Recently, a number of neuroscientists and philosophers have taken the so-called predictive coding approach to support a form of radical neuro-representationalism, according to which the content of our conscious experiences is a neural construct, a brain-generated simulation. There is remarkable similarity between this account and ideas found in and developed by German neo-Kantians in the mid-nineteenth century. Some of the neo-Kantians eventually came to have doubts about the cogency and internal consistency of the representationalist framework they were operating within. In (...) this paper, I will first argue that some of these concerns ought to be taken seriously by contemporary proponents of predictive coding. After having done so, I will turn to phenomenology. As we shall see, Husserl’s endorsement of transcendental idealism was partially motivated by his rejection of representationalism and phenomenalism and by his attempt to safeguard the objectivity of the world of experience. This confronts us with an intriguing question. Which position is best able to accommodate our natural inclination for realism: Contemporary neuro-representationalism or Husserl’s transcendental idealism? (shrink)

Part 1. Husserl: the outlines of the transcendental-phenomenological system -- 1. Husserl's phenomenological discovery of the natural attitude -- 2. Husserl's theory of the phenomenological reduction: between lifeworld and Cartesianism -- 3. Some methodological problems arising in Husserl's late reflections on the phenomenological reduction -- 4. Facticity and historicity as constituents of the lifeworld in Husserl's late philosophy -- 5. Husserl's concept of the "transcendental person": another look at the Husserl-Heidegger relationship -- 6. Dialectics of the absolute: the (...) systematics of the phenomenological system in Husserl's last period -- Part 2. Husserl, Kant, and neo-Kantianism: from subjectivity to lifeworld as a world of culture -- 7. From being to givenness and back: some remarks on the meaning of transcendental idealism in Kant and Husserl -- 8. Reconstruction and reduction: Natorp and Husserl on method and the question of subjectivity -- 9. A hermeneutic phenomenology of subjective and objective spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer -- 10. Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms: between reason and relativism: a critical appraisal -- Part 3. Toward a Husserlian hermeneutics -- 11. The subjectivity of effective history and the suppressed husserlian elements in Gadamer's hermeneutics -- 12. Husserl's "hermeneutical phenomenology" as a philosophy of culture. (shrink)

This book argues that Kant's transcendental idealism has been misinterpreted: it denies not simply the super-sensory reality of space, time, and appearances, but their reality outside imagination as well. After adducing extensive and explicit textual evidence in its favor, Waxman shows this interpretation to be essential to the Transcendental Deduction, the affirmation of things in themselves, and the attempt to surmount Hume's scepticism. He further argues that Kant's much-neglected claim that, besides himself, "no psychologist has so much as (...) even thought that the imagination might be a necessary constituent of perception," should be construed so that even our consciousness of sensation itself (visual, tactile, etc.) is impossible without imagination. A compelling and original contribution to Kantian scholarship, Kant's Model of the Mind will also bear close examination by students and scholars of Hume, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

This book offers new answers to this persistent philosophical question by defining the question in specifically Husserlian terms and by means of a careful examination of Husserl’s later texts, including the unpublished Nachlass.

Among Immanuel Kant's most influential contributionsto philosophy is his development of the transcendental argument. InKant's conception, an argument of this kind begins with a compellingpremise about our thought, experience, or knowledge, and then reasonsto a conclusion that is a substantive and unobvious presupposition andnecessary condition of this premise. The crucial steps in thisreasoning are claims to the effect that a subconclusion or conclusionis a presupposition and necessary condition of a premise. Such anecessary condition might be a logically necessary condition, (...) butoften in Kant's transcendental arguments the condition is necessary inthe sense that it is the only possible explanation for the premise,whereupon the necessity might be weaker than logical. Typically, thisreasoning is intended to be a priori in some sense, eitherstrict or more relaxed. The conclusion of the argument is often directed againstskepticism of some sort. For example, Kant's Transcendental Deductiontargets Humean skepticism about the applicability of a priorimetaphysical concepts, and his Refutation of Idealism takes aim atskepticism about external objects. These two transcendental argumentsare found in the Critique of Pure Reason, butsuch arguments are found throughout Kant's works, for example inthe Critique of Practical Reason, in the Critiqueof the Power of Judgment, and in the OpusPosthumum. This article focuses on theTranscendental Deduction, the Refutation of Idealism, and more recenttranscendental arguments such as P. F. Strawson's that areinspired by these two examples. (shrink)

In a recent book entitled Free Will and Epistemology. A Defence of the Transcendental Argument for Freedom, Robert Lockie argues that the belief in determinism is self-defeating. Lockie’s argument hinges on the contention that we are bound to assess whether our beliefs are justified by relying on an internalist deontological conception of justification. However, the determinist denies the existence of the free will that is required in order to form justified beliefs according to such deontological conception of justification. As (...) a result, by the determinist’s own lights, the very belief in determinism cannot count as justified. On this ground Lockie argues that we are bound to act and believe on the presupposition that we are free. In this paper I discuss and reject Lockie’s transcendental argument for freedom. Lockie’s argument relies on the assumption that in judging that determinism is true the determinist is committed to take it that there are epistemic obligations – e.g., the obligation to believe that determinism is true, or the obligation to aim to believe the truth about determinism. I argue that this assumption rests on a wrong conception of the interplay between judgments and commitments. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende investigar a maneira pela qual o filósofo alemão Edmund Husserl, em Meditações Cartesianas (1929), modaliza e pretende solucionar o problema do solipsismo a partir dos expedientes de sua fenomenologia transcendental. Neste registro, a “tensão” a ser efetivamente superada está na passagem do ego transcendental ao alter ego: de que maneira poder-se-ia escapar ao solipsismo se, em regime de redução fenomenológica transcendental, descubro-me como ego transcendental e, portanto, como o fiador último da experiência? Tendo (...) em vista essas considerações, o interesse do presente artigo será o de, partindo da descrição do ego cogito husserliano por meio do método da redução fenomenológica transcendental, descobrir como, refutando a objeção de solipsismo, Husserl teria chego à descoberta do alter ego e em seguida teria mapeado a possibilidade da intersubjetividade transcendental e, consequentemente, do mundo objetivo. (shrink)

Nesta contribuição, a filosofia da cultura de Cassirer é apresentada como uma aplicação especial da filosofia transcendental kantiana, então comparada a outra tradição aqui, a Escola de Pittsburgh, especialmente McDowell. O resultado é o conceito de Sellars de “espaço de razões”, que é então expandido por McDowell com seu conceito de “segunda natureza”. Uma interpretação interessante de um dos primeiros intérpretes de Cassirer – Howe – torna possível trazer “Marburgo” e “Pittsburgo” para a conversa. O resultado dessa comparação será (...) uma posição que transmite ambas as tradições e que Howe poderia descrever como “idealismo naturalista”. No final, tenta-se demonstrar a superioridade da posição de Cassirer, o que não significa uma refutação da de McDowell, mas sim um encaixe de sua posição na de Cassirer. (shrink)

Scholars who consider that the Transcendental Analytic contains the core of what Kant calls ‘transcendental idealism’ are mistaken. Indeed, Kant’s transcendental idealism of space, time and spatiotemporal objects is sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic and does not depend on complementary claims made later on in the Critique. This does not mean, however, that we are allowed to subscribe to the so-called separability-thesis, which states that we can endorse Kant's views in the Transcendental Logic without (...) endorsing the results of the expositions and arguments laid out in the Aesthetic. Nor does it mean that the Aesthetic contains the only proof for transcendental idealism. Indeed, as Kant himself explicitly recognizes, the antinomies provide the premise for an indirect or mediate proof of his position with respect to the nature of space and time. First, I analyze Kant’s argument for the claim that the production of transcendental illusion is inherent to the function of human reasoning, and therefore inevitable. I then follow the presuppositions and the argumentation of the mediate proof of transcendental idealism and argue that it has a more general validity than could be assumed on the basis of Kant’s text, because it is in its essence independent from the particular determinations of the cosmological idea in the form of the four antinomies. Indeed, as I argue, the nature of reason itself and the content of the general cosmological idea suffice as elements for a mediate proof. Thus, I claim that transcendental idealism can be mediately established on the basis of the general antinomical relation between transcendental realism and material idealism, without any requirement to refer to the particular realisations of this antagonism as they are presented in the four antinomies. If the argument is correct, it shows that the mediate proof of transcendental idealism does not depend on a sympathetic account of the antinomies and is not automatically invalidated if the proofs of thesis and antithesis are considered unconvincing. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the strategy of circularity employed by Kant and Husserl in their treatment of categoriality. I focus on the relation between transcendental and metaphysical deductions in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and on the problem of “epistemic foundationalism” and categoriality in Husserl’s Sixth Logical Investigation. I propose that the strategy of circularity is manifested through the peculiar self-enclosure of the categories of transcendental deduction vis-à-vis metaphysical deduction (Kant) and categorial intuition vis-à-vis sensuous intuition (Husserl). (...) Although it is usually regarded as a deficient and damaging occurrence in argumentation, circularity appears to be a crucial component in the analysis of both thinkers. The analytical realms recognized by both these thinkers, are acknowledged as continually dependent upon the self-evidential “contingency” of the realms they are supposed to hierarchically overarch. The strict separation between the transcendental and phenomenological realms and their addressees appears to be founded on mutual circularity, where the relation between investigator and investigated extends beyond their separation and reconciliation. Both Kant and Husserl, through the circular relationship with empiricism-rationalism and psychologism radically re-articulated the logic-ontology and founding-founded polarities. (shrink)

The Fichte-Schelling Correspondence interweaves intriguing personal stories and philosophical combat. One of the sadder personal stories involves Schelling getting wind of Fichte’s remark to Friedrich Schlegel that he did not understand transcendental method. The letters document several clumsy attempts by Fichte to minimize the criticism only to have it surface again in a letter Fichte wrote to a former student, Jean Baptiste Schad, who showed the letter to Schelling. In it, Fichte claimed that Schelling understood Wissenschaftslehre no better than (...) Friedrich Nicolai, whom Fichte had publicly excoriated for critiquing as “I-philosophy” a superficial assemblage of random quotes from mixed sources. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault's work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault's constant focus on the question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can (...) be understood as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism or of materialism. The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault's work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the "anthropological sleep"—various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault's work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

This book challenges the presupposition among professional philosophers that René Descartes is the Father of Modern Philosophy. It demonstrates by intensive textual analysis of Descartes's _Discourse_ and _Meditations_ that he inaugurated a new type of sophistry rather than a new way of conducting philosophy. Transcendental Sophistry is a synthesis of Renaissance humanism and Christian theology, especially the theology of creation. This striking re-evaluation of the achievement of Descartes opens the history of Western philosophy to radical reinterpretation.

O artigo interpreta o pensamento de Heidegger como transformação da filosofia transcendental que conduz à sua radicalização e, ultimamente, destruição. A este projecto contrapõe Apel a sua tentativa de estabelecer uma filosofia transcendental linguístico-pragmática que procura estabelecer um compromisso entre as temáticas da constituição antepredicativa do sentido e da exigência de validade intersubjectiva. /// L'article interprète la pensée de Heidegger comme transformation de la philosophie transcendantale qui conduit à sa radicalisation et, en dernier lieu, à sa destruction. A (...) ce projet, Apel oppose sa tentative d'établir une philosophie transcendantale linguistique pragmatique qui cherche à faire un compromis entre les thématiques de la constitution anteprédicative du sens et de l'exigence de validité intersubjective. /// The author interprets Heidegger's thought in terms of a transformation of transcendental philosophy, leading to its radicalization and finally its destruction. In the place of this project, the author proposes a transcendental philosophy of a linguistic and pragmatic kind, wich seeks to establish a compromise between the thematics of ante-predicative constitution of sense and the demand for intersubjective validity. (shrink)

The Fichte-Schelling Correspondence interweaves intriguing personal stories and philosophical combat. One of the sadder personal stories involves Schelling getting wind of Fichte’s remark to Friedrich Schlegel that he did not understand transcendental method. The letters document several clumsy attempts by Fichte to minimize the criticism only to have it surface again in a letter Fichte wrote to a former student, Jean Baptiste Schad, who showed the letter to Schelling. In it, Fichte claimed that Schelling understood Wissenschaftslehre no better than (...) Friedrich Nicolai, whom Fichte had publicly excoriated for critiquing as “I-philosophy” a superficial assemblage of random quotes from mixed sources. (shrink)