Abstract: In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Kant's account of empirical intuitions according to which he is a conceptualist and a naïve realist. "Conceptualists" (e.g., Gomes 2017; Ginsborg 2008; McDowell 1996; Longuenesse 1998) interpret Kant as believing that synthesis is required for intuitions of external objects, whereas "non-conceptualists" (e.g., Allais 2015, 2017; Hanna 2005; McLear 2015, 2016) think that one can have intuitions without the application of concepts involved in synthesis, and that synthesis occurs at a different stage in the cognitive process. In the first part of the paper, I provide initial motivations, textual and otherwise, why one might read Kant as a non-conceptualist or a conceptualist. I conclude that the most heavily debated passages in Kant's works do not point decisively in the direction of conceptualism or non-conceptualism. In the second part of the paper, I present Lucy Allais's (2015, 2017) non-conceptualist reading of Kant's view of intuition involving binding, which she takes to present us with perceptual particulars. I object to Allais using Kant's account of intuitions of mathematical objects in the Axioms and argue that her non-conceptualist view is inconsistent with Kant's account of the nature of (what he calls in the B-Deduction and Axioms of Intuition) determinate, conscious intuitions (A161ff/B202ff and B154; Sutherland 2005). Contra Allais, I endorse a conceptualist view in which synthesis is required for intuitions of external objects, incorporating elements from views of other conceptualists, specifically Anil Gomes (2014, 2017) and Hannah Ginsborg (2008).

Some have argued that Kant's view of perception, specifically the feature that one must apply concepts to be presented with objects in intuition, is incompatible with naïve realism, which is the relationalist view in which the relation between perceiver and that which is perceived is a direct relation of acquaintance. They reject Kant's account on the basis of that incompatibility, so this provides some motivation for reading Kant as a naïve realist. Non-conceptualists can offer a way of reading Kant that is compatible with naïve realism, but most scholars assume that the representational elements involved in conceptualist readings preclude attributing to Kant a relationalist view.

In the third part of the paper, I develop a conceptualist view involving both relational and representational elements. My account involves three main components: (1) a subject is given a proto-object in the manifold of intuition, (2) she turns her attention to it, and (3) both of these elements together result in a seeming that there is an object in front of her. (1) and (2) represent the relational element, and (3) represents the representational element. Furthermore, the seeming in (3) is accompanied by the assumption that she is combining representations as she ought, for if she weren't combining representations as she ought, then she wouldn't have the seeming of the object. My account meets the conditions of Kant's account of determinate, conscious empirical intuitions, while also representing a plausible way in which one can be both a conceptualist and a naïve realist.