From the second half of the last century, there has been a widespread view in the Anglophone world that Kant’s transcendental deduction (aka TD) aims to vindicate our common-sense view of the world as composed of public and objective particulars against some unqualified forms of skepticism. This widespread assumption has raised serious doubt not only about the success of TD but also about the very nature of its argument in both editions of the Critique. Yet, if there is (...) a connection between TD and global skepticism, the intriguing question is: Who is this skeptic? According to Strawson, “the skeptic” is a hypothesis of a purely sense-datum experience. In contrast, the fact that TD turns on the key notion of self-consciousness has induced several other scholars to assume that the skeptic is no none but a Cartesian external-world skeptic. None of those readings find textual support or are compatible with the very structure of the first Critique. The question is: Does this mean that TD aims only to undermine empiricism, as Guyer suggests? I do not believe so. I am pretty convinced that TD addresses a peculiar form of global skepticism, namely “Hume’s challenge to reason.” Assuming that we cognize (erkennen) and experience (erfahren) appearances as objects as a requirement of Newtonian physics, TD aims to provide a justification of the principle that nature is uniform that is superior to Hume’s justification. (shrink)

The common assumption that the Transcendental Deduction aims to refute scepticism often leads interpreters to conclude that it fails and even that Kant is confused about what it is supposed to achieve. By examining what Kant himself says concerning the Deductions' relation to scepticism, this article seeks to determine what sort of scepticism he has in view and how he responds to it. It concludes that the Deduction aims neither to refute Cartesian, outer- world scepticism nor to (...) refute Humean, empiricist scepticism, and it outlines an alternative conception of the Deduction's task, as one of reconciling apparently conflicting claims of reason. (shrink)

This paper deals with a foundational aspect of Integrated Information Theory of consciousness: the nature of the relation between the axioms of phenomenology and the postulates of cause-effect power. There has been a lack of clarity in the literature regarding this crucial issue, for which IIT has received much criticism of its axiomatic method and basic tenets. The present contribution elucidates the problem by means of a categorial analysis of the theory’s foundations. Its main results are that: IIT has a (...) set of nine fundamental concepts of reason, called categories, which constitute its categorial lexicon and through which it formulates a system of principles incorporating the axioms, the postulates, and the central identity; and the connection between the axioms and postulates is grounded by their common root in this categorial lexicon, the categories of which find their justification by means of a phenomenological and transcendental deduction. Some further results are the unique origin of axioms and postulates in the categories; the distinction between conceptual and formalized postulates; a clarification of the uniqueness problem of categorial lexica in general; and an IIT account of objectivity by explicating how the physical is defined by means of categories. All of this is put to use against various criticism targeting IIT’s theoretical core. If successful, the proposed interpretation illuminates a central issue in the contemporary study of consciousness and contributes to an environment of mutual understanding between defenders and critics of the theory. (shrink)

Henry E. Allison presents an analytical and historical commentary on Kant`s transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding in the Critique of Pure Reason. He argues that, rather than providing a new solution to an old problem, it addresses a new problem, and he traces the line of thought that led Kant to the recognition of the significance of this problem in his 'pre-critical' period. In addition to the developmental nature of the account of Kant`s views (...) presented here, two distinctive features of Allison's reading of the deduction are a defense of Kant`s oft criticized claim that the conformity of appearances to the categories must be unconditionally rather than merely conditionally necessary and an insistence that the argument cannot be separated from Kant`s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

James Van Cleve has argued that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories shows, at most, that we must apply the categories to experience. And this falls short of Kant’s aim, which is to show that they must so apply. In this discussion I argue that once we have noted the differences between the first and second editions of the Deduction, this objection is less telling. But Van Cleve’s objection can help illuminate the structure of the B (...) class='Hi'>Deduction, and it suggests an interesting reason why the rewriting might have been thought necessary. (shrink)

The paper offers a model of Kant's claim that unity of consciousness entails objectivity of experience. This claim has nothing especially to do with thought, language or the categories but is a general truth about arbitrary signaling systems of the sort modeled in the paper. In conclusion I draw some consequences for various forms of idealism.

One of the strongest motivations for conceptualist readings of Kant is the belief that the Transcendental Deduction is incompatible with nonconceptualism. In this article, I argue that this belief is simply false: the Deduction and nonconceptualism are compatible at both an exegetical and a philosophical level. Placing particular emphasis on the case of non-human animals, I discuss in detail how and why my reading diverges from those of Ginsborg, Allais, Gomes and others. I suggest ultimately that it (...) is only by embracing nonconceptualism that we can fully recognise the delicate calibration of the trap which the Critique sets for Hume. (shrink)

In these comments, I share some remarks concerning two main points lying at the core of Gava’s book Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics: Gava’s reconstruction and account of a transcendental deduction, its relation to a metaphysical deduction, and more specifically his reading of the B-Deduction. I will discuss Gava’s arguments in order to highlight the key tenets of his interpretation and raise questions related to (1) the meaning and scope of the (...) notion of ‘transcendental’; and (2) the commitment to – and the extent of – what we might call ‘cognitive constructivism’. (shrink)

Fregean predicates applied to Fregean objects are merely defined by a `timeless' deductive order of sentences. They cannot provide sufficient structure in order to explain how names can refer to objects of intuition and how predicates can express properties of substances that change in time. Therefore, the accounts of Wilson and Quine, Prior and Brandom for temporal judgments fail — and a new reconstruction of Kant's transcendental logic, especially of the analogies of experience, is needed.

My aim is to reconstruct the basic steps and the fundamental idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction of categories as well as Hegel’s interpretation and reframing of Kant’s idea. Hegel’s reading is crucial for two reasons: first, for fixing the basic form of the Kant­ian argument and secondly, for understanding its metaphilosophical relevance. For Hegel, philosophical proof has a specific nature, which distinguishes it from scientific proof and brings it closer to a juridical one. In this perspective the (...) class='Hi'>transcendental deduction, which is universally considered one of the most difficult chapters in the history of philosophy, reveals itself as the genuine clarification of specifically philosophical proof. I first present the idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as its Hegelian reading in the Science of Logic and reformulation as the very method of philosophy in the Philo­sophy of Right. I show what in the Kantian argumentation constituted the basis for Hegel’s own interpretation and transformation. In so doing, I highlight a ‘red thread’ between the two ideas of the transcendental deduction. I conclude by proposing a formal account of Kant’s and Hegel’s ideas and by summing up the main metaphilosophical insights we can gain from Kant’s idea and its Hegelian interpretation. (shrink)

One recent trend in Kant scholarship has been to read Kant as undertaking a project in philosophical semantics, as opposed to, say, epistemology, or transcendental metaphysics. This trend has evolved almost concurrently with a debate in contemporary philosophy of mind about the nature of concepts and their content. Inferentialism is the view that the content of our concepts is essentially inferentially articulated, that is, that the content of a concept consists entirely, or in essential part, in the role that (...) that concept plays in a system of inferences. By contrast, relationalism is the view that this content is fixed by a mental or linguistic item's standing in a certain relation to its object. The historical picture of Kant and the contemporary debate about concepts intersect in so far as contemporary inferentialists about conceptual content often cite Immanuel Kant not only as one of the founding fathers of a tradition that leads more or less straightforwardly to contemporary inferentialism, but also as the philosopher who first saw the fatal flaws in any attempt to articulate the content of our concepts relationally. (shrink)

In this article, the author proposes to reconstruct Kant's "transcendental deduction" without in any way making use of the results of the so-called "metaphysical" one. His suggestion is that what Kant baptizes "pure concepts" or "categories" are in fact not "concepts" at all, strictly speaking, but rather the very forms of judgment from which these "concepts" were supposed to have been derived in the "metaphysical deduction". The task of the "transcendental" deduction is, then, to show (...) that such forms of judgment can legitimately be applied to empirical contents: to demonstrate, in other words, the possibility of empirical knowledge. (shrink)

Kant’s Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories justifies their apriority, i.e. that their contents originate in the understanding itself, while the Transcendental Deduction justifies their objectivity, both in that they purport to represent objects of experience and that they do so successfully. The apriority of the categories, as explained in terms of acts of synthesis required for having sensible intuitions of objects, is justified by establishing their generic identity with logical functions of judgment, i.e. acts of judgment required (...) for referring concepts to objects. The objective purport of the categories is justified by establishing that sensible intuitions fall under them. To finally justify that the categories represent successfully, i.e. that the objects of our intuitions fall under them, it is established that the representations of space and time do, namely by showing that the features addressed in their Metaphysical Expositions, too, are to be explained in terms of acts of synthesis. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the antinomy of pure practical reason and the deduction of the Highest Good in the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason (in the second Critique). Although Kant claims that the Dialectic contains both the antinomy and the deduction, the boundaries dividing one from the other are at best vague. It is difficult to make out where the antinomy of practical reason ends and where the deduction begins. To locate both and to distinguish one (...) from the other (with special attention paid to the modality of the Highest Good) are the chief aims of this article. Additionally but no less importantly, I show, against the line of criticism originally traceable to Schopenhauer, that the antinomy of practical reason amounts to more than a reflection of Kant’s “architectonic obsession.” Not only does the antinomy of practical reason correspond to a genuine dialectical problem in the Critique of Practical Reason, but it also shares a fundamental (even if not immediately apparent) similarity with the antinomy of pure speculative reason. Finally, I consider Kant’s transcendental deduction of the Highest Good against the backdrop of his other deductions, especially the deduction of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason, and defend it against the charge of potential circularity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to exhibit some important features of the two versions of the deduction. In the first edition, Kant emphasizes the role of imagination as an autonomous faculty; in the second, On the contrary, Imagination, Though keeping its synthetic function, Is subordinated to the understanding. This reversal in the role of imagination is bound up to a paradoxical conception of the object which pervades the two editions of the "critique". The deduction should be conceived (...) as a way out of the paradox, Each edition favoring one alternative against the other. The role of the subject is correlative of the way the object is conceived: this article shows how german idealism radicalized kant's position in the first edition, And positivism, The second version, Though both were led to depart from kant's general requirement that knowledge was a result of the equilibrium of concepts and intuitions. (shrink)

SummaryThe aim of this paper is to exhibit some important features of the two versions of the Deduction. In the first edition, Kant emphasizes the role of imagination as an autonomous faculty; in the second, on the contrary, imagination, though keeping its synthetic function, is subordinated to the understanding. This reversal in the role of imagination is bound up to a paradoxical conception ot the object which pervades the two editions of the Critique. The Deduction should be conceived (...) as a way out of the paradox, each edition favoring one alternative against the other. The role of the subject is correlative of the way the object is conceived: this article shows how German Idealism radicalised Kant's position in the first edition, and Positivism the second version, though both were led to depard from Kant's general requirement that knowledge was a result of the equilibrium of concepts and intuitions. (shrink)

Major recent interpretations of Kant's first "critique" (wolff, Strawson, Bennett) have taken his transcendental deduction to be an argument from the fact of consciousness to the existence of an objective world. I argue that it is unclear such an argument can succeed and there are overwhelming reasons to believe kant understood his deduction as having a very different form, namely as moving from the premise that there is empirical knowledge to the conclusion that there are universally valid (...) pure categories. Detailed support for this contention is offered in an analysis of the second edition version of the deduction. (shrink)

The argument of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the Critique of Pure Reason is the deepest and most far-reaching in philosophy. In his new book, Robert Howell interprets main themes of the Deduction using ideas from contemporary philosophy and intensional logic, thereby providing a keener grasp of Kant's many subtleties than has hitherto been available. No other work pursues Kant's argument through every twist and turn with the careful, logically detailed attention maintained here. Surprising new (...) accounts of apperception, the concept of an object, the logical functions of thought, the role of the Metaphysical Deduction, and Kant's relations to his Aristotelian-Cartesian background are developed. Howell makes a precise contribution to the discussion of most of the disputed issues in the history of Deduction interpretation. Controversial in its conclusions, this book demands the attention of all who take seriously the task of understanding Kant's work and evaluating it dispassionately. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is first to explain a general notion of transcendental deductions, of which the Kantian are special cases; next to show, and to illustrate by examples from Kant’s work, that no transcendental deduction can be successful; and thirdly to put one of Kant’s achievements in its proper light by substituting for his spurious distinction between metaphysical exposition and transcendental deduction, a revised notion of metaphysical exposition and of the philosophical tasks arising (...) out of it. (shrink)

In this book, Alison Laywine considers the mystery of the Transcendental Deduction in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. What is it supposed to accomplish and how? Laywine argues that Kant's peculiar adaptation of his early account of a world is the key to this mystery. Collecting evidence from the Critique and other writings by Kant--in order to identify what he took himself to be doing on his own terms--she holds that Kant deliberately adapted elements of his early (...) metaphysics both to set the agenda of the Deduction and to carry it out. Laywine highlights how the most important metaphysical element in Kant's thought was his early account of a world; a world is not just the sum-total of all substances created by God, but a whole unified by the universal laws of community prescribed by God that externally relate any given substance to all others. From this conception of a world, Kant then extracted a way to conceive key elements in the Deduction: experience as the whole of all possible appearances unified by the universal laws human understanding gives to nature. (shrink)

The two major options on which the current debate on the interpretation of quantum mechanics relies, namely realism and empiricism, are far from being exhaustive. There is at least one more position available, which is metaphysically as agnostic as empiricism, but which shares with realism a committment to considering the structure of theories as highly significant. The latter position has been named transcendentalism after Kant. In this paper, a generalized version of Kant's method is used. This yields a reasoning that (...) one is entitled to call a transcendental deduction of some major formal features of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

I take up Kant's remarks about a " transcendental deduction" of the "concepts of space and time". I argue for the need to make a clearer assessment of the philosophical resources of the Aesthetic in order to account for this transcendental deduction. Special attention needs to be given to the fact that the central task of the Aesthetic is simply the "exposition" of these concepts. The Metaphysical Exposition reflects upon facts about our usage to reveal our (...) commitment to the idea that these concepts refer to pure intuitions. But the legitimacy of these concepts still hangs in the balance: these concepts may turn out to refer to nothing real at all. The subsequent Transcendental Exposition addresses this issue. The objective validity of the concepts of space and time, and hence their transcendental deduction, hinges on careful treatment of this last point. (shrink)

On one reading of Kant’s account of our original representations of space and time, they are, in part, products of the understanding or imagination. On another, they are brute, sensible givens, entirely independent of the understanding. In this article, while I agree with the latter interpretation, I argue for a version of it that does more justice to the insights of the former than others currently available. I claim that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction turns on the representations of space (...) and time as determinate, enduring particulars, whose unity is both given and a product of synthesis. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in the sense of greatest epistemological concern for Kant, empirical cognition is “rational sensory discrimination”: the identification or differentiation of sensory objects from each other, occurring through a capacity to become aware of and express judgments. With this account of empirical cognition, I show how the transcendental deduction of the first Critique is most plausibly read as having as its fundamental assumption the thesis that we have empirical cognition, and I provide evidence (...) that Kant understood Hume as granting this assumption. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive exposition of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in both editions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

I first criticize strawson's account of the transcendental deduction, And then argue that wittgenstein's considerations (in his later work) of the rule-Governed nature of judgment can be used to reconstruct a valid argument for a certain kind of objectivity, Which excludes solipsims. I suggest how kant's talk of synthesis can be reinterpreted in the light of this, As indeed can the doctrine of empirical realism and transcendental idealism.

The subject of this article is a powerful objection to the non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. Part of the purpose of the deduction is to refute the sort of scepticism according to which there are no objects of empirical intuition that instantiate the categories. But if the non-conceptualist interpretation is correct, it does not follow from what Kant is arguing in the transcendental deduction that this sort of scepticism is false. This (...) article explains and assesses a number of possible responses to this objection. (shrink)

This paper considers how Descartes's and Hume's sceptical challenges were appropriated by Christian Wolff and Johann Nicolaus Tetens specifically in the context of projects related to Kant's in the transcendental deduction. Wolff introduces Descartes's dream hypothesis as an obstacle to his account of the truth of propositions, or logical truth, which he identifies with the 'possibility' of empirical concepts. Tetens explicitly takes Hume's account of our idea of causality to be a challenge to the `reality' of transcendent concepts (...) in general, a challenge he addresses by locating the source of this concept in the understanding rather than in the imagination. After considering this background, I turn to Kant's deployment of apparently traditional sceptical concerns at the outset of the transcendental deduction and argue that he does not there intend to introduce a global sceptical challenge and, accordingly, that there are historical grounds for doubting that the transcendental deduction is intended as an anti-sceptical argument. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 4 Seiten: 589-600.

This is a monumental study of the transcendental deduction—that argument of legendary obscurity lying at the heart of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Allison begins from the methodological precept that “Kant’s argument can best be understood in light of the internal development of his thought”, and his book thus provides a systematic historical account of the deduction and its emergence from earlier texts. It begins with two chapters on the major pre-critical writings, which trace the emergence (...) of Kant’s “methodological” concerns with the limits and possibilities of metaphysical theorizing. However, this concern... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Apperception Representations of Objects Universality and Necessity Logical Forms of Judgment and Categories The Second Step of the B‐Deduction A Final Word.

Dieter Henrich’s reconstruction of the transcendental deduction in "Identität und Objektivität" has been criticised (probably unfairly) by Guyer and others for assuming that we have a priori Cartesian certainty about our own continuing existence through time. In his later article "The Identity of the Subject in the Transcendental Deduction", Henrich addresses this criticism and proposes a new, again entirely original argument for a reconstruction. I attempt to elucidate this argument with reference to Evans’s theory of the (...) Generality Constraint and a remark of Strawson’s in Individuals. Its logical form of a sentence-operator requires that the "I think" be capable of accompanying every thought that we can form. Henrich seems to rely on this point, claiming in addition that we must be aware of this property of the "I think". I object that we cannot assume everyone to be capable of doing the philosophy of her own situation. (shrink)

To understand Kant's transcendental deduction of categories we must distinguish between Kant's strategy foe constructing such a deduction and the manner in which this strategy is executed. I argue that both versions of the deduction contain similar strategies in which categories are identified with transcendental conditions of experience. Where the versions differ substantially is in the manner Kant executes the various stages of this strategy. It is pointed out, for instance, that in the objective (...) class='Hi'>deduction in A Kant introduces 'understanding' as a defined term (A119), whereas in B Kant postulates understanding as the fundamental activity of synthesis in terms of which he formulates the arguments of each stage of the deduction. Once the distinction between strategy and execution is accepted, much of Vaihinger's evidence for the "patchwork thesis" dissolves. But I also argue that in neither version of the deduction does Kant execute the identificatory strategy with convincing success. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to shed light on the use of transcendental deductions, within demonstrations of aspects of Wittgenstein's early semantics, metaphysics, and philosophy of mathematics. I focus on two crucial claims introduced by Wittgenstein within these transcendental deductions, each identified in conversation with Desmond Lee in 1930-31. Specifically, the claims are of the logical independence of elementary propositions, and that infinity is a number. I show how these two, crucial claims are both demonstrated and subsequently deployed (...) by Wittgenstein within a series of transcendental deductions, a series which begins with extensionalism as a generalized condition of sense on propositions, and in the context of which are then derived various, further, significant and unobvious presuppositions generated by that generalized condition of sense. In addition to clearing up deductions of these two, aforementioned claims, I also elucidate deductions of the subsistence of objects, and of logical space as an infinite totality. (shrink)