 If it is correct to read Kant as at least entertaining the possibility of a cognitivist position regarding animal minds, then Intellectualism faces a challenge. Intellectualism construes Kant as claiming that synthetic acts carried out by the intellect are necessary for the cognitive standing of a mental state. But if this is correct then—on the cognitivist reading of the animal mind—Kant is contradicting fundamental elements of his own position in crediting intuitions (or their possibility) to non-rational animals. In contrast Sensibilism has no problem accommodating the possibility that animals have representations of their environment, and that these representations are (potentially) conscious and thus count as intuitions.