In this essay, I specify types of representational content that can be
attributed to Kant’s account of representation. The more specific aim is
to examine which of these types of content can be regarded as possible
without the application of concepts. In order to answer the question, I
proceed as follows. First, I show how intuition (in Kant’s sense) can be
seen as providing indexical content independently of empirical
concepts. Second, I show in what sense the generation of spatial content
can be regarded as non-categorial. A key distinction is that a
perceptual examination of an object can be understood as thoroughly
sensible and particular, whereas a conceptual determination always
grasps the object via its generalisable features. Third, I propose that
the faculties of sensibility and understanding are not only separable in
principle, but that their contributions remain in a certain sense
separate in actual cognition as well. This is to say that a conceptual
determination of an object does not entail that the object ceases to be
non-conceptually available to the perceiver, which further suggests the
autonomy of sensibility and its perceptual content. Finally, I raise
difficulties in attributing non-conceptual representational content to
Kant’s judgment-centered stance on representation and experience, only
to emphasise how these difficulties easily lead to a misappreciation of
Kant’s fundamental distinction between sensibility and understanding and
their unique cognitive contributions.