The Truth about Things in Themselves

If what we think and talk about were constituted independently of its accessibility to us, two questions might turn out to be unanswerable. First of all: How could we know anything about it? Furthermore: How could we form a bona fide conception of it, or even of its possibility? I consider two answers to the twin questions about knowledge and concept formation, by Kant and Dummett respectively. I argue that in spite of appearances, transcendental idealism and semantic antirealism share common concerns about knowledge, content and truth. Against both Kant and Dummett, I propose an argument from contingency in favor of the constitutive independence of the subject-matter of thought and talk, and of the independence of truth from epistemic constraints.