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)

In his response to the question about the conditions of the possibility of dependable cognition Kant first points to the faculties of the cognitive powers and subsequently lists the criteria and normative foundations of knowledge—a system of forms, concepts and principles. Kant primarily seeks the possibilities of experience-independent cognition, the logical criteria governing the possibility of cognition as such. The paper outlines the creation of the systemic union of the primal concepts and principles of pure reason, which is necessary for (...) the creation of knowledge. In other words, it follows the constitution phases of the cognition system: apperception, experience, self-consciousness and the principles of reason. The principles of reason ultimately give systemic unity to humancognitive powers—and, in effect, the human world of experience and cognition. It is this systemic unity which makes cognition science—or, in other words, pure reason—as it constitutes a specific system and is able to create science understood as the systemic unity of specific fields. (shrink)

This article argues that many (often Anglophone) interpreters of the Deduction have mistakenly identified Kant's aim as vindicating ordinary knowledge of objects and as refuting Hume's (alleged) skepticism about such knowledge. Instead, the article contends that Kant's aims were primarily negative. His primary mission (in the Deduction) was not to justify application of the categories to experience, but to show that any use beyond the domain of experience could not be justified. To do this, he needed to show that their (...) proper use in attaining metaphysical knowledge was restricted to (actual and possible) experience. The central theoretical claims of previous metaphysics were thus rendered void. Kant was not out to save ordinary knowledge from the skeptic, at least not originally, since he did not think such knowledge was in danger. Rather, he wanted to sustain the skeptical claim that we cannot justify metaphysical claims about things in themselves, hence that we cannot gain metaphysical knowledge about the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the beginning of time, and the least parts of matter. He wanted to achieve this result in a more theoretically satisfying manner than had skeptical authors. Doing so would also allow him to curb certain forms of skeptical empiricism, by showing that we cannot disprove, or rule out as unintelligible, human freedom, an afterlife, or divine providence. The article ends by considering the retrospective rereadings of the Deduction by Hermann Cohen and P. F. Strawson, concluding that these rereadings force Kant's text into an alien mold, thereby diminishing its philosophical value as a work with its own distinctive aims and methods. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, Kant famously claims that even if ideas and principles of reason cannot count as cognitions of objects, they can play a positive role when they are used “regulatively” with the aim of organizing our empirical cognitions. One issue is to understand what assuming “regulatively” means. What kind of attitude does this “assuming” imply? Another issue is to characterize the status of ideas and principles themselves. It is to this second issue that this (...) article is dedicated. Some interpreters have suggested that ideas and principles that can be assumed regulatively consist of propositions that we know are false. Others have suggested that at least some regulative ideas, as for example the idea of the homogeneity of nature, consist of propositions that we know are true but are indeterminate. Still others argue that, in assuming regulative ideas and principles, we assume propositions that cannot be proved true, but are nonetheless possibly true. In this article, I reject the view that regulative ideas consist of true but indeterminate propositions. Moreover, I argue that it is wrong to presuppose that only one of the remaining two options can apply to Kant’s account of regulative ideas and principles. By contrast, I submit that while in some cases assuming regulative ideas and principles does involve assuming some propositions that we know are false, this is not true for all regulative ideas and principles. More specifically, assuming regulative ideas involves assuming false propositions when assuming them means assuming that a “totality of appearances” is given. (shrink)

Most work in Kant’s epistemology focuses on what happens “upstream” from experience, prior to the formation of conscious propositional attitudes. By contrast, this essay focuses on what happens "downstream": the formation of assent (Fuerwahrhalten) in its various modes. The mode of assent that Kant calls "Belief" (Glaube) is the main topic: not only moral Belief but also "pragmatic" and "doctrinal" Belief as well. I argue that Kant’s discussion shows that we should reject standard accounts of the extent to which theoretical (...) reason can provide justified assent about things-in-themselves, in favor of one that is much more liberal. Interpretive benefits are not the only results of the discussion, however. I also hope it will become clear along the way that there is such a thing as Kantian Belief, and that we often have quite a lot of it. -/- . (shrink)

In this essay I hope to demonstrate that Goethe's delicate empiricism is a science of life in all of its forms. To gain a full understanding of life, Goethe's method requires that the scientist respect and treasure life. I argue that to accomplish this goal one must become an apprentice to life. Becoming an apprentice to life requires that one refuses to eat the Other. This implies that Goethe's method can be fruitfully employed by anyone who seeks social justice. First, (...) I elaborate on bell hooks idea of eating the Other using several African American social critics. Then, I explain Goethe's delicate empiricism by contrasting it to the science of his day which was grounded in Bacon and Descartes and elaborated by Kant. Finally, by expanding upon Elizabeth Spelman's discussion of apprenticeship, I develop the idea of a Goethean apprentice who is a practitioner of a science of life based on a morality which opposes eating the Other. (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)

This paper discusses Immanuel Kant’s views on the role of experiments in natural science, focusing on their relationship with hypotheses, laws of nature, and the heuristic principles of scientific enquiry. Kant’s views are contrasted with the philosophy of experiment that was first sketched by Francis Bacon and later developed by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. Kant holds that experiments are always designed and carried out in the light of hypotheses. Hypotheses are derived from experience on the basis of a set (...) of heuristic principles. The function of experiments is testing hypotheses in order to either reject them as false, or else to transform them into empirical laws of nature. To this end, we must integrate the hypotheses that are confirmed by experiments with the a priori principles which are the foundations of natural science. Compared with Bacon, Boyle, and Hooke, Kant has elaborate views on the one hand, on how our theoretical and pre-theoretical assumptions bear on experimental practice, and on the other hand, on how the results of experimental activity can be integrated with theories to advance our knowledge of nature. However, Kant overstates the dependence of experiments on theories. (shrink)

My topic is Kant’s theory of historical progress. My approach is primarily textual and contextual. I analyse in some detail Kant’s three most important essays on the topic: ‘Idea for a Universal History’, the third part of ‘Theory and Practice’ and the second part of The Conflict of the Faculties. I devote particular attention to the Kant-Herder debate about progress, but also discuss Rousseau, Mendelssohn, Hegel and others. In presenting, on Kant’s behalf, a strong case for his theory of progress, (...) I address the main objections which have been put to it. These are: (i) historical teleology is incoherent (history can’t have a goal because there is no intentional actor functioning at the historical level); (ii) historical teleology undermines morality (if things are getting better anyway, why do I have to try to make them better?); (iii) progress involves ‘chronological unfairness’ (if things are getting better, doesn’t this mean that earlier generations get a raw deal?); (iv) progress consigns the species to ‘spurious infinity’ (isn’t endless improvement endlessly unsatisfactory?); (v) progress amounts to pernicious homogenization (doesn’t the elimination of traditional practices and values impoverish our world?); (vi) the idea of progress is just ‘secularized’ religion (and should be rejected accordingly). In relation to (vi), I consider the Löwith-Blumenberg debate, and draw some general conclusions about the issue of ‘secularization’. In relating these to Kant, I argue for the following position: (a) his theory of progress is more than merely secularized religion; (b) to the extent that it can be described in terms of the secularization thesis, this reflects his ‘critical’ endeavour to rationalize Christianity; (c) in any case, the idea of progress by no means exhausts the rational potential of religion, and so should not be seen as intended to replace the latter. (shrink)