Kant on Given Empirical Concepts, Judgments of Perception, and the Genesis of Experience

Abstract Kant scholars have tended to treat his theory of empirical concepts as monolithic. Against this tendency, I show that Kant systematically distinguishes between two kinds of empirical concepts: ‘concepts of experience,’ on the one hand, and ‘given empirical concepts,’ on the other. I develop an interpretation of this distinction on which given empirical concepts, unlike their experiential counterparts, represent intrinsic features of subjective sensations, in this respect resembling the ‘phenomenal concepts’ invoked in the contemporary philosophy of mind. I go on to show that appreciating this distinction yields a novel account of Kant’s infamous distinction between judgments of perception and experience.