I demonstrate that the pre-Critical Kant is essentialist and intellectualist about the relational properties of substances. That is to say, God can choose whether or not to create a substance, and whether or not to connect this substance with other substances, so as to create a world: but God cannot choose what the nature of the relational properties is, once the substance is created and connected. The divine will is constrained by the essences of substances. Nonetheless, Kant considers that essences (...) depend upon God, in that they depend upon the divine intellect. I conclude by gesturing towards some possible implications of this interpretation, when considering the role that might be played by God – both historically and conceptually – in relation to the notion of ‘laws of nature’, and when understanding Kant's transcendental idealism and his Critical conception of freedom. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Der Kommentar zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft bietet eine textnahe Erschließung der zentralen Begriffe, Thesen und Argumentationsgänge von Kants Hauptwerk auf aktuellem Forschungsstand. Es ist der erste Kommentar zur KrV, der den gesamten Text in der Fassung der ersten und zweiten Auflage gleichmäßig und lückenlos berücksichtigt. Davon profitieren vor allem die „Transzendentale Dialektik“ und die „Methodenlehre“, die in früheren Gesamtkommentaren meist nicht hinreichend berücksichtigt worden sind. Die Beiträge wurden nach einheitlichen Richtlinien verfasst, wobei unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen und Interpretationsansätze zur Geltung kommen. (...) Um dem Leser dieses Kommentars die Orientierung zu erleichtern, ist jeder Beitrag in drei bzw. vier Teile untergliedert: Der erste Teil behandelt die Stellung und Funktion des kommentierten Textabschnitts in der KrV, der zweite Teil gibt einen Überblick über Inhalt und Aufbau des Abschnitts, der dritte Teil enthält den eigentlichen Textkommentar. Wo dies sinnvoll erschien, wurden in einem vierten Teil wichtige Interpretationsfragen angesprochen. Hinweise auf weiterführende Spezialliteratur am Ende eines jeden Beitrags, eine Auswahlbibliographie zu Kant und zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft sowie ein Namen- und ein Sachregister machen den Band zu einem komfortablen Arbeitsmittel für den Benutzer. Die vorliegende zweite Auflage trägt der Tatsache Rechnung, dass der Band mittlerweile als Standardwerk der Kant-Forschung gilt. Mit Beiträgen von Henry Allison, Karl Ameriksm Reinhard Brandt, Wolfgang Carl, Konrad Cramer, Jean Ferrari Eckart Förster, Volker Gerhardt, Paul Guyer, Otfried Höffe, Hansgeorg Hoppe, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Heiner F. Klemme, Lothar Kreimendahl, Béatrice Longuenesse, Georg Mohr, Birgit Recki, Alain Renaut, Peter Rohs, Gerhard Seel, Dieter Sturma, Bernhard Thöle, Eric Watkins, Marcus Willaschek. (shrink)

How all philosophical explanations of human consciousness and the fundamental structure of the cosmos are bizarre—and why that’s a good thing Do we live inside a simulated reality or a pocket universe embedded in a larger structure about which we know virtually nothing? Is consciousness a purely physical matter, or might it require something extra, something nonphysical? According to the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, it’s hard to say. In The Weirdness of the World, Schwitzgebel argues that the answers to these fundamental (...) questions lie beyond our powers of comprehension. We can be certain only that the truth—whatever it is—is weird. Philosophy, he proposes, can aim to open—to reveal possibilities we had not previously appreciated—or to close, to narrow down to the one correct theory of the phenomenon in question. Schwitzgebel argues for a philosophy that opens. According to Schwitzgebel’s “Universal Bizarreness” thesis, every possible theory of the relation of mind and cosmos defies common sense. According to his complementary “Universal Dubiety” thesis, no general theory of the relationship between mind and cosmos compels rational belief. Might the United States be a conscious organism—a conscious group mind with approximately the intelligence of a rabbit? Might virtually every action we perform cause virtually every possible type of future event, echoing down through the infinite future of an infinite universe? What, if anything, is it like to be a garden snail? Schwitzgebel makes a persuasive case for the thrill of considering the most bizarre philosophical possibilities. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to cast new light on an important and often overlooked notion of perspectival knowledge arising from Kant. In addition to a traditional notion of perspectival knowledge as "knowledge from a vantage point", a second novel notion — "knowledge towards a vantage point" —is here introduced. The origin and rationale of perspectival knowledge 2 are traced back to Kant's so-called transcendental illusion. The legacy of the Kantian notion of perspectival knowledge 2 for contemporary discussions on (...) disagreement and the role of metaphysics in scientific knowledge is discussed. (shrink)

In this article I offer an opinionated overview of the central elements of Kant’s philosophical methodology during the critical period. I begin with a brief characterization of how Kant conceives of the aims of human inquiry – focusing on the idea that inquiry ideally aims at not just cognition (Erkenntnis), but also the more demanding cognitive achievements that Kant labels insight (Einsehen) and comprehension (Begreifen). Then I explore the implications of this picture for philosophy — emphasizing Kant’s distinction between critical (...) and doctrinal phases of philosophical inquiry, with the first of these playing both a negative and a positive role with respect to the second. Then, I will argue that this positive role is possible, according to Kant, only insofar as philosophy follows what I call a “capacities-first” methodology – that is, one that treats basic cognitive capacities (such as reason) and their self-conscious activities as fundamental (in both a cognitive sense and in an explanatory sense) for the sort of philosophy human beings are capable of. It is this methodology, I will argue, that allows Kant to introduce the first principles that philosophy in its doctrinal phase requires in a manner that is neither arbitrary nor (at least obviously) incompatible with Kant’s own critical restrictions on cognition. I conclude by discussing some of the implications of this methodological picture – including the methodological significance of self-consciousness and regressive or “transcendental” arguments, Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic methods in philosophy, and Kant’s conception of reason as autonomous. (shrink)

The paper is a sustained analysis of some recent work on transcendental arguments with a view to assessing both its relevance to Kant's philosophy and its historical accuracy. Robert Stem's reading of Kant's philosophical aims is examined and criticized narrowly, and Barry Stroud's influential objection to transcendental arguments as a class is shown to be harmless. Kant is presented as a friend rather than a foe of scepticism, and his 'proto-verificationist' criterion of meaning is shown to underpin, rather than undermine, (...) the sceptical position. (shrink)

The aim of the Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason is to solve the problem posed by the “inhomogeneity” of intuitions and categories: the sensible properties of objects represented in intuition are of a different kind than the properties represented by categories. Kant's solution is to introduce what he calls “transcendental schemata,” which mediate the subsumption of objects under categories. I reconstruct Kant's solution in terms of two substantive premises, which I call Subsumption Sufficiency (i.e., that subsuming an (...) object under a transcendental schema is sufficient to subsume it under the corresponding category) and Real Possibility (i.e., that it is really possible to subsume objects under each of the transcendental schemata). These two principles, together with a trivial modal one (the Subsumption-Possibility Link), entail that it is possible to subsume objects under categories; in other words, the argument of the Schematism is valid. The main work of the paper consists in reconstructing Kant's arguments for, and explanations of, these premises. I argue that they hinge on Kant's claim that transcendental schemata are “time-determinations,” which I interpret to mean: rules for reflexively representing the temporal relations among our own representational states. On the basis of this reading, I reconstruct Kant's argument for Subsumption Sufficiency, category by category. I also explain why Real Possibility follows almost immediately. Granting Kant the argument up to this point in the Critique, the argument of the Schematism is sound. (shrink)

The importance of the pure concepts of the understanding (i.e. the categories) within Kant’s system of philosophy is undeniable. As I hope to make clear in this essay, however, the categories are also an essential part of Kant’s critique of Christian Wolff. In particular, I argue that Kant’s development of the categories represents a decisive break with the Wolffian conception of the understanding and that this break is central to understanding the task of the Transcendental Analytic. This break, however, is (...) not merely that Kant affirms while Wolff and his followers deny a sharp distinction between sensibility and the understanding, which is the aspect of Kant’s rejection of Wolff that scholars most frequently note. Rather, this break concerns differences in their views about the understanding itself. For while Wolff conceives of the understanding as a mental capacity to extract and make distinct content already present in the senses, Kant conceives of the understanding in its “real use” as a capacity to produce purely intellectual content. (shrink)

A historical and philosophical reassessment of the impact of Aristotle and early-modern Aristotelianism on the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant and Aristotle reassesses the prevailing understanding of Kant as an anti-Aristotelian philosopher. Taking epistemology, logic, and methodology to be the key disciplines through which Kant’s transcendental philosophy stood as an independent form of philosophy, Marco Sgarbi shows that Kant drew important elements of his logic and metaphysical doctrines from Aristotelian ideas that were absent in other philosophical traditions, such as (...) the distinction of matter and form of knowledge, the division of transcendental logic into analytic and dialectic, the theory of categories and schema, and the methodological issues of the architectonic. Drawing from unpublished documents including lectures, catalogues, academic programs, and the Aristotelian-Scholastic handbooks that were officially adopted at Königsberg University where Kant taught, Sgarbi further demonstrates the historical and philosophical importance of Aristotle and Aristotelianism to these disciplines from the late sixteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

From the second half of the last century, there has been a widespread view in the Anglophone world that Kant’s transcendental deduction (aka TD) aims to vindicate our common-sense view of the world as composed of public and objective particulars against some unqualified forms of skepticism. This widespread assumption has raised serious doubt not only about the success of TD but also about the very nature of its argument in both editions of the Critique. Yet, if there is a connection (...) between TD and global skepticism, the intriguing question is: Who is this skeptic? According to Strawson, “the skeptic” is a hypothesis of a purely sense-datum experience. In contrast, the fact that TD turns on the key notion of self-consciousness has induced several other scholars to assume that the skeptic is no none but a Cartesian external-world skeptic. None of those readings find textual support or are compatible with the very structure of the first Critique. The question is: Does this mean that TD aims only to undermine empiricism, as Guyer suggests? I do not believe so. I am pretty convinced that TD addresses a peculiar form of global skepticism, namely “Hume’s challenge to reason.” Assuming that we cognize (erkennen) and experience (erfahren) appearances as objects as a requirement of Newtonian physics, TD aims to provide a justification of the principle that nature is uniform that is superior to Hume’s justification. (shrink)

The book addresses two main areas of Kant’s theoretical philosophy: the doctrine of transcendental idealism and various central aspects of the arguments from the Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions, as well as the relation between the deduction argument and idealism. -/- Among the topics covered are the nature of objective validity, the role and function of transcendental logic in relation to general or formal logic, the possibility of contradictory thoughts, the meaning of the Leitfaden at A79 and the unity of cognition, (...) the two-steps-in-one-proof interpretation and categorial instantiation, categorial illusion, Strawson’s transcendental argument, the persistently perplexing question of the derivation of the categories, and the relation between apperception, objectivity, judgement, and idealism. -/- With regard to idealism in particular, the focus is on the metaphysical two-aspect interpretation and its problems, on the merits and demerits of the controversial phenomenalist reading of Kant’s idealism, and on the topic of subjectivism and epistemic humility. -/- In all of the aforementioned topics, the book presents wholly novel interpretations compared to the standard or mainstream interpretations. (shrink)

This compelling reevaluation of the relationship between logic and knowledge affirms the key role that the notion of judgement must play in such a review. The commentary repatriates the concept of judgement in the discussion, banished in recent times by the logical positivism of Wittgenstein, Hilbert and Schlick, and the Platonism of Bolzano. The volume commences with the insights of Swedish philosopher Per Martin-Löf, the father of constructive type theory, for whom logic is a demonstrative science in which judgement is (...) a settled feature of the landscape. His paper opens the first of four sections that examine, in turn, historical philosophical assessments of judgement and reason; their place in early modern philosophy; the notion of judgement and logical theory in Wolff, Kant and Neo-Kantians like Windelband; their development in the Husserlian phenomenological paradigm; and the work of Bolzano, Russell and Frege. The papers, whose authors include Per Martin-Löf, Göran Sundholm, Michael Della Rocca and Robin Rollinger, represent a finely judged editorial selection highlighting work on philosophers exercised by the question of whether or not an epistemic notion of judgement has a role to play in logic. The volume will be of profound interest to students and academicians for its application of historical developments in philosophy to the solution of vexatious contemporary issues in the foundation of logic. ​. (shrink)

Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, social (...) epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools: chapter learning outcomes, key terms, images of philosophers and related art, useful diagrams and tables, boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material, questions for reflection, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary. For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series (edited by Christina Hendricks). (shrink)

This book suggests that to know how Wittgenstein’s post-Tractarian philosophy could have developed from the work of Kant is to know how they relate to each other. The development from the latter to the former is invoked heuristically as a means of interpretation, rather than a historical process or direct influence of Kant on Wittgenstein. Ritter provides a detailed treatment of transcendentalism, idealism, and the concept of illusion in Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s criticism of metaphysics. Notably, it is through the conceptions (...) of transcendentalism and idealism that Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be viewed as a transformation of Kantianism. This transformation involves a deflationary conception of transcendental idealism along with the abandonment of both the idea that there can be a priori 'conditions of possibility' logically detachable from what they condition, and the appeal to an original ‘constitution’ of experience. -/- The closeness of Kant and post-Tractarian Wittgenstein does not exist between their arguments or the views they upheld, but rather in their affiliation against forms of transcendental realism and empirical idealism. Ritter skilfully challenges several dominant views on the relationship of Kant and Wittgenstein, especially concerning the cogency of Wittgenstein-inspired criticism focusing on the role of language in the first Critique, and Kant's alleged commitment to a representationalist conception of empirical intuition. (shrink)

The direct proof of transcendental idealism, in the Transcendental Aesthetic of Kant's First Critique, has borne the brunt of enormous criticism. Much of this criticism has arisen from a confusion regarding the epistemological nature of the arguments Kant proposes with the alleged ontological conclusions he draws. In this paper I attempt to deflect this species of criticism. I concentrate my analysis on the Metaphysical Expositions of Space and Time. I argue that the argument form of the Metaphysical Expositions is that (...) of disjunctive syllogism and that Kant's primary target of attack is that of Leibnizian relativism. I provide a detailed analysis and reconstruction of the arguments of the Metaphysical Expositions, defending Kant against various claims of argumentative invalidity and incoherence. I conclude by identifying what can properly be inferred regarding the ontological nature of space and time, given my reconstructions of the arguments, and by suggesting the manner in which Kant can deflect objections from the other major proponent of transcendental realism, namely, Newtonian absolutism. (shrink)

Hegel famously criticizes Kant’s resolution of the antinomies. According to Sedgwick, Hegel primarily chastises Kant’s resolution for presupposing that concepts are ‘one-sided’, rather than identical to their opposites. If Kant had accepted the dialectical nature of concepts, then (according to Sedgwick) Kant would not have needed to resolve the antinomies. However, as Ameriks has noted, any such interpretation faces a serious challenge. Namely, Kant’s first antinomy concerns the universe’s physical dimensions. Even if we grant that the concept of the finite (...) is necessarily related to that of the infinite, the physical universe cannot both have and lack a temporal beginning. I argue that Hegel neither adopts Sedgwick’s view that Kant’s antinomies require no resolution nor absurdly accepts that the physical universe both has and lacks a temporal beginning. Instead, Hegel proposes a sophisticated resolution of Kant’s first antinomy (including its physical aspect) that depends on Hegel’s theory of the Absolute. (shrink)

. Between 1833 and 1835, Victor Cousin and F.W.J. Schelling engaged in an “amical but serious critique” of each other’s philosophies. I argue that, despite perceptions to the contrary, key to this exchange is a common vision of an atypical, speculative empiricism. That is, against the grain of most commentaries, I contend that there are significant similarities between Cousin’s and Schelling’s philosophies of the early 1830s—similarities that converge on the possibility of a post-Kantian speculative empiricism, which they respectively dub metaphysical (...) psychology or a priori empiricism. (shrink)

This essay is a response to John Milbank’s comparison of Kant and Aquinas’ theories of analogy in ‘A Critique of the Theology of Right’. A critique of Milbank’s essay forms the point of departure for my reconstruction of Kant’s actual theory of analogy. I show that the usual focus on the Prolegomena for this end is insufficient; in fact, the full extent of Kant’s theory of analogy only becomes clear in the Critique of Judgment. I also consider the significance of (...) the Analogies of Experience in the Critique of Pure Reason. In conclusion, I draw on the work of Michel Guérin to designate Kantian analogy, ‘post-established harmony’. (shrink)

In 1792 and 1798 Kant noticed two basic problems with hisMetaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MAdN) which opened a crucial gap in the Critical system as a whole. Why is theMAdN so important? I show that the Analogies of Experience form an integrated proof of transeunt causality. This is central to Kant's answer to Hume. This proof requires explicating the empirical concept of matter as the moveable in space, it requires the specifically metaphysical principle that every physical event has an (...) external cause, and it requires a metaphysical principle regarding the individuation of spatio-temporal things. These three doctrines are not defended in the firstCritique, but only in theMAdN. Kant's transcendental analysis of the conditions of experience thus requires the special metaphysics of theMAdN. This marks an important shift in Kant's view of the metaphysical basis of the transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Argues inter alia that Kant and Hegel identified necessary conditions for the possibility of singular cognitive reference that incorporate avant la lettre Evans’ (1975) analysis of identity and predication, that Kant’s and Hegel’s semantics of singular cognitive reference are crucial to McDowell’s account of singular thoughts, and that McDowell has neglected (to the detriment of his own view) these conditions and their central roles in Kant’s and in Hegel’s theories of knowledge. > Reprinted in: J. Lindgaard, ed., John McDowell: Experience, (...) Norm and Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008d), 124–151. (shrink)

I show how Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretation of classical mechanics. I argue that Hamilton’s metaphysics of causation was injected into his dynamics by way of a causal interpretation of force. I then detail how forces are indispensable to both Hamilton’s formulation of classical mechanics and what we now call Hamiltonian mechanics (i.e., the modern formulation). On this point, my efforts primarily consist of showing that the contemporary orthodox interpretation of potential energy is (...) the interpretation found in Hamilton’s work. Hamilton called the potential energy function the “force-function” because he believed that it represents forces at work in the world. Various non-historical arguments for this orthodox interpretation of potential energy are provided, and matters are concluded by showing that in classical Hamiltonian mechanics, facts about the potential energies of systems are grounded in facts about forces. Thus, if one can tolerate the view that forces are causes of motion, then Hamilton provides one with a road map for transporting causation into one of the most mathematically sophisticated formulations of classical mechanics, viz., Hamiltonian mechanics. (shrink)

Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we (...) first (I) investigate Kant’s explicit characterizations of the nature of cognition. As it turns out, he introduces several different notions that must be carefully distinguished before identifying the one that is central to his project in the first Critique. We then (II) consider the basic features of Kant’s conception of knowledge, indicating both how it involves assent and objective justification and how it relates to our contemporary conception. Next (III), we compare and contrast Kant’s understanding of cognition and his conception of knowledge in a way that allows us to present their fundamental differences and connections. We argue that while cognition, in the most relevant sense, is a species of representation that differs from other representations in that it involves the conceptual determination of a sensibly given object, knowledge (for Kant) is a kind of assent to a judgment that requires consciousness of a sufficient epistemic ground. Finally (IV), by appreciating the differences between cognition and knowledge, we explain several of the implications this conception of cognition has for some of Kant’s main claims in the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole. Among other things, we show how Kant can deny cognition of specific things in themselves while allowing philosophical knowledge about things in themselves in general (e.g. that they exist, are not in space and time, etc.). (shrink)

It has long been disputed whether Kant's transcendental idealism requires two worlds ? one of appearances and one of things in themselves ? or only one. The one-world view must be wrong if it claims that individual spatio-temporal things can be identified with particular things in themselves, and if it fails to take seriously the doctrine of double affection; versions that insist on one world, without making claims about the identity of individual things, cannot say in what way the world (...) as we know it and the world of things in themselves can be ?the same?. The two-world view must be wrong if it denies Kant's empirical realism, or offers a phenomenalist interpretation of it. On moral grounds Kant ?identifies? each human person with a particular thing in itself, but the relationship here cannot be strict identity; instead its closeness may warrant regarding the two distinct entities as part of a composite whole. Perhaps up to the first edition of the Critique, Kant thought that empirical knowledge required a particular kind of close correspondence between appearances and things in themselves, one that would make it appropriate to speak of composite wholes here also. By the time of the second edition, he saw that there could be no good grounds for thinking that. In this respect something a bit like the one-world theory might make more sense for the first edition than for the second; but in both cases there is room to speak of two worlds as well. Talk of the number of worlds is metaphorical, and both metaphors have their dangers. (shrink)

This article presents a critical analysis of two influential readings of Kant’s Second Analogy, namely, Gerd Buchdahl’s “modest reading” and Michael Friedman’s “strong reading.” After pointing out the textual and philosophical problems with each, I advance an alternative reading of the Second Analogy argument. On my reading, the Second Analogy argument proves the existence of necessary and strictly universal causal laws. This, however, does not guarantee that Kant has a solution for the problem of induction. After I explain why the (...) empirical lawfulness of nature does not guarantee the empirical uniformity of nature, I examine the modal status of empirical laws in Kant and argue contra Buchdahl and Friedman that empirical laws express two different kinds of necessity that are not reducible to each other. -/- . (shrink)

I argue for a new delimitation of what Kant means by ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’, on the basis of the intermediate, transitional place that Kant gives to cognition in the ‘progression [Stufenleiter]’ of our representations and our consciousness of them. I show how cognition differs from mental acts lying earlier on this progression—such as sensing, intuiting, and perceiving—and also how cognition differs from acts lying later on this progression—such as explaining, having insight, and comprehending. I also argue that cognition should not be (...) confused with ‘knowledge [Wissen]’, insofar as knowledge represents the culmination of a separate orthogonal progression of acts of ‘holding-true’. Along the way, I show how having in focus the specific progression from representation, to consciousness, to cognition allows us to better appreciate the architectonic significance of the progression of Kant’s analysis in the first Critique, and also helps to illuminate the unity of Kant’s account of cognition itself across its variety of forms. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason makes important claims about space, time and mathematics in both the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Axioms of Intuition, claims that appear to overlap in some ways and contradict in others. Various interpretations have been offered to resolve these tensions; I argue for an interpretation that accords the Axioms of Intuition a more important role in explaining mathematical cognition than it is usually given. Appreciation for this larger role reveals that magnitudes are central to Kant's philosophy (...) of mathematics and to the part that intuition plays in it. (shrink)

We argue that Kant’s views about consciousness, the mind-body problem, and the status of psychology as a science all differ drastically from the way in which these topics are conjoined in present debates about the prominent idea of a science of consciousness. Kant did never use the concept of consciousness in the now dominant sense of phenomenal qualia; his discussions of the mind-body problem center not on the reducibility of mental properties but of substances; and his views about the possibility (...) of psychology as a science did not employ the requirement of a mechanistic explanation, but of quantification of phenomena. This shows strikingly how deeply philosophical problems and conceptions can change even if they look similar on the surface. (shrink)

According to the ‘One Object’ reading of Kant's transcendental idealism, the distinction between the appearance and the thing in itself is not a distinction between two objects, but between two ways of considering one and the same object. On the ‘Metaphysical’ version of the One Object reading, it is a distinction between two kinds of properties possessed by one and the same object. Consequently, the Metaphysical One Object view holds that a given appearance, an empirical object, is numerically identical to (...) the thing in itself that appears as that object. I raise various indiscernibility arguments against that view; because an appearance has different spatiotemporal and modal properties than a thing in itself, no appearance can be identical to a thing in itself. I point out that these arguments are similar to arguments against Monism, the view that material objects are numerically identical to the matter of which they are made. I outline some strategies Monists have developed to respond to these indiscernibility arguments and then develop parallel responses on behalf of the Metaphysical One Object view. However, I then raise another indiscernibility argument, to which, I argue, the Metaphysical One Object view cannot respond, even using the resources I have developed thus far. I develop a modified version of the Metaphysical One Object view that can respond to this new indiscernibility argument, but, I argue, this modified version of the One Object view is only a terminological variant of the Two Object view. When the Metaphysical One Object view is fully thought through it becomes the Two Object view. I conclude that Kantian appearances are not numerically identical to the things in themselves that appear to us. (shrink)

I advance a novel interpretation of Kant's argument that our original representation of space must be intuitive, according to which the intuitive status of spatial representation is secured by its infinitary structure. I defend a conception of intuitive representation as what must be given to the mind in order to be thought at all. Discursive representation, as modelled on the specific division of a highest genus into species, cannot account for infinite complexity. Because we represent space as infinitely complex, the (...) spatial manifold cannot be generated discursively and must therefore be given to the mind, i.e. represented in intuition. (shrink)

Kant is known for having said relatively little about truth in Critique of Pure Reason. Nevertheless, there are important lessons to be learned from this work about truth, lessons that apply to the contemporary debate on the nature and structure of truth and its theory. In this paper I suggest two such lessons. The first lesson concerns the structure of a substantive theory of truth as contrasted with a deflationist theory; the second concerns the structure of a correspondence theory of (...) truth. The first lesson warns us against conceiving of a substantive theory of truth in a way that led Kant to conclude that such a theory is unviable. In so doing it indirectly suggests what a viable substantive theory of truth would be like. The second lesson teaches us that a correspondence theory of truth need not be as naive and overly simplistic as it is usually thought to be, but can, and should be, far more complex. This lesson is based on a correspondence theory of truth incipient in the Critique, one whose structure reflects the complexity of the relation between mind and world in Kant’s theory. (shrink)

In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant offers an argument for transcendental idealism. This argument is one focus of the longstanding controversy between "one-world" and "two-world" interpretations of the distinction between things in themselves and things as they appear. I present an interpretation of the argument of the "Aesthetic" that supports a novel "one-world" interpretation. On this interpretation, Kant is concerned with the mind-dependence of spatial and temporal properties; and with the idea that space and time (...) can be identified with mental objects. I end by arguing that, for Kant, even on a "one-world" interpretation, we do not know the nature or even the existence of mind-independent things. (shrink)

The article defends Heidegger’s view that the main question of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is the question of being. It is also argued that Heidegger special understanding of the level and method of KrV deserves serious attention. Finally it is argued that Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of the KrV is best seen as representative of an hermeneutical conception of phenomenology.

In the first experiment, I exhibit unreliable judgment about the primeness or divisibility of four-digit numbers, in contrast to a seeming Excel program. In the second experiment, I exhibit an imperfect memory for arbitrary-seeming three-digit number and letter combinations, in contrast to my seeming collaborator with seemingly hidden notes. In the third experiment, I seem to suffer repeated defeats at chess. In all three experiments, the most straightforward interpretation of the experiential evidence is that something exists in the universe that (...) is superior in the relevant respects – theoretical reasoning (about primes), memorial retention (for digits and letters), or practical reasoning (at chess) – to my own solipsistically-conceived self. (shrink)

Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow ‘absolute’. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain-damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give (...) us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible. (shrink)

Perhaps one of the most pivotal ideas of Kant which connects all of the periods of his continuous intellectual work is the idea of the nature as the whole. According to Kant the nature as the whole is equivalent to totality and universality. This is the rule of the fundamental idea: the particulars finally must be under the general in order to be explicable. But it is interesting to note that this general rule which remains unchanged in Kant’s three periods (...) of intellectual work has a special meaning in each period. So we seek to answer the question of how Kant begins with the nature as the objective and then reaches the nature as the ideal of the pure reason and consider it as the necessary totality for the power of judgment and from there reaches the nature as something that has legal requirements. But such a transformation into the legal and historical nature is possible only if we pay attention to the power of reflective judgments which are contained of aesthetic and teleological judgments. Because it is the power of reflective judgment that provides Kant with the necessary tools to view the nature as a totality whose purpose is the realization of rights. In this sense the nature is something that offers hope to the human race.. (shrink)

The paper aims to cast light on the kind of proof involved in central transcendental arguments. It is suggested that some of the difficulty associated with such arguments may result from the tendency to construe them simply as articulating relations between concepts or propositional contents. A different construal, connected with phenomenological description, is outlined, as a way of bringing out the force of these arguments. It is suggested that it can be fruitful to think in terms of this construal in (...) understanding some of Kant's transcendental proofs. The recommended construal also helps to understand the nature of the link between transcendental arguments and transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Critical Notice of Kant's Transcendental Deduction, by Henry Allison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. Xv + 477.