Samantha Matherne on Intuitions of Sense, Intuitions of Imagination, and Full‐Blown Experience

In her book Seeing more,1 Samantha Matherne first gives a characterization of imagination in general and then explains how we use imagination in theoretical, aesthetic and practical contexts. Seeing More is an extraordinarily valuable and helpful contribution to Kant scholarship, offering a remarkably clear and comprehensive account of the faculty of imagination. It is rare to encounter philosophical writing that is so lucid and accessible. Particularly impressive is the way she develops and applies her conception of imagination across a wide range of philosophical domains, including theoretical philosophy, aesthetics, and practical philosophy. Matherne starts her book with examining how imagination relates to the two cognitive capacities of sensibility and understanding and argues for the view that imagination belongs to the faculty of sensibility. Her main reason is that Kant characterizes sensibility as the general capacity to bring about intuitions and imagination as the capacity to bring about specific intuitions. On her view, sensibility has two parts, namely sense and imagination, which are capacities to bring about two different kinds of intuitions, which she calls “intuitions of sense” and “intuitions of imagination” (SM, 74). Whereas intuitions of sense are the direct result of the senses being affected by objects, intuitions of imagination require an act of synthesis that is performed by imagination. Furthermore, she claims that in order for imagination to synthesize a sensible manifold it has to be guided by concepts. Intuitions of sense, by contrast, neither require synthesis nor the use of concepts. Matherne begins the second part of Seeing More, in which she analyzes the use of imagination in theoretical contexts, with discussing a specific kind of intuitions of imagination, namely perceptions. She distinguishes perceptions not only from intuitions of sense, but also from what she calls “full-blown experience”. Whereas in her view both perceptions and full-blown experience require the use of empirical concepts, only full-blown experience involves the application of concepts in judgments. The way in which concepts guide acts of the imagination does not consist in being applied in a judgment. In my comment, I will only discuss topics from the first and second part of the book. More specifically, what interests me is how Matherne conceives of perceptions and how she distinguishes them from intuitions of sense on the one hand and from full-blown experience on the other hand. In the first part of my comment, I will treat the relation between perceptions and intuitions of sense. In the second and third part, I will examine how perceptions relate to concepts. This will include a discussion of the relation between perceptions and full-blown experience which is the topic of the third part of my comment. From now on, like Matherne, I will refer to intuitions of sense as “intuitionss” and to intuitions of imagination as “intuitionsi”. “[F]or Kant, the imagination stage [of experience] does not just contribute to our representation of objects as sensibly determinate [as having a determinate spatio-temporal form]; it also contributes to our representation of objects as qualitatively determinate in a way that the sense stage [the stage at which intuitionss are generated] does not.” (SM, 160). Matherne distinguishes between three stages of experience: the sense stage, the imagination stage and the understanding stage (cf. SM, 5.2). On the sense stage of experience, empirical intuitionss are generated, on the imagination stage a specific kind of intuitionsi, namely perceptions, are generated and on the understanding stage judgments about objects of experience are formed. So, from the quotation from p. 160 we learn that perceptions differ from (empirical) intuitionss in two respects: (i) in the way in which they represent a certain spatio-temporal form and (ii) in representing objects as qualitatively determinate. “On the one hand, an intuition can be a conscious representation that is the result of a causal sequence in which we are affected by an object that has a determinate spatio-temporal form. Think, for example, of an intuition that is the result of being causally affected by something with a triangular form, such as ∴ . […] On the other hand, an intuition can be a representation, the content of which involves consciously representing something as a determinate spatio-temporal form. Think, for example, of consciously representing the dots, ∴ , as having a triangular form.” (SM, 84). “[R]epresenting an object as […] qualitatively determinate involves representing it as having properties shared by objects of a certain kind.” (SM, 158). I take it to be uncontroversial that, on Kant's view, representing an object as qualitatively determinate involves employing a concept. This is because, according to him, concepts are general representations, that is representations of properties that are shared by objects of a certain kind. So, one cannot represent an object as sharing a property with objects of a certain kind without using a concept. With respect to this point Matherne and I agree. Now consider the following situation: When Anne and Miriam first see the cow, it is slightly foggy and the cow is extremely far away from them, so that even Anne is not sure about what it is that she sees. They walk for some minutes, get much closer to the cow and the fog disappears. We might characterize this situation by saying that first Anne and Miriam perceive or intuit the cow not as a cow, but just as a brown spatial area, and only perceive it as a cow when they get closer and the fog has disappeared. By saying this, we do not mean that they classify or identify the cow either as a brown spatial area or as a cow. Instead, by saying that the cow is represented in these ways we specify how the cow looks to Anne and Miriam. First, the cow looks like a brown spatial region, later it looks like a cow. I refer to perceiving or intuiting an object x as F in this sense as “phenomenally perceiving or intuiting x as an F".2 And I take it to be controversial whether phenomenally intuiting/perceiving an x as an F requires possessing the concept F. If one believes that perceptions have conceptual content, then one assumes that phenomenally representing x as F requires possessing the concept F3; if one believes that perceptions have non-conceptual content, then one denies that phenomenally representing x as F requires possessing the concept F. “To illustrate, consider an episode in which you have been in a darkened movie theater for a few hours and then exit into bright daylight. As your senses are affected by the parking lot, cars, and lampposts in front of you, you will have various objective sensations, e.g. of colors and sounds. Through these sensations, you are conscious not just of a subjective state in yourself; you are, instead, conscious of something like an array of colors and sounds in space and time. But overwhelmed by the daylight, you are not yet conscious of what you see as having a determinate spatio-temporal form. It is an episode of this sort that I take to involve an empirical intuitions that represents an object as “undetermined” in Kant's framework.” (SM, 85). The point of this example is to describe how your surrounding looks to you after you have left the movie theater. In a situation like this, the parking lot and the cars look different than if you haven't come out of a dark movie theater. They look blurred, and so look different than when you perceive them as having a determinate shape. Thus, Matherne characterizes the first difference between intuitionss and intuitionsi as a difference in the way in which they phenomenally represent objects. To sum up, when I have a perception, (i) I phenomenally intuit its object as having a determinate spatio-temporal form, and (ii) represent it as qualitatively determinate (as sharing a property with other objects of a certain kind). By contrast, when I have an intuitions, (i) I phenomenally intuit an object as having an indeterminate spatio-temporal form, and (ii) I do not represent it as qualitatively determinate. For example, when I leave the movie theatre and have an intuitions of my surrounding, the objects that I intuit look fuzzy shaped, and, say, red to me, but I do not represent them as being qualitatively identical to other red objects with respect to color, that is, I do not classify or identify them as being red. Neither do I classify them as having certain indeterminate shapes. By contrast, after my sensible representations have been synthesized and I have a perception of my surrounding, I phenomenally intuit my surrounding as consisting of red objects with determinate shapes, for example car-shapes and I represent these car-shaped objects as sharing the property of being red with red things and the property of being a car with cars, and thus classify them as red and as being cars. In this part of my comment, I will only treat the first respect in which intuitionss and perceptions differ.4 Specifically, I will discuss the question whether we should – as Matherne suggests – interpret Kant as claiming that we have two kinds of intuitions, the first of which does not require synthesis and phenomenally represents objects as having an undetermined spatio-temporal form, whereas the second does require synthesis and phenomenally represents objects as having a determinate spatio-temporal form. “[T]he imagination stage does depend on the sense stage: insofar as it involves the synthesis of a manifold of empirical intuitions into a perceptual image, our imaginative activities in perception depend on the deliverances of sense.” (SM, 157-8). Yet, the claim that every intuitioni, and thus every perception, has to be preceded by an intuitions is phenomenologically unconvincing. Since, as Matherne claims herself, intuitionss for Kant are conscious representations, she has to assume that in our stream of consciousness intuitions that represent objects as having fuzzy boundaries constantly alternate with intuitions of the same objects as having determinate shapes. Put differently: On Matherne's interpretation, Kant is forced to claim that the world looks alternately blurred and sharp. But in fact, this is not the way we experience the world. Secondly, to me at least it is unclear what could be an example of an intuitions of other sensory modalities such as an auditory, olfactory, or tactile intuitions. What could it mean to hear a melody and to represent it as temporally indeterminate? Thirdly, according to Kant, we form empirical concepts by comparing empirical intuitions (or by comparing their objects). Since according to Matherne, the synthesis that results in the generation of perceptions is guided by empirical concepts and thus presupposes that we already possess empirical concepts, I assume that in her view, empirical concepts are formed by comparing intuitionss. Yet, the empirical concepts we would form on the basis of intuitions that represent objects as spatio-temporally indeterminate would be other empirical concepts than the ones that we indeed possess. Our concept of a car for example is not the concept of an object that has an indeterminate shape. So, if Kant distinguished between intuitionss and intuitionsi in the way Matherne proposes, he would not be able to explain how we form the empirical concepts that we in fact possess. “According to Kant, at the most elementary level, our imagination is responsible for forming, synthesizing, or composing a manifold in such a way that results in an intuitioni that represents a “shape” or “gestalt” (Gestalt) or a temporal “sequence” (Gefolge), “series” (Reihe), or “play” (Spiel). As an example of the former, think about an intuitioni that represents these dots ∴ as a triangle.” (SM, 83). In this passage, Matherne claims that in order for an intuition to (phenomenally) represent an object as having some shape, synthesis has to take place. Let us apply this to Matherne's example of the intuitions you have after having left the movie theatre: This intuitions (phenomenally) represents the objects you see as having shapes. As Matherne claims herself: “[Y]ou are […] conscious of something like an array of colors […] in space […].” (SM, 85). An array of colors in space clearly has some shape. So, after you have left the movie theatre, the objects you see (phenomenally) look shaped in some way. You do not (phenomenally) intuit them as having determinate shapes; you (phenomenally) intuit them as having fuzzy shapes. Still, (phenomenally) intuiting something as having fuzzy shapes is (phenomenally) intuiting it as being shaped in some way and for this, according to the passage quoted above, synthesis is required. So, if we take Matherne's claim that, in for an intuition to represent an object as being shaped in some way, synthesis has to take place, seriously, then it follows that also intuitionss require synthesis. “I call an extensive magnitude that in which the representation of the parts makes possible the representation of the whole […]. I cannot represent to myself any line, no matter how small it may be, without drawing it in thought, i.e., successively generating all its parts from one point, and thereby first sketching this intuition. It is exactly the same with even the smallest time.” (CpR, A 162-3/B203). What Kant stresses in this passage is that the generation of any intuition of a spatial or temporal region requires that I synthesize the representations of the parts of the region with each other. This is a general view about the way in which intuitions of spatial or temporal regions are formed, and I don't see why, for Kant, the fact that an intuition represents a spatial or temporal region as having fuzzy instead of determinate boundaries should have the consequence that the formation of such an intuition does not require synthesis.5 If this last objection against Matherne's interpretation of Kant's conception of intuition is correct and Kant indeed assumes that not only intuitions that represent objects as having a determinate spatio-temporal form, but also intuitions that represent objects as having an indeterminate spatio-temporal form require synthesis, then it turns out that there are no intuitions that do not require synthesis. Now, since of the two capacities sense and imagination, only imagination is a capacity to synthesize representations, accepting my objection has the consequence that all intuitions are what Matherne calls “intuitions of imagination”. “The imagination stage […] involves spontaneous sensible activities of imaginative synthesis that are guided by empirical concepts […]. These concept-guided imaginative activities generate intuitionsi (perceptual images) through which we […] represent […] appearances as spatio-temporally determinate and as exhibiting empirical concepts.” (SM, 175). If I understand this passage correctly, it shows that according to Matherne, synthesis has to be guided by concepts not only in order for the resulting intuitions to represent objects as exhibiting concepts and thus as qualitatively determinate,6 but also in order for them to phenomenally represent objects as spatio-temporally determinate. Still, to me at least, it is unclear why Matherne attributes this position to Kant. In her view, the claim that acts of the imagination are guided by concepts follows from the Schematism chapter. As she understands this chapter, Kant answers the question of how we are able to subsume intuitions under empirical concepts in the following way: Empirical schemata are rules that guide the synthesis of imagination responsible for the generation of perceptions. Since empirical schemata depend on empirical concepts, the perception that results from an act of synthesis guided by schemata exhibits those concepts on which the relevant schemata depend. And since perceptions exhibit concepts, we are able to subsume them under concepts. Thus, on Matherne's interpretation, Kant introduces concepts as rules for acts of the imagination to explain how intuitions represent objects as qualitatively determinate. Yet, since the topic of the Schematism chapter is not how we bring it about that we phenomenally represent objects of intuition as spatio-temporally determinate, in Seeing More we do not find an explanation for why acts of the imagination have to be guided by concepts in order for intuitions to phenomenally represent objects as spatio-temporally determinate.7 I myself do not believe that we can phenomenally intuit objects as having a determinate spatio-temporal form only if we possess empirical concepts. This claim seems to be empirically false. It is not the case that before I acquired the concept of a hare and the concept of a bunny, say, hares and bunnies looked fuzzy to me. More generally, to acquire a concept F is (at least) to acquire the capacity to classify Fs as being F. Now, I don't see any reason for the view that in order to phenomenally intuit an F as having a determinate shape we have to be able to classify the object as an F. As I have already said, to me quite the contrary seems to be true. As long as we do not intuit objects as having determinate shapes, we are not able to acquire the concepts they fall under. If hares and bunnies looked like fuzzy brown regions to me, I would never form the concept of a bunny and a hare. So, since the claim that having an intuition that represents its objects as spatio-temporally determinate requires a concept-guided act of synthesis is systematically not convincing, and since in Seeing More I do not find an account of why Kant adopts this view, I prefer not to ascribe it to him. In the next part of my comment, I will explain why I furthermore do not believe that, for Kant, in order for an intuition to represent its object as qualitatively determinate, it has to be generated by a concept-guided synthesis. In order to do so, I will examine how Matherne conceives of the relation between perceptions and full-blown experience. “[F]or Kant, the role empirical concepts play in the empirical intuitionsi at issue in perception differs from the role that they play in the empirical judgments carried out by the understanding in experience.” (SM, 134). “Suppose I am at a party and “King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown” comes on. […] [T]hough I have dutifully learned key marks of <dub> […], I fail to hear this song as an of from a this in part, in my to a in which I think of what I hear as under the concept there is also a at the sensible I am not it as this is not a of I sense the sensible is I am not this song as a sensible of the concept And what I am is that, on Kant's view, this sort of sensible which is neither a of sense nor a of is a of my my imagination has not the concept <dub> sensible through the of (SM, are two ways in which I fail to identify the song as an of On the one hand, I I am to that the is On the other hand, I I am to hear the as (SM, to these we can use empirical concepts in two different We can either apply them in judgments about objects of intuition or we can use them as acts of imagination. In the first what is generated is a In the second what is generated is a full-blown experience. In both we identify the object as being but we identify it in different In the first we intuit the object as being in the second we it to be F. As I understand Kant, he does not between two ways in which we can use concepts or two ways in which we can identify objects of intuition as being some way. What I object to is Matherne's claim that Kant it to be possible to identify an object as being F without a concept in a judgment. I that, on Kant's view, we can perceive or intuit an object x as being but as I understand him, this to intuiting x and that x is F. first reason for this view is Kant's claim that understanding can no other use of these concepts than that of by of (CpR, A Kant denies that, from concepts in there is a second way of using them, and thus he denies that we can represent objects as being qualitatively determinate by using concepts as acts of the imagination. Kant's view, in the imagination stage, we do not yet consciously represent how objects, in fact, we only consciously represent how things spatio-temporally to (SM, is a between the sort of consciousness of how things to us that we at through the sensible activities of imagination in perception and the consciousness of how objects, in fact are, that we at through the activities of the understanding in (SM, […] can be as […] that one cannot first before one and but in so against an to be something than For the most part, we with in all our in the of Kant that first something then assumes it as […].” (CpR, A to both the stage that comes before or to be is not but As I see the reason why Kant characterizes the state of representing an object of intuition as qualitatively determinate without to the of this representation not as a perception or empirical but as a is that representing an object as qualitatively determinate requires a and – as we have just – concepts, in view can only be applied in judgments. For these I think it is that according to Kant, we cannot between perceiving or intuiting an object as being F and that an or object is F. Instead, perceiving or intuiting an object as being F involves a about the which might either be a or an phenomenally represent objects as spatio-temporally indeterminate and do not represent objects as qualitatively determinate. phenomenally represent objects as spatio-temporally determinate, and represent objects as qualitatively determinate. are the direct result of causal of the require a synthesis of sensible representations and require imagination as the capacity to synthesize sensible to Matherne, acts of the imagination have to be guided by concepts for two (i) perceptions would not phenomenally represent their objects as spatio-temporally determinate. (ii) perceptions would not represent their objects as qualitatively determinate. From my objection to Matherne's claim that an intuition that represents its object as qualitatively determinate is about by a concept-guided act of synthesis it follows that for Kant having a perception that represents its object as being qualitatively determinate involves that it has this Thus, since perceptions on their do not represent objects as qualitatively determinate at Kant does not assume that the way in which a object is represented as qualitatively determinate by a perception is different from the way in which it so is represented by a judgment. least that is what I have If we take my to Matherne's claims we at a conception of the between sense, imagination and understanding that differs from her to this the generation of all of our intuitions requires that imagination sensible Yet, this synthesis is never guided by concepts. Intuitions phenomenally represent objects as a having a determinate or indeterminate spatio-temporal form and phenomenally represent objects as having but they do not involve their objects as having a property shared by objects of a certain kind. For example, in having an intuition of a red the looks and red to me, but I do not identify it as being as being red or as being a In order to identify an object of intuition in this way, I have to apply a concept to it either in a or an judgment. and by