In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant presents an argument for the centrality of <motion> to our concept <matter>. This argument has long been considered either irredeemably obscure or otherwise defective. In this paper I provide an interpretation which defends the argument’s validity and clarifies the sense in which it aims to show that <motion> is fundamental to our conception of matter.

Mental representations—like many other things—seem to have parts. However, it isn’t clear how to properly understand the idea of a part of a representation. In this paper I shed new light on how representations can have a mereology. In particular, it has been recognized that there is a mereological element to Kant’s distinction between two kinds of representations: intuitions and concepts. A concept depends upon its parts, whereas an intuition is prior to its parts. The paper thus focuses on an (...) exploration of how to make sense of the parts and wholes of intuitions and concepts. (shrink)

One striking contrast that Kant draws between the kind of cognitive capacities that humans have and alternative kinds of intellect concerns modal concepts. Whilst , the very distinction between possibility and actuality would not arise for an intuitive understanding. The aim of this paper is to explore in more detail how the functioning of these cognitive capacities relates to modal concepts, and to provide a model of the intuitive understanding, in order to draw some general lessons for our ability to (...) make modal judgements, and the function of such judgements. (shrink)

One of Kant’s categories—a priori concepts the possession and applicability of which are necessary conditions of possible experience—is a concept of necessity. But it is unclear why the concept of necessity, as Kant defines it, should be a category thus understood. My aim is to offer a reading of Kant that fills this lacuna: the category of necessity is required to make necessity as it features in the world of experience understandable: a concept that the understanding can grasp and employ (...) in cognition of objects. Kant’s view has potential wider significance for accounts of the function of necessity judgments. (shrink)

Kant's conception of autonomy presents the following problem. If, following Kant's explicit lead, we consider autonomy as the universal principle of morality and ground of the actions of rational beings (e.g. G 4:452), then self-legislation is best understood as a prescription by reason to itself. Applied to individual cases of willing, the term 'autonomy' describes the bringing of a set of practical attitudes under rational legislation. Agents may count as autonomous then, insofar as and only to the extent that they (...) are able to implement reason's prescription. This is the bare Kantian picture. The problem, as Schiller originally put it, is that this is also a picture of self-alienation, since parts of one's identity, feelings, emotions, and attachments, are kept at arm's length and treated with suspicion (e.g. AW XXb: 280). Schiller's point is that there must be something that makes autonomy different from mere rationomy. For Schiller this matters because he thinks that a rationalist prescriptive ethic is deeply unattractive and because, anticipating contemporary theories of personal autonomy, he wants to defend an integrative conception of autonomous agency. No such further commitments are needed, however, to see that the bare picture needs adding to it, to show how the principle of reason's self-legislation not only has a grip on individual agents, but also can express their autonomy. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, following his elucidation of the ‘postulates’ of possibility, actuality, and necessity, Kant makes a series of puzzling remarks. He seems to deny the somewhat metaphysically intuitive contention that the extension of possibility is greater than that of actuality, which, in turn, is greater than that of necessity. Further, he states that the actual adds nothing to the possible. This leads to the view, fairly common in the literature, that Kant holds that all modal categories, (...) in their empirical applications, are coextensive. I diverge from the common view. First, Kant is not committed to the coextensiveness thesis, understood as above. Instead, he espouses a weaker, epistemological version of the coextensiveness thesis, namely that what we can assert to be really possible is coextensive with what we cognize to be actual. Second, Kant's remarks are not intended to introduce a positive ontological thesis about the extensions of modal categories. Rather, he means to criticize a certain conception of modalities that was prevalent among his rationalist predecessors, i.e., the conception of modalities as various determinations that enter the intensions of concepts of things. (shrink)