CONCEPTS, RULES AND MENTAL ACTIVITY: A SYNTHESIS OF THEMES FROM KANT AND WITTGENSTEIN

摘要

Kant claims in the Critique of Pure Reason that concepts are rules and argues that experience of objects and of ourselves is possible only on the condition that mental activity ("synthesis") is subject to special rules: the categories. Under certain construals of a "rule" some features of the role played by the categories make Kant's identification of them with rules incoherent. The identification of ordinary concepts and their related schemata with rules, understood in these ways, is also problematical. These difficulties are circumvented by adopting a notion of "rule" which does not require that there be someone to follow the rule or even be aware of the rule in order for an action to be related to the rule in a non-accidental way. I therefore argue against theories of rules demanding agency and awareness of rules for rule-related actions and for a theory of rules which makes primary the notion of rule-governed activities: viz., activities directly related to rules without the mediation of any person following the rule.;Rules figure prominently in Wittgenstein's theory of linguistic activity in his Philosophical Investigations and other later works. I show that his account of rules and rule following is very similar to my account of rules and rule-governed activities and that his understanding of rules is central to his position concerning language.;Applying the new theory of rules and rule-governedness to Kant's epistemology, we are able to analyze synthesis as an activity governed by the categories, empirical concepts, and the related schemata in their role as rules. In terms of this account of rules, I defend the Kantian claim that synthesis governed by rules is a necessary condition for cognitive experience.