely internal to them as sensations are to empirical Anschauung, manifolds of anticipations and retentions (which might otherwise be deemed “mere associations”) – precisely as a condition for the possibility of perceptual fields within which any sorts of discriminations are possible. 6. I take the English term ‘intuition’ to be sufficiently misleading to advise sticking in general with Anschauung. Kant uses the latter mainly for: what we might call “intuitings,” or cases of intuiting; our capacity for such; and what might be called the intuiteds that are Gegenstände (or Objekte) of the intuitings in question. With the latter way of putting things, I follow the practice e.g. of Wilfrid Sellars; cf. [Sellars, 1968, p. 8]. In any case, Kant frequently uses anschauen to speak of “intuiting” all sorts of things: appearances, the manifold of appearances, space and time, particular spaces, determinations or relations of things, objects (Gegenstände, A27/B43, A93/B125, A293/B350, A490/B518; Objekte A38/B55), things in themselves (at least possibly), things intuited “under” the pure forms of intuition, and things or objects intuited in space and time (A30/B45, B147, A373, A490/B518), such as drops of water (A263-4/B319). And he frequently speaks of “objects of” our Anschauung, specifically as of sensible Anschauung (Bxxvi [Objekt], A27/B43, A35/B52, A51/B75, A90/B122, A772/B800) or simply as of Anschauung (B71, A79/B105, B110, B148, B150, A326/B382, A428-9/B456-7, A538/B566, A444/B472).

7. Cf. [Aquila, 2013, p. 19] and [Aquila, 1989].
9 A further preliminary point is that, whether or not one feels comfortable with the notion of mental directedness in the absence of at least some minimal intellectual conditions, I am not supposing that, in arguing for a pure form of aesthetic directedness, Kant is arguing for even a minimal level of apprehension of “appearances.” In particular, it seems to me likely that, apart from satisfaction of further conditions, the “Gegenstand” of whatever directedness might be in question would be at most a holistic “appearance” within which appearances are in principle discriminable: arguably, what he calls the “undetermined object [Gegenstand] of an empirical Anschauung” (A20/B34). On the other hand, and as I have also argued elsewhere, it is far from clear that satisfaction of specifically intellectual conditions, or at least conditions involving full-blown concepts, is required to achieve at least certain minimal discriminations within such a holistic Gegenstand. Here I would simply note that, apart from the question of a possible need for intellectual (if not conceptual) conditions as well, this is a point at which a state bearing the form of aesthetic directedness arguably needs to contain, nested within itself – and again, within itself just as integrally as it contains a manifold of sensations – a manifold of sub-states of which each also (and indeed with perhaps more than one layer of such nesting) bears the form of aesthetic directedness.8 8. I have discussed this in [Aquila, 2013, p. 9].

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