Kant: Metaphysics and Epistemology

This essay is concerned with a passage from §24 of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia, in which Hegel characterises the concepts or ‘thoughts’ developed in the discipline of metaphysics by saying that they ‘used to count as expressing the essentialities of things’. I begin by drawing attention to Hegel’s use of the past tense in this passage and suggest that it looks problematic for conceptual realist interpreters of Hegel’s idealism, who want, roughly, to attribute to him the view that thoughts or ‘thought-determinations’ express (...) the essentialities of things. I then develop this challenge with help from Robert Pippin, who takes Hegel, in this passage, to be rejecting the metaphysical projects of pre-Kantian European rationalism. If Pippin is right, then in this passage Hegel is in fact distancing himself from the view that conceptual realist accounts attribute to him. In the final part of the article, I re-examine some of Hegel’s remarks concerning the history of European metaphysics and offer an alternative, better explanation of Hegel’s use of the past tense in the passage in question, one which neutralises the objection to conceptual realist accounts of Hegel’s idealism. (shrink)

The philosophical tradition says that Immanuel Kant’s critique of the theoretical reason is an attempt to epistemological foundation. The model is based on the relationship between subject and object and aims to determine the limits of the possibility of knowledge. This would follow from the Kantian denial to the pure metaphysical intelligibility. Such ontology, however, would not focus on the naming of pure objects or pure intelligibility. It is then intended to debate the possibility of a transcendental ontology that is (...) based on the objectuality of empirical objects, which points to the Heideggerian interpretation of Kantian thought. Thus, this paper hopes to contribute to the theme of the possibility of a Kantian ontology with view to the objectuality of the objects. (shrink)

This book provides the first comprehensive discussion regarding the role that Kant ascribes to systematicity in the sciences. It considers not only what Kant has to say on systematicity in general, but also how the systematicity requirement for science is specified in different fields of knowledge. -/- The chapters are divided into three thematic sections. Part 1 is devoted to historical context. The chapters explore precursors of Kant’s account of the systematicity of the sciences. Part 2 addresses the application of (...) systematicity to the special sciences—cosmology, physics, chemistry, logic, mathematics, the life sciences and history. Finally, Part 3 explores the systematicity of philosophy. -/- Kant and the Systematicity of the Sciences will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Kant and the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

I spell out two theses, one shared by Kant and Heidegger, the other Kant’s alone: (1) there is a difference between “within-time-ness” (Innerzeitigkeit) and original or pure time (the temporal difference); (2) the temporal difference is articulated by a self-conscious act not bound by time. While each agrees that the “time-less” original or pure time has limits within which particular temporal determinations have their significance, Kant goes further in asserting that the pure ‘I’ must cognize the determinate boundaries of original (...) or pure time if objective cognition is to be possible. The ‘I’ thus rejects time as a horizon of its own significance. Understanding this argument suggests why Kant’s position is not as obviously susceptible to Heidegger’s criticism: not only does Kant positively argue that the ‘I’ is atemporal, but the content of this argument tells us why it is impossible for this understanding of the ‘I’ to result in a conception of it as ‘extant’ or a superadded representation in need of unification with temporality . Finally, it suggests that the dispute between Kant’s and Heidegger’s philosophical orientations rests not on the question of a lack of understanding of temporality, but on the question of how the ultimate conditions of intelligibility relate to their limits. (shrink)

My dissertation proposes a novel interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism as presented in the Critique of Pure Reason. I aim to give a consensus interpretation by overcoming past errors in interpreting this doctrine. I support my interpretation through a textual exegesis of the Critique of Pure Reason with a special focus on the direct and indirect proofs of transcendental idealism. Transcendental idealism is the doctrine that objects of our experience, space, and time, when taken as they would be (...) outside our possible experience, are nothing but mere representations. However, this does not make them into illusions. This is because Kant takes objects of our experience, space, and time to be empirically real. Empirical realism is the doctrine that objects of our experience, space, and time, when taken within our possible experience, exist independently of us. Yet, their empirical reality is not grounded in things in themselves, about whose existence Kant is agnostic. Instead, the reality of objects of our experience, space, and time depend on a standard of empirical reality that differs from the standard of transcendental reality. This separate standard of empirical reality allows Kant to hold transcendental idealism and empirical realism at the same time. Finally, while not strictly part of the doctrine of transcendental idealism, I answer the question of the relation of appearances and things in themselves. The distinction between appearances and things in themselves is a metaphysical distinction between two different ways of being, i.e., objectivity, properties, existence, reality. Yet, this is a metaphysical distinction within the same concept of an object. Thus, appearances and things in themselves are the same object conceptually that is determined metaphysically in two different ways. (shrink)

This essay is a contribution to a symposium on Anja Jauernig's excellent book, The World According to Kant. I discuss Jauernig's account of how Kant conceives the empirical reality of appearances.

In diesem Artikel rezensiere ich Jens Pier (Ed.): Limits of Intelligibility: Issues from Kant and Wittgenstein (2023).

Over the course of the twentieth century, the notion of the systematicity of thought has acquired a much narrower meaning than it used to carry for much of its history. The so-called “systematicity debate” that has dominated the philosophy of language, cognitive science, and AI research over the last thirty years understands the systematicity of thought in terms of the compositionality of thought. But there is an older, broader, and more demanding notion of systematicity that is now increasingly relevant again. (...) To recover this notion from under the shadow of the systematicity debate, I distinguish between (i) the systematicity of thinkable contents, (ii) the systematicity of thinking, and (iii) the ideal of systematic thought. I then deploy this distinction to critically evaluate Fodor’s systematicity-based argument for the language of thought hypothesis before recovering the notion of the systematicity of thought as a regulative ideal, which has historically shaped our understanding of what it means for thought to be rational, authoritative, and scientific. To assess how much systematicity we need from AI models, I argue that we must look to the rationales for systematizing thought. To this end, I recover five such rationales from the history of philosophy and identify five functions served by systematization. Finally, I show how these can be used to arrive at a dynamic understanding of the need to systematize thought that can tell us what kind of systematicity is called for and when. (shrink)

Throughout different versions of the Wissenschaftslehre J. G. Fichte uses the term ‘experiment’ in reference to his philosophical method. This paper presents an account of Fichte’s methodological understanding of experiments in philosophy and their role in the Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95). I show that Fichte in Part One and Two of the Grundlage describes and conducts a type of philosophical experiment that draws on key elements of Kant’s conception of an “experiment of pure reason” in the Critique of Pure (...) Reason. On this account, Fichte introduces the notion of a philosophical experiment to explain how the Grundlage can establish its foundational principles by virtue of a synthetic method. Moreover, I argue that Fichte in Part Two further distinguishes between explorative and demonstrative experiments, each serving a distinctive role in proving the possibility and reality of theoretical knowledge. By way of this reading, I arrive at new conclusions concerning Fichte’s conception of the synthetic procedure to be employed in philosophy and the argumentative strategies employed in the Grundlage. (shrink)

We are self-conscious creatures thrown into a world which is not of our making. What is the connection between being self-conscious and being related to an objective world? Descartes and Kant, in different ways and with different emphases, argued that self-conscious subjects must be related to an objective world. But many have worried about their starting points. ‘One should say it is thinking, just as one says, it is lightning’, the eighteenth-century philosopher, physicist, and aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg writes. ‘To (...) say cogito is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement.’ Lichtenberg raises a question here about our entitlement to think of ourselves as the agent of our thinking. Sometimes thoughts strike us like lightning. When this happens, we are their patient. It is central to our self-conscious lives that this is the exception: we are first and foremost the agents of our thinking. What right do we have to think of ourselves as such? The Practical Self argues that self-consciousness requires faith in ourselves as the agents of our thinking. But faith can be undermined and it can be sustained. And this provides us with a connection to the world since our faith in ourselves as the agents of our thinking is sustained by practices which relate us to other thinkers. Self-conscious subjects must have faith in themselves as thinking agents and it is our relations to the others which sustain this faith. Self-consciousness connects us to a world of others. (shrink)

_Kant’s Reason_ (2023) is an excellent study that develops an original set of interpretive claims and shows their relevance for contemporary theories of rationality. At the core of Karl Schafer’s project is the following thesis: that Kant’s account of reason is unified as a power of comprehension in both its theoretical and practical activities. The aim of my paper is to examine this thesis against Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good. In §1, I question some claims Schafer makes about the (...) Highest Good. Then, in §2 and §3, I consider how we might develop a more detailed reading of this doctrine along the lines of Schafer’s project. §4 concludes. (shrink)

This is a review of a volume comprising 18 of Eckart Förster’s most important essays. Written between 1987 and 2022, all of them touch upon the theme of limits of cognition. Among the issues tackled are Kant’s Opus Postumum, Goethe’s project of a scientia intuitiva or science of the intuitive understanding, the significance of §§76–77 of the third Critique for post-Kantianism, the case for Hölderlin’s authorship of the Oldest System-Programme of German Idealism, and Hegel’s early ideas on logic and phenomenology. (...) My discussion of the volume focuses on three aspects. (i) I give a brief outline of its structure and goals; (ii) I investigate some of its highlights and central themes; and (iii) I place Förster’s picture of Kant and post-Kantianism within current scholarship and confront it with an alternative interpretive option: a reading of Kant as concerned with non-contrastive limits of cognition and intelligibility. (shrink)

With his innovative research on Kant and German Idealism, Eckart Förster has been a major driving force in research on idealism for many years. In particular, his works on Kant’s ‘Opus postumum’ and spatial schematism, on intellectual intuition and intuitive understanding, on Fichte, Hölderlin, and Goethe, on the genesis of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as well as on the importance of Goethe for post-Kantian philosophy have received widespread attention. This volume contains many of his most important essays from the last (...) three decades. (shrink)

In this paper, I will explore a concept of person in Kant based on two features: the unity of consciousness and the consciousness of the numerical identity of one’s body in time. The reason for choosing these features is that I take as my starting point the notion of personhood from rational psychology that appears in the major premise of the third paralogism (A361). I will focus on the second feature in order to show that since Kant it is possible (...) to think of the body not merely as an object, but as a subject, i.e., that bodily awareness is self-awareness. I will explain this on the basis of what I will denominate the thesis of corporeality. To develop this thesis, I will draw on passages from Kant’s work and contemporary considerations of bodily awareness, specifically the immunity to error through misidentification. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn explicitly states that the paradigm shift implies a change of the world. This is because the paradigm is seen as constitutive of nature itself. In this paper, I will try to interpret this thesis by inscribing Kuhn's theory in the larger Kantian theoretical framework. As the last chapter of the „Critique of pure reason” shows, Kant thought that reason is inherently historical and evolves through revolutions. This dynamical perspective on reason comes clearly to light especially in the „Appendix” (...) to the „transcendental Dialectic”, where the Idea of reason is seen as an abstract theoretical framework that makes possible and guides the understanding. It will be shown that the Kuhnian paradigm and the Kantian transcendental Ideea function in similar ways. Both serve as an orientation for scientific research, they make rules possible, and constitute nature in a weak, indirect, way. The relation between Ideea and understanding in the first „Critique” parallels in many ways the kuhnian relation between paradigm and normal science. (shrink)

I respond to Karin de Boer, Thomas Land, and Claudio La Rocca’s comments on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023). I first provide a quick outline of some of the main claims I make in the book. I then directly address their criticisms, which I group into three categories. The first group of comments raises doubts concerning my characterization of the central tasks of the critique of pure reason. The second targets the fact that (...) I downplay faculty analysis as an essential characteristic of the critique. The third has to do with my claim that the Critique of Pure Reason aims to show that metaphysics is capable of architectonic unity, where this unity is only achievable when we construe metaphysics according to the worldly concept of philosophy. (shrink)

It is a familiar story that, where Kant humbly draws a line beyond which cognition can’t reach, Husserl presses forward to show how we can cognize beyond that limit. Kant supposes that cognition is bound to sensibility and that what we experience in sensibility is mere appearance that does not inform us about the intrinsic nature of things in themselves. By contrast, for Husserl, it makes no sense to say we experience anything other than things in themselves when we enjoy (...) sensory perception. Kant’s conception, then, by doing just that, is nonsensical. I argue that Husserl’s account does not deliver on its promise. Things as they are in themselves are just as cognitively out of reach on Husserl’s understanding of them as they are on Kant’s. Further, the charge of nonsense Husserl raises against Kant’s conception of things in themselves applies—indeed, with greater force—to his own. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant gilt zu Recht als einer der wichtigsten Philosophen in der Geschichte der westlichen Philosophie. In dieser Einführung werden – neben einem Seitenblick auf seine Biografie und seinen intellektuellen Werdegang – die bedeutendsten Werke seiner kritischen Periode vorgestellt und anhand ihrer Schlüsselbegriffe erklärt. Außerdem wird Kants Neuansatz in der Philosophie aus einer zentralen Idee verständlich gemacht: der Idee, dass nicht nur das menschliche Handeln, sondern alle leitenden menschlichen Weltbezüge «normativ» strukturiert sind.

The present work is a beautific monograph over Kant’s philosophy. It begins with the proper analysis of nature and significance of content copernican revolution. The author has systematically formulated the epistemic and non-epistemic implications of Kant’s Philosophy the epistemic implications cover the philosophical issues and seminal significance: the notion of space and time, the nature and function of categories, distinction of phenomena and noumena, refutation of idealism and Kantain transcendental idealism, transcendental unity of pure apperception, nature function and limitations of (...) reason (vernuft) and few more. The non-epistemic implication encompass: metaphysical, ethical and aesthetic implications. In metaphysical implication the author clearly demonstrated the limit of reason as a theoretical reason can’t venture into the realm of metaphysical(noumenal) entities such as God, Soul and cosmos- leading to reputation of metaphysics. The ethical implication is directed towards ,analysing the nature and good will, holy will and autonomous will, and apart from that a critical treatment is offered to categorical imperative postulated and maxims of morality. The aesthetics implication tries to analyse the content notion of beauty, sublime and teleology of nature. It is on account of the conceptual clarity, linguistic beauty and systematic exposition of the subject matter that book will receive the enthusiastic response from the students and scholars of philosophy. -/- This book is also Peer reviewed in JICPR, Volume XIX, No. 2, April-June, 2002 by Prof. Laksminarayan Lenka, Department of Philosophy, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. (shrink)

En este artículo se emplea la epistemología del testimonio kantiana para analizar el concepto de _akrasia _epistémica (es decir, creer que p cuando se tienen motivos de orden epistémico para sostener que ¬p) en el caso de las teorías conspirativas. Se señala que las personas suelen mantener esa clase de discursos por motivos sociales (e.g. Pertenecer a un grupo que comparte esas ideas) antes que por una genuina incomprensión de la evidencia como tal, de modo que el problema es fundamentalmente (...) moral. Ante esto, se indica que la akrasia epistémica es primeramente una forma de akrasia moral que explica a través del autoengaño, en tanto que ningún agente moral quiere tenerse a sí mismo como malo. Por consiguiente, se puede afirmar que, desde el punto de vista de la audiencia, el sostener un testimonio que contenga teorías conspirativas en un asunto ético en principio, aunque con consecuencias epistémicas evidentes. _Palabras clave: akrasia epistémica, testimonio, teorías conspirativas, epistemología kantiana, autoengaño. (shrink)

In considering Kant’s response to the Leibnizian theory of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic, scholars have overwhelmingly emphasized Kant’s response to Leibniz’s relationalism. They have largely missed the metaphysically realistic aspects of Leibniz’s theory with which Kant is primarily concerned. As such, scholars have failed to appreciate the threat Leibniz’s theory poses to Kant’s idealism, a point made publicly as early as 1786 by H. A. Pistorius. I argue that the Aesthetic does indeed contain a compelling argument against the Leibnizian (...) theory of space. This argument crucially depends upon Kant’s claim that space is monistic: that the whole of space is prior to the parts of space and, as such, spatial representations are not decomposable. (shrink)

This brief paper is devoted to criticizing the widespread reading of Kant’s first Critique, according to which reference to subject-independent objects is “constituted” by higher-order cognitive abilities (concepts). Let us call this the “constitutional view.” In this paper, I argue that the constitutional reading confuses the un-Kantian problem of how we come to represent objects (which I call the intentionality thesis), with the quite different problem of how we cognize (erkennen) (which I call the “cognition thesis”) that we do represent (...) objects, that is, things that exist independently of the subject. (shrink)

Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant’s conception of reason and its philosophical significance, focusing on two claims. First, it argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or “comprehension”). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, through it, we see why the (...) activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason also reads Kant as presenting us with a compelling picture of the role that reason (as a capacity or power) should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats as fundamental neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality, but instead a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity — namely, the capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of “rational constitutivism” – one which contrasts both with the forms of “reasons fundamentalism” that are currently fashionable and the forms of “agency-first constitutivism” that have dominated much of Kantian metaethics. In this sense, the aim of the book is to vindicate Kant’s insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason’s implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness. (shrink)

In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the Method of Metaphysics (CUP 2023), I argue that the first Critique is not only a ‘propaedeutic’ to metaphysics, but actually already establishes parts of metaphysics. These parts belong to what Kant calls transcendental philosophy. Additionally, I also provide an account of Kant’s critique of dogmatism and Wolff as its main defender. In this paper, I take up Luigi Filieri’s and Davide Dalla Rosa’s invitation to further develop my characterization of transcendental philosophy and (...) I respond to Michael Walschots’s objections against my interpretation of Kant’s critique of Wolff’s dogmatism. (shrink)

This paper explores Kant’s account of propositional content and its implications for the relationship between his notions of knowledge (Wissen) and cognition (Erkenntnis). While previous commentators commonly read Kant as holding a Fregean theory of propositional content, in this paper I argue that Kant’s theory of propositional content aligns more closely with Peter Hanks’ recent account. According to my reading, Kant holds that individual acts of judging are both ontologically and explanatorily prior to propositions or Kantian judgments (Urteil). Furthermore, on (...) my reading, acts of judging for Kant are acts of assertively predicating a property of an object rather than merely acts of neutral predication. This reading challenges the lately popular view that Kant’s notions of knowledge and cognition are not only distinct but also disjunct. I instead suggest that we should regard Kantian knowledge that requires cognitions as its grounds as a species of Kantian cognitions. (shrink)

In this chapter, I investigate a problem for Kant’s claim that metaphysics can reach the status of science. The problem arises when one considers Kant’s account of the “architectonic unity” of metaphysics in the Architectonic of Pure Reason. Attaining architectonic unity is a condition for becoming a science for any body of cognitions that purports to be such. This is achieved when the cognitions belonging to a science are systematically organized according to the “idea of reason” which lies at the (...) basis of that science. However, Kant suggests that nobody can ever legitimately claim to have matched the idea of the philosopher, where this appears to imply that nobody can justifiably claim that she has fully grasped the idea of metaphysics. This generates a problem. I suggest that when Kant claims that the idea of the philosopher must remain an ideal or an archetype, he has a particular conception of philosophy in mind, that is, philosophy as a doctrine of wisdom. According to this understanding, philosophy must provide an example of how one can become virtuous. However, this is only a partial solution to our problem, for reasons that will be illustrated. (shrink)

In this chapter, Robb Dunphy is concerned with the nature of G.E. Schulze's scepticism as he presents it in his 1792 work Aenesidemus, and with its relation to the metaphysical projects of Kant, Reinhold, and later German Idealists. After introducing Schulze's text, Dunphy turns to a recent interpretation offered by Jessica Berry, who claims that the extent to which Schulze endorsed a genuinely Pyrrhonian Scepticism has gone unacknowledged, both by his idealist contemporaries and by the majority of the secondary literature (...) on the period. Berry suggests that this unacknowledged Pyrrhonism in Aenesidemus provides the resources for a more radical criticism of the German Idealists' scientific, systematic metaphysical ambitions, to which they remain fundamentally vulnerable. Despite agreeing that an exploration of Schulze's debt to Pyrrhonism represents a valuable addition to our understanding of his scepticism, in the latter parts of the chapter Dunphy suggests that the Berry's attribution of a Pyrrhonian Scepticism to Schulze should to some extent be rejected, and that such a scepticism is perhaps not quite as problematic for the projects of Kant and the German Idealists as she suggests. (shrink)

11. bis 13. Oktober 2018 - Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz.

El libro ilustra un caso de migración de ideas a través de un análisis contextual e histórico-filosófico que introduce al lector en la traducción de la tesis doctoral del filósofo japonés Nakajima Rikizo (1858-1918), La doctrina kantiana de la cosa en sí (1889), defendida en la Universidad de Yale. En el estudio introductorio se examina la aportación del pensador a la luz de la querella sobre la cosa en sí de Kant y esta se enmarca en la corriente neokantiana del (...) siglo XIX, extrayéndose, de ahí, consecuencias para situar el papel de la disertación en el interior de la recepción del idealismo alemán y el neokantismo en la historia de la modernidad filosófica en Japón a partir de la época Meiji (1868). En la tarea de la edición literaria que acompaña a la traducción, el lector encontrará referenciadas de manera sistemática las muchas fuentes que cita Nakajima en su tesis doctoral, aunque, como signo de su tiempo, en el original lo haga sin una convención coherente y, en ocasiones, sin detalles suficientes. Así pues, al aportar al lector acceso a las referencias a los libros que manejó el filósofo, se contribuye a que el texto tenga, además, un interés histórico que se suma al eminentemente filosófico, con el objetivo de impulsar y potenciar estudios sobre la red de interacciones filosóficas que atraviesan el escrito del autor japonés. Por último, el libro se suma a las publicaciones que, en torno a la obra de Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), ganan relevancia filosófica en un momento en el que se está a las puertas de la celebración del 300 aniversario de su nacimiento. (shrink)

Attempts to discover fundamental traits in the process of experiencing and producing in man. Includes chapters on judgment, query, experience, and meaning.

It is commonly assumed that the expression “an sich selbst” (“in itself”) in Kant combines with terms to form complex nouns such as “thing in itself” and “end in itself.” I argue that the basic use of “an sich selbst” in Kant’s German is as a sentence adverb, which has the role of modifying subject-predicate combinations, rather than either subject or predicate on their own. Expressions of the form “S is P an sich selbst” mean roughly that S is P (...) ‘in its own right’ or without some further ‘condition’. Accordingly, “an sich selbst” should not be treated as forming complex nouns. This analysis has significant consequences for the interpretation of “thing in itself” in particular, for it implies that the latter is not a complete nominal expression. Instead, one must treat ‘an sich selbst’ as expressing how some S is a ‘thing’, looking to the wider sentential context. I conclude with a brief account of the new significance granted to the concept of a ‘thing’ (Ding) according to the present interpretation. (shrink)

In two often neglected passages of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant submits that the Critique is a 'treatise' or a 'doctrine of method'. These passages are puzzling because the Critique is only cursorily concerned with identifying adequate procedures of argument for philosophy. In this book, Gabriele Gava argues that these passages point out that the Critique is the doctrine of method of metaphysics. Doctrines of method have the task of showing that a given science is indeed a science because (...) it possesses 'architectonic unity' – which happens when it realizes the 'idea' of a science. According to Gava's novel approach, the Critique establishes that metaphysics is capable of this unity, and his reading of the Critique from this perspective not only illuminates the central role of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method within it, but also clarifies the relationship between the different parts of the work. (shrink)

Kant’s use of epigenesis differed according to the context within his remarks were made and can be seen to be falling within three main types of consideration. The first of these considered epigenesis as a theory of biological generation. A second group of related uses of the term epigenesis consider whether the biological account impacts discussions of the transference of soul from parent to child. The third type of consideration stems from Kant’s efforts, primarily in the 1770s, to use epigenesis (...) as a model for understanding the spontaneous generation of ideas, with reason positioned thereby as a self-formative capacity. (shrink)

In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused significant trouble for Kant in three distinct ways, though in each case the difficulty would turn on Kant's approach to "empirical psychology." The first problem for Kant had to do with refashioning psychology such that empirical psychology could be reassigned to anthropology (...) and rational psychology protected from the spectre of subreption. The second problem, and in many way the larger one for Kant during this time period, followed from Kant's desire to make use of empirical psychology's account of the mental faculties in his own transcendental theory of cognition. This introduced a separate problem for Kant, however, since this was a time during which physiological psychology was on the rise, a psychology that was being promoted by Ernst Platner and his followers, as "anthropology." This left Kant with the unwelcome task of simultaneously distinguishing his own philosophical anthropology from Platner's, and distancing his own transcendental theory of cognition from the likes of Herder and Tetens, given their embrace of the "embodied mind" approach being advanced by the physiological psychologists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Kant's Tribunal of Reason: Legal Metaphor and Normativity in the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 208. Hardback, $105.00. -/- Even those with a passing knowledge of Kant's system will recognize his sustained use of legal metaphor and his appeal to lawfulness as a beacon of philosophical progress. He famously begins one of the most important (and impermeable) sections of the Critique of Pure (...) Reason with the juridical distinction between quid juris (what is the law) and quid facti (what is the fact) (A 84/B 116), insisting—against the empiricists—that the critique of our cognitive faculty must speak to the former and requires a Transcendental Deduction of the categories. In her book, Sofie Møller delves into the historical context and philosophical significance of such legal metaphors to reveal that their roots spread to the deepest foundations of Kant's project. In doing so, she contends that we should understand "philosophical systematicity as legal systematicity" (15). According to Møller, to accept this reading of Kant is to acknowledge that the legal system provides not just one helpful type of metaphor to be appreciated alongside many others, but the only proper symbol of the abstract nature of reason itself (173).For those interested in Kant's engagement with the natural-rights theory that prevailed during his lifetime, or in his familiarity with the concrete legal practices of eighteenth-century European courts, Møller's book proves to be thoroughly researched and informative. As the first English-language book-length study providing a comprehensive account of the legal aspects influencing Kant's system, it should serve as a valuable catchall resource. There are limits to its accessibility, however, as familiarity with basic legal distinctions—e.g. between civil and criminal codes—is assumed, and Latin terms and phrases often go untranslated. At times, this makes for a difficult intersection between the arduousness of Kant's own prose and the equally technical legal terminology that is meant to explain it. However, this barrier is mitigated by Møller's own interpretive work, which cautions that we should not let indeterminate legal terminology fix too much in our reading of Kant's texts, especially when considering the Transcendental Deduction and its reliance on the quid juris/quid facti distinction. As she concludes at the end of chapter 3, the procedure of legal deduction that Kant invokes "could be an investigation, an exposition, a thorough consideration, a review, explanation, description, account, dispute or procedure" (64). Thus, despite Kant's historically demonstrable familiarity with legal-deduction writings, on their own, they "do not present a sufficiently uniform argument structure to settle the question of the structures of the two versions of the transcendental deduction" (64). This observation serves both as a general warning as well as a criticism of Dieter Henrich's approach to Kant's system, which popularized attention to legal metaphor in Kant scholarship in the twentieth century. For Møller, little philosophical insight is won through Henrich's approach, since it "places too much weight on the importance of an origin" (60), taking its cue from a particular type of legal deduction whose assumption is unsupported, and which cannot be accurately projected onto Kant's text. As Møller argues, "The validity of the categories is not only grounded in their origin in pure apperception but in their being the necessary structures in the synthesis which creates objects of experience, which is an act of pure apperception" (60). Møller's suggestion, instead, is to read the Deduction as adopting the twofold structure of "judicial imputation," which does a more faithful job of capturing the structuring activity that Kant accords to the understanding. With the latter reading, emphasis shifts from whether the categories' application to objects of experience is valid because of their a priori origin, to the spontaneous activity of the judging subject as the originator of experience (75). Part of what is unique about this approach is that it does not read the... (shrink)

The realistic alternatives to the kantian transcendental idealism, inso- far as they “categorematically” conceive the thinking subject, show themselves inconsistent with the critical treatment. We will try to determine here the detachment acquired by the critical philosophy in relation to transcendental realism due to the peculiar treatment given to the logical functions, categories and, consequently, to the very unity of apperception involved in all judging.

This article has two related aims: to examine how the Internet might be rendered an object of coherent philosophical consideration and critique, and to contribute to divesting the term “transcendental” of the negative connotations it carries in contemporary philosophy of technology. To realise them, it refers to Kant’s transcendental approach. The key argument is that Kant’s “transcendental idealism” is one example of a more general and potentially thoroughgoing “transcendental” approach focused on conditions that much contemporary philosophy of technology misunderstands or (...) ignores, to the detriment of the field. Diverse contemporary approaches are engaged to make this claim, including those of Verbeek, Brey, Stiegler, Clark and Chalmers, Feenberg, and Fuchs. The article considers how these approaches stand in relation to tendencies towards determinism, subjectivism, and excessive forms of optimism and pessimism in contemporary considerations of the Internet. In terms of Kant’s transcendental idealism, specifically, it concludes by arguing that contemporary philosophy of technology does not go far enough in considering the Internet as a “regulative idea”; in terms of transcendental approaches more generally, it concludes by arguing that openness to the transcendental has the potential to call into question presuppositions regarding what constitutes an “empirical” object of enquiry in philosophy of technology, thereby, opening the field up to important new areas of research. (shrink)

Langton’s (1998) and Allais’ (2015) metaphysical interpretations of Kant’s idealism have given special relevance to Kant’s analysis of the inner/outer dichotomy in the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection, for they agree that this dichotomy is key to correctly grasping Kant’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves. In this article I argue that Langton’s and Allais’ accounts of Kant’s analysis of the inner/outer dichotomy have major limitations, and therefore that the text should not be read in the way they (...) propose. In order to show these limitations, I examine the overall structure of Kant’s argument in the Amphiboly. Furthermore, I aim to establish the contribution brought by the Amphiboly to the issue of noumenal knowledge and the nature of things in themselves. Langton’s and Allais’ accounts of the relation between appearances and things in themselves as the inner nature of things not only prove to be unwarranted, but indeed to some extent opposite to what I claim to be Kant’s actual stance on things in themselves in the Amphiboly. (shrink)

This article develops an interpretation of Hegel that aims to show how a proper understanding of the nature of speculative sentences might achieve what Kant set out to do: to vindicate our most fundamental claims to knowledge as actual knowledge, rather than mere acts of believing. To this end, it develops a conception of speculative geographies (or “maps”) as an interpretive tool and introduces an Hegelian-inspired distinction between empirical, generic, and speculative sentences. On this reading, Kant’s employment of the “boundary (...) concept” of a noumenon is bound to fail as it needs to employ a contrast between our human point of view and that of an omniscient God – which turns out to be an aperspectival “view from nowhere” and thus an incoherent notion. The artcile ends by suggesting ways in which Hegel’s logical analysis can help us to better comprehend the reflective ascent necessary to make our conceptual differentiations and typical ways of understanding intelligible to ourselves. (shrink)

The paper investigates the distinction between form and matter in Kant’s theoretical philosophy – his adoption of an Aristotelian hylomorphism. This connection to Aristotle is sometimes recognized in Kant scholarship, though most proponents claim that against the backdrop of a structural analogy, Kant and Aristotle also differ in an important respect: according to them, while Aristotle puts forth a hylomorphic conception of being, Kant merely offers a hylomorphic conception of cognition in which sensibility provides the matter and understanding the form. (...) Against this, the paper claims that this “interiorization” of form cannot be squared with Kant’s actual views. Form is not internal for Kant, but neither is it external. Rather, it is “original form”. This interpretation ascribes a “hylomorphism all the way down” to Kant, meaning that the form and the matter of cognition are jointly actualized in virtue of each other. The understanding cannot be understood apart from its part in a hylomorphic unity with sensibility. Therefore, a proper appreciation of this unity enables us to see that it is impossible to distinguish the form that objects have as objects of cognition from the form they have in themselves. (shrink)

Kant asserts that we cannot represent to ourselves the non-existence of space. In his discussion of the Ontological Argument he maintains that there is nothing whose non-existence is inconceivable. He thus seems to contradict himself. If the non-existence of space is unthinkable, so is the non-existence of a part of space — a place. Indicating a particular place, we might say "There are no objects there", but it would be nonsense to say "There doesn't exist". We can say, as Aristotle (...) saw, "There is a place where there was water and where there is now air"; but to do so is to bind an adverbial variable with a quantifier, not to attach "exists" to the name of a place. To assert of a place, or of space, that it exists or that it does not exist would be nonsense, and the unthinkable in that sense is not something whose negation is, as Kant thought, a necessary truth. (shrink)

The article discusses two claims from Seiberth's book Intentionality in Sellars: A Transcendental Account of Finite Knowledge, both of which bear on the question of what it takes to be in touch with the world. Seiberth claims, first, that the philosophical method known as transcendental analysis, which Sellars adopts from Kant, is more basic than Sellars's other methodological commitments, including the method of providing a conceptual analysis of the manifest and the scientific image of man-in-the-world. I ask whether the results (...) of transcendental analysis should be applied to the manifest image. Does Sellars think that the manifest image fulfills the transcendental conditions for any conceptual system that is a) about the world of which it is a part and that b) allows those using it to gain knowledge of that world? On Seiberth's reading of Sellars, the answer seems to be negative. Second, Seiberth claims that there is only one kind of vertical relation between the conceptual and the real, the non-semantic relation Sellars calls picturing. I contest that claim, arguing that Seiberth gives too strong an interpretation of Sellars's denial that meaning statements are relational statements connecting a word with an independently existing object. This precludes Seiberth from seeing that Sellars, just like Kant, is an empirical realist in a robust sense. I also argue that picturing provides a meagre substitute for what in my reading of Sellars we might call vertical 'semantical' relations between words and things after all. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the objections of Adolf Reinach to Kant’s transcendental apriorism, shedding light on (1) the speculative distance separating their conceptions of philosophy (namely Reinach’s phenomenology and Kant’s transcendental critique), and (2) the consequential misunderstanding which is at the core of Reinach’s confrontation with Kant. In particular, attention is paid to the issue of the transcendental constitution of objectness, i.e. the question of the givenness of an object with respect to certain functions proper to the subject. In order to (...) illustrate how such a concept is completely absent in Reinach, I will compare his position with those of Husserl, in their relations with Kant’s interpretation of Hume’s philosophy. (shrink)