BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

260
We may now proceed to another of the objections suggested above.
The categories are classified as concepts. According to our traditional
understanding of what a concept is, however, it is not an embodied
practice. How are we to solve this problem? A first step towards a
solution may be found by reminding ourselves that the term ‘concept’
may have several meanings. Sometimes it is used to mean ‘mental
representation’. At other times, it may refer to a system of beliefs, or
prototypes. 27 Johannessen complains that philosophers typically use the
term as if it were settled what it meant, when it is not. 28
In some Kantian texts published before and after the Critique we
have seen that Kant promotes what we have called a pragmatic theory of
embodied rationality, according to which a person may possess a concept
solely through the successful performance of an embodied practice. In
such a case, the concept exists in the practice itself, or as what we termed
a working concept. In this and the following sections I shall examine
some statements in the Critique about the categories. I shall argue that
even if Kant does not explicitly say that the categories are embodied
practices, what he says is consistent with the idea that they are such
practices.
Notice how Kant typically qualifies the categories. They are functions
or acts carried out by the agent, or as Kant puts it in German, they are
Handlungen des reinen Denkens (A 57/B 81). However, the categories
are also referred to as rules. 29 A category, we may conclude, is both an act
and a rule, or an act taking place according to a rule. This way of
paraphrasing the point conforms to Kant’s definition of a practice, so at a
general level his way of describing the categories conforms to his own
definition of a practice. It may be objected that the parallel is merely
formal here, and should not be emphasized too much. I agree, but the
Critique also contains other interesting reflections on the connection
between concepts, categories and practices. Not surprisingly, given what
we have previously learned from examining his Logic, they are found in
Kant’s general discussion of logic introducing the second main part of the
Critique, the Transcendental logic.
27
Cf. Peacocke (1992), 3.
28
Cf. Johannessen (1999), 95.
29
Cf. e.g. A 126 and B 145.
KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY