Sensible Intuition in Kant: Neither Conceptualism nor Nonconceptualim

In this paper, I intend to show that it’s a serious mistake to construe the role of sensible representation in Kant’s work as a nonconceptual content (in the contemporary and technical sense of “content”), which, like a mental indexical would refer to what appears in space and time in the so-called de re form. The interpretation I advance and further support is this: without possessing a representational content, sensible representation must be understood as the basic epistemic relation between the subject and the physical entities in space and time she is acquainted with. Immediate reference of sensible intuition to their respective objects is to be understood as a form of knowledge by acquaintance. I call my own interpretation relationalism.