Transcendental deduction of predicative structure in Kant and Brandom
On the Fregean account of predication, which Brandom and Quine share, the predicative structure of a judgment consists in a certain deductive order of a suitable domain of judgments. A rival and, as will be argued, superior account of predication can be found in Kant, according to which the source of the predicative structure of thought is not an inferential order among thoughts, but thought’s relation to intuition. Not only do intuitions provide thought with content but the dependence of thought on intuition is the principle of its form. The development of this systematic claim requires, or yields, a new reading of the Analogies of Experience.