Born Patricia Williams, she attended Wellesley College and then graduate school in philosophy at Princeton where she studied with George Pitcher.
Kitcher has written numerous articles on the forms of intuition, Kant's epistemology, self-consciousness, and on how transcendental arguments work.
First, contra Peter Frederick Strawson, Kitcher argues that to understand synthetic a priori knowledge, it is essential to consider transcendental psychology.
Second, she explicates a Kantian argument for the necessity of an integrated thinking subject, which serves as a reply to David Hume's denial of the unity of the self.
(Kitcher jokes that her arguments managed to alienate all readers: Freudians, because she exposes the mistaken foundation of psychoanalysis, and anti-Freudians, because she portrays his program as scientifically legitimate.)
Her works from this period provide an account of Kantian maxims and an interpretation of Kant's argument for the Formulation of the Universal Law for the Categorical Imperative.