Abstract

PELAEZ CEDRES, Álvaro. Non-Conceptual Content and the Need for Schematism. Tópicos (México) [online]. 2021, n.60, pp.351-373.  Epub Feb 23, 2021. ISSN 0188-6649.  https://doi.org/10.21555/top.v0i60.1141.

The contemporary debate that discusses whether the content of perceptual experience is or not conceptual claims I. Kant as its precursor. Surprisingly, both contenders in this debate do so. The Kantian non-conceptualists, R. Hanna and L. Allais, among others, have support their arguments on Kant´s insistence on clearly separating intuitions and concepts and the faculties that make them possible, sensibility and understanding in order to emphasize that, once divided according to their functions, it makes sense to think that experience emerges from the collaboration between those two faculties. In this paper I want to make an argument in favor of the non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant. In a nutshell, my argument goes as follows: If, as the Kantian conceptualists say, concepts already operate in sensibility, why would it be necessary to postulate an independent device that helps close the bridge between sensibility and understanding? Why is there a need for schematism? I will defend the legitimacy of that tertium as a mediator element that resolves the problem of the subsumption of particulars under concepts, and with that I will make an argument for the separability between intuitions and concepts.

Keywords : Kant; non-conceptual content; schematism of concepts.