Kant holds that some nonhuman animals “are acquainted with” objects, despite lacking conceptual capacities (“understanding”). What does this tell us about his theory of human cognition? Numerous authors have argued that this is a significant point in favour of Nonconceptualism—the claim that, for Kant, sensible representations of objects do not depend on the understanding. Against this, I argue that Kant’s views about animal minds can readily be accommodated by a certain kind of Conceptualism. It remains viable to think that, for Kant, (i) humans’ sensible representations necessarily represent objects as temporally structured in ways that allow us to have thoughts about them, and (ii) such representations are produced, and could only be produced, by the understanding. This allows Conceptualists to maintain that humans’ sensible representations depend on the understanding, while accepting that animals have sensible representations of objects too. We must, therefore, reassess both the warrant for Nonconceptualism and the shape Conceptualist readings must take.

中文翻译：

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康德、动物心智和概念主义

康德认为，一些非人类动物“熟悉”物体，尽管缺乏概念能力（“理解”）。关于他的人类认知理论，这告诉了我们什么？许多作者认为这是支持非概念主义的一个重要观点——对于康德来说，对象的可感表征不依赖于理解。与此相反，我认为康德关于动物心灵的观点可以很容易地被某种概念主义所接受。对于康德来说，认为（i）人类的可感表象必然以允许我们对它们进行思考的方式将对象表示为时间结构，并且（ii）这样的表象是通过并且只能通过以下方式产生的，这仍然是可行的。理解，体会。这使得概念主义者能够坚持人类的可感知表征依赖于理解，同时接受动物也具有物体的可感知表征。因此，我们必须重新评估非概念主义的理由和概念主义阅读必须采取的形式。