摘要：In the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant informs us that the basis of his critical project is '...a critique of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all the cognitions after which reason might strive independently of all experience...' (Kant 1998, 101; A xii). Elsewhere, Kant repeatedly holds that he is comprehensively outlining the conditions for the possibility of experience itself. Given the centrality of experience ( Erfahrung ) to Kant’s philosophy, the lack of a close Anglo-American treatment of the concept of Erfahrung seems to be unconscionable. 2 Two general factors seem to explain this omission: first, Kant consistently fails to give and maintain a clear definition of the term; second, the broader argument that Kant inveighs against skepticism in traditional epistemology (epitomized by Hume) begins with one conception of experience, a common-sense notion that 'experience is...the first product that our understanding brings forth as it works on the raw material of sensible sensations' and, in the process of the transcendental proof of the conditions of experience, radically transforms the concept by linking it to the methodology of the natural sciences (Kant 1998, 127; A 1). Thus, in the first Critique , what is proved is not what was assumed. In this paper, I will defend this interpretation of a serious equivocation of experience in Kant, as well as attempt to show how this equivocation affects Kant’s defense against epistemological skepticism. 3 In section one, I trace the lineage of Kant’s understanding of experience in several of his pre-critical works, finally presenting his engagement with Hume. In section two, I show how Kant’s introduction of experience in the first Critique , cast in terms of perception and understanding, attempts to meet epistemological skepticism on its own terms. In section three, I show how this original conception of experience is transformed, and its broader justification in terms of Kant’s metaphysics of science. In the conclusion, I maintain that this equivocation of 'experience' deflates Kant’s argument against the skeptic
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