Critical realism is a frequently mentioned, but not very well-known, late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century philosophical tradition. Having its roots in Kantian epistemology, critical realism is best characterized as a revisionist approach toward the original Kantian doctrine. Its most outstanding thesis is the idea that Kantian things-in-themselves are knowable. This idea was—at least implicitly—suggested by thinkers such as Alois Riehl, Wilhelm Wundt, and Oswald Külpe. Interestingly enough, the philosophical position of the early Moritz Schlick stands in the critical (...) realist tradition as well. As will be outlined in the course of this paper, both Schlick’s magnum opus General Theory of Knowledge (1918) and his seminal Space and Time in Contemporary Physics (1917) are based on the assumption that the objects of science are relations and that relations have the status of Kantian things-in-themselves. By way of conclusion, I shall point out that this— more or less directly—leads to the current debate over ‘structural’ realism. (shrink)

This essay attempts a re-reading of the meaning and import of “synthetic propositions a priori” in the light of two other background concepts in Kantian epistemology: Erklärung and Begründung. The significance of this pair of concepts lies in the fact that they represent the “philosophical motive” of Kant---leading him, inevitably, to take the “transcendental turn”. (And, on this point, I believe that some commentators have reversed the dialectic of Kant’s thinking: they make him take the “transcendental turn” first, (...) and then envision the Erklärung and the Begründung.) And the distinction between the “sensible world” and the “intelligible world” was the consequence. Did this distinction also provide the ontological matrix for the epistemological distinction between “analytic propositions” and “synthetic propositions”? I take that to be evident. What is less evident is that Kant was more interested in the relation between the two worlds than in these worlds in isolation. He was concerned with demonstrating the possibility (i.e., the “transcendental possibility” and not merely the “logical possibility”) of the sensible in the light of the intelligible. This he sought to do by elucidating (with the help of “transcendental arguments”) the a priori conditions of possible experience. This was the hidden dialectic of the transformation of the image of mind, from the Lockean “mirror” to the Kantian “prism”. The synthetic propositions a priori (I argue) articulate the relation of the a priori conditions of experience to the possible objects of experience. (That is why Kant takes the metaquestion, “How are synthetic propositions a priori possible?”, to be the main problem of the Kritik der reinen Vemunft.) The significance of the work of Kant for what we moderns call the “philosophy of science” is noted in the conclusion. (shrink)

This essay attempts a re-reading of the meaning and import of “synthetic propositions a priori” in the light of two other background concepts in Kantian epistemology: Erklärung and Begründung. The significance of this pair of concepts lies in the fact that they represent the “philosophical motive” of Kant---leading him, inevitably, to take the “transcendental turn”. (And, on this point, I believe that some commentators have reversed the dialectic of Kant’s thinking: they make him take the “transcendental turn” first, (...) and then envision the Erklärung and the Begründung.) And the distinction between the “sensible world” and the “intelligible world” was the consequence. Did this distinction also provide the ontological matrix for the epistemological distinction between “analytic propositions” and “synthetic propositions”? I take that to be evident. What is less evident is that Kant was more interested in the relation between the two worlds than in these worlds in isolation. He was concerned with demonstrating the possibility (i.e., the “transcendental possibility” and not merely the “logical possibility”) of the sensible in the light of the intelligible. This he sought to do by elucidating (with the help of “transcendental arguments”) the a priori conditions of possible experience. This was the hidden dialectic of the transformation of the image of mind, from the Lockean “mirror” to the Kantian “prism”. The synthetic propositions a priori (I argue) articulate the relation of the a priori conditions of experience to the possible objects of experience. (That is why Kant takes the metaquestion, “How are synthetic propositions a priori possible?”, to be the main problem of the Kritik der reinen Vemunft.) The significance of the work of Kant for what we moderns call the “philosophy of science” is noted in the conclusion. (shrink)

This book provides an approach to Emerson that walks the line between traditional and revisionist interpretations of his life and works. The author presents Emerson as a man of faith whose unique synthesis of Kantian and Vedantic philosophies resulted in a view of faith that was one hundred years ahead of its time.

In this paper I make use of Heidegger’s late essay, “Kant’s Thesis About Being,” in order to examine the structure of Kantian critique, the elusive transcendental method. Heidegger investigates the underlying reflective act that restricts “the use of the understanding to experience,” what Kant describes in an Appendix to the “Transcendental Analytic” of the Critique of Pure Reason as “transcendental reflection.” What is clear from Kant’s brief description is that prior to the analysis of the conditions of the possibility (...) of experience, critical inquiry has designated the boundary of possible experience. While neither Kant nor Heidegger explicitly develops the account of the transcendental method that follows from this initial orienting act, doing so will offer a response to the charge, leveled at Kant since thepublication of the first Critique, that he was blind to the metaphysical presuppositions of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In this paper I make use of Heidegger’s late essay, “Kant’s Thesis About Being,” in order to examine the structure of Kantian critique, the elusive transcendental method. Heidegger investigates the underlying reflective act that restricts “the use of the understanding to experience,” what Kant describes in an Appendix to the “Transcendental Analytic” of the Critique of Pure Reason as “transcendental reflection.” What is clear from Kant’s brief description is that prior to the analysis of the conditions of the possibility (...) of experience, critical inquiry has designated the boundary of possible experience. While neither Kant nor Heidegger explicitly develops the account of the transcendental method that follows from this initial orienting act, doing so will offer a response to the charge, leveled at Kant since thepublication of the first Critique, that he was blind to the metaphysical presuppositions of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

This is a study of the epistemological theory of Theodor Adorno.

It is exhibited that maxwellian electrodynamics grew out of the old pre-maxwellian programmes reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampere-Weber, the wave theory of Young-Fresnel and Faraday’s scientific research programme. The programmes’ meeting led to construction of the whole hierarchy of theoretical objects starting from the genuine crossbreeds (the displacement current) and up to usual mongrels. After the displacement current invention the interpenetration of the pre-maxwellian programmes began that marked the beginning of theoretical schemes of optics and electromagnetism real unification. Maxwell’s programme (...) did supersede its rivals because it had assimilated some ideas of the Ampere-Weber programme, as well as the presuppositions of the programmes of Young-Fresnel and Faraday. Maxwellian programme’s victory over its rivals became possible because the core of Maxwell’s unification strategy was formed by Kantian epistemology looked through the prism of William Whewell and such representatives of Scottish Enlightenment as Thomas Reid and William Hamilton. It was Kantian epistemology that enabled Hermann von Helmholtz and Heinrich Hertz to arrive at such a version of Maxwell’s theory that could serve a heuristical basis for the radio waves discovery. (shrink)

This thesis sets out an argument in defence of moral objectivism. It takes Mackie as the critic of objectivism and it ends by proposing that the best defence of objectivism may be found in what I shall call Kantian intuitionism, which brings together elements of the intuitionism of Ross and a Kantian epistemology. The argument is fundamentally transcendental in form and it proceeds by first setting out what we intuitively believe, rejecting the sceptical attacks on those beliefs, (...) and by then proposing a theory that can legitimize what we already do believe. Chapter One sets out our intuitive understanding of morality: that morality is cognitive, moral beliefs can be true or false; that morality is real, we do not construct it; that morality is rational, we can learn about it by rational investigation; and that morality places us under an absolute constraint. The chapter ends by clarifying the nature of that absolute demand and by arguing that the critical idea within morality is the idea of duty. In Chapter Two Mackie’s sceptical attack on objectivism is examined. Four key arguments are identified: that moral beliefs are relative to bfferent agents; that morality is based upon on non-rational causes; that the idea of moral properties or entities is too queer to be sustainable; and that moral objectivism involves queer epistemological commitments. Essentially all of these arguments are shown to be ambiguous; however it is proposed that Mackie has an underlying epistemological and metaphysical theory, scientific empiricism, which is hostile to objectivism and a theory that many find attractive for reasons that are independent of morality. Chapter Three explores the nature of moral rationality and whether scientific empiricism can use the idea of reflective equilibrium to offer a reasonable account of moral rationality. It concludes that, while reflective equilibrium is a useful account of moral rationality, it cannot be effectively reconciled with scientific empiricism. In order to function effectively as a rational process, reflective equilibrium must be rationally constrained by our moral judgements and our moral principles. Chapter Four begins the process of exploring some alternative epistemologies and argues that the only account that remains true to objectivism and the needs of reflective equilibrium is the account of intuitionism proposed by Ross. However this account can be developed further by drawing upon number of Kantian ideas and using them to supplement Ross’s intuitionism. So Chapter Five draws upon a number of Kant's ideas, most notably some key notions from the Critique of Judgement. These ideas are: that we possess a rational will that is subject to the Moral law and determined by practical reason; that we possess a faculty of judgement which enables us to become aware of moral properties and that these two faculties together with the third faculty of thought can function to constitute the moral understanding. Using these ideas the thesis explores whether they can serve to explain how intuitions can be rational and how objectivism can be justified. (shrink)

Kant's account of space as an infinite given magnitude in the Critique of Pure Reason is paradoxical, since infinite magnitudes go beyond the limits of possible experience. Michael Friedman's and Charles Parsons's accounts make sense of geometrical construction, but I argue that they do not resolve the paradox. I argue that metaphysical space is based on the ability of the subject to generate distinctly oriented spatial magnitudes of invariant scalar quantity through translation or rotation. The set of determinately oriented, constructed (...) geometrical spaces is a proper subset of metaphysical space, thus, metaphysical space is infinite. Kant's paradoxical doctrine of metaphysical space is necessary to reconcile his empiricism with his transcendental idealism. (shrink)

A basic thesis of Neokantian epistemology and philosophy of science contends that the knowing subject and the object to be known are only abstractions. What really exists, is the relation between both. For the elucidation of this “knowledge relation ("Erkenntnisrelation") the Neokantians of the Marburg school used a variety of mathematical metaphors. In this con-tribution I reconsider some of these metaphors proposed by Paul Natorp, who was one of the leading members of the Marburg school. It is shown that (...) Natorp's metaphors are not unrelated to those used in some currents of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this paper, I’ll sketch an approach to epistemology that draws its inspiration from two aspects of Kant’s philosophical project. In particular, I want to explore how we might develop a Kantian conception of rationality that combines a virtue-theoretical perspective on the nature of rationality with a role for transcendental arguments in defining the demands this conception of rationality places upon us as thinkers. In discussing these connections, I’ll proceed as follows. First, I’ll describe the sorts of epistemological (...) questions I’ll be focusing on, and the framework within which I’ll try to address them. Then I’ll say a bit about the connections between this framework on Kant’s own views. Next, I’ll explain in more detail how the two main elements of this framework relate to one another by explaining how a certain sort of “transcendental argument” allows us to derive conclusions about the requirements of rationality from facts about the nature of rational capacities. Then, I’ll briefly illustrate these connections with two examples: the rationality of explanatory inference like inference to the best explanation and the rationality of perceptual belief. Finally, I’ll conclude by saying a bit about the relevance of this ideas for debates about the rationality of basic beliefs or prior probabilities. (shrink)

We propose a formal representation of objects , those being mathematical or empirical objects. The powerful framework inside which we represent them in a unique and coherent way is grounded, on the formal side, in a logical approach with a direct mathematical semantics in the well-established field of constructive topology, and, on the philosophical side, in a neo-Kantian perspective emphasizing the knowing subject’s role, which is constructive for the mathematical objects and constitutive for the empirical ones.

More than many other Austrians, Mises tried to found aprioristic methodology on a well defined and developed epistemology. Although references to Kant are scattered rather unsystematically throughout his works, he nevertheless used an unequivocal Kantian terminology. He explicitly defended the existence of ‘a priori knowledge’, ‘synthetic a priori propositions’, ‘the category of action’, and so forth.

: This paper considers Peirce's epistemology against the background of its Kantian legacy. While various interpreters like R. Rorty, K.-O. Apel and J. Habermas have claimed that Peirce remained a Kantian philosopher, the thesis defended here is that Peirce rejected several of Kant's epistemological dichotomies, such as the transcendental-empirical and the a priori-a posteriori dichotomy. In particular, the paper considers an epistemological project which has been largely neglected in the literature: Peirce's semiotic analysis of assertions. This analysis (...) reconstructs various sign forms as elements of assertions and as pre-theoretic conditions for formal logic and for scientific inquiry. The paper shows how this analysis bears on modern philosophical research on indexicals, and also on pragmatically oriented philosophy of language more generally. (shrink)

In this article, I lend support to Miranda Fricker's work in social epistemology from a post-Kantian point of view. In Epistemic Injustice: Power and The Ethics of Knowing, Fricker writes that, at times, social power, rather than the actual possession of knowledge, determines whether a speaker is believed (Fricker, 2007, 1-2). I will develop Miranda Fricker's project in feminist epistemology by examining the post-Kantian linguistic sign with a view to showing how G.W.F. Hegel and Jacques Derrida (...) transform the Kantian analytic/synthetic contrast in their semiologies. Epistemic injustice arises not only from cultural stereotypes and impoverished categories of identity but, also, from the dynamic way that language generates meaning. (shrink)

This article presents Durkheim as a Neo-Kantian social thinker and a source of the theory of emotional contagion. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is examined as Durkheim’s paradigm case of Neo-Kantianism. He is first considered among the intellectual context of French Neo-Kantianism and its figures Charles Renouvier, Émile Boutroux, and Octave Hamelin, all whom were influential in his formative years. Durkheim’s Neo-Kantianism in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is then juxtaposed to the Neo-Kantian legal philosophy of (...) Emil Lask and Hans Kelsen. Agued is that Durkheim’s notions of distortion and emotional contagion are his leading contributions to Neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

In Who's Afraid of Idealism? the philosophical concept of idealism, the extent to which reality is mind-made, is examined in new light. Author Luis M. Augusto explores epistemological idealism, at the source of all other kinds of idealism, from the viewpoints of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche, two philosophers who spent a large part of their lives denigrating the very concept. Working from Kant and Nietzsche's viewpoints that idealism was a scandal to philosophy and the cause of nihilism, Augusto evaluates (...) these philosophers and their role in shaping epistemological idealism. Using textual evidence from their writings and their reactions to western philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, and Hegel, Who's Afraid of Idealism? argues that in fact Kant and Nietzsche were really idealists at heart. In accessible prose, this text puts forward a theory that goes against current scholarly opinion, and even Kant and Nietzsche's opinions of themselves. (shrink)

In this presentation I take a close look at Kant’s notion of “orientation” as it arises in a minor essay of 1786 in order to show how this relatively obscure moment forces us to reconsider the central division between epistemology and aesthetics. What makes Kant’s notion orientation difficult to place in a critical system that separates conceptually grounded cognition from the affective nature of aesthetics is that orientations turn out to be claims to knowledge which can not be had (...) without an irreducible aesthetic or “felt” discrimination. So what is philosophically at issue in examining Kant’s notion of orientation is the question of whether there are indeed some features of objects or states of affairs which are not properly recognized prior to or independently of feeling a certain way about them. In other words, are our feelings epistemologically relevant? The official Kantian answer is, of course, a resounding “no”. By reconstructing the logic of “orientation” as deployed in the 1786 essay I show where the attempt to separate cognition from feelings leads into a vicious “Kantian Circle”. This logical circularity anticipates similar problems in the third critique’s explanation of beauty and life. I end by returning to the notion of “orientation” in order to suggest a way out of this “Kantian Circle”. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to interpret the naturalist epistemological project of W. Quine from a problematic nucleus that we can identify in I. Kant, especially in the Critique of Pure Reason, which is expressed in the categories of explanation-justification, experimental psychology and transcendental philosophy. The hypothesis of our work is that the naturalization of epistemology in a psychology by Quine is possible due to a dissolution of the limits of the concepts of explanation and justification, which have (...) in Quine a translation in the notions of concept and doctrine. To account for this, (i) we will propose, in a general way, the Kantian problematic nucleus about the distinction between explanation and justification and its relationship with the experimental psychology of the 18 th century; ii) we will analyze some important texts of W. Quine where he bases the project of a naturalization of epistemology. Our focus will be to establish the relationship between concept and doctrine as translations of Quine of the concepts of explanation and justification; (iii) finally; we will describe the psychology as a new epistemology and observational statements as an expression of this epistemological turn of Quine. (shrink)

A growing number of commentators have, in recent years, noted the important affinities in the views of Immanuel Kant and Niels Bohr. While these commentators are correct, the picture they present of the connections between Bohr and Kant is painted in broad strokes; it is open to the criticism that these affinities are merely superficial. In this essay, I provide a closer, structural, analysis of both Bohr's and Kant's views that makes these connections more explicit. In particular, I demonstrate the (...) similarities between Bohr's argument, on the one hand, that neither the wave nor the particle description of atomic phenomena pick out an object in the ordinary sense of the word, and Kant's requirement, on the other hand, that both ‘mathematical’ (having to do with magnitude) and ‘dynamical’ (having to do with an object's interaction with other objects) principles must be applicable to appearances in order for us to determine them as objects of experience. I argue that Bohr's ‘complementarity interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, which views atomic objects as idealizations, and which licenses the repeal of the principle of causality for the domain of atomic physics, is perfectly compatible with, and indeed follows naturally from a broadly Kantian epistemological framework. (shrink)

One of the central debates in contemporary Kant scholarship concerns whether Kant endorses a “conceptualist” account of the nature of sensory experience. Understanding the debate is crucial for getting a full grasp of Kant's theory of mind, cognition, perception, and epistemology. This paper situates the debate in the context of Kant's broader theory of cognition and surveys some of the major arguments for conceptualist and non-conceptualist interpretations of his critical philosophy.

This book presents a critical reconsideration of the Kantian cognitive and practical subject. Special attention is devoted to highlight the complex relation between subjectivity as it is presented in the three critiques and the way in which it is construed in other writings, in particular the Anthropology. While for Kant our cognitive apparatus and the structure of our will are common to all humans, the anthropological subject reveals degrees of variation, depending on a myriad of external circumstances that pose (...) a challenge to the unity of Kant's account and await theoretical solutions. The essays collected in the volume delve into how the different shapes of human nature are not unrelated. They explore how and why different "Kantian subjects" are closely connected and at their core, if not entirely unified. The notions of personality, humanity, and citizenship will serve as leading threads for the reconstruction of this possible underlying unity. An engaging read that promises to deepen our understanding of human nature, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, politics, psychology, social anthropology, ethics, and epistemology. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism is more similar to the self-described pragmatisms of his contemporaries Jürgen Habermas and Hilary Putnam than it is dissimilar from them. Indeed, the only significant difference between Rorty’s views and those of his interlocutors, and what forms the basis of their many public exchanges, is their respective stances toward the status of epistemic norms. Rorty’s arguments against Habermas’s endorsement of transcendental conditions that ground successful communication, and against Putnam’s contention that there exists a limit conception of truth (...) upon which the possibility for critique depends speak to the very heart of his philosophical differences from the Kantian pragmatisms of Habermas and Putnam. -/- This paper engages in a detailed exploration of the debates between Rorty and Habermas and between Rorty and Putnam over these matters. These debates provide us with a direct route to understanding Rorty’s own views on epistemic norms. That is, the comparison between his own position and those of his fellow neopragmatists throws into sharp relief Rorty’s belief in the radical contingency of epistemic norms. -/- This exploration profits from engaging a feminist lens because feminist critiques, specifically of Habermas’s work, draw attention to the inadequacies of his views that Rorty seeks to correct, inadequacies that can be easily translated to Putnam’s case as well. By approaching this issue from a feminist angle, the paper highlights the dissimilarities in the theoretical positions between Rorty and his contemporaries, and shows why this difference is more significant than it might seem at first blush. The paper concludes with the suggestion that Rorty’s emphasis on the radical contingency of epistemic norms can provide a basis for the kind of revolutionary social, political, and cultural change that is central to much recent feminist theory. (shrink)

In this paper I do three things. Firstly, I defend the view that in his most familiar arguments about morality and the theological postulates, the arguments which appeal to the epistemological doctrines of the first Critique, Kant is as much of a fictionalist as anybody not working explicitly with that conceptual apparatus could be: his notion of faith as subjectively and not objectively grounded is precisely what fictionalists are concerned with in their talk of nondoxastic attitudes. Secondly, I reconstruct a (...) logically distinct argument to a fictionalist conclusion which I argue Kant also gives us, this time an argument to the conclusion that it is a good thing if our commitment to the existence of God is nondoxastic. And finally, I argue that this argument is of continuing interest, to Kantians and non-Kantians alike, not only because it raises interesting questions about the relation of morality to belief in God (which go in the opposite direction to most discussions, which focus on whether and to what extent belief in God can be an aid to morality), but also because this ‘Moral Hazard Argument’ seems to be available to religious realists and non-realists alike, thus suggesting that religious fictionalism is not by any means just an interesting version of religious non-realism. (shrink)

This book offers an array of important perspectives on Kant and nonconceptualism from some of the leading scholars in current Kant studies. As well as discussing the various arguments surrounding Kantian nonconceptualism, the book provides broad insight into the theory of perception, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, and aesthetics. His idealism aside, Kantian nonconceptualism is the most topical contemporary issue in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In this collection of specially commissioned essays, major players in the current (...) debate, including Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, engage with each other and with the broader literature in the field addressing all the important aspects of Kantian nonconceptualism. Among other topics, the authors analyse the notion of intuition and the conditions of its generation, Kant’s theory of space, including his pre-Critical view of space, the relation between nonconceptualism and the Transcendental Deduction, and various challenges to both conceptualist and nonconceptualist interpretations of Kant. Two further chapters explore a prominent Hegelian conceptualist reading of Kant and Kant’s nonconceptualist position in the Third Critique. The volume also contains a helpful survey of the recent literature on Kant and nonconceptual content. Kantian Nonconceptualism provides a comprehensive overview of recent perspectives on Kant and nonconceptual content, and will be a key resource for Kant scholars and philosophers interested in the topic of nonconceptualism. (shrink)

This book connects Schopenhauer’s philosophy with transcendental idealism by exploring the distinctly Kantian roots of his pessimism. By clearly discerning four types of coming to knowledge, it demonstrates how Schopenhauer’s epistemology can enlighten this connection with other areas of his philosophy. The individual chapters in this book discuss how these knowledge types—immediate or mediate, representational or non-representational—relate to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, ethics and action, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and asceticism. In each of these areas, a specific sense of pessimism (...) serves to disarm a number of paradoxes and inconsistencies typically associated with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. _The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer's Pessismism _shows how Schopenhauer’s claim that he is a true successor to Kant can be justified. (shrink)

This is a work in Kantian conceptual geography. It explores issues in analytic epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics by appealing to theses drawn from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

In the recent debate between conceptualists and nonconceptualists about perceptual content, Kant’s notion of intuition has been invoked on both sides. Conceptualists claim Kant as a forerunner of their position, arguing that Kantian intuitions have the same kind of content as conceptual thought. On the other hand, nonconceptualists claim Kant as a forerunner of their own position, contending that Kantian intuitions have a distinctly nonconceptual kind of content. In this paper, I argue first, that both sides are wrong (...) about Kant, secondly, that neither side can properly account for the epistemic function of intuition, and thirdly, that Kant’s own notion of intuition contains the resources for a third alternative. The epistemic function of an intuition for Kant is to furnish the sensory representation of an object of cognition. Conceptualism cannot account for this function because it construes perception as a species of thought. As a proper appreciation of Kant’s reasons for insisting upon the heterogeneity of thought and perception puts one in a position to see, any view that does this will fail to do justice to the distinctly sensory nature of intuition. Nonconceptualism, on the other hand, cannot account for the epistemic function of intuition because it views intuition as self-standing, and thus as completely independent from thought. As a consequence, nonconceptualism is not entitled to claim that an intuition is itself a cognitive state. I show that Kant’s actual view avoids both these extremes because it involves a different way of conceiving how perception is informed by conceptual thought. Building on this conception, Kant is able to preserve the distinctly sensory nature of intuition, while also securing proper cognitive standing for it. As a result, Kant’s notion of intuition provides the resources for an alternative account of how thought relates to the senses – one that avoids the shortcomings of the positions staked out in the contemporary debate. (shrink)

Two main foundations have been proposed for the side-constraints that deontologists think make it sometimes wrong to do what will have the best effects. Thomist views agree with consequentialism that the bearers of value are always states of affairs, but hold that alongside the duty to promote good states are stronger duties not to choose against them.1 Kantian views locate the relevant values in persons, saying it is respect for persons rather than for any state that makes it wrong (...) to kill, lie, and so on.2 The central innovation of Stephen Darwall’s Welfare and Rational Care is to extend this Kantian idea from side-constraints to the concept of welfare, or of what is good for a person.3 As a good-to-be-promoted, welfare is usually understood as located in states of affairs. Darwall agrees that a person’s welfare involves her being in certain states, but argues that the value in these states derives from her value as a person. More specifically, his “rational care” theory of welfare equates a person’s welfare with those states it would be rational to want for her insofar as one cared for her for her sake, so an attitude to her is primary and to her states is derivative. Whereas standard theories take the concept of welfare to come first and define care as a desire for that, Darwall reverses this ordering. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that a rationale for a circumscribed form of desire-based justification can be developed out of a contemporary Kantian account as a natural extension of that account. It maintains that certain of Christine Korsgaard's recent arguments establish only that desires must have certain features antithetical to instrumentalism in order to justify. Other arguments purport to establish the standard (stronger) result: that because desires do not have these features, they cannot justify. Her arguments for this strong result, it (...) contends, cannot be reconciled with central commitments in her epistemology and philosophy of mind. The consistent implementation of these commitments opens up a surprising space within what is still readily recognizable as a Kantian ethics--the space for desire-based justification. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has often been seen as an attempt to reduce the natural mind to informational processes and, consequently, to naturalize philosophy. The many criticisms that were addressed to the so-called “old-fashioned AI” do not concern this attempt itself, but the methods it used, especially the reduction of the mind to a symbolic level of abstraction, which has often appeared to be inadequate to capture the richness of our mental activity. As a consequence, there were many efforts to evacuate the (...) semantical models in favor of elementary physiological mechanisms simulated by information processes. However, these views, and the subsequent criticisms against artificial intelligence that they contain, miss the very nature of artificial intelligence, which is not reducible to a “science of the nature”, but which directly impacts our culture. More precisely, they lead to evacuate the role of the semantic information. In other words, they tend to throw the baby out with the bath-water. This paper tries to revisit the epistemology of artificial intelligence in the light of the opposition between the “sciences of nature” and the “sciences of culture”, which has been introduced by German neo-Kantian philosophers. It then shows how this epistemological view opens on the many contemporary applications of artificial intelligence that have already transformed—and will continue to transform—all our cultural activities and our world. Lastly, it places those perspectives in the context of the philosophy of information and more particularly it emphasizes the role played by the notions of context and level of abstraction in artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Recent perspectival interpretations of Kant suggest a way of relating his epistemology to empirical science that makes it plausible to regard Einstein’stheory of relativity as having a Kantian grounding. This first of two articles exploring this topic focuses on how the foregoing hypothesis accounts for variousresonances between Kant’s philosophy and Einstein’s science. The great attention young Einstein paid to Kant in his early intellectual development demonstrates the plausibility of this hypothesis, while certain features of Einstein’s cultural-political context account (...) for his reluctance to acknowledge Kant’s influence, even though contemporary philosophers who regarded themselves as Kantians urged him to do so. The sequel argues that this Kantian grounding probably had a formative influence not only on Einstein’s discovery of the theory of relativity and his view of the nature of science, but also on his quasi-mystical, religious disposition. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Kant’s critical discussions of the topic of miracles (including the important but neglected fragment from the 1780s called “On Miracles”) in an effort to answer the question in the title. Along the way I discuss some of the different kinds of “laws” in Kant’s system, and also the argument for his claim that, even if empirical miracles do occur, we will never be in a good position to identify instances of them. I conclude with some (...) tentative remarks about the notorious suggestion that intelligible finite agents, too, might have some sort of influence over the laws of nature. The goal throughout is to show that exploring Kant’s answer to a traditional question in philosophical theology can deepen our understanding of his metaphysics and epistemology of nature generally. (shrink)

We interpret the philosophy of Niels Bohr as related to the so called ''linguistic turn'' and consider paraconsistency in the light of the Bohrian notion of complementarity. Following [16], Jean-Yves Beziau has discussed the seemingly contradictory perspectives found in the quantum mechanical double slit experiment in terms of paraconsistent view-points [7, 8]. This interpretation goes in line with the well known Bohrian Neo-Kantian epistemological account of quantum mechanics. In the present paper, we put forward the idea that one can (...) also consider, within quantum mechanics and departing from the philosophy of the danish physicist, a more radical paraconsistency found within one of the main formal elements of the theory, namely, quantum superpositions. We will argue that, rather than epistemological, the contradictions found within quantum superpositions could be interpreted as ontological contradictions. (shrink)

Abstract Robert Hanna has recently advanced a theory of non-conceptual content, the central claim of which is that "it is perfectly possible for there to be directly referential intuitions without concepts". Hanna bases this claim in Kant's account of intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason, and so extends his Kantian non-conceptualism beyond the epistemology of empirical knowledge into the realm of mathematics. Thus, Hanna has proposed a Kantian non-conceptualist solution to a well-known dilemma set out by (...) Paul Benacerraf in his 1973 paper, "Mathematical Truth". I argue that Hanna is right about Kant's non-conceptualism, but mistaken in its application to Benacerraf's Dilemma. (shrink)

Part I in this two-part series employed a perspectival interpretation to argue that Kant’s epistemology serves as the philosophical grounding for modern revolutions in science. Although Einstein read Kant at an early age and immersed himself in Kant’s philosophy throughout his early adulthood, he was reluctant to admit Kant’s influence, possibly due to personal factors relating to his cultural-political situation. This sequel argues that Einstein’s early Kant-studies would have brought to his attention the problem of simultaneity and the method (...) of solving it that eventually led to the theory of relativity. Despite Einstein’s reluctance to acknowledge his Kantian grounding, a perspectival understanding of Kant’s philosophy of science shows it is profoundly consistent with Einstein’s views on both synthetic apriority and the nature of scientific theory. Moreover, Kant and Einstein share quasi-mystical religious tendencies, relying on an unknowable absolute as the ultimate boundary of our scientific understanding of nature. (shrink)

This paper investigates some classical oppositional categories, like synthetic vs. analytic, posterior vs. prior, imagination vs. grammar, metaphor vs. hermeneutics, metaphysics vs. observation, innovation vs. routine, and image vs. sound, and the role they play in epistemology and philosophy of science. The epistemological framework of objective cognitive constructivism is of special interest in these investigations. Oppositional relations are formally represented using algebraic lattice structures like the cube and the hexagon of opposition, with applications in the contexts of modern color (...) theory, Kantian philosophy, Jungian psychology, and linguistics. (shrink)

This is an unedited version of a paper written in 2012 accepted for publication in a forthcoming Festschrift for Mark Platts. In it I argue that the Helmholtz/Bayes tradition of free energy neuroscience begun by Geoffrey Hinton and his colleagues, and now being carried forward by Karl Friston and his, can be seen as a fulfilment of the Quine/Davidson program of radical interpretation, and also of Quine’s conception of a naturalized epistemology. -/- This program, in turn, is rooted in (...) Helmholtz’s scientific reconception of Kant’s notion of a concept-led synthesis of affectations by an extra-sensory reality that creates human self-consciousness, a topic previously discussed in my (2012) Psychoanalysis, Representation, and Neuroscience. -/- I also argue that 20th century analytical philosophy went astray when Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein ignored their legacy from Helmholtz and espoused a conception of perception and epistemology that he had already shown to be false. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant and Henry Sidgwick are towering figures in the history of moral philosophy. Kant's views on ethics continue to be discussed and studied in detail not only in philosophy, but also theology, political science, and legal theory. Meanwhile, Sidgwick is emerging as the philosopher within the utilitarian tradition who merits the same meticulous treatment that Kant receives. As champions of deontology and consequentialism respectively, Kant and Sidgwick disagree on many important issues. However, close examination reveals a surprising amount of (...) consensus on various topics including moral psychology, moral epistemology, and moral theology. This book presents points of agreement and disagreement in the writings of these two giants of philosophical ethics. The chapters will stimulate discussions among moral theorists and historians of philosophy by applying cutting-edge scholarship on each philosopher to shed light on some of the more perplexing arguments and views of the other, and by uncovering and examining points of agreement between Sidgwick and Kant as possible grounds for greater convergence in contemporary moral philosophy. This is the first full-length volume to investigate Sidgwick and Kant side by side. It will be of major interest to researchers and advanced students working in moral philosophy and its history. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Michael Thompson (2006) argues that there is a problem about justice that holds for Aristotlean, Humean, and Kantian views of ethics. To see his problem, consider the normative judgment that “X wronged Y by killing her.” Thompson thinks that Aristotelian, Humean, and Kantian views can show why Xdid something wrong by killing Y but they cannot show that X wronged Y, at least not without taking on intolerable moral, metaphysical, or epistemological commitments. I argue (...) that the Kantian can solve this problem without taking on any intolerable commitments, given the way that duties are derived from thecategorical imperative. (shrink)

Internalism holds that epistemic justification is determined by what is internal to the mind, not by facts about the mind-independent world. This paper introduces and defends a new kind of internalism that is rooted in rationalist ideas that have been neglected in recent epistemology, despite inspiring internalist projects in cognitive science. Ignoring rationalist insights has, I argue, damaged the prospects for internalism, by needlessly saddling internalists with empiricist burdens. Internalists can refuse these burdens by accepting a better philosophy of (...) mind. Rather than looking to 17th century rationalists, I look to Kant, and especially his idea that normativity is grounded in the constitution of agency and mind. A Kantian approach can avoid stock objections to internalism, I argue, and can also capture all the alleged benefits of externalism. The paper is structured as follows. In §2, I get back to basics and consider more ways to satisfy the core internalist template than have become standard. I draw attention to rationalist insights about how normativity could be grounded in the constitution of mind, and hypothesize that if internalism respects these insights, some problems disappear. I develop this hypothesis in §3 with a Kantian view. I further defend this view in §4. I conclude in §5 by explaining why Kantian internalism answers the latest challenges to internalism. (shrink)