Kant: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Misc

Recently, Kenneth Westphal has presented a highly interesting and innovative reading of Kant's critical philosophy.2 This reading continues a tradition of Kantscholarship of which, e.g., Paul Guyer's work is representative, and in which the antiidealistic potential of Kant's critical philosophy is pitted against its idealistic selfunderstanding. Much of the work in this tradition leaves matters at observing the tensions this introduces in Kant's work. But Westphal's proposed interpretation goes farther. Its attractiveness derives for the most part from the promise that (...) it permits an internal critique of Kant's transcendental idealism (TI), that is, a critique that is based on the very resources of Kantian transcendental philosophy.3 In contrast to these resources, which currently seem to go through a sort of revival in an enormous array of fields, TI is notorious for dismaying even sympathetic interpreters. How attractive and needed such an internal critique of TI would be becomes all the more patent when we place such a promise in the context of some of the contemporary discussions about TI after Allison's famous defense of it. Before directly engaging with Westphal's interpretation, I would therefore like to quickly sketch on what background it acquires its force (I). After characterizing the main features of Westphal's view (II), and supporting it in more detail by an account of Kant's theory of cognitive significance (III), I then want to review the extent of its success to present Kant as issuing an anti-skeptical argument (IV.1), or semantic views that are incompatible with TI (IV.2), or a 'proof of not merely empirical realism' (IV.3). I agree that purely idealist readings of Kant are mistaken. Westphal's... (shrink)

Kant’s theoretical philosophy includes various claims that seem to be incompatible with later advancements in science. The project for this chapter is to (a) cash out the main challenges to Kant’s account of space and geometry based on developments in logic, mathematics, and physics up to about 1920 in the form of several concrete objections; (b) assess the strength of these objections; and (c), where needed, canvass some strategies for how to mitigate the damage and defend a form of Kantianism (...) that is compatible with the relevant scientific developments. It turns out that Kant’s account of space and geometry emerges surprisingly unscathed. (shrink)

In the past two decades, much work on Kant has aimed to delimit and evaluate the bedrock assumptions of Kant's mature Critical philosophy. This volume brings together leading Kant scholars to address this issue in conversation with each other, articulating and interrogating Kant's critical assumptions.

ABSTRACT: I argue that Sellars’s metaconceptual theory of the categories exemplifies and extends a long line of nominalistic thinking about the nature of the categories from Ockham and Kant to the Tractatus and Carnap, and that this theory is far more central than has generally been realized to each of Sellars’s most famous and enduring philosophical conceptions: the myth of the given, the logical space of reasons, and resolving the ostensible clash between the manifest and scientific images of the human (...) being in the world. Sellars’s distinctive contribution to this longstanding (if currently on the defensive) metaconceptual approach to the nature of ontological categories was to interpret and reconstruct it in terms of his own ‘meaning as use’ or norm-governed inferential role semantics. With these resources Sellars sought to preserve the genuine insights in the ‘realist’ or broadly platonic traditions while simultaneously defending the idea that in the end, as he puts it, “a naturalistic ontology must be a nominalistic ontology” (1980a NAO IV §129). (shrink)

In the 1750s Optimism, the Leibnizian doctrine that the actual world is the best possible world, popularised by Pope in 1733 in his Essay on Man, was a hot topic. In 1759 Kant wrote and published a brief essay defending Optimism, Attempt at some Reflections on Optimism. Kant’s aim in this essay is to establish that there is one and only one best possible world. In particular, he argues against the claim that, for every possible world, there is a possible (...) world better than it and against the claim that there are two or more equally good possible worlds that are better than all the rest. Although it is not clear why, Kant was later dissatisfied with his essay. In this article I shall reconstruct, discuss, and evaluate Kant’s arguments. My evaluation will be negative, and so I think Kant had reasons to be dissatisfied with his essay. (shrink)

About 200 years prior to the publication of the "Critique of Pure Reason", the Scholastic theologian and philosopher Luis de Molina (1535-1600) developed a striking libertarian account of human free will in terms of what today would be called "counterfactuals of freedom". In Molina’s opinion, there are truths about how a finite free agent would act in any fully-specified situation. Moreover, Molina thought that although God has no control over these truths, he has knowledge of them in the so-called scientia (...) media which informs his creative activity of playing his part in bringing about a world. The aim of this paper is to suggest that while Kant’s indebtedness to the early modern Scholastic legacy is perhaps not universally acknowledged, it is fair to say that Molinist ideas are indeed animating key elements of Kant’s doctrine of freedom. These elements are: his conception of the intelligible character, his theologically inflected altered-laws compatibilism, his doctrines of grace and radical evil, and various metaphysical assumptions about divine rational agency at the foundation of his philosophy of history. (shrink)

Kant’s tragic brilliance lies in discovering the transcendental subject as the necessary condition for all experience. This analysis forms part of a broader systematic project concerned with the metalogical conditions of identity, reference, and intelligibility. While the present paper introduces the notion of a Primordial Identity Lock in schematic form, its aim is not to offer an independent metaphysical foundation, but to examine how Kant’s transcendental framework already presupposes structural conditions that it cannot itself thematize. We demonstrate that the “I (...) think” accompanying all representations relies on this Lock in three dimensions: (1) as the subject’s self-identity across time, (2) as the categorical framework’s stability, and (3) as the performative ground of the Critique itself. Kant’s achievement is tragic: he approaches the threshold of this Lock yet can only conceive it as a limit rather than as radiant source. (shrink)

Una de las cuestiones que caracteriza la crítica kantiana es la reflexión metafilosófica entorno a lo que la filosofía puede y no puede lograr mediante el pensamiento discursivo. No obstante, han sido poco estudiados los argumentos en Crítica de la razón pura (1781/1787) sobre la imposibilidad de ofrecer definiciones reales de determinados conceptos. A saber, Kant sostiene la indefinibilidad (i) los conceptos filosóficos en general y, de modo más específico, de (ii) la verdad y de (iii) las categorías. En esta (...) contribución se examinan estos argumentos de indefinibilidad, en base a los cuales se muestra cómo los tres indefinibles ofrecen por vía negativa algo que no encontrábamos des del lado de la teoría positiva de la definición. En particular, se reconstruyen estos argumentos en base a una distinción en común, a saber, las condiciones de definición (cómo debe ser un juicio para que sea una definición) y condiciones de definibilidad (cómo debe ser un concepto para que sea definible). Mostramos cómo en estos casos dichas condiciones entran en conflicto mutuo. (shrink)

In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant introduces the ideal of systematicity, represented by the connection of three principles of reason. At the core of the discussion in the Appendix is the distinction between the constitutive use of concepts of understanding and the regulative use of ideas of reason. This article shows that certain passages from the Appendix suggest that Kant’s concept of the “use” (Gebrauch) of a rule could explain an interpretative difficulty (...) that arises in paragraph 70 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. In this passage, the principle of the causality of nature (originally a constitutive–critical principle) seems to be assimilated to the thesis (Satz) of an antinomy composed of merely regulative principles. This article aims to demonstrate that this assimilation is impossible. (shrink)

While there has been a surge of studies on Kant’s Architectonic of Pure Reason in the last few years, we still lack a comprehensive account of the historical sources that have influenced Kant’s emphasis on its moral orientation. In this chapter, I argue that Christian August Crusius is one of these sources. In particular, Crusius’s account of ends and their relationships in the Anweisung vernünftig zu leben is a key source for understanding Kant’s views on the hierarchy of human ends (...) in the Architectonic. In turn, reading Kant from this perspective allows us to get a better grasp on two issues: whether Kant thinks that obtaining cognition or knowledge is an essential end of reason, and what kinds of subordination between ends are at stake in Kant’s hierarchy. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the role played by descriptions of the first-person experience of embodiment in Immanuel Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. This text has proven difficult to interpret. It is not clear whether Kant is expressing skepticism towards metaphysics as such, whether he is simply attacking the metaphysics of his day, or whether he is taking steps towards a new approach to metaphysical questions. Furthermore, Kant’s tone in this text is frequently derisive and (...) sarcastic and it is not always clear whether he is writing in his own voice. I show that Kant provides a consistent phenomenology of embodiment in this text, which he takes to have deflationary value with respect to four metaphysical theses concerning how mind and body are related. I examine these theses that Kant discusses and demonstrate how for each, he provides a first-person description of embodied awareness which is meant to aid the reader in grasping its implausibility. I argue that this shows that Kant takes embodied awareness to have epistemic authority that cannot be ignored in any attempt to do metaphysics. (shrink)

One source of misunderstanding about modeling non-conceptual mental content in Kant’s philosophy of mind and perception consists in the conventional functionalist reading that the apprehension of the power of imagination, both in the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of the Power of Judgement, stands as the relevant cognitive apparatus for creating a mental content without any concepts. I clarify that ‘sensible intuitions’ and ‘reflective intuitions’ in the first and third Critiques signify two distinct stages of the (...) phenomenal consciousness and cannot be justified by the same ‘procedure’ of mind. Sensible intuitions of different types are world-directed if they are justified by the ‘way and manner’ of perceiving objects through the representation of space as the relevant cognitive pattern, although they can appear with phenomenological different patterns given by nature or the mind itself. Reflective intuitions are, by contrast, non-world-directed but only satisfy the state of mind. Respectively, I conclude that Kant establishes a stronger phenomenal conservatism than his contemporary commentators have argued for because the relevant cognitive pattern is independent of the emergence of objects. (shrink)

In this article, we revisit Immanuel Kant’s frequently used description of John Locke’s philosophical project as a “physiology” of human reason and understanding. We unpack this description in a twofold manner. Firstly, we stress the foundational role it might have had for Kant’s attempt to analyse the faculty of the understanding. In line with Michael Wolff ’s proposal in his seminal 1995 book, Die Vollständigkeit der kantischen Urteilstafel, we propose to interpret the notion of physiology as part and parcel of (...) the set of organic metaphors used by Kant to characterise his philosophical system. In particular, we argue that the derivation of the pure concepts of the understanding (Kant’s ‘categories’) from the functions of the understanding, the latter of which are identified by Kant as the epigenetic ‘germs and predispositions’ of the understanding, can be viewed precisely as a (metaphorically) physiological undertaking. Secondly, we argue that Kant’s depiction of Locke as a physiologist might also be appreciative in another, more literal sense. Whereas Kant would warn against Locke’s project insofar as it seems to be geared towards an overly empiricist account of human cognition, this is only one aspect of Kant’s discussion of Locke’s project. For Kant, Locke’s physiology is part of a valid epistemological and philosophical project: it can serve as a stepping stone for investigating the empirical occasioning causes for acquiring categories or developing cognition generally. More precisely, we argue that the notion of physiology in the metaphorical sense might have helped Kant to systematise his views on how the categories originate in the faculty of the understanding itself, as well as his views on how those categories enable cognition to arise (part (1)), while in the literal sense physiology corresponded to Kant’s anthropological aspiration to examine how (categorial) cognition commences, develops, and is cultivated (part (2)). (shrink)

This chapter discusses Sellars’ early (pre-1950) essays in the context of his ambition to articulate a Kantian turn within the philosophical landscape of the ‘new way of words’. Buholzer takes up Sellars’ contention that his own project of ‘pure pragmatics’ might be compared to Kant’s transcendental logic, specifically the idea that a transcendental turn brings in a focus on the content of language or thought. Buholzer assesses the evidence for this parallel in Sellars’ early essays, not in the interest of (...) vindicating a Sellarsian reading of Kant’s transcendental logic but in order to map out Sellars’ indirect engagement with Kant’s theoretical philosophy in this period. This comparative lens provides new insight into Sellars’ career-long preoccupation with ‘aboutness’, or intentionality, and the abandonment of his early formalist project. (shrink)

Hegel argues that Kant's critical project is analogous to the attempt to learn to swim before getting in the water. Some have taken this to indicate the broadly anti-epistemological nature of Hegel's philosophical system. In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of the swimming argument which is both (i) compatible with a broadly epistemological conception of his Logic and (ii) more obviously efficacious against its intended target (viz. Kant). Briefly stated, the swimming argument is intended to reveal the reflexive (...) or self-implicating nature of any critical-reflection. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant distinguishes between two kinds of self-consciousness: transcendental apperception and empirical apperception (or, approximately, inner sense). However, Kant sometimes claims that “I think,” the general expression of transcendental apperception, expresses an indeterminate empirical inner intuition (IEI), which differs in crucial ways from the empirical inner intuition produced by inner sense. Such claims undermine Kant’s conceptual framework and constitute a recalcitrant obstacle to understanding his theory of self-consciousness. This paper analyzes the relevant passages, evaluates the major (...) interpretations of IEI, revisits the notion of pure apperception, and proposes an alternative reading: IEI is a ubiquitous, nonfocal, “obscure,” and empirical inner intuition that is built into all nonintrospective conscious states. This reading can successfully account for the peculiarities of IEI, resolving a major mystery in Kant’s theory of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Our aim in this chapter is to shed light on Kant’s account of the pure forms of sensibility by focusing on a somewhat neglected issue: Kant’s restriction of his claims about space and time to the case of human sensibility. Kant argues that space and time are the pure forms of sensibility for human cognizers. But he also says that we cannot know whether space and time are likewise the pure forms of sensibility for all discursive cognizers. A great deal (...) of attention has focused on the first of these claims, both on how Kant argues for it and how it relates to transcendental idealism. But a satisfactory interpretation must also account for the second claim, and it must account for the fact that Kant endorses both of them. What we need is an explanation of why Kant thinks our knowledge that space and time are the pure forms of sensibility extends to all human beings but no further. (shrink)

In several places of his work, Kant distinguishes between two senses of self-consciousness: a pure one and an empirical one. The aim of this work is to analyze these two senses of consciousness and show that, for Kant, self-consciousness does not occur unrestrictedly: a relation with something other than consciousness is needed for it to become conscious of itself. I carry out these objectives throughout six sections. In the first one I lay out the Kantian principle of pure apperception. In (...) the second one, I present the limits of pure apperception through Kant’s critique of rational psychology. Then, in the third section, I set the basis to understand the relationship that Kant establishes between the I think and the I exist. In the fourth one I show that pure apperception, despite being pure, is not possible without the opportunity of perception. Next, in the fifth one, I introduce the notion of empirical apperception, establish its relationship with pure apperception, and elucidate its meaning. Finally, in the last section, I explain the way in which empirical self-consciousness is determined, in relation to the knowledge of objects of the external sense. (shrink)

The emergence of experimental philosophy was one of the most significant developments in the early modern period. However, it is often overlooked in modern scholarship, despite being associated with leading figures such as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, David Hume and Christian Wolff. Ranging from the early Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century to the uptake of experimental philosophy in Paris and Berlin in the eighteenth, this book provides new terms of reference for (...) understanding early modern philosophy and science, and its eventual eclipse in the shadow of post-Kantian notions of empiricism and rationalism. Experimental Philosophy and the Origins of Empiricism is an integrated history of early modern experimental philosophy which challenges the rationalism and empiricism historiography that has dominated Anglophone history of philosophy for more than a century. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta el modo de relación de la totalidad de lo condicionado y lo incondicionado en la lógica transcendental de Kant. Para ello el argumento reconstruye los elementos que abren el tratamiento de la dialéctica transcendental en la "Crítica de la razón pura", es decir, la apariencia ilusoria y las Ideas de la razón. Este modo de leer la doctrina de las síntesis transcendentales de lo condicionado y lo incondicionado exhibe la tesis de la complementariedad diferenciada entre ambas regiones, (...) dando a cada una su derecho, lugar y misión. (shrink)

Esta edição contém a única transcrição estudantil sobrevivente das Lições de Metafísica de Kant da década de 1770. A Lição foi ministrada o mais tardar no inverno de 1779/80 e, portanto, antes mesmo da publicação da Crítica da Razão Pura (1781). Um exceção é, contudo, a parte sobre a ontologia que seguramente se remonta a uma Lição que Kant ministrou depois de 1781. Estas transcrições de Lições são de valor inestimável para a história do desenvolvimento da filosofia de Kant e, (...) em especial, para a gênese de sua Crítica da Razão Pura. Elas representam também um complemento importante para suas outras Lições, como por exemplo, as de antropologia, nas quais Kant também se ocupou com as questões da psicologia empírica e racional. É interessante observar que Kant se serve de métodos distintos, nas Lições de Antropologia e de Metafísica, para demonstrar a substancialidade e a imortalidade da alma. Embora Kant ainda leve a doutrina da alma da psicologia racional muito a sério na Metafísica-Pölitz, ele rejeitará de fato suas pretensões de conhecimento pouco tempo depois na Crítica na seção sobre os paralogismos da doutrina pura da alma. Aquele que deseja se aprofundar na filosofia de Kant e conhecer seu contexto histórico-filosófico não pode deixar de ler as Lições de Metafísica-Pölitz. Heiner F. Klemme Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. (shrink)

In recent years, nonconceptual content theories have seen Kant as a reference point for his notion of intuition (§§ 1-3). This work aims to dismiss the possibility that intuition is provided with an autonomous function of de re knowledge. To this end, it will explore certain epistemological points that emerge from Garroni’s reading of the Third Critique in the conviction that they provide a suitable context to verify the presence of autonomous, epistemically nonconceptual content in the transcendental system (§§ 4-5). (...) It is here, in fact, that Kant discusses those cases where intuition is given without bringing into play the conceptual component. As Garroni posits, in this frame of reference, such content cannot subsist without the interplay between aesthetic and conceptual dimensions (§§ 6-7). Long before the development of the debate on Kantian nonconceptualism, and during the period in which the Kantian debate on the epistemic considerations contained in the Third Critique was developing deeply for the first time, Garroni had already identified a theoretical position on these issues, which can be labelled aesthetic conceptualism, thanks to his fundamentally epistemological reading of the Third Critique. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy focuses on the power and limits of reason. Two questions are central. In his theoretical philosophy, Kant asks whether reasoning can give us metaphysical knowledge. In particular, can reason ground insights that go “beyond” (meta) the physical world, as “rationalist” philosophers such as Leibniz and Descartes claimed? In his practical philosophy, Kant asks whether reason can guide action and justify moral principles. “Empiricist” philosophers claimed that only feelings can motivate us to act; reason cannot. In Hume’s famous words: (...) “Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals”. Against rationalist metaphysics, Kant claims that reasoning faces strict limits. Reason cannot give us knowledge of God or a world beyond the senses; reasoning falls into contradiction and confusion if it does not respect these boundaries. Against the empiricist account of motivation and morality, Kant argues that reason has a vital power. Reason enables us to act on principles that we can share with other rational beings. In a world of limits, reason reveals human freedom. This entry has the following structure. The first section sets out the role that reason plays in Kant’s account of knowledge and metaphysics. This focuses on the Critique of Pure Reason or “first Critique” (1781, second edition 1787). The second section examines his moral philosophy. This focuses on his Critique of Practical Reason or “second Critique” (1788). Reflecting Kant’s own works and most of the secondary literature, these two sections are relatively independent. The third section therefore considers the relations between theoretical and practical reason. Since Kant rarely discusses reason as a whole, his general view is a matter of interpretation: Onora O’Neill has given the most prominent account. The concluding remarks stress the philosophical interest of her unified interpretation. (shrink)

In Recursivity and Contingency, Yuk Hui prompts a rigorous historical and philosophical analysis of today’s algorithmic culture. As evidenced by highspeed AI trading, predictive processing algorithms, elastic graph-bunching biometrics, Hebbian machine learning and thermographic drone warfare, we are privy to an epochal technological transition. As these technologies, stilted on inductive learning, demonstrate, we no longer occupy the moment of the ‘storage-and-retrieval’ static database but are increasingly engaged with technologies that are involved in the ‘manipulable arrangement’ (p204) of the indeterminable. It (...) is, in fact, extricating the indeterminable or the Inhuman and its cosmic anti-capitalist imperative that concerns the core of Hui’s project of technodiversity. (shrink)

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his main work of theoretical philosophy, frequently uses metaphors from law. In this first book-length study in English of Kant's legal metaphors and their role in the first Critique, Sofie Møller shows that they are central to Kant's account of reason. Through an analysis of the legal metaphors in their entirety, she demonstrates that Kant conceives of reason as having a structure mirroring that of a legal system in a natural right framework. Her study shows (...) that Kant's aim is to make cognisers become similar to authorized judges within such a system, by proving the legitimacy of the laws and the conditions under which valid judgments can be pronounced. These elements consolidate her conclusion that reason's systematicity is legal systematicity. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant famously thought that the presuppositions of Newtonian physics are the necessary conditions of the possibility of experience in general – both “outer” and “inner” experience. Today we know, of course, that Newtonian physics only applies to a limited domain of physical reality and is radically inadequate in the quantum and relativistic domains. This gives rise to an interesting question: could the radical changes in physics suggest new conditions for the possibility of experience? In other words, does post-Newtonian physics (...) suggest a post-Kantian view of human experience? (shrink)

In this review, I criticize aspects of Emanuel Rutten's new reading of Kant, which belongs to the radical phenomenalistic interpretations of Kant's idealism.

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 1010-1025, December 2021.

The empiricist needs to explain the origin, in perception, of the idea of time. Kant believed the only answer was a kind of idealism about time. This essay examines Hume’s extensionalism as a possible answer to Kant. Extensionalism allegedly accounts for the experience of time via the manner of presentation of experiences, rather than the content of experience.

The aim of this paper is to address the semantic issue of the nature of the representation I and of the transcendental designation, i.e., the self-referential apparatus involved in transcendental apperception. The I think, the bare or empty representation I, is the representational vehicle of the concept of transcendental subject; as such, it is a simple representation. The awareness of oneself as thinking is only expressed by the I: the intellectual representation which performs a referential function of the spontaneity of (...) a thinking subject. To begin with, what exactly does Kant mean when he states that I is a simple and empty representation? Secondly, can the features of the representation I and the correlative transcendental designation explain the indexical nature of the I? Thirdly, do the Kantian considerations on indexicality anticipate any of the semantic elements or, if nothing else, the spirit of the direct reference theory? (shrink)

Wolff advocates the mathematical method, which consists in chains of syllogisms that proceed from axioms and definitions to theorems, for achieving scientific certainty in branches of philosophy like ontology and physics. By contrast, in ‘The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Dogmatic Use’ Kant significantly limits the efficacy of this method in philosophy. In this paper I investigate an under-examined result of the Discipline: Kant’s claim that his system of philosophy does not contain “dogmata”. By identifying “dogmata” in Wolff’s system (...) of physics, I argue that, for Kant, they are propositions that uncritically deploy ideas of reason. I conclude that the Discipline extends criticisms raised in the Transcendental Dialectic to any erroneous use of the mathematical method in philosophy. (shrink)

The main task of the paper is to explore Kant’s understanding of what unites the three kinds of judgment that he regards as the signature judgments of the three fundamental faculties of the mind--theoretical, practical and aesthetic judgments--in a way that preserves their fundamental differences. I argue that these are differences in kind not only in degree; or, in the terms I motivate in the paper, differences in form. Thus, I aim to show that (1) the Romantic unity of knowing, (...) doing, and enjoying is not only inspired by Kant, but is in Kant’s own writings, and that (2) Kant understands this unity as a unity within a categorical variety: for him, theoretical judgment, practical judgment, and aesthetic judgment are the paradigmatic judgments of three formally different and irreducible rational capacities. I argue that a chief component in understanding the unity in this multiplicity is the imagination. This is because lawfulness turns out to be an essential mark of the “high” or “rational” aspects of the mind. But, for Kant, human beings can be lawful, and thus rational, in and of their world, only insofar as they are also imaginative. It is the imagination that allows us to be rational in our empirical world: to be rational animals. (shrink)

From an author meets critics session on Melissa Merritt's *Kant on Reflection and Virtue*.

In his account of Plato’s ideas in the first book of the “Transcendental Dialectic”, “On the concepts of pure reason”, Kant, in describing how for Plato ideas were “archetypes of things themselves”, adds that these ideas “flowed from the highest reason, through which human reason partakes in them”.1 Later, in the section of the Transcendental Dialectic treating the “ideals of pure reason”, he again attributes to Plato the notion of a “divine mind” within which the “ideas” exist. An “ideal”, Kant (...) says, “was to Plato, an idea in the divine understanding”.2 But as the editors of the Cambridge University Press translation of the Critique of Pure Reason point out, the idea of a divine mind as container of the ideas was not Plato’s and did not originate until the “syncretistic Platonism from the period of the Middle Academy”. From there it “was later adopted by Platonists as diverse as Philo of Alexandria, Plotinus and St Augustine, and became fundamental to later Christian interpretations of Platonism”. (shrink)

I defend what I take to be a genuinely Kantian view on temporal extension: time is not an object but a human horizon of concrete particulars. As such, time depends on the existence of embodied human subjects. It does not, however, depend on those subjects determined as spatial objects. Starting with a realist notion of “apperception” as applied to indexical space, I proceed with the need for external criteria of temporal duration. In accordance with Kant’s Second Analogy of Experience, these (...) criteria are found in concepts and laws of motion and change. I then see what follows from this for a reasonable notion of transcendental idealism. Finally, in support of my Kantian conclusions, I argue for the transcendentally subjective nature of particular temporal extension. (shrink)

Famously, Kant is a transcendental idealist. Yet he also endorses empirical realism, and even boasts that only the transcendental idealist can be an empirical realist. The difficulty of making sense of those commitments together leads many interpreters to begin by attributing to Kant some variant of conventional, subjective idealism. That in turn requires that Kant's empirical realism be at best a merely ersatz or quasi-realism. But that drains Kant's boast of its significance. For any idealist can be a realist if (...) the 'realism' in question is defined in terms of a prior commitment to idealism. Thus I argue, on the contrary, that we must begin the interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy by taking his empirical realism to be a genuine, common-sense realism about empirical things. That approach yields a consistent, satisfying, and novel reading of the Critical enterprise, including transcendental idealism, as explaining how empirical realism is possible. Along the way I show, among other things, (1) how to make systematic sense of Kant's controversial theory of meaning, which is standardly either downplayed or regarded as grossly inconsistent with his other core commitments; (2) how to dispense with the centuries-old Neglected Alternative objection; and (3) how to account for the syntheticity of the moral law and its role in conferring experience-immanent meaning on the practical postulates (e.g., of the existence of God). (shrink)

This is a report of the international workshop «Transcendental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy 2: Kant’s Appearance, Its Ontological and Epistemic Status» (April 27—29, 2017, Moscow), the tasks of which was (1) to discuss the specificity of transcendental idealism, (2) to study the nature of one of Kant’s important concepts — that of appearance — within the framework of the essential conceptual triad of transcendentalism: thing in itself (Ding an sich) — appearance (Erscheinung) — representation (Vorstellung), (3) to analyse the distinction (...) between Kant’s concepts of appearance and phenomenon, and (4) to examine the concepts of appearance and phenomenon in relation to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. (shrink)

Each of Kant’s three Critiques offers an account of the nature of a mental faculty and arrives at this account by means of a procedure I call ‘faculty analysis’. Faculty analysis is often regarded as among the least defensible aspects of Kant’s position; as a consequence, philosophers seeking to inherit Kantian ideas tend to transpose them into a different methodological context. I argue that this is a mistake: in fact faculty analysis is a live option for philosophical inquiry today. My (...) argument is as follows: Faculty analysis is a live option for certain kinds of philosophical theories if so-called “agentialist” views about the nature of belief are correct. There are good reasons for thinking that such views are correct. So faculty analysis should not be dismissed out of hand. Since the first premise in this argument bears a lot of weight, a large part of the paper is devoted to clarifying and defending it, in part by arguing that Kant himself holds a version of agentialism about belief. (shrink)

This article presents a critical analysis of two influential readings of Kant’s Second Analogy, namely, Gerd Buchdahl’s “modest reading” and Michael Friedman’s “strong reading.” After pointing out the textual and philosophical problems with each, I advance an alternative reading of the Second Analogy argument. On my reading, the Second Analogy argument proves the existence of necessary and strictly universal causal laws. This, however, does not guarantee that Kant has a solution for the problem of induction. After I explain why the (...) empirical lawfulness of nature does not guarantee the empirical uniformity of nature, I examine the modal status of empirical laws in Kant and argue contra Buchdahl and Friedman that empirical laws express two different kinds of necessity that are not reducible to each other. -/- . (shrink)

It is commonly thought that the distinction between subjectively valid judgements of perception and objectively valid judgements of experience in the Prolegomena is not consistent with the account of judgement Kant offers in the B Deduction, according to which a judgement is ‘nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception’. Contrary to this view, I argue that the Prolegomena distinction maps closely onto that drawn between the mathematical and dynamical principles in the System (...) of Principles: Kant’s account of the Prolegomena distinction strongly suggests that it is the Analogies of Experience that make it possible for judgements of perception to give rise to judgements of experience. This means that judgements of perception are objectively valid with regard to the quantity and quality of objects, and subjectively valid with regard to the relation they posit between objects. If that is the case, then the notion of a judgement of perception is consistent with the B Deduction account of judgement. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the structure of the Transcendental Logic is modeled on the Wolffian division of logic textbooks into sections on concepts, judgments, and inferences. While it is undeniable that the Transcendental Logic contains elements that are similar to the content of these sections, I believe these similarities are largely incidental to the structure of the Transcendental Logic. In this essay, I offer an alternative and, I believe, more plausible account of Wolff’s influence on the structure of the (...) Transcendental Logic, one that puts the focus on his empirical psychology rather than his logic. In particular, I argue that the structure of the Transcendental Logic is deeply indebted to a conception of purity that Wolff introduces in his empirical psychology and that this conception sheds more light on the overall structure of the Transcendental Logic than the accepted view. In section one, I outline two conceptions of purity found in Kant and trace them to similar views in Wolff. In section two, I turn to Kant’s views about logic as they are expressed in the Critique and argue that it is best to interpret Kant’s taxonomy of logic on its own terms rather than reading it through its terminological similarities to aspects of the Wolffian tradition. In section three, I argue that the second of the two conceptions of purity identified in section one is central to the structure of the Transcendental Logic. In doing so, I argue against the widespread view that this section of the Critique is modeled solely on what Kant calls pure general logic as opposed to both pure and applied general logic. I then conclude by briefly reviewing my account and considering some of its broader implications for our understanding of Kant. (shrink)

A well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal, or both. I argue that according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have (...) are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves. (shrink)

Kant's doctrine of the radical evil in human nature invites at least two serious worries: first, it is unclear how Kant could establish the claim that all human beings adopt an evil maxim; second, this claim seems to conflict with central features of Kant's doctrine of freedom. I argue, via criticisms of various charitable interpretations, that these problems are indeed insuperable if we read Kant as trying to establish that all human beings are evil as a matter of fact. I (...) then develop an alternative reading that avoids these problems. On my reading, Kant transforms the complaint that humans are evil into a prescriptive regulative principle. Although we cannot know whether all human beings really are evil, we ought to presuppose “inextirpable” human evil in the context of moral “ascetic”, the practical field that answers to the duty of moral self-perfection and that aims at the development of virtue. (shrink)

In this paper I return to the question of whether intuition is object-dependent. Kant’s account of the imagination appears to suggest that intuition is not object-dependent. On a recent proposal, however, the imagination is a faculty of merely inner intuition, the inner objects of which exist and are present in the way demanded by object-dependence views, such as Lucy Allais’s relational account. I argue against this proposal on both textual and philosophical grounds. It is inconsistent with what Kant says about (...) how the imagination functions and is ultimately incompatible with the relational account it is supposed to support. Kant’s account of the imagination remains a serious obstacle for the view that intuition is object-dependent. (shrink)

The essays in this volume explore those aspects of Kant’s writings which concern issues in the philosophy of mind. These issues are central to any understanding of Kant’s critical philosophy and they bear upon contemporary discussions in the philosophy of mind. Fourteen specially written essays address such questions as: What role does mental processing play in Kant’s account of intuition? What kinds of empirical models can be given of these operations? In what sense, and in what ways, are intuitions object-dependent? (...) How should we understand the nature of the imagination? What is inner sense, and what does it mean to say that time is the form of inner sense? Can we cognize ourselves through inner sense? How do we self-ascribe our beliefs and what role does self-consciousness play in our judgments? Is the will involved in judging? What kind of knowledge can we have of the self ? And what kind of knowledge of the self does Kant proscribe? These essays showcase the depth of Kant’s writings in the philosophy of mind, and the centrality of those writings to his wider philosophical project. Moreover, they show the continued relevance of Kant’s writings to contemporary debates about the nature of mind and self. Contents: 0. Introduction Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson 1. Kant, The Philosophy Of Mind, And Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy Anil Gomes 2. Synthesis And Binding Lucy Allais 3. Understanding Non-Conceptual Representation Of Objects: Empirical Models Of Sensibility’s Operation Katherine Dunlop 4. Are Kantian Intuitions Object-Dependent? Stefanie Grüne 5. Intuition And Presence Colin McLear 6. Imagination And Inner Intuition Andrew Stephenson 7. Inner Sense And Time Ralf M. Bader 8. Can’t Kant Cognize Himself? Or, A Problem For (Almost) Every Interpretation Of The Refutation Of Idealism Andrew Chignell 9. A Kantian Critique Of Transparency Patricia Kitcher 10. Judging For Reasons: On Kant And The Modalities Of Judgment Jessica Leech 11. Kant On Judging And The Will Jill Vance Buroker 12. Self and Selves Ralph C. S. Walker 13. Subjects Of Kant’s First Paralogism Tobias Rosefeldt 14. The Lessons Of Kant’s Paralogisms Paul Snowdon. (shrink)