Givenness, Objective Reality, and A Priori Intuitions

According to Eric Watkins and Marcus Willaschek, cognition (in the narrow sense), that is, a conscious representation of a given object and of its general features, has to fulfill two conditions: the ‘givenness’ and ‘thought’ conditions. Additionally, they argue that the givenness of an object implies that the object exists. In this paper, I will focus exclusively on their conception of the givenness condition. For Watkins and Willaschek, the reason why cognition in the narrow sense has to fulfill the givenness condition is that it has to “latch onto the world.” I will try to show that Kant’s account of cognition, in the narrow sense, only requires a relation to really possible objects; that is, a relation to objects whose existence is really possible. It does not require a relation to actually existing objects.

In the first section, I will argue that the reason why cognition in the narrow sense requires the givenness of objects in intuition is not that cognition has to “latch onto the world” in the sense of referring to existing particulars. In the second section, I will try to show that, at least in the case of a priori intuitions, givenness does not imply existence. Given this result, a priori intuitions do not latch onto the world in the sense of referring to existing particulars. In the third section, I will argue that a priori cognitions furthermore do not latch onto the world in a weaker sense.