In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant asserts that laws of nature “carry with them an expression of necessity”. There is, however, widespread interpretive disagreement regarding the nature and source of the necessity of empirical laws of natural sciences in Kant's system. It is especially unclear how chemistry—a science without a clear, straightforward connection to the a priori principles of the understanding—could contain such genuine, empirical laws. Existing accounts of the necessity of causal laws unfortunately fail to illuminate the possibility (...) of non-physical laws. In this paper, I develop an alternative, ‘ideational’ account of natural laws, according to which ideas of reason necessitate the laws of some non-physical sciences. Chemical laws, for instance, are grounded on ideas of the elements, and the chemist aims to reduce her phenomena to these elements via experimentation. Although such ideas are beyond the possibility of experience, their postulation is necessary for the achievement of reason's theoretical ends: the unification and explanation of the cognitions of science. (shrink)

A well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal, or both. I argue that according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have (...) are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves. (shrink)

Im ersten Teil des Anhangs zur Transzendentalen Dialektik entwickelt Kant einen Übergang zwischen dem logischen Gebrauch der Vernunft und den transzendentalen Prinzipien der Vernunft. Basierend auf methodologischen Überlegungen zur Chemie, zur physiologischen Anthropologie und zur Entwicklungsgeschichte astronomischer Grundannahmen versucht Kant, diese Prinzipien in ihrem transzendentalen Status zu rechtfertigen und ihre Kompatibilität mit anderen Teilen der Kritik der reinen Vernunft nachzuweisen. Ausgehend von diesen wissenschaftstheoretischen Beispielen wird für eine heuristisch- pragmatische Rechtfertigung der transzendentalen Prinzipien der Vernunft und eine ideelle Funktion der (...) durch diese Prinzipien gewonnenen Ideen argumentiert. Dabei lässt sich die enge Verbindung zwischen den transzendentalen Prinzipien des ersten Teils des Anhangs zur Transzendentalen Dialektik und Kants Konzept der rationalen Naturwissenschaft in den Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Naturwissenschaft nachweisen. (shrink)