In order to secure the limits of the critical use of reason, and to
succeed in the critique of speculative metaphysics, Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) had to present a full account of human cognitive experience.
Perception in Kant’s Model of Experience is a detailed investigation of
this aspect of Kant’s grand enterprise with a special focus:
perception. The overarching goal is to understand this common phenomenon
both in itself and as the key to understanding Kant’s views of
experience. In the process, the author argues against any such reading
of Kant that puts too much emphasis on concepts and understanding in
perception. This means that claims of the sort that intuitions cannot
play their role without concepts, that sensibility cannot bring anything
to cognition without being mediated through the functions of
understanding, or that there is no such thing as concept-independent
perception, are shown to be either plainly false or misleading at best.
Together with the contemporary topics examined by the end of the book,
the findings suggest how the role of conceptual thinking in human
cognition has been exaggerated partly because of a misplaced
interpretation of Kant, which not only makes perception far more
intellectual in character than what was intended by Kant himself, but
distorts Kant’s account of cognition by overlooking what there is at the
heart of his critical philosophy: the revaluation of sensible
cognition.