EDITED BY SLAVENKO ŠLJUKIĆBOOK SYMPOSIUM ON KENNETH R. WESTPHAL’S HOW HUME AND KANT RECONSTRUCT NATURAL LAW.

This book assesses and defends Kant's Critical epistemology, and the rich yet neglected resources it provides for understanding and resolving fundamental issues regarding human experience, perceptual judgment, empirical knowledge and cognitive sciences. Kenneth Westphal first examines Kant's methods and strategies for examining human sensory-perceptual experience, and then examines Kant's central, proper, and subtle attention to judgment, and so to the humanly possible valid use of concepts and principles to judge particulars we confront. This provides a comprehensive account of Kant's (...) anti-Cartesianism, the integrity of his three principles of causal judgment, and Kant's account of disciminatory perceptual-motor behaviour, including both sensory reafference and perceptual affordances. Westphal then defends the significance of Kant's subtle and illuminating account of causal judgment for three main philosophical domains: history and philosophy of science, theory of action and human freedom, and philosophy of mind. Kant's Critical Epistemology will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Kant and the relations of his thought to contemporary philosophical debates and to the sciences of the mind. (shrink)

The essay begins with an explanation of the underlying theological vision that supports Catholic social teaching's commitment to the centrality of the common good and the role of solidarity as both a virtue and a norm. The vision of humanity as one family and the church as a sacrament of unity is the foundation for a communitarian ethic that prizes inclusion, participation, and relative equality in the quest for a truly just society. An array of social science studies is then (...) employed to show that economic inequality “bleeds” into other realms of public life to undermine fundamental commitments of American society, namely, equal opportunity and political democracy. The essay concludes that an understanding of Catholic social teaching promotes a critical perspective that is deeply at odds with ongoing trends in the U.S. economy. (shrink)

This collection of essays examines the issue of norms and social practices both in epistemology and in moral and social philosophy. The contributors examine the issue across an unprecedented range of issues, including epistemology (realism, perception, testimony), logic, education, foundations of morality, philosophy of law, the pragmatic account of norms and their justification, and the pragmatic character of reason itself.

Focusing on the ground-breaking and often controversial science of Charles Darwin, the author seeks to bridge the gulf between science and religion on the subject of human evolution.

The scope of this study is both ambitious and modest. One of its ambitions is to reintegrate Hegel's theory of knowledge into main stream epist~ology. Hegel's views were formed in consideration of Classical Skepticism and Modern epistemology, and he frequently presupposes great familiarity with other views and the difficulties they face. Setting Hegel's discussion in the context of both traditional and contemporary epistemology is therefore necessary for correctly interpreting his issues, arguments, and views. Accordingly, this is an issues-oriented study. I (...) analyze Hegel's problematic and method by placing them in the context of Sextus Empiricus, Descartes, Kant, Carnap, and William Alston. I discuss Carnap, rather than a Modern empiricist such as Locke or Hume, for several reasons. One is that Hegel himself refutes a fundamental presupposition of Modern empiricism, the doctrine of "knowledge by acquaintance," in the first chapter of the Phenomenology, a chapter that cannot be reconstructed within the bounds of this study. (shrink)

In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how ...

Ken Hammond has been an influential figure in the study of decision making; with this book, he aims to show why mistaken judgments happen, how to make better decisions, and how to understand the thought modes operating in the political process.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Introduction Sense Certainty Perception Force and Understanding Hegel's Epistemological Analysis in the Phenomenology of Spirit Conclusion References Further Reading.

This book is the first detailed study of Kant's method of 'transcendental reflection' and its use in the Critique of Pure Reason to identify our basic human cognitive capacities, and to justify Kant's transcendental proofs of the necessary a priori conditions for the possibility of self-conscious human experience. Kenneth Westphal, in a closely argued internal critique of Kant's analysis, shows that if we take Kant's project seriously in its own terms, the result is not transcendental idealism but realism regarding (...) physical objects. Westphal attends to neglected topics - Kant's analyses of the transcendental affinity of the sensory manifold, the 'lifelessness of matter', fallibilism, the semantics of cognitive reference, four externalist aspects of Kant's views, and the importance of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations for the Critique of Pure Reason - that illuminate Kant's enterprise in new and valuable ways. His book will appeal to all who are interested in Kant's theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

This article shows that Hegel’s analysis of ‘Perception’ (PhdG, ch. 2) is a critique of Hume’s analysis, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the senses’ (Treatise, I.iv §2). To extend his concept-empiricism to handle the non-logical concept of the identity of a perceptible thing, Hume must appeal to several psychological ‘propensities’ to generate, in effect, a priori concepts; he must confront a ‘contradiction’ in the concept of the identity of a perceptible thing; and he must regard this concept as a ‘fiction’. (...) Hegel reexamines Hume’s account to show that the concept of the identity of a perceptible thing is non-logical and cannot be defined in accord with concept-empiricism. This important point supports Hegel’s concept-pragmatism. This point is also important in connection with the quite general problem of how we bring various sensations together into the perception of any one object. (English translation by the author of „Vom Skeptizismus in Bezug auf die Sinne oder das Ding und die Täuschung“.). (shrink)

In this brief article, essential content from mission statements by three different church groupings is compared and contrasted. Lausanne’s Cape Town Commitment is brought together with the WCC’s Together Towards Life and the Vatican’s Evangelii Gaudium. This article identifies considerable convergences between the three agendas and sees these as grounds not only for general optimism for the future of mission, but also for meaningful dialogue and appropriate strategies for the work.

Despite the accumulation of substantial cognitive science research relevant to education, there remains confusion and controversy in the application of research to educational practice. In support of a more systematic approach, we describe the Knowledge-Learning-Instruction (KLI) framework. KLI promotes the emergence of instructional principles of high potential for generality, while explicitly identifying constraints of and opportunities for detailed analysis of the knowledge students may acquire in courses. Drawing on research across domains of science, math, and language learning, we illustrate the (...) analyses of knowledge, learning, and instructional events that the KLI framework affords. We present a set of three coordinated taxonomies of knowledge, learning, and instruction. For example, we identify three broad classes of learning events (LEs): (a) memory and fluency processes, (b) induction and refinement processes, and (c) understanding and sense-making processes, and we show how these can lead to different knowledge changes and constraints on optimal instructional choices. (shrink)

The most important thesis of "Of Miracles" has no special connection with miracles: I mean the perfectly general thesis that testimonial evidence should be evaluated by the method of balancing likelihoods, which is a relatively informal version of the calculus of changes (or of probabilities). C. S. Peirce argues that the method is radically unsuited to the assessment of historical testimony. In this paper, I do essentially two things: (1) set out both an informal and a formal account of Hume’s (...) method; and (2) collect, systematize, and discuss Peirce’s somewhat scattered animadversions upon Hume’s use of this method. As part of (2), I explore some lines of thought that Peirce suggests but does not develop. (shrink)

Rejection of the philosophical relevance of history of philosophy remains pronounced within contemporary analytic philosophy. The two main reasons for this rejection presuppose that strict deduction is both necessary and sufficient for rational justification. However, this justificatory ideal of scientia holds only within strictly formal domains. This is confirmed by a neglected non-sequitur in van Fraassen’s original defence of ‘Constructive Empiricism’. Conversely, strict deduction is insufficient for rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains of inquiry. In non-formal, substantive domains, rational justification (...) is also, in part, ineliminably social and historical, for sound reasons Hegel was the first to articulate. Demonstrating this involves considering closely two key reasons many analytic philosophers (still) reject the philosophical relevance of historical philosophy (§2). As specific example of presumed, though fallacious, deductivism about justification in the non-formal domain of empirical knowledge is found in van Fraassen’s (1980) defence of ‘Constructive Empiricism’ (§3). These first two sections contend that philosophical consideration of historical philosophy is required to properly formulate key issues in non-formal domains. I next consider the further issues involved rational justification in non-formal domains, issues quintessentially posed by the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion (§4). Finally I consider what kind of history of philosophy is required for cogent philosophy in non-formal domains (§5). (shrink)

In this book, Westphal offers an original interpretation of Hegel's moral philosophy. Building on his previous study of the role of natural law in Hume's and Kant's accounts of justice, Westphal argues that Hegel developed and justified a robust form of civic republicanism. Westphal identifies, for the first time, the proper genre to which Hegel's Philosophical Outlines of Justice belongs and to which it so prodigiously contributes, which he calls Natural Law Constructivism, an approach developed by Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and (...) Hegel. He brings to bear Hegel's adoption and augmentation of Kant's Critique of rational judgment and justification in all non-formal domains to his moral philosophy in his Outlines. Westphal argues that Hegel's justification for the standards of political legitimacy successfully integrates Rousseau's Independence Requirement into the role of public reason within a constitutional republic. In these regards, Hegel's moral and political principles are progressive not only in principle, but also in practice. Hegel's Civic Republicanism will be of interest to scholars of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of law, Hegel, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Kant famously declares that “although all our cognition commences with experience, … it does not on that account all arise from experience”. This marks Kant’s disagreement with empiricism, and his contention that human knowledge and experience require both sensation and the use of certain a priori concepts, the Categories. However, this is only the surface of Kant’s much deeper, though neglected view about the nature of reason and judgment. Kant holds that even our a priori concepts are acquired, not from (...) sensation, but “originally,” because our mind has a fundamental capacity to judge that, upon sensory stimulation, generates the Categories through its basic logical functions of judgment. This “epigenesis” of reason and our fundamental capacity to judge that drives it is the topic of Longuenesse’s fascinating book, and the source of her title. (shrink)

I first highlight a main theme of the collection I edited and issued last year, Realism, Science and Pragmatism, by contrasting classical pragmatism and neo-pragmatism in terms of the distinction between semantic externalism and semantic internalism, and exhibiting how both of these semantic views are concisely stated by Carnap, though neither he nor his followers recognised this contrast, nor its profound methodological and substantive implications – although they were highlighted at the time by Wick, published by Wilfrid Sellars and Herbert (...) Feigl in the second year of their journal, Philosophical Studies. I exhibit the continuing influence of semantic internalism – which dominates Quine’s, Rorty’s, van Fraassen’s, Brandom’s and Huw Price’s neo-pragmatist views – and argue against it with pragmatic realist considerations drawn from Kant, Carnap and Sellars. (shrink)

Kenneth R. Westphal presents an original interpretation of Hume's and Kant's moral philosophies, the differences between which are prominent in current philosophical accounts. Westphal argues that focussing on these differences, however, occludes a decisive, shared achievement: a distinctive constructivist account of the basic principles of justice which justifies their strict objectivity without invoking moral realism nor moral anti- or irrealism. Westphal explores how Hume developed a kind of constructivism for basic property rights and for government, and how Kant greatly (...) refined Hume's construction of justice within his 'metaphysical principles of justice', whilst preserving the core model of Hume's innovative account. Westphal contends that Hume's and Kant's constructivism avoids the conventionalist and relativist tendencies latent if not explicit in contemporary forms of moral constructivism. (shrink)

Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ plainly has an anti-Cartesian conclusion: ‘inner experience in general is only possible through outer experience in general’ (B278). Due to wide-spread preoccupation with Cartesian skepticism, and to the anti-naturalism of early analytic philosophy, most of Kant’s recent commentators have sought to find a purely conceptual, ‘analytic’ argument in Kant’s Refutation of Idealism – and then have dismissed Kant when no such plausible argument can be reconstructed from his text. Kant’s argument supposedly cannot eliminate all relevant alternatives, (...) and so cannot justify its strong modal claims. Kant based his arguments on an inventory of our basic cognitive capacities to employ our forms of intuition and our forms of judgment. Kant provides a variety of considerations and arguments to determine what our cognitive capacities are. This involves ‘transcendental reflection’, which Kant held is absolutely crucial for judging matters a priori (A263/B319). I argue that there is a level of philosophical reflection on our own cognitive capabilities and their preconditions that is significantly richer than has been noticed by recent commentators, and that is a precondition of Kant’s transcendental reflection proper. I explicate certain thought experiments Kant proposes in order for us to recognize some our basic, characteristic cognitive capabilities, and the limits and requirements they entail for the nature and objects of human knowledge. These thought experiments involve a kind of reflection on who we as cognizant subjects are, on what our basic cognitive capabilities are. Engaging in this kind of reflection reveals that Kant’s transcendental arguments are significantly stronger and more persuasive than has been recognized in recent commentary. (shrink)

The three presumptions that Hegel’s idealism further develops or radicalises Kant’s transcendental idealism, that their respective versions of idealism are linked by Kant’s account of self-positing (Selbstsetzungslehre) in the late opus postumum and that the basic model of Hegel’s early idealism holds also for his mature system are wide-spread and largely unexamined. This paper examines several problems confronting these presumptions, including Hegel’s refutation of the basic premises of Kant’s transcendental idealism and Transzendentalphilosophie in the late opus postumum (§2), Hegel’s critical (...) rejection of intellectual intuition because it cannot escape Pyrrhonian scepticism (§3), and his critical rejection of the deductivist ideal of scientia, which undergirds Kant’s transcendental idealism and his late Transzendentalphilosophie (§4), the highly un-Kantian principles of Hegel’s mature idealism (§5) and finally Hegel’s thorough and incisive critique in the 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit of common philosophical views, concepts and presuppositions, including those which undergird the three presumptions noted above (§6). To understand properly Hegel’s philosophy of nature and hence also his philosophical system requires abandoning those three presumptions. (shrink)

According to Kant, justifying the application of mathematics to objects in natural science requires metaphysically constructing the concept of matter. Kant develops these constructions in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MAdN). Kant’s specific aim is to develop a dynamic theory of matter to replace corpuscular theory. In his Preface Kant claims completely to exhaust the metaphysical doctrine of body, but in the General Remark to MAdN ch. 2, “Dynamics,” Kant admits that once matter is reconceived as basic forces, it (...) is no longer possible to construct the concept of matter. I argue that Kant’s admission is only the tip of the problem, and that none of Kant’s commentators has fully grasped the problems infecting the MAdN that underlie Kant’s admission. I show that Kant’s proof that matter consists of forces is fallacious. I then re-analyze the circularity in Kant’s definition of density, criticizing both Adickes’ formulations and his later dissolution of it. I also show that a third circularity infects the relations between Kant’s treatment of “Dynamics” and “Mechanics” (MAdN ch. 3). These three fundamental problems demonstrate the untenability of Kant’s metaphysical method, and they require the radical revision of the relation between mathematics and metaphysics Kant undertakes in his opus postumum. I show that some of Kant’s most surprising and critical later claims about the Critical philosophy are correct, and that they require the sorts of remedies Kant contemplates in the opus postumum. (I defend the essentially correct analyses offered by Burkhard Tuschling and Eckart Forster against criticisms by Michael Friedman.). (shrink)

The apparent implications of the latest findings of the life sciences for our freedom and autonomy are both exciting and controversial: They undermine a common view of human freedom: a fundamentally Cartesian view. A superior account of our freedom was developed by Kant and Hegel. Key features of Hegel's account show that we can expect from the life sciences further insights into the biological basis of our freedom and autonomy, but not their repudiation. I begin with basic features of Cartesian (...) self-transparency (II) and then review three findings of contemporary life sciences (III). I then detail key features of Hegel's anti-Cartesianism (IV), in order to formulate the basic question about our freedom posed by the claim that biology explains away human freedom (V). I criticize this biological determinism by drawing upon Hegel's account of human freedom as autonomy (VI), and comment briefly on biologism in moral theory (VII). (shrink)

Despite extensive examination of Kant’s Transcendental Idealist account of freedom of action, an important question has been neglected about why and how Kant can use two distinct models of human action when considering any particular human act. The present paper examines and answers this question, revealing neglected yet important points about Kant’s account of action and its understanding and assessment.

The rapid development of connectionist models in computer science and of powerful computational tools in neuroscience has encouraged eliminativist materialist philosophers to propose specific alternatives to traditional mentalistic theories of mind. One of the problems associated with such a move is that elimination of the mental would seem to remove access to ideas like truth as the foundations of normative epistemology. Thus, a successful elimination of propositional or sentential theories of mind must not only replace them for purposes of our (...) psychology, it must also replace them for purposes of the evaluation of our theories and explanations, psychological and otherwise. This paper briefly reviews eliminativist arguments for doubting the correctness of sentential accounts of explanation, understanding, and normative evaluation. It then considers Paul Churchland's (1989) proposed alternative norms, which are framed neurocomputationally. The alternative is found wanting in several specific ways. The arguments for eliminating propositionally-based norms are then re-examined and it is suggested that the need for wholesale elimination is overstated. A clear gap in the traditional epistemological story is identified, however, and a more modest set of norms is proposed as a way of filling this gap, rather than as a way of entirely replacing the traditional framework. (shrink)

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting (...) material states to shifting information states. (shrink)

For many reasons mainstream Hegel scholarship has disregarded Hegel's interests in epistemology, hence also his response to scepticism. From the points of view of defenders and critics alike, it seems that 'Hegel' and 'epistemology' have nothing to do with one another. Despite this widespread conviction, Hegel was a very sophisticated epistemologist whose views merit contemporary interest. This article highlights several key features and innovations of Hegel's epistemology-including his anti-Cartesianism, fallibilism, realism (sic) and externalism both about mental content and about justification-by (...) considering his systematic responses to Pyrrhonian, Humean, Cartesian and Kantian scepticism. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Hegel’s chapter “Sense Certainty” (Phenomenology of Spirit, chap. 1) in detail in its historical and philosophical context. Hegel’s chapter develops a sound internal critique of naive realism that shows that sensation is necessary but not sufficient for knowledge of sensed particulars. Cognitive reference to particulars also requires using a priori conceptions of space, spaces, time, times, self, and individuation. Several standard objections to and misinterpretations of Hegel’s chapter are rebutted. Hegel’s protosemantics is shown to accord in important (...) regards with Gareth Evans’ view in “Identity and Predication.”. (shrink)

Argues inter alia that Kant and Hegel identified necessary conditions for the possibility of singular cognitive reference that incorporate avant la lettre Evans’ (1975) analysis of identity and predication, that Kant’s and Hegel’s semantics of singular cognitive reference are crucial to McDowell’s account of singular thoughts, and that McDowell has neglected (to the detriment of his own view) these conditions and their central roles in Kant’s and in Hegel’s theories of knowledge. > Reprinted in: J. Lindgaard, ed., John McDowell: Experience, (...) Norm and Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008d), 124–151. (shrink)