Richard E. Aquila

This survey of problems is motivated by the conviction that the Fregean revolution in logic inaugurated a renewal of classical metaphysics and also provides the best structure for formulating its problems. The main issues of concern in contemporary analytical metaphysics seem to be touched. Reference, however, to particular philosophers is often by name only, and the historical comments are occasionally misleading: regarding Locke, for example, and in the broad use of the term "Cartesian," now common in philosophy but perhaps misleading for the general reader.

Transcendental consciousness is described by Kant as 'the one single thing' in which 'as in the transcendental subject, our perceptions must be encountered.' The unity of that subject depends on intellectual functions. I argue that its singularity is just the same as that of Kant's pre-intellectual 'form' of spatiotemporal 'intuition.' This may seem excluded by Kant's claim that it is through intellect that 'space or time are first given as intuitions.' But while preintellectual form is insufficient for space and time as distinct 'things,' it is sufficient for the constitution of a 'single thing' indifferently construable as both. Contrary to what are typically seen as the main differences between Kant and Hume on identity of 'self,' there is thus already a difference in play below the level of either's concern with the sorts of connections available for the combining, or illusion of combining, of manifolds of 'impressions' or 'ideas.'

In the Critique of Fure Reason Kant distinguishes two sorts of conditions of knowledge. First, there are the space and time of pure intuition, introduced in the Transcendental Aesthetic. They are grounded in our dependence on a special sort of perceptual field for the location of objects. Second, there are pure concepts of the understanding, or categories, introduced in the Analytic. In one respect these are grounded in the logical function of the understanding in judgements, introduced in the first chapter of the analytic of concepts: Clue to the Discovery of All Pure Concepts of the Understanding; in another respect, they are grounded in transcendental unity of apperception, which is introduced in the second chapter: Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Transcendental Deduction. I shall be concerned with the latter and its contribution to the overall strategy of argument in the analytic. Within the Analytic, Kant distinguishes between an Analytic of Concepts and an Analytic of Principles. This corresponds to a traditional distinction between a doctrine of concepts and judgement. It is arguable that Kant's theory of concepts undermines this distinction. However, I shall not deal with that general issue, but with a more specific issue related to the first two chapters of the Analytic of Principles: the Schematism and the System of Principles.

This book, assembled in large part from previous papers and talks, consists of three chapters. The first offers distinctions between types of description and between descriptive and speculative procedures in philosophy, and then a view as to the character of "philosophical facts." Then it turns to the charge that description is really interpretation. On account of the method of composition, the challenge is met in a somewhat disjointed manner. With emphasis on the question of historical and moral relativism, Mohanty returns to the theme in chapter 3 as well. What the latter adds is mainly a comparison of Davidson and Husserl on incommensurable worlds/conceptual schemes; the sketch of a means for overcoming relativism "from within," and for confirming a "belief in moral absolutism as [at least] a regulative ideal" by means of "reflective inner morality" as a particular instance of "tak[ing] up the stance of the transcendental ego". Mohanty compares the conflict in question to that between uncritical contentment with absorption in Hegelian Sittlichkeit and submission to Kantian Moralität. The palm goes to the latter, once it is construed as something to be arrived at precisely through the former.

BRENTANO'S APPROPRIATION OF THE Scholastic notion of intentionality, and of what Brentano called "the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object," was early on exploited in a reading of Kant's theory of objects and appearances. Apparently the first systematic attempt was undertaken by Hans Vaihinger. However, Vaihinger's is radically different from more recent intentionalist readings of Kant. Albeit not in every respect, I propose that a return to this aspect of Vaihinger's approach supports a rewarding advance on such readings. After a general introduction, I survey three instances of the latter—Prauss, Pereboom, and Sellars—in section 2 (and comment on some others in notes throughout). In sections 3 and 4, I then turn to Vaihinger's approach.

This book is a critical and analytical survey of the major attempts, in modern philosophy, to deal with the phenomenon of intentionality—those of Descartes, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Frege, Russell, Bergmann, Chisholm, and Sellars. By coordinating the semantical approaches to the phenomenon, Dr. Aquila undertakes to provide a basis for dialogue among philosophers of different persuasions. "Intentionality" has become, since Franz Brentano revived its original medieval use, the standard term describing the mind's apparently paradoxical capacity to relate itself to objects existing in the world. One approach to the phenomenon emphasizes the mental act. The author argues that the most adequate account involves elements of both approaches. Contemporary treatments tend to formulate problems of intentionality primarily in terms of logic and semantics rather than those of metaphysics and phenomenology. Dr. Aquila's effort to coordinate these approaches will make his book useful to students both of analytical philosophy of mind and also of phenomenology.

I want to state as clearly as I can the sense in which Kant is, and the sense in which he is not, a phenomenalist. And I also want to state the argument which Kant presents, in the Transcendental Deduction, for his particular version of phenomenalism. Since that doctrine has been stated by Kant himself as the view that we have knowledge of “appearances” only, and not of things in themselves, or that material objects are nothing but a species of our “representations,” it will of course be part of my task in this paper to deal with these fundamental notions. Some recent works on Kant have completely misinterpreted these notions, and because of this they have failed to capture the peculiar character of Kant’s phenomenalism. Jonathan Bennett, for example, interprets Kant’s claim that “objects are nothing but representations” as the claim that “statements about objects must be translatable into statements about intuitions.” I shall call such a view a reductive phenomenalism and argue in this paper that Kant is not a reductive phenomenalist. But Kant is, all the same, a phenomenalist. I shall call him an existential phenomenalist. The difference is this: Kant does not maintain, as Bennett claims, that all propositions which assert or presuppose the existence of objects must be translatable into statements which refer to intuitions alone, but he does hold that all such propositions are translatable into statements about the existence of intuitions alone. When Kant tells us, therefore, that objects are mere “appearances,” he is not offering a theory about what empirical objects are or about what we are really referring to when we refer to such objects, but he is offering a theory about the sense in which any empirical objects can meaningfully be said to exist. The significance of the distinction between reductive and existential phenomenalism is great. For it both allows Kant to do justice to those considerations which appear to lead to idealism or phenomenalism, while it does not at the same time require him to deny that the level at which we speak of material bodies and states is, and must be, a basic level of our conceptual framework. It cannot be one which is itself built upon, or constructed out of, some more basic level, e.g., out of talk about sense-data or sensory states. The uniqueness of Kant’s phenomenalism lies precisely at this point.