Kant's Transcendentalism and the Problem of Conceptualism in the Present Philosophy of Perception

Abstract

Kantian transcendentalism describes the synthetic character of our cognition and represents the anticipation of conceptualism which is widely discussed on the field of the analytic philosophy of perception today. I will try to present the main pillars of Kant's philosophy as they are present in several key standpoints of the contemporary philosophy of the perception and I will attempt to show how we can understand the reality of the objects of experience based on the thesis of conceptualism. I will also try to show why conceptualism can make up the essence of varied positions in the philosophy of perception, independently from differences in comprehension of the object of perception. The present dispute along the lines of conceptual content vs. non-conceptual content in the reference to Kant's philosophy must also concern the problem of the reality of things itself, despite that the notion of reality for many standpoints of the philosophy of perception refers only to the world of possible experience.

Summarised by Paweł Sikora