Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar (Tuesday - Week 2, HT20)

For Kant, the human cognitive faculty has two sub-faculties: sensibility and the understanding. Each has a pure form which is necessary to us as humans: space and time for sensibility; the logical functions of judgement and the categories for the understanding. But Kant is careful to leave open the possibility that, in some sense, there could be creatures like us, with both sensibility and understanding, who nevertheless have different pure forms of sensibility. They would be finite rational beings and discursive cognizers. But they would not be human. And this raises a question about the pure form of the understanding. Is there any sense in which there could be discursive cognizers who have different categories or different logical functions of judgement? Even if other discursive cognizers need not sense like us, must they at least think like us? We will set out our reasons for disagreeing about these questions, and see whether we can make progress on adjudicating our dispute.