Imagination and Inner Intuition

This chapter addresses the question of whether intuition is object-dependent. Kant’s account of the imagination appears to suggest that intuition is not object-dependent. On a recent proposal, however, the imagination is a faculty of merely inner intuition, the inner objects of which exist and are present in the way demanded by object-dependence views, such as Lucy Allais’s relational account. It is argued that this proposal is problematic on both textual and philosophical grounds. The proposal is inconsistent with what Kant says about how the imagination functions and it is ultimately incompatible with the relational account it is supposed to support. Kant’s account of the imagination remains a serious obstacle for the view that intuition is object-dependent.