Authors and printers together created the New Book of Nature—the printed literature of science—in early modern Europe. Careful attention has been given in recent years to the development of literary and rhetorical techniques in science. This article proposes that these developments were linked to printing technology and the typographic culture that produced the early printed book of science. We focus on several cases in which the roles of author and printer-publisher were joined and thereby highlight connections between knowledge production and (...) reproduction during the Scientific Revolution. Examples include Regiomontanus, Tycho Brake, Galileo, William Leybourn, Joseph Moxon, and the collective practices and privileges of the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kant's Critique of Berkeley HENRY E. ALLISON THE CLAIMTHAT KANT'S IDEALISM,or at least certain strands of it, is essentially identical to that of Berkeley has a long and distinguished history. It was first voiced by several of Kant's contemporaries such as Mendelssohn, Herder, Hamann, Pistorius and Eberhard who attacked the alleged subjectivism of the Critique of Pure Reason. 1 This viewpoint found its sharpest contemporary expression in the (...) notorious Garve-Feder review to which Kant responded at length in the Prolegomena. In subsequent times it has been championed by Schopenhauer, and most nineteenth century German commentators on the relation between the two philosophers. 2 In addition, it has been, and continues to be, the prevailing view of the vast majority of British writers on Kant, including, with significant qualifications, Norman Kemp Smith. 3 This tradition continues despite the fact that Kant specifically, and in no uncertain terms, repudiated this identification in the Prolegomena and the second edition of the Critique. In both works he responds to the charges of subjectivism, and in so doing distinguishes his position from that of Berkeley, who in the eighteenth century was commonly regarded as a solipsist and denier of the "external world." 4 In contra-distinction to Kant's own critical or transcendental idealism, which explains the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge within the realm of possible experience, Berkeley is characterized as a "dogmatic" or "visionary idealist." He is judged guilty of "degrading bodies to mere illusion" (B69), of regarding things in space as "merely imaginary entities" (B274), and of holding with all "genuine idealists" that: "all knowledge through the senses and experience is i Cf. Hans Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kant's Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (Stuttgart, Berlin, Leipzig, 1892), II, 494-505. Cf. Friederich Fredericks, Der Phainomenale Idealisraus Berkeley's und Kant's (Berlin, 1871); Robert Zimmerman, "Ober Kant's Widerlegung des Idealismus yon Berkeley" (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Philox.-hist. Kl.), LXVIII (1871); Gustav Dieckert, tiber dos Verhiiltnis des Berkeleyschen ldealismus zu Kantischen Vernun]tkritik (Konitz, 1888). Tiffs is a consequence of the general British tendency to view Kant in phenomenalist terms. A typical recent example is found in P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London, 1966). Kemp Smith in his Commentary to Kant's Critique o[ Pure Reason (2nd ed., rev., 1923) takes greaZ pains to distinguish between the subjectivist strand in Kant's thought, which is essentially identical to Berkeley's position, and the genuine critical doctrine which stands side by side with it in the text. 9 Cf. I-I.M. Bracken, The Early Reception of Berkeley's Materialism 1710-1733, rev. ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965). [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY nothing but sheer illusion, and only in the ideas of pure understanding is there truth" (374). 5 One of the chief reasons for the continuation of the Kant-Berkeley tradition is that these, and similar statements about Berkeley, which we find in these works and in Kant's correspondenc e with Beck, have not been taken very seriously by Kant's critics. They are usually dismissed as obvious misinterpretations, due to Kant's ignorance of Berkeley's actual writings, and of his reliance upon distorted second and third hand accounts of Berkeley's thought such as is to be found in Beattie. Furthermore, this view is often supported by the philological reflection that Kant did not read English, and that Berkeley's writings were not yet available in German translation. 6 The philological argument, however, loses much of its force when we consider that there was indeed a German translation of Berkeley's Dialogues, which although apparently unknown to nineteenth century scholars, was readily accessible to Kant. This is to be found, together with a translation of Collier's Clavis Universalis and critical analyses, in a work by the professor of philosophy at Rostock, Johann Christian Eschenbach, entitled: Samlung der vornehmsten Schri[tsteller die die tFirklichkeit ihres eignen K~rpers und der ganzen Ki~rperwelt leugnen (Rostock, 1756). Furthermore, in addition to this work, which was probably known to Kant, there is Berkeley's important Latin work, De Motu (1721), as well as French translations of many of... (shrink)

Although a good deal has been written about Kant's conception of free will in recent years, there has been no serious attempt to examine in detail the development of his views on the topic. This book endeavours to remedy the situation by tracing Kant's thoughts on free will from his earliest discussions of it in the 1750s through to his last accounts in the 1790s. This developmental approach is of interest for at least two reasons. First, it shows that the (...) path that led Kant to view freedom as a transcendental power that is both radically distinct from and compatible with the causality of nature was a winding one. Second, it indicates that, despite the variety of views of free will that Kant held at various times, the concept occupied a central place in his thought, because it was the point of union between his theoretical and practical philosophy. (shrink)

This paper contains a critical analysis of the interpretation of Kant's second edition version of the Transcendental Deduction offered by Béatrice Longuenesse in her recent book: Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Though agreeing with much of Longuenesse's analysis of the logical function of judgment, I question the way in which she tends to assign them the objectifying role traditionally given to the categories. More particularly, by way of defending my own interpretation of the Deduction against some of her criticisms, (...) I argue that Longuenesse fails to show how either part of the two-part proof may be plausibly thought to have established the necessity of the categories (as opposed to the logical functions). Finally, I question certain aspects of her 'radical' interpretation of the famous footnote at B160-1, where Kant distinguishes between 'form of intuition' and 'formal intuition'. (shrink)

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

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation for (...) a coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant uses the notion of spontaneity to characterize both the ordinary epistemic activity of the understanding and the kind of causal activity required for transcendentally free agency. In spite of the obvious differences between these two conceptions of spontaneity, at one time Kant virtually identified them, since he licensed the inference from the spontaneity of thought manifest in apperception to the transcendental freedom of the thinker. By the mid-1700s, however, he abandoned that view, affirming (...) instead a sharp distinction between “logical freedom,” which pertains to acts of thought, and “transcendental freedom,” which supposedly pertains to acts of will. This distinction, if not the precise language in which it was originally expressed, remained an integral part of the “critical” philosophy. Moreover, although the topic of freedom is not discussed in the Paralogisms, Kant there insists on the illegitimacy of the attempt to derive any synthetic knowledge regarding the nature of the “thing which thinks” from the ‘I think’. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper is divided into two parts. The first sketches an interpretation of the thing in itself, the noumenon and the transcendental object which clarifies the connection between these conceptions and shows that each has a “critical” function. This is accomplished by linking them with transcendental reflection. It is shown that such reflection requires the distinction between two ways of considering an object and that “noumenon” and “transcendental object” characterize alternative descriptions of an object considered as it is in itself. (...) The second part deals with the problem of affection. Although the theory of “transcendental” or “double affection” is rejected, it is argued that affection, like objects, can be considered from two points of view . Thus, while there is no distinct event entitled “transcendental affection”, there is a transcendental consideration of affection. Moreover since such a consideration involves analytic judgments about how the affecting object must be thought, the appeal to categories such as causality does not violate “critical” structures. (shrink)

Guyer argues for four major theses. First, in his early, pre-critical discussions of morality, Kant advocated a version of rational egoism, in which freedom, understood naturalistically as a freedom from domination by both one's own inclinations and from other people, rather than happiness, is the fundamental value. From this point of view, the function of the moral law is to prescribe rules best suited to the preservation and maximization of such freedom, just as on the traditional eudaemonistic account it is (...) to prescribe rules for the maximization of happiness. Second, in the Groundwork, Kant abandoned this naturalistic approach and while retaining the same substantive thesis as his early moral philosophy, "namely that freedom is the value that is realized by adherence to the moral law" (Guyer 455), attempted to provide a non-naturalistic (transcendental) grounding for this valuation of freedom. Third, this took the form of a transcendental deduction, closely modeled on that of the first Critique, which was intended to demonstrate that we are in fact (noumenally) free and the moral law is the "causal law" of this freedom. Fourth, this deduction is a disaster, indeed, one of Western philosophy's "most spectacular train wrecks" (Guyer 445). I shall discuss each in turn, devoting the bulk of my attention to the last. (shrink)

Perhaps the ultimate significance of Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy lies in its attempted reconciliation of the transcendental, logical orientation of continental rationalism with the humanistic, psychological approach of British empiricism. With the rationalists, Kant distinguished sharply between questions concerning the causes and origins of our knowledge and questions about its limits and objective validity. Thus, a rigorous critique of psychologism, i.e. of any attempt to explain, or explain away the validity of either our cognitive or moral principles by means (...) of an analysis of their basis in human nature or their genesis in human experience, is one of the most characteristic traits of the Kantian philosophy. Yet this transcendental, logical investigation of the nature and limits of knowledge, and of the fundamental principles of morality leads Kant back to the human subject, in whose cognitive faculties he finds the a priori principles of human knowledge and in whose autonomy he finds the basis of the categorical imperative. This gives rise to a paradoxical conception of man as on the one hand, together with the rest of creation, a part of nature, subject to its laws, and on the other hand, in his capacity as knower and actor, a rational being who not only transcends nature in the sense that he is not completely determined by its laws, but who is actually the author of these laws. (shrink)

This volume, originally published in 2002, assembles the historical sequence of writings that Kant published between 1783 and 1796 to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781. The best known of them, the Prolegomena, is often recommended to beginning students, but the other texts are also vintage Kant and are important sources for a fully rounded picture of Kant's intellectual development. As with other volumes in the series there are copious (...) linguistic notes and a glossary of key terms. The editorial introductions and explanatory notes shed light on the critical reception accorded Kant by the metaphysicians of his day and on Kant's own efforts to derail his opponents. (shrink)

The system presented by the author in The Logical Foundations of Statistical Inference suffered from certain technical difficulties, and from a major practical difficulty; it was hard to be sure, in discussing examples and applications, when you had got hold of the right reference class. The present paper, concerned mainly with the characterization of randomness, resolves the technical difficulties and provides a well structured framework for the choice of a reference class. The definition of randomness that leads to this framework (...) is simplified and clarified in a number of respects. It resolves certain puzzles raised by S. Spielman and W. Harper in their contributions to Profiles: Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. and Isaac Levi 1982). (shrink)

THE Concluding Unscientific Postscript is generally regarded as the most philosophically significant of Kierkegaard's works. In terms of a subjectivistic orientation it seems to present both an elaborate critique of the pretensions of the Hegelian philosophy and an existential analysis which points to the Christian faith as the only solution to the "human predicament." Furthermore, on the basis of such a straightforward reading of the text, Kierkegaard has been both vilified as an irrationalist and praised as a profound existential thinker (...) who has uncovered the only legitimate starting point for a philosophical analysis of the religious life and a Christian apologetic. (shrink)

This paper defends the thesis of the analyticity of the principle of apperception, as developed in the first part of the B-Deduction, against recent criticisms by Paul Guyer and Patricia Kitchen The first part presents these criticisms, the most important of which being that the analyticity thesis is incompatible with both the avowed goal of which being that the Deduction of establishing the validity of the categories and Üie account of apperception in the A-Deduction. The second part argues that Kant's (...) procedure in the B-Deduction of beginning with an abstract analysis of a discursive understanding, independentiy of its relation to the specifically human forms of sensibility, requires him to regard the principle as analytic and that this explains the difference from the A-Deduction. By appealing to the model of a deduction in Kant's moral theory and the two step in one proof structure of the B-Deduction, the third part argues that the analyticity thesis is in fact compatible with the goal of the Deduction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Das Medusenhaupt der Kritik, Kantstudien Ergänzungshefte by Manfred GawlinaHenry E. AllisonManfred Gawlina. Das Medusenhaupt der Kritik, Kantstudien Ergänzungshefte 128. Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. Pp. ix + 345.This work is the first full scale study of the controversy between Kant and the Wolffian philosopher Johann August Eberhard. The controversy was launched by Eberhard’s publication in 1788 of the first part of the first volume of the Philosophisches (...) Magazin, a journal which he and a handful of associates created specifically as an organ for attacking the Kantian philosophy from the standpoint of Leibniz and Wolff. The central claim was that whatever is true in the Kantian philosophy is already contained in Leibniz, and where Kant differs from Leibniz (such as in the denial of knowledge of things in themselves or “true things”) he goes astray. Kant reacted strongly to this [End Page 632] critique, first in a pair of letters to Reinhold (May 12 and 19, 1789) and then in his own published response, with the sarcastic title: Über eine Entdeckung. nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll1 From Eberhard’s side the controversy continued through three more volumes of the Philosophisches Magazin (1790–92), and two volumes of its successor, Philosophisches Archiv (1792–95). Although Kant himself did not respond directly to these subsequent attacks, he contributed material to Johann Schulz for his review of the second volume of the Philosophisches Magazin.Gawlina analyzes the controversy at both the pragmatic and philosophical levels. The former includes a consideration of the motivations of the protagonists and the various strategies and tactics adopted in an attempt to convince the philosophical public of the correctness of their respective positions. Eberhard, for his part, was particularly concerned with the threat which the Critique, which Kant himself describes as the “Medusa head” (hence the title), posed to the survival of Leibnizian-style metaphysics, while Kant’s primary concern was with the misrepresentation of his own philosophy that he saw in Eberhard’s attack. At the philosophical level, the controversy is presented as a clash between two conflicting and ultimately irreconcilable philosophical paradigms: the first being the ontological orientation of Leibniz (defended by Eberhard) according to which pure (contradiction-free) thought mirrors being (this entails that logic has ontological significance), and the epistemological-transcendental orientation of Kant, according to which the fundamental questions concern the conditions of human knowledge and the justification of its claims. The author is well aware that there are epistemological elements in Leibniz and ontological ones in Kant (most notably the claims about space and time in the Transcendental Aesthetic), but he argues persuasively that these are grounded in the philosopher’s respective ontological and epistemological standpoints.This general thesis serves to illuminate virtually all of the main points of the controversy, including the question of why Eberhard refuses to admit either the significance or novelty of the analytic-synthetic distinction, while Kant insists on both. Of particular interest in this regard is the author’s discussion of the distinction between Schranken (limits) and Grenzen (boundaries), which Kant himself draws in the Prolegomena (§58). This distinction becomes relevant to the controversy because of Eberhard’s frequent appeal to the fact that Leibniz recognizes the Schranken of human knowledge as part of his attempt to show that Leibniz anticipated Kant in providing a “critique of pure reason.” As Gawlina notes, however, the limits of knowledge, as understood by Leibniz, are merely de facto constraints on the extent to which finite minds are capable of grasping things from the eternalistic perspective of God, whereas the boundaries insisted on by Kant are principled restrictions, grounded in the positive conditions of the possibility of cognition for finite knowers. [End Page 633]Although Gawlina thus clearly indicates the ways in which Eberhard misunderstood and misrepresented Kant’s position, he refuses to declare Kant the victor in the controversy. This is partly on historical and partly on philosophical grounds. Historically, the reason is that in spite of all of its limitations, Eberhard’s critique of Kant did succeed in raising questions among Kant’s followers regarding the coherence of the... (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kant's thesis in the Tugendlehre that there are certain ends that we are obligated to adopt. It contends that none of the three arguments which Kant advances in support of this thesis succeeds and that the attempted reconstruction by Nelson Potter likewise fails. It then maintains that the argument does work, if one brings in, as an implicit premise, transcendental freedom. Finally, it is argued that this late doctrine of obligatory ends marks a significant advance over the (...) treatment of broad duties in the Grundlegung and can serve as a basis for defending Kant's ethics against the familiar emptiness charge. Der Beitrag untersucht die These Kants in der Tugendlehre , daß es bestimmte Zwecke gibt, zu deren Verfolgung wir verpflichtet sind. Dabei stellt sich heraus, daß keines der drei Argumente, die Kant zur Stützung dieser These verwendet, durchgreift und daß der diesbezügliche Rekonstruktionsversuch von Nelson Potter ebenso fehlschlägt. Es wird weiterhin die Ansicht vertreten, daß die Argumentation dann überzeugt, wenn man die transzendentale Freiheit als Prämisse einbezieht. Schließlich wird gezeigt, daß diese späte Lehre Kants von den Zwecken, die zugleich Pflicht sind, einen erheblichen Fortschritt gegenüber der Behandlung der weiten Pflichten in der Grundlegung bedeutet und eine Grundlage dafür bietet, Kants Ethik gegen den üblichen Vorwurf des leeren Formalismus in Schutz zu nehmen. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper attempts to develop an interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism which is based upon his critique of transcendental realism . It is argued that given Kant's transcendental distinction, all non‐ or pre‐critical philosophies, even Berkeleian phenomenalism are transcendentally realistic. This paradoxical result is used as the basis for an analysis of Kant's resolution of the mathematical antinomies, wherein this resolution is seen both as an “indirect proof” of transcendental idealism and as a refutation of transcendental realism. Finally, it is (...) claimed that Kant's idealism, at least insofar as it is established by means of a refutation of transcendental realism, is methodological rather than metaphysical, viz. it involves a claim about how the sensible world is to be considered in transcendental reflection, not a claim about the “real nature” of this world.RésuméCet article essaye de développer une interprétation de l'idéalisme transcendental de Kant, interprétation basée sur sa critique du réalisme transcendental . L'auteur montre que, si l'on accepte la distinction transcendentale de Kant, toutes les philosophies non critiques et précritiques sont transcendentalement réalistes, y compris le phénoménalisme de Berkeley. A partir de ce résultat paradoxal, il analyse la manière dont Kant résoud les antinomies mathématiques: cette résolution apparaît à la fois comme preuve indirecte de l'idéalisme transcendental et comme une réfutation du réalisme transcendental. L'auteur est finalement d'avis que l'idéalisme de Kant, du moins lorsqu'il est justifié par une réfutation du réalisme transcendental, est plus méthodologique que métaphysique, c'est‐à‐dire qu'il déclare comment le monde sensible doit être considéré dans la réflexion transcendentale et non quelle est la véritable nature de ce monde.ZusammenfassungEs wird versucht, eine Interpretation von Kants transzendentalem Idealismus zu entwickeln, die auf seiner Kritik am transzendentalen Realismus — verstanden als derjenige Standpunkt, der systematisch Erscheinung und Ding an sich verwechselt — beruht. Es wird argumentiert, dass — einmal Kants transzendentale Unterscheidung angenommen — aile früheren, vorkritischen Systeme der Philosophie einschliesslich Berkeleys Phänomenalismus transzendental realistisch sind. Dieses paradoxale Ergebnis wird als Basis für eine Analyse von Kants Auflösung der mathematischen Antinomien verwendet, wobei dièse Auflösung sowohl als ein indirekter Beweis für den transzendentalen Idealismus als auch als eine Widerlegung des transzendentalen Realismus gedeutet wird. Es wird schliesslich nahegelegt, dass Kants Idealismus, sofern wenigstens als er sich auf Widerlegung des transzendentalen Realismus abstützt, mehr ein rnethodologischer als ein metaphysischer Idealismus ist. Er statuiert eher über die Art, wie die Sinneswelt in einer transzendentalen Reflexion betrachtet werden soll, als über die Frage, wie die Welt wirklich beschaffen sei. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s _Paralogisms, _and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic. _Praise for the earlier edition: _ “Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by (...) any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.”—Lewis White Beck “This masterful study... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.”—Garrett Green, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

This essay examines the main line of argument of Yirmiyahu Yovel's The Adventures of Immanence. Expressing general agreement with Yovel's central thesis that Spinoza's ?immanent revolution? marked an important tuming?point in the history of modernity and profoundly influenced subsequent thought, I none the less take issue with some of the details of the story. In particular, I question his omission of Lessing, his account of the relationship between Spinoza and Kant, and his treatment of Marx. In a final section I (...) present some objections to Yovel's guiding conception of a philosophy of immanence. (shrink)

Although only one aspect of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's diverse oeuvre, his religious thought had a significant influence on thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and present-day liberal Protestant theologians. His thought is particularly difficult to assess, however, because it is found largely in a series of essays, reviews, critical studies, polemical writings, and commentary on theological texts. Beyond these, his correspondence, and a few fragmentary essays unpublished during his lifetime, we have his famous drama of religious toleration, Nathan the Wise, (...) and his philosophical-historical sketch, The Education of the Human Race. In these scattered texts, Lessing challenged the full range of theological views in the Enlightenment, from Protestant orthodoxy, with its belief in Biblical inerrancy, to a radical naturalism, which rejected both the concept of a divine revelation and the historically based claims of Christianity to be one, as well as virtually everything in between. Since he refused to identify himself with any of these parties, Lessing was an enigmatic figure, and a central question from his time to today is where he stood on the issue of the truth of the Christian religion. Now back in print, and with the addition of two supplementary essays, Henry E. Allison's book argues that, despite appearances, Lessing was not merely an eclectic thinker or intellectual provocateur, but a serious philosopher of religion, who combined a basically Spinozistic conception of God with a sophisticated pluralistic conception of religious truth inspired by Leibniz. (shrink)

Since Ramsey, much discussion of the relation between probability and belief has taken for granted that there are degrees of belief, i.e., that there is a real-valued function, B, that characterizes the degree of belief that an agent has in each statement of his language. It is then supposed that B is a probability. It is then often supposed that as the agent accumulates evidence, this function should be updated by conditioning: BE(·) should be B(·E)/B(E). Probability is also important in (...) classical statistics, where it is generally supposed that probabilities are frequencies, and that inference proceeds by controlling error and not by conditioning. I will focus on the tension between these two approaches to probability, and in the main part of the paper show where and when Bayesian conditioning conflicts with error based statistics and how to resolve these conflicts. (shrink)

There are a number of reasons for being interested in uncertainty, and there are also a number of uncertainty formalisms. These formalisms are not unrelated. It is argued that they can all be reflected as special cases of the approach of taking probabilities to be determined by sets of probability functions defined on an algebra of statements. Thus, interval probabilities should be construed as maximum and minimum probabilities within a set of distributions, Glenn Shafer's belief functions should be construed as (...) lower probabilities, etc. Updating probabilities introduces new considerations, and it is shown that the representation of belief as a set of probabilities conflicts in this regard with the updating procedures advocated by Shafer. The attempt to make subjectivistic probability plausible as a doctrine of rational belief by making it more flowery — i.e., by adding new dimensions — does not succeed. But, if one is going to represent beliefs by sets of distributions, those sets of distributions might as well be based in statistical knowledge, as they are in epistemological or evidential probability. (shrink)

Quantities are naturally viewed as functions, whose arguments may be construed as situations, events, objects, etc. We explore the question of the range of these functions: should it be construed as the real numbers (or some subset thereof)? This is Carnap's view. It has attractive features, specifically, what Carnap views as ontological economy. Or should the range of a quantity be a set of magnitudes? This may have been Helmholtz's view, and it, too, has attractive features. It reveals the close (...) connection between measurement and natural law, it makes dimensional analysis intelligible, and explains the concern of scientists and engineers with units in equations. It leaves the philosophical problem of the relation between the structure of magnitudes and the structure of the reals. What explains it? And is it always the same? We will argue that on the whole, construing the values of quantities as magnitudes has some advantages, and that (as Helmholtz seems to suggest in "Numbering and Measuring from an Epistemological Viewpoint") the relation between magnitudes and real numbers can be based on foundational similarities of structure. (shrink)

Kant’s views on enlightenment are best known through his essay, “What is Enlightenment?” This is, however, merely the first of a series of reflections on the subject contained in the Kantian corpus. In what follows, I shall attempt to provide an overview of the Kantian conception of enlightenment. My major concern is to show that Kant had a complex and nuanced conception of enlightenment, one which is closely connected to some of his deepest philosophical commitments, and is as distinct from (...) the views of his contemporaries, including Mendelssohn’s, as his critical philosophy is from the rationalism of Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. (shrink)