Abstract

In this book the author presents an original argument for constitutive and ontological realism, developed against the backdrop of a reconstruction of Kantian philosophy. The first chapter argues that Kant does not primarily reject the epistemological principles of classical empiricism--that there are only two species of epistemic warrant possible for any judgment: logical warrants as analytic entailments and evidential warrants. Rather, Kant rejects its tacit commitment to an epistemological atomism, substituting for this a species of representational holism. The primary question of legitimacy attaches not to individual concepts or judgments but to a larger conceptual structure in which they are embedded as logically indispensable features. Kant's transcendental deduction thus consists in the demonstrations of a family of analytic entailments which collectively secure a logical warrant for meta-judgments expressing the applicability of categorial concepts to, and the truth of corresponding judgments about, a world as a systematic experiential unity.