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The contemporary discussion of non-conceptual content inaugurated by Gareth Evans and John McDowell has generated a range of differing views as to Kant's position on the issues raised. I argue that for Kant perception is prior to thought and that it is as being prior that perception connects us to reality in outer intuition. I then argue that for Kant thought relates to perception by being the rule for perceptual procedures. This accounts for thought's extending in scope beyond what we actually perceive to all that is manifest in space and time. As against Merleau-Ponty this Kantian understanding of thought beyond perception does not distort the nature of reality which remains essentially that which can be engaged.

According to Kant's theory of thought or cognition, thoughts are rules for empirical reactions in the compass of spatial and temporal constructions. Theses rules function to represent our situation in relation to all the ways it is proper to interact with reality. After outlining Kant's theory, I present a modified version in which rules are identified with executive mechanisms for behavioural output. Following Kant, I show how such rules can pertain to the past in terms of mechanisms for being beyond or past stages of temporal constructions. This identification of rules with mechanisms allows for a real definition of the truth of thoughts as the active realizability of the mechanisms that thoughts are. I show how this modified version can encompass the full scope of even relativistic spatio-temporal reality, and indicate why this theory deserves consideration as against rival descriptive and causal theories of cognition.

In a 1772 letter to Marcus Herz1 Kant asks how intellectual representations can refer to an object when they do not produce the object. How can a thought in me represent something which is not affecting me or present to me, granting that the thought itself does not produce the object? This question is directed by Kant against his own view in the Innaugural Dissertation. There he had argued against Leibniz that spatio-temporal construction together with sensation did provide for adequate and precise representation as in geometry. However he still agreed with Leibniz that thought by itself was adequate for representation of objects (which objects constituted the intelligible world). The principle of this representation by thought was most likely some sort of isomorphism. The thought in its structure and in its component concepts was isomorphic to one and only one object and thus represented that object. Modern Leibnizians would be those for whom definite description understood attributively provides an adequate account of reference to objects. The failure of this account is presupposed and indeed sets the stage for the Critique of Pure Reason.

In this chapter we outline how the middle reworking of the issue of simplicity forced Kant to abandon his middle view and shift to a new basis of legitimacy. We begin by discussing the textual discrepancies in the Antinomies chapter. Then in Section 2 we consider the thesis and antithesis arguments of the Second Antinomy and how Kant is unable to avoid these arguments and so unable to resolve this antinomy. Finally in Section 3 we set out how this failure to resolve the antinomy led to the late basis of legitimacy.

The final element for interpreting Kant’s Critique is our hypothesis that Kant came to the view set out in the preceding four chapters only through two previous flawed attempts at a non-descriptivist theory of thought, and that all three attempts appear in the A edition of the Critique. Further each flawed attempt constitutes a topically complete book, so that the text of the Critique is actually an overlay of three complete books, each an attempt to work out the answer to the 1772 Herz question. We call this hypothesis, the rework hypothesis, since it claims that Kant entirely reworked the topics of the Critique, and we label the three attempts the early view, the middle view and the late view. In this chapter we set out this hypothesis in preliminary fashion.

We have seen that in attempting a resolution of the antinomy over simplicity Kant was led to the anticipative notion of things as they appear in order to avoid the original second antithesis argument. Things as they appear at any stage of actual bisection or division contain a rule for further limitless division reaching or providing further things as they appear. Things as they appear in the course of proper ongoing division then do not form a finite totality. Nor, however, do they form an actually infinite totality. Since they are represented relative to the bisecting procedure, for them to form an infinite totality would require that the procedure itself be total as in (1) It is legitimate to Finish all bisecting: With respect to the things as they appear at any of those stages . . .1 In (1) there is a total infinity of stages of the procedure and so a total infinity of things as they appear. But for Kant a total infinite procedure makes no sense and so cannot be proper or legitimate.