In der Erfahrung sind zwei Stufen zu unterscheiden: Die primäre Welt besteht aus den noch nicht dinglich gedeuteten Sinnesempfindungen in ihrer einfachsten Ordnung nach Zeit-, Raum-und Qualitätsunterschieden. Alle Ordnung und Verarbeitung der Erfahrung von solcher Art, daß sie auch weggelassen werden kann, rechnet zur zweiten Stufe. Ihr Inhalt ist die sekundäre Welt; Beispiele: die gewöhnliche Welt des täglichen Lebens und die physikalische Welt.Der Begriff der Dimensionszahl (DZ) wird festgelegt. Während die sekundäre (die gewöhnliche und die physikalische) Welt die DZ (3+1) (...) hat (d. h. 3 Raum- und 1 Zeitdimension), ergibt die Untersuchung für die primäre Welt (den Bereich der ungedeuteten Sinnesempfindungen) nur die DZ (2+1). Die Konstruktion der sekundären Welt schließt also eine Erhöhung der DZ um 1 ein.Nach einer Bestimmung des Begriffs der determinierenden und der beschränkenden Gesetze zeigt sich: In der sekundären (physikalischen) Welt gelten determinierende Gesetze bestimmter Art (ersten Grades). In der primären Welt bestehen weder determinierende noch auch bloß beschränkende Gesetze. Der Aufbau der sekundären Welt führt also die Determiniertheit neu ein.Die beiden in die sekundäre Welt eingebauten Fiktionen: Dreidimensionalität des Raumes (gleichbedeutend mit Vierdimensionalität des Weltgeschehens) und Determiniertheit oder physikalische Kausalität stehen in logischem Abhängigkeits-verhältnis zueinander. Die erste ist durch die zweite bedingt. (shrink)

Das Ziel: Konstitutionssystem der Begriffe Das Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchungen ist die Aufstellung eines erkenntnismäßig-logischen Systems der ...

This volume is the first ever English translation of Kant's last major work, the so-called Opus Postumum, a work Kant himself described as his 'chef d'oeuvre' and as the keystone of his entire philosophical system. It occupied him for more than the last decade of his life. Begun with the intention of providing a 'transition from the metaphysical foundations of natural science to physics,' Kant's reflections take him far beyond the problem he initially set out to solve. In fact, he (...) reassesses a whole series of fundamental topics of transcendental philosophy: the thing in itself, the nature of space and time, the concept of the self and its agency, the idea of God, and the unity of theoretical and practical reason. Though never completed, the text reaches a logical albeit not fully developed, conclusion. (shrink)

A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)

Review of T. S. Kuhn's The Essential Tension.

THE DANISH chemist and physicist Hans Christian Oersted (1777-I 851) is recognized by historians of science primarily as the discoverer of electromagnetism. His experiments in 1820 demonstrated a definite lawlike relationship between electrical and magnetic phenomena. The quite general question of whether there is in science such a thing as a “logic of discovery” can in this case be given a more precise formulation. Why was Oersted, rather than another of the many scientists interested in electricity and magnetism in the (...) nineteenth century, the fortunate one to have made the discovery, and thus to have his name immortalized in the history of science? What events, ideas, or methods were responsible for the discovery? (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: The Problem of Dynamics in the Enlightenment Kant's Starting Point: The Ontology of Force Relativistic Dynamics: The Force–Space Bond The True Estimation of Force: The Marriage of Momentum and Energy Conclusion – Kant's Unlikely Dialectical Inspiration.

The divide between the analytic and the continental philosophical traditions has been a major preoccupation of philosophers and historians of philosophy in the past few decades. Many attempts have been made to bridge the gap between the two traditions. Appel, Rorty, Cavell, and others, for example, have drawn to our attention profound affinities between Wittgenstein and Heidegger. But until now, it has nonetheless seemed that the divide remained firmly entrenched with respect to the thought of Heidegger and Carnap, between whom (...) there still appears to be deep alienation. Heidegger and Carnap themselves encouraged this view. Carnap’s notorious attack on Heidegger left no possibility of dialogue between the two, and for Heidegger, the conflict with Carnap continued to be momentous even in the sixties. He described the conflict between himself and Carnap as embodying the “most extreme counterpositions” of the time. (shrink)

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...) we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. (shrink)

This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

Normative naturalism is a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a meta-epistemology. It maintains that epistemology can both discharge its traditional normative role and nonetheless claim a sensitivity to empirical evidence. The first sections of this essay set out the central tenets of normative naturalism, both in its epistemic and its axiological dimensions; later sections respond to criticisms of that species of naturalism from Gerald Doppelt, Jarrett Leplin and Alex Rosenberg.

This article reviews the transition between post-Fregean anti-naturalistic epistemology and contemporary naturalistic epistemologies. It traces the revival of naturalism to Quine’s critique of the "a priori", and Kuhn’s defense of historicism, and use the arguments of Quine and Kuhn to identify a position, "traditional naturalism", that combines naturalistic themes with the claim that epistemology is a normative enterprise. Pleas for more radical versions of naturalism are articulated, and briefly confronted.

Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of Kant and Helmholtz, who adopted opposing stances on whether central questions about spatial perception were fully amenable to natural-scientific treatment. At stake were the proper understanding of the relationships among sensation, perception, and experience, and the proper methodological framework for investigating the mental activities of judgment, understanding, and reason issues which remain at the core of philosophical psychology (...) and cognitive science. (shrink)

This is a very important book. It has already become required reading for researchers on the relation between the exact sciences and Kant’s philosophy. The main theme is that Kant’s continuing program to find a metaphysics that could provide a foundation for the science of his day is of crucial importance to understanding the development of his philosophical thought from its earliest precritical beginnings in the thesis of 1747, right through the highwater years of the critical philosophy, to his last (...) unpublished writings in the Opus postumum. In the course of articulating this theme, Friedman has made extensive use of detailed historical information about their scientific and mathematical background to illuminate Kant’s texts. Over and over again, such information is used to suggest interesting and quite subtle interpretations for texts that may have seemed puzzling or just wrong-headed. (shrink)

There is hardly another principle in physics with wider scope of applicability and more far-reaching consequences than Pauli's exclusion principle. This book explores the principle's origin in the atomic spectroscopy of the early 1920s, its subsequent embedding into quantum mechanics, and later experimental validation with the development of quantum chromodynamics. The reconstruction of this crucial historic episode provides an excellent foil to reconsider Kuhn's view on incommensurability. The author defends the prospective rationality of the revolutionary transition from the old to (...) the new quantum theory around 1925 by focusing on the way Pauli's principle emerged as a phenomenological rule 'deduced' from some anomalous phenomena and theoretical assumptions of the old quantum theory. The subsequent process of validation is historically reconstructed and analysed within the framework of 'dynamic Kantianism'. (shrink)

What good is Kant's philosophy for current philosophy of science? There has been an increasing interest in Kant and philosophy of science in the past twenty years. Through the reconstruction of a variety of Kantian legacies in the development of nineteenth and twentieth century physics and mathematics, this edited volume explores the relevance that Kant's philosophy still has for current debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of physics.

In this insightful study of the common origins of analytic and continental philosophy, Friedman looks at how social and political events intertwined and influenced philosophy during the early twentieth century, ultimately giving rise to the two very different schools of thought. He shows how these two approaches, now practiced largely in isolation from one another, were once opposing tendencies within a common discussion. Already polarized by their philosophical disagreements, these approaches were further split apart by the rise of Naziism and (...) the resulting emigration of all influential German-speaking philosophers except for Heidegger. Although the book gives a general overview of the philosophical issues of the period, the author pays special attention to the relationships among three key twentieth-century philosophers: Rudolf Carnap, Ernst Cassirer, and Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Kants Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft von 1786 stehen ihrem Anspruch nach zwischen einer transzendentalen Kritik der Vernunft - Kant bereitete zur selben Zeit die in wesentlichen Stücken umgearbeitete zweite Auflage der KrV vor - und der Physik als empirischer Wissenschaft. Die Notwendigkeit einer Reflexion über die Naturwissenschaft verhilft dieser Schrift heute wieder zu systematischer Relevanz, nachdem sie lange Zeit nur aus dem Blickwinkel ihrer Bedeutsamkeit für die empirische Naturwissenschaft betrachtet und infolgedessen allenfalls aus wissenschaftshistorischem Interesse rezipiert wurde.

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In this new book, Michael Friedman argues that Kant's continuing efforts to find a metaphysics that could provide a foundation for the sciences is of the utmost ...

In dieser Schrift begründet Schelling 1800 in methodischer Strenge das Programm seiner Philosophie, d. h. die Notwendigkeit der Zusammenführung von Natur- und Transzendentalphilosophie.

Ernst Cassirers 1932 erschienene Darstellung der »Philosophie der Aufklärung« zählt zu den herausragenden Standardwerken zur Bestimmung der Leitgedanken der Epoche. »Die eigentliche ›Philosophie‹ der Aufklärung ist und bleibt«, so Cassirer, »etwas anderes als der Inbegriff dessen, was ihre führenden Denker [...] gedacht und gelehrt haben«. Entsprechend sah er das auszeichnende Merkmal seiner historischen Rekonstruktion der Epoche darin, »daß sie nicht die Geschichte der einzelnen Denker und ihrer Lehren, sondern eine reine Geschichte der Ideen der Aufklärungszeit zu geben suchte, und daß (...) sie diese Ideen selbst nicht nur in ihrer abstrakt-theoretischen Fassung darlegen, sondern in ihrer unmittelbaren Wirksamkeit aufzeigen und sichtbar machen wollte«. (shrink)