Kant’s Appearances as Object-Dependent Senses

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents a novel interpretation of Kant’s account of appearances, according to which an appearance plays a role in an intuition akin to the role played by an object-dependent “sense” (Sinn), as this is understood on broadly Fregean accounts of cognitive content. It is argued that this approach best captures several key features that Kant attributes to appearances. Perhaps most importantly, this Fregean interpretation best captures the fact that, for Kant, appearances are representations of some further object (a “something = x”), despite being themselves the (phenomenologically) immediate objects of intuitions. The Fregean interpretation can help illuminate the ideality of appearances and the extent to which appearances might nevertheless count as dependent upon real things. This interpretation is contrasted with other recently prominent interpretations, such as those given by Aquila, Van Cleve, Langton, Allison, and Allais.