Arnaud Dewalque

La critique néokantienne de Kant et l’instauration d’une théorie conceptualiste de la perception

ABSTRACT : This paper contributes to explor the historical background of contemporary conceptualism. It suggests that a step forward toward a more promising understanding of this historical background can be made if we focus, not on the much-discussed, controversial position of Kant, but rather on the straightforward position of some main representatives of classical neo-Kantianism. My main hypothesis is that criticisms of Kant’s transcendantal aesthetics coming from Paul Natorp (1854–1924) and Bruno Bauch (1877–1942) may be regarded as a significant historical source for the so-called “content” conceptualism (especially in McDowell’s version), insofar as they imply that the contents of perception are conceptual contents.

The Normative Force of Perceptual Justification

From a naturalistic point of view, the world may be seen as a set of physical entities that causally interact. Physical sciences precisely aim at explaining the world by discovering causal transitions between its constituent entities. Similarly, when it comes to the mind, philosophers of a physicalist persuasion typically attempt to account for the place of mind in nature by exploring causal transitions involving mental states. However, our mental life is not just made up of natural processes and causal chains. It involves rational transitions as well. Very roughly, saying that our mental life is also made up of rational transitions simply amounts to saying that, within the sphere of our mental states, some moves are justified while others are not. For instance, my belief that today is Wednesday, given the additional beliefs that school ends at 12 on Wednesday and that I have to go and pick up my children when school ends, doesn’t just cause my belief that I have to pick up my children at school at 12. It is also part of what makes it rational for me to believe so.1

Windelband on Beurteilung

A main challenge for philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was to construct judgements as acts of decision or position (thesis) rather than as acts of combination or synthesis. Let us call this the thetic view. Franz Brentano (1838–1917) is usually regarded as the best supporter of this view, since he takes advantage of the Kantian-Herbartian notion of ‘position’ (Setzung) to break with the traditional definition of judgement as symploke (Martin 2006, 64 sq.; see Brentano 2008, 335). Generally speaking I think this usual line of interpretation is quite correct, yet it could benefit from a more detailed account of the Brentano reception. What I would like to suggest is this: At stake in Brentano’s legacy is not just the rejection of the synthetic view but also the way in which the thetic dimension is itself conceived. There are, in fact, various ways of constructing judgements as thetic or positional phenomena. Brentano’s notion of ‘existential assertion’ is not the only way to do so.