Empirical Cognition in the Transcendental Deduction: Kant's Starting Point and his Humean Problem

In this article, I argue that in the sense of greatest epistemological concern for Kant, empirical cognition is rational sensory discrimination': the identification or differentiation of sensory objects from each other (whether correctly or not), occurring through a capacity of forming judgements (whether correct or not). With this account of empirical cognition, I show how the Transcendental Deduction of the first Critique is most plausibly read as having as its fundamental assumption the thesis that we have empirical cognition, and I provide evidence that Kant understood Hume as granting this assumption.