Kant on Nativism, Scepticism and Necessity

What is it about?

This paper discusses Kant's attitude to the theory that fundamental concepts - the categories- are innate. He seems to object to the theory on the grounds that it would leave open a kind of sceptical worry. I suggest that Kant's thought is that if the categories were innate, then we would not represent connections in the world as necessary in the way that we do. This is a more fundamental worry than the sceptical one that we would represent things as necessary without knowing that those representations are correct.

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Why is it important?

It tries to link together three difficult topics in Kant's theoretical philosophy: the status of the categories, the nature of Kant's response to scepticism, and the question of how modal elements enter into the intentional content of our representations.