This article explores Immanuel Kant’s transcendental argument in philosophy. According to Kant, a transcendental argument begins with a compelling first premise about our thought, experience, knowledge, or practice, and then reasons to a conclusion that is a substantive and unobvious presupposition and necessary condition of the truth of this premise, or as he sometimes puts it, of the possibility of this premise’s being true. Transcendental arguments are typically directed against skepticism of some kind. For example, Kant’s (...) class='Hi'>Transcendental Deduction targets Humean skepticism about the applicability of a priori metaphysical concepts, and his Refutation of Idealism takes aim at skepticism about an external world. The article first considers the nature of transcendental arguments before analysing a number of specific transcendental arguments, including Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and Refutation of Idealism. It also discusses contemporary arguments, such as those forwarded by P. F. Strawson and and Christine Korsgaard, together with their problems and prospects. (shrink)

In metaphysical theorizing, it is common to use expressions whose function is that of denoting or being true of absolutely everything. Adopting a scolastic term, these may be called ‘transcendentals’. Different metaphysical theories may adopt different transcendentals, the most usual candidates being ‘thing’, ‘entity’, ‘object’, ‘be’, ‘exist’, and their counterparts in various languages dead or alive. We call ‘transcendental disagreement’ any dissent between philosophical theories or traditions that may be described as a disagreement in the choice of transcendentals. Examples (...) of transcendental disagreement include the debate about Lewis's conception of actuality and a number of recent discussions between Meinongians and their ‘Quinean’ rivals. A case is made for the conclusion that, as such, transcendental disagreements are purely terminological in character. It is argued that transcendental disagreements are generally to be assessed on pragmatic rather than on metaphysical grounds. Finally, the paper makes a start in the analysis of those pragmatic grounds which include the pursuit of univocity, fairness, and ease of comparison between theories. (shrink)

Surprisingly, over the decade or so since its publication, Bhaskar's Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom has received relatively little in the way of systematic analysis either by critical realists or their critics. There have been, however, a number of critiques that have dealt with some of its themes and developments in a variety of contexts. In the following study, I assess the argument of Alex Callinicos. Callinicos' critique, though in many ways sympathetic, is fundamental to critical realism. Engaging with it (...) provides a means to develop and clarify a number of arguments about aspects of critical realism in general and also provides a useful staging point to set forth a basic and consistent ordering of inquiry for a critique of DPF. The initial purpose of the analysis is not so much a defence of DPF but an assessment of the construction of an argument brought to bear on it. I argue that the form of the argument deployed is problematic in a way that detracts from the substance of the critique of the content of DPF. This is not to suggest that DPF is immune to criticism but rather to suggest that a fuller analysis of the DPF argument and its potential remains to be made. The ultimate purpose of the analysis is to use this assessment of a strategy of critique—an argumentation schema or discursive form—to create an alternative approach to critically appraising DPF. Fundamental to Callinicos' argument is the nature of transcendental argument. (shrink)

The article considers I.Kant's transcendental philosophy as a possible basis for further research in the field of artificial intelligence. It is demonstrated that the main criticism of transcendentalism associated with the exclusion of ontology "in its pure form" in I.Kant's philosophy is irrelevant if artificial intelligence is understood by "pure reason", since one of the features of the latter is the absence of an "ontological assumption". A number of I.Kant's propositions quite adequately describe the basic mechanisms of artificial intelligence, (...) and at the same time "pure reason" is considered in I.Kant's works not in isolation, but in connection with human consciousness as a whole, which makes his philosophy a productive basis for developments in the field of artificial consciousness. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I defend an interpretation of the methodological development of transcendental philosophy from Kant's first Critique to Fichte's later Jena-period Wissenschaftslehre. Both Kant and Fichte claim that experience is founded upon certain a priori subjective structures and capacities. However, I argue that the methodology of Kant's first Critique includes a number of assumptions and explicit doctrines that limit his ability to explain experience. The chief problem of Kant's theory of method is, I claim, his distinction between the (...) methods of philosophy and mathematics, whereby the method of construction is limited to mathematics. I argue that Fichte attempts to solve Kant's problem by expanding the method of construction to philosophy itself. As a method, construction has two aspects. First, the task of the philosopher is to reconstruct discursively the spontaneous process whereby subjectivity is self-constructing. By "self-construction," I refer to a functional structure wherein subjectivity is the achievement of a range of proto-conscious, primitive mental activities. Second, the method of the philosopher is similar to the method of geometric construction, viz., the postulation of a task to be completed regarding which one---beginning from putatively self-evident resources---creatively and imaginatively seeks out a solution. Fichte turns to construction since there is no algorithm for philosophical reflection and he revises Kant's important doctrines regarding intellectual intuition and the productive imagination. However, though Fichte's solution to Kant's problem is promising, the notion of construction itself generates a number of problems. (shrink)

One of Kant’s central central claims in the Critique of Pure Reason is that we cannot have knowledge of things as they are in themselves. This claim has been regarded as problematic in a number of ways: whether Kant is entitled to assert both that there are things in themselves and that we cannot have knowledge of them, and, more generally, what Kant’s commitment to things in themselves amounts to. A number of commentators deny that Kant is committed to there (...) actually being an aspect of reality which we cannot cognise; they argue that he is committed merely to the idea that we cannot avoid the concept of things as they are in themselves. I will argue in this paper that while transcendental idealism is partly an epistemological position, it is also partly a metaphysical position, and in specific, that Kant is committed to the claim that the things we cognise have, in addition to the way they appear to us, a nature that is independent of us, which we cannot cognise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility: Husserl and Fink on the Phenomenologizing Subject by Denis DŽANIĆD. J. HobbsDŽANIĆ, Denis. Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility: Husserl and Fink on the Phenomenologizing Subject. Cham: Springer, 2023. x + 236 pp. Cloth, $119.99Denis Džanić’s Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility, despite its superficially historical focus on a specific period of collaboration between Edmund Husserl and his somewhat wayward protégé Eugen (...) Fink, addresses key systematic issues in transcendental phenomenology, namely, how the act of phenomenologizing should be understood in connection with the specific human beings who aim to become phenomenologists, and what the answer to this question tells us about both the genuine subject of phenomenology and the motivation for phenomenologizing. These questions are important for our understanding of not only the historical development of phenomenology but also the practice and goals of phenomenology—specifically, for a conception of phenomenologizing as a project in which we, as particular, historical, empirical figures, might want to engage.Much of the book focuses on laying the groundwork for understanding these complicated issues both historically and systematically. Džanić does an admirable job of tracing the rapidly evolving interactions between Husserl and Fink, both as intellectual collaborators on this philosophical project and as a pair of very human figures who ultimately found themselves pursuing quite different solutions to the problems of the subject and origin of phenomenology. He focuses particularly on the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Fink’s attempt to extend Husserl’s famous text to include a phenomenology of the act of phenomenologizing itself (including Husserl’s marginal comments on the text), although he draws on a number of other significant texts and manuscripts (mostly Husserl’s, albeit with an extended aside on Heidegger) wherever they are helpful for explicating the complex evolution of Husserl’s thought on the subject. Admittedly, the book thus takes on a challenging task—both because of the difficult nature of this topic and because of the obscurity of the technical terms required to discuss it. However, despite the necessarily enigmatic character of the relevant language, Džanić’s attempts to explore the main outlines of this issue are worthwhile, particularly due to his ability to resist the temptation to view Husserl’s thought here as monolithic.In the early chapters, Džanić explicates in detail the rather complicated solution that Fink proposed to this difficulty, namely, the abandonment (to some extent) of the ultimately human origin of phenomenology in favor of a fundamentally nonhuman (and eventually meontic) conception of the transcendental ego, which generated a great deal of elaborate and (at least in the Sixth Meditation) inadequately supported speculation. For Fink, both the motivation to phenomenologize and the act of phenomenologizing itself ultimately stem from a source that is fundamentally prior to—in a(n onto)logical rather than temporal sense—any empirical ego or empirical act of phenomenologizing, a source that merely “enworlds” itself (in various complicated senses that Džanić does [End Page 145] an admirable job of clarifying) in the apparently anthropologistic, everyday world of individual phenomenologists. Džanić calls this interpretation of phenomenology Fink’s “epistemological anti-humanism,” and it serves as the basis for one potential (radically anti-Heideggerian but nevertheless somewhat disappointing) solution to the question of why we should phenomenologize at all. As Džanić notes, this solution was at least briefly taken up by Fink’s mentor Husserl himself, although the degree to which Husserl actually endorsed this path beyond the level of a fleeting flirtation remains questionable. Ultimately, as Džanić rightly highlights and as becomes abundantly clear in Husserl’s (often rather scathing) notes on Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation, he abandoned this interpretation.Accordingly, in the later chapters of the book, Džanić traces Husserl’s ultimate development of a quite different solution to the problems of the origin and motivation of phenomenology—a solution that, unlike his brief foray into Finkian grandeur, views the act of phenomenologizing as essentially rooted in human possibility (that is, as part of the famous lifeworld that features so prominently in Husserl’s work, especially in the Crisis and other late texts). After his collaboration with and... (shrink)

The analyses of the mind–world relation offered by transcendental idealists such as Husserl have often been dismissed with the argument that they remain committed to an outdated form of internalism. The first move in this paper will be to argue that there is a tight link between Husserl’s transcendental idealism and what has been called phenomenological externalism, and that Husserl’s endorsement of the former commits him to a version of the latter. Secondly, it will be shown that key (...) elements in Husserl’s transcendental idealism, including his rejection of representationalism and metaphysical realism, is shared with a number of prominent contemporary defenders of an externalist view on the mind. Ultimately, however, it will be suggested that the very alternative between internalism and externalism—an alternative based on the division between inner and outer—might be inapplicable when it comes to phenomenological conceptions of the mind–world relation. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to shed light on the use of transcendental deductions, within demonstrations of aspects of Wittgenstein's early semantics, metaphysics, and philosophy of mathematics. I focus on two crucial claims introduced by Wittgenstein within these transcendental deductions, each identified in conversation with Desmond Lee in 1930-31. Specifically, the claims are of the logical independence of elementary propositions, and that infinity is a number. I show how these two, crucial claims are both demonstrated and subsequently deployed (...) by Wittgenstein within a series of transcendental deductions, a series which begins with extensionalism as a generalized condition of sense on propositions, and in the context of which are then derived various, further, significant and unobvious presuppositions generated by that generalized condition of sense. In addition to clearing up deductions of these two, aforementioned claims, I also elucidate deductions of the subsistence of objects, and of logical space as an infinite totality. (shrink)

The essay is a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire distributed to a sample of 775 worshipers immediately after the Sunday Liturgy in a random number of churches in Athens, Thessaloniki and Mytilini. The questions addressed to them try to grasp feelings and thoughts felt during liturgical experience and effervescence as such, as well as reflections concerning the religious and the political self. The findings suggest that the liturgy has profound effects on those who attend service often, but it is not (...) irrelevant even to those who attend service less often. Those who attend service often and feel strongly the liturgical rite tend to identify religion, both doctrinal and vernacular, with politics, consider themselves to be rightist and hold political beliefs revolving around antinomian egotism and authoritative paternalism. Those who attend service rarely and do not experience any effervescence, as the mirror-image of the former, tend to identify themselves as leftist and hold political beliefs revolving around revolution, defiance and the like, and reject democratic institutions. The study underlines the very close connection of church attendance to ‘magical’ aspects of the Orthodox religion, as well as the very strong presence of icons in the life of the believers irrespective of their frequency of liturgical attendance. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of the place of deconstruction in the history of transcendental philosophy. J. Derrida’s project is considered as one of the most representative and consistent realizations of theoretical foundations of transcendentalism along with prominent conceptions such as Kant’s critique and Husserl’s phenomenology. The author suggests a number of attributes of transcendental thinking that allow historical reconstruction of the transcendental paradigm. Derridian approach is considered as a turn towards this tradition, conceived as a (...) class='Hi'>transcendental tradition par exellence, guided by the attitude of «turning. Historical legacy of deconstructive «turning» is analyzed with respect to Husserlian Rückfrage: return-inquiry as method, idea and attitude, reproducing in deconstructive strategy of interpretative critique. A concept of hyperbolic transcendentalism is introduced in order to (1) define a deconstructive version of transcendental philosophy and (2) indicate an immanent tendency in the transcendental thought, constitutive for both Kantian critical project and Husserlian strive towards intellectual radicalism extending from methodological hyperboles (reduction and epoche) to radicalization of «transcendental motive». The author relies upon the concept of quasi-transcendental (thematized by Derrida himself), which defines a mode of de-dogmatization, critical purifying and preservation of proper transcendental foundations of philosophical thinking. (shrink)

From this summary account of the deduction we can draw a number of conclusions: In the first place, the guiding thesis used to make sense of the argument was that the argument needed to ground not just the moral law but a cognitive framework within which the moral law is the highest law. This distinction is important since it allows us to distinguish in the practical philosophy (as in the theoretical) a level of transcendental argumentation from a level of (...) metaphysical argumentation: The concern of transcendental philosophy would be to establish the conditions of the possibility of a cognitive framework, whereas the concern of metaphysics (in Kant's sense) is to develop the principles of a given cognitive framework and to derive from them knowledge of objects (see KU, Introduction, Section V). (This distinction turns out to be invaluable in dealing with the problem of the “application” of the moral law.)In the second place, this interpretation allows us to avoid reducing the practical viewpoint to the status of a poor imitation of “real” knowledge, one whose inadequacies must be passed over in embarrassed silence for the sake of rescuing morality. If the argument is correct, practical knowledge is in one sense more firmly grounded than (and even subsumes) theoretical knowledge, even though its grounds do not allow of complete insight.And, finally, we can make at least some cautious generalizations about Kant's understanding of a transcendental argument. Two things in particular seem to characterize the deduction: (1) It is essential that the argument is concerned with a cognitive framework rather than with any specific knowledge within that framework; it is the possibility of knowledge at all that is in question, and it is that fact that requires a special kind of argument. (2) Kant's assumptions about the distinct roots of human knowledge are indispensable to the argument. The distinction between mere speculation (mere thinking, which requires only our rational faculties) and knowledge (which also requires sensibility) is essential: Without that distinction we cannot understand why the argument is necessary in the first place (since, as I argued above, we cannot see how the moral law is synthetic), nor can we understand what it means to ground a cognitive framework: Grounding a cognitive framework for Kant has turned out to involve showing how two irreducibly distinct faculties can cooperate in acts of cognition - here it is the faculty of desire and the pure will which are conceptually irreducible and for which grounds of a possible a priori unity must nevertheless be given. The fact that these two features are so central to the argument would indicate that they should be taken into consideration in any discussion of transcendental arguments framed along Kantian lines. (shrink)

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)

Although Peter Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’ was published over fifty years ago and has been widely discussed, its main argument is still notoriously difficult to pin down. The most common – but in my view, mistaken – interpretation of Strawson’s argument takes him to be providing a ‘relentlessly’ naturalistic framework for our responsibility practices. To rectify this mistake, I offer an alternative interpretation of Strawson’s argument. As I see it, rather than offering a relentlessly naturalistic framework for moral responsibility, Strawson (...) actually develops a transcendental argument, which grounds our moral responsibility practices in the practical perspective of social agents. However, the aims of this essay are not purely interpretative. Strawson’s essay continues to have important implications for a number of issues that arise in the contemporary debates that concern free will and moral responsibility. In particular, it puts significant pressure on moral responsibility sceptics like Derk Pereboom [Living Without Free Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001] who think that the truth of moral responsibility scepticism has no worrisome implications for our lives with others. (shrink)

The Life of the Transcendental Ego presents essays by a number of distinguished writers in the continental tradition of philosophy. The essays include problems in transcendental philosophy, the nature of autobiography, the validity of existentialism, the possibilities of phenomenology, as well as focused discussions of concrete issues in aesthetics and ethics.

The subject of this article is a powerful objection to the non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories. Part of the purpose of the deduction is to refute the sort of scepticism according to which there are no objects of empirical intuition that instantiate the categories. But if the non-conceptualist interpretation is correct, it does not follow from what Kant is arguing in the transcendental deduction that this sort of scepticism is false. This article explains and (...) assesses a number of possible responses to this objection. (shrink)

This essay examines critically a number of characteristics of transcendental philosophy. The question, ?What, if anything, distinguishes transcendental philosophy and transcendental arguments from other types of philosophy and argument??, is given a negative answer: nothing, no essential thing, demarcates transcendental argumentation or philosophy from other kinds of philosophical reflection. In particular, argumentative structure alone is not a defining feature of transcendental philosophy. Illustrative examples of recent debates on the meaning and philosophical relevance of the ? (...) class='Hi'>transcendental? are discussed in the essay: e.g., attempts to ?naturalize? the transcendental, Wittgensteinian reflections on the limits of meaningful language, and ?merely methodological? interpretations of Kantian transcendental idealism. Through these case studies, it is shown how transcendental inquiry can be rearticulated in a pragmatist context. (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can (...) serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

The issue of the nature of cognitive experience has been a subject of lively debate in recent works on epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. During this debate, the relevance of Kant to contemporary theories of cognition has been re-discovered. However, participants in this debate disagree whether Kant was a conceptualist or a non-conceptualist, with regard to the character of intuitions. The central point of controversy concerns whether or not Kant’s sensible intuitions involve understanding and have a conceptual content. In (...) this paper, I show that, despite their disagreements, both sides share a number of common presuppositions, which have determined a biased framework for the reading of Kant. My principal aim in this article is to reconcile the case for conceptualism with those interpretations which argue that intentionality and conceptuality can be separated. To achieve it, I present my own reconstruction of Kant’s theory of cognition, relying essentially on Kantian considerations found in the B-version of the Transcendental Deduction, and offer a new interpretation of Kantian conceptualism. (shrink)

One as transcendental and one as number -- Number and time in Being and time -- The mathematical epoch -- Conclusion : toward a continental philosophy of mathematics.

Kant's critical philosophy is often regarded as standing in a problematic relation to his works in “anthropology”, or the study of human nature. In the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant describes his critical project as a “Copernican” turn toward the cognitive subject, which might seem to signal a reorientation of philosophy around anthropology.1 However, both in the first Critique and in his subsequent works he relegates “empirical anthropology” and “practical” or “moral anthropology” to (...) the sidelines of his critical projects in cognitive and practical philosophy. Yet Kant's formulation of his critical philosophy coincided almost exactly with the development of his interest in anthropology. During the 1770s, the “silent decade” in which he formulated his critical philosophy, Kant initiated a course on anthropology at the University of Königsberg. This course was among the most popular in his regular schedule, and he offered it annually for twenty-five years until his retirement. He then published a revised version of his lectures as the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, a text that is one of his most accessible publications, and might even seem uncharacteristically loose and anecdotal to readers of his other works. Kant also published a number of shorter works on anthropological topics during this period, and even suggested, in several scattered remarks, that anthropology in some way encompasses all of the philosophical disciplines. (shrink)

Working within the Aristotelian tradition, I argue that relation is not a category but a transcendental property of being. By this I mean that all substances are actualized, and hence defined, relationally: all actuality is interactuality. Interactuality is the locus for the relational categories of substance, action, being-affected, number, and most types of quality. The interactuality of corporeal beings is further conditioned by relations of setting; here we find the relational categories of place (where), quantity in the sense of (...) size, quality in the sense of shape, and time (when). In offering a relational account of substance, I distinguish between external relata (physical environment, objects of sensation and knowledge as external) and internal relata (one’s body, objects of sensation and knowledge as internal. This distinction between external and internal relata is transcended in the case of the Trinity, insofar as the divine persons are both perfectly distinct and perfectly united. (shrink)

The article provides a philosophical reconstruction of the composition of key motives in the phenomenological project of Mark Richir, who is known for his criticism of the symbolic institution. Following Richir’s deep inspiration in Schelling’s philosophy allows to find connections between his theory of the phenomenological unconscious and affectivity, his commentaries concerning Greek mythology and mythological thinking in La Naissance de Dieux—and his political theory. Along with general historical and philosophical comments on a number of translations of Schelling into French, (...) Richir repeatedly refers to Schelling in his own theoretical arguments. The research shows how some of Richir’s concepts — in particular, his interpretation of the phenomenological unconsciousness, myth, the Protean nature of power, the change of grand epochs as a change of types of the symbolic institutions of power—can be understood on the basis of relevant passages from Schelling’s philosophy, and how a semantic genealogical connection between them can be built. By considering the importance of the phenomenological unconsciousness in the course of phenomenalization process as described in Richir’s works, it is proposed to contrast the interpretation of the unconsciousness, which retains its simple mystery and the ways of dealing, with it in Richir’s version: while psychoanalysis is striving for the “disenchantment” of the unconsciousness by means of translating it into the symbolic language and transferring the living potentiation of meaning into the reproduction of a symptom. Richir’s phenomenological appeal to mythology turns out to be a non-trivial shift from theoretical philosophy to practical philosophy. The article also pays attention to the theory of power in Richir and Lefort, which presumably dates back to La Boétie. It is proposed to reveal the antithesis of the imaginary policy of the despot proposed by Richir, reproducing the symbolic institution of power and supporting the transcendental illusion of the need for control and order in the form of a kind of “hypnosis”—and real politics as a praxis of freedom. (shrink)

SummaryIn this paper it is argued that, contrary to some widely accepted views, Kant's doctrine of Transcendental Schematism is a coherent one. The interpretation of this doctrine is given as follows: for Kant, the imagination functions empirically and transcendentally . Empirically, an image is created out of a collection of impressions which we happen to have at any particular time: this is the «certain content« of inner sense. In order that this be an object of cognition, however, it must (...) be brought to order in accordance with certain necessary and unchanging forms and this task is performed by the transcendental imagination. Here, the procedure of imagination is schematic: by means of it the categories become schematized, i.e. the transcendental imagination in its schematic procedure, produces a schema for each category such that is becomes materially operative. But generally speaking the schemata, as transcendental time determinations, are the conditions under which the categories are brought to bear on inner sense. Time is «determined» in a number of ways so that sensible intuition is received under various temporal modes in accordance with the categories. Schemata therefore, in guaranteeing the employment of the categories, restrict their application to inner sense. (shrink)

As the title suggests, Sebastian Luft’s book concerns Husserl’s mature thought, from the “transcendental turn” of Ideas I to the latest works of the 1930s. Even though its various chapters have been published separately before, it makes up a coherent whole and works well as a book. Transitional passages have been added to tie the chapters together. The book is clearly the work of a thorough and consummate Husserl scholar who has a grasp of all the works, published, posthumously (...) published, and still unpublished. And no wonder: Luft is a true insider, who worked in the Archives at Leuven for a number of years and edited one of the volumes (Hua XXXIV) of Husserliana.First, an aside prompted by the title and what I claim it “suggests:” The title doesn’t mention Husserl and there is no subtitle. Further, my copy has nothing on the back cover. So how do we know, before even opening it, that it is about Husserl? It would seem that “transcendental phenomenology” is just another name for Husser. (shrink)

This is a book in which Harris weaves together his work on logic, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and political philosophy - already the subject of his earlier articles and books - into a striking personal synthesis. Harris does not while away his time calculating the number of angels on the head of a pin or the types and differrentiations of “raw feels,” but addresses himself to important and challenging questions, some of them almost completely neglected by other philosophers. In what (...) follows I will discuss what I consider to be the three major contributions of this book, and end with some reservations I have about the concept of dialectic expounded there. (shrink)

Habermas's transcendentalism in Knowledge and Human Interests ( KHI) deserves to be reappraised for a number of reasons. Prevailing conceptions of strong transcendental arguments, which inform many of his critics, cannot be sustained. The analytic reception of Kant suggests a more modest role for them that is remarkably similar to Habermas's claims for the paradigm of rational reconstruction. Hence a reinterpretation of transcendentalism provides a new basis for establishing a continuity between his early and later work. Habermas's underlying argument (...) structure owes much, albeit unconsciously, to Kant's concept of a regulative idea. Only the "as if" status of regulative ideas allows one to make sense of the metacritical structure of KHI and Habermas's transcendental arguments emerge as deeply hermeneutic in character rather than logical in any formal sense. (shrink)

This essay examines critically a number of characteristics of transcendental philosophy. The question, 'What, if anything, distinguishes transcendental philosophy and transcendental arguments from other types of philosophy and argument?', is given a negative answer: nothing, no essential thing, demarcates transcendental argumentation or philosophy from other kinds of philosophical reflection. In particular, argumentative structure alone is not a defining feature of transcendental philosophy. Illustrative examples of recent debates on the meaning and philosophical relevance of the ' (...) class='Hi'>transcendental' are discussed in the essay: e.g., attempts to 'naturalize' the transcendental, Wittgensteinian reflections on the limits of meaningful language, and 'merely methodological' interpretations of Kantian transcendental idealism. Through these case studies, it is shown how transcendental inquiry can be rearticulated in a pragmatist context. (shrink)

Numbers. Natural numbers -- Integers -- Real numbers -- Irrational and transcendental numbers -- Funny numbers. Zero -- e : the unnatural natural number -- [Phi] : the golden ratio -- i : the imaginary number -- Writing numbers. Roman numerals -- Egyptian fractions -- Continued fractions -- Logic. Mr. Spock is not logical -- Proofs, truth, and trees : oh my! -- Programming with logic -- Temporal reasoning -- Sets. Cantor's diagonalization : infinity isn't just infinity -- Axiomatic (...) set theory : keep the good, dump the bad -- Models : using sets as the LEGOs of the math world -- Transfinite numbers : counting and ordering infinite sets -- Group theory : finding symmetries with sets -- Mechanical math. Finite state machines : simplicity goes far -- The turing machine -- Pathology and the heart of computing -- Calculus : no, not that calculus- [lambda] calculus -- Numbers, booleans, and recursion -- Types, types, types : modeling [lambda] calculus -- The halting problem. (shrink)

From a number of quarters have come attempts to answer some form of skepticism—about knowledge of the external world, freedom of the will, or moral reasons—by showing it to be performatively self-defeating. Examples of this strategy are subject to a number of criticisms, in particular the criticism that they fail to shift the burden of proof from the anti-skeptical position, and so fail to establish the epistemic entitlement they seek. To these approaches I contrast one way of understanding Kant’s core (...) anti-skeptical arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s goal is the more modest one of showing the applicability of the concepts of substance and cause to experience, against those who might call such application incoherent, or a category mistake. I explain why this goal makes Kant’s approach more promising than those of neo-Kantian practitioners of otherwise structurally-similar strategies. (shrink)

It has long been disputed whether Kant's transcendental idealism requires two worlds ? one of appearances and one of things in themselves ? or only one. The one-world view must be wrong if it claims that individual spatio-temporal things can be identified with particular things in themselves, and if it fails to take seriously the doctrine of double affection; versions that insist on one world, without making claims about the identity of individual things, cannot say in what way the (...) world as we know it and the world of things in themselves can be ?the same?. The two-world view must be wrong if it denies Kant's empirical realism, or offers a phenomenalist interpretation of it. On moral grounds Kant ?identifies? each human person with a particular thing in itself, but the relationship here cannot be strict identity; instead its closeness may warrant regarding the two distinct entities as part of a composite whole. Perhaps up to the first edition of the Critique, Kant thought that empirical knowledge required a particular kind of close correspondence between appearances and things in themselves, one that would make it appropriate to speak of composite wholes here also. By the time of the second edition, he saw that there could be no good grounds for thinking that. In this respect something a bit like the one-world theory might make more sense for the first edition than for the second; but in both cases there is room to speak of two worlds as well. Talk of the number of worlds is metaphorical, and both metaphors have their dangers. (shrink)

This paper provides a new, comprehensive overview of Martin Heidegger’s interpretations of Immanuel Kant. Its aim is to identify Heidegger’s motive in interpreting Kant and to distinguish, for the first time, the four phases of Heidegger’s reading of Kant. The promise of the “phenomenological Kant” gave Heidegger entrance to a rich domain of investigation. In four phases and with reference to Husserl, Heidegger interpreted Kant as first falling short of phenomenology (1919-1925), then approaching phenomenology (1925-1927), then advancing phenomenology (1927-1929), and (...) finally recovering phenomenology (1930 and after). By identifying this motive and these four phases, the paper sets aside a number of common misinterpretations concerning the significance of the 1925 turn to Kant, the relation of the Kant-interpretation to Husserl, the relation of the 1929 'Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics' to 'Being and Time,' and Heidegger’s regard for Kant in his later writings. The paper thereby clarifies Heidegger’s path of thinking and its indebtedness to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

"Husserl's work include lengthy treatment of universals, categories, meanings, numbers, manifolds, etc. from an ontological perspective. Here, however, we shall concentrate almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations, which contain in a clear form the ontological ideas which provided the terminological and theoretical basis both for much of the detailed phenomenological description and for many of the metaphysical theses presented in Husserl's later works.

No one should be put off from reading Miles' Logik undMetaphysik bei Kant by his telling us that he is following the ‘phenomenological-philological method’ Heidegger practiced, as shown in his Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, his earliest work on Kant and his last to be published. I do not claim to understand Miles' conception of this method. Whatever it be, what Miles actually presents is a careful examination of a number of crucial passages in Kant's first Critique (...) in Kantian terms. From it even the most seasoned student of the Critique will find light. (shrink)

Številka 45-46 revije Phainomena z naslovom „Evropsko sporazumevanje – filozofsko razumevanje združuje filozofsko refleksijo o evropskosti s hermenevtičnimi in fenomenološkimi študijami o temah, ki so temeljito opredelile evropski duh v prejšnjem stoletju. Na podlagi tega je mogoče oblikovati vprašanje o filozofsko smislu evropskosti danes in o možnosti prihodnjega evropskega sporazumevanja. Osnovo za to diskusijo najdemo v Husserlovem delu Kriza evropskih znanosti in transcendentalna fenomenologija. .The 45-46 issue of the philosophical journal Phainomena, “European Coming to an Understanding – Philosophical Understanding”, is (...) a collection of philosophical reflections on Europe introducing a number of hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of the topics which fundamentally determined the spirit of Europe of the 20th century. On this basis, it is possible to pose questions about the philosophical meaning of Europe today and of the possibility of the future European coming to an understanding. The fundamental work of this enterprise is Husserl’s work Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic by Lorne FalkensteinManfred KuehnLorne Falkenstein. Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Pp. xxiii + 465. Cloth, $70.00.This is the most substantial book on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic to appear in a long time. Though the Transcendental Aesthetic takes up only thirty-five pages of the six hundred sixty-five pages (...) of the Critique of Pure Reason, it is most important. Kant’s theory of space and time belongs among his most provocative contributions to philosophy, and it is the centerpiece of his so-called transcendental idealism. As such, it has received a great deal of attention even in recent times, just not many book-length treatments.The book has three parts. The first deals with Kant’s terminology, and in particular with the distinctions between intuition and understanding, form and matter in intuition, and sensation and matter in intuition. Since Kant was far from clear in drawing these distinctions, Falkenstein’s sophisticated discussion adds considerably to a better understanding of them. Part II discusses Kant’s various Metaphysical and Transcendental Expositions. Falkenstein is for the most part sympathetic to Kant’s goals in the Metaphysical Expositions, believing that they go a long way towards establishing that space and time are intuitive or “prior to all processing” (279) and not the result of any kind of synthesis. He is more guarded in his evaluation of the Transcendental Expositions. Though they seem to establish the same conclusion as the Metaphysical Expositions, and though they even seem to strengthen these conclusions, the Transcendental Expositions start from premises that “many will not be able to grant,” like the claim that Euclidean geometry must be presupposed for “solid and enduring objects” (282). Furthermore, they also rely on results established in the Metaphysical Expositions. Thus, while the conclusions of the Metaphysical Expositions are weaker, they are more trustworthy. Falkenstein believes that “far too much attention” has been given to the subjectivity of the forms of intuition, “and far too little (in fact, none) has been focused on the weaker, but still important conclusion that space and time are orders in which sensations are originally received by us” (283). Falkenstein also calls space and time “presentational orders.” In the third part, he examines central claims, which, according to Kant, follow from his arguments, namely, (i) the subjectivity thesis, (ii) the non-spatiotemporality thesis, and (iii) the unknowability thesis. (i) is the claim that space and [End Page 326] time “do and must qualify all the objects of our sensory experience” (288); (ii) is the claim that space and time are “absolutely nothing” apart from intuition, and that things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal; and (iii) is the claim that things in themselves are unknowable. Falkenstein argues that (i) is largely uncontroversial. It is a basic conclusion that follows from his arguments. While (ii) is controversial and might present great difficulties for Kant, it can be rescued, if it is understood simply as the “analytic claim that any order of things in themselves could not be a presentational order” (356). In this sense it is innocuous and follows from Kant’s arguments. The unknowability thesis (iii) seems to conflict both with the non-spatiotemporality thesis in the strong sense and with a number of things which Kant says about affection and the receptive constitution of the subject in intuition. However, it can also be rescued. If we understand (ii) in a mitigated sense, and if we dismiss Kant’s claims about affection and receptive constitution as vacuous, it also presents no fundamental problems. And Falkenstein argues that we should do just that. The claims about affinity and our receptive constitution do not do any work. They “translate Kant’s Critical Idealism into a naive realist paradigm” and are thus “needlessly confusing” (357).Falkenstein’s book offers a carefully argued and sophisticated account of the Aesthetic. No one concerned with this aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy (or indeed any other aspect of it) can afford to ignore it. The book should become an indispensable part of graduate seminars on Kant’s first... (shrink)

We argue that certain modal questions raise serious problems for a modal metaphysics on which we are permitted to quantify unrestrictedly over all possibilia. In particular, we argue that, on reasonable assumptions, both David Lewis's modal realism and Timothy Williamson's necessitism are saddled with the remarkable conclusion that there is some cardinal number of the form ℵα such that there could not be more than ℵα-many angels in existence. In the last section, we make use of similar ideas to draw (...) a moral for a recent debate in meta-ontology. (shrink)

Goldbach’s conjecture, if not read in number theory, but in a precise foundation theory of mathematics, that refers to the metaphysical ‘theory of the participation’ of Thomas Aquinas, poses a surprising analogy between the category of the quantity, within which the same arithmetic conjecture is formulated, and the transcendental/formal dimension. It says: every even number is ‘like’ a two, that is: it has the form-of-two. And that means: it is the composition of two units; not two equal arithmetic units, (...) but two different formal-transcendental units, which are, in arithmetic, two prime numbers. (shrink)

Richard Aquila's study tackles a number of difficult and important issues in the Transcendental Deduction, issues that are frequently slighted. In recent decades, the fashion has been to read Kant as if his primary target were skepticism and his primary weapon "transcendental" arguments that turn on the meaning of certain key terms in our conceptual scheme. As Aquila notes, this cannot be the entire or essential story of the Transcendental Deduction, for it offers a theory of the (...) formation of concepts. Rejecting current trends, Aquila explores some classic, but almost impenetrable, issues in the Deduction. What is the essential feature of intuitions? How are intuitions related to concepts? What is the role of the imagination in conceptualization? What is the object that corresponds to our knowledge? Among other topics, he also offers a plausible and clear interpretation of the Prolegomena's distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience. (shrink)

This article attempts to broaden the phenomenologically motivated perspective of H. Weyl's Das Kontinuum in the hope of elucidating the differences between the intuitive and mathematical continuum and further providing a deeper phenomenological interpretation. It is known that Weyl sought to develop an arithmetically based theory of continuum with the reasoning that one should be based on the naturally accessible domain of natural numbers and on the classical first-order predicate calculus to found a theory of mathematical continuum free of impredicative (...) circularities only to stumble, to cite a key question, in the evident lack of intuitive support for the notion of points of the continuum. In this motivation, I set out to deal from a Husserlian viewpoint with the general notion of points as appearances reducible to individuals of pre-predicative experience in contrast with the notion of an interval of real numbers taken as an abstraction based on the intuition of time-flowing experience. I argue that the notions of points and of real intervals in the above sense are not by essence related to objective temporality and thus their incompatibility in mathematical terms is ultimately due to deeper constituting reasons independently of any causal and spatio-temporal constraints. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that Immanuel Kant was one of Karl Barth's most important intellectual influences, but how and to what extent this is the case remains an open question. In Presupposing God, Robert Hand demonstrates a deep consistency between Kant's and Barth's theological epistemologies, with this issue in mind. After arguing for a number of positive emphases in Kant's critical philosophy and religious epistemology in conversation with modern Kant scholarship, Presupposing God demonstrates how these emphases were obscured in Kant's (...) reception in the decades between Kant and Barth, and then explores the intellectual conditions under which Barth first encountered Kant. The argument proceeds to show how Barth wrestled with these varying interpretations and continued to utilize Kant with increased sophistication as his thought developed across the Romans commentaries, Anselm, and the Church Dogmatics. Presupposing God suggests that Kant can be an asset to theology, rather than the liability he is often taken to be, and that Barth is one of the better available examples of this in practice. (shrink)

In this paper we establish the following theorems. THEOREM A. Let T be a complete first-order theory which is uncountable. Then: (i) I(|T|, T) ≥ ℵ 0 . (ii) If T is not unidimensional, then for any λ ≥ |T|, I (λ, T) ≥ ℵ 0 . THEOREM B. Let T be superstable, not totally transcendental and nonmultidimensional. Let θ(x) be a formula of least R ∞ rank which does not have Morley rank, and let p be any stationary (...) completion of θ which also fails to have Morley rank. Then p is regular and locally modular. (shrink)

What is central to the progression of a sequence is the idea of succession, which is fundamentally a temporal notion. In Kant's ontology numbers are not objects but rules (schemata) for representing the magnitude of a quantum. The magnitude of a discrete quantum 11...11 is determined by a counting procedure, an operation which can be understood as a mapping from the ordinals to the cardinals. All empirical models for numbers isomorphic to 11...11 must conform to the transcendental determination of (...) time-order. Kant's transcendental model for number entails a procedural semantics in which the semantic value of the number-concept is defined in terms of temporal procedures. A number is constructible if and only if it can be schematized in a procedural form. This representability condition explains how an arbitrarily large number is representable and why Kant thinks that arithmetical statements are synthetic and not analytic. (shrink)

This article is a spiritual interpretation of Leonhard Euler’s famous equation linking the most important entities in mathematics: e (the base of natural logarithms), π (the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle), i ( d -1),1 , and 0. The equation itself (e π i+1 = 0>) can be understood in terms of a traditional mathematical proof, but that does not give one a sense of what it might mean. While one might intuit, given the significance (...) of the elements of the equation, that there is a deeper meaning, one is not in a position to get at that meaning within the discipline of mathematics itself. It is only by going outside of mathematics and adopting the perspective of theology that any kind of understanding of the equation might be gained, the significant implication here being that the whole mathematical field might be a vast treasure house of insights into the mind of God. In this regard, the article is a response to the monograph by George Lakoff and Rafael Núñez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being (2000), which attempts to approach mathematics in general and the Euler equation in particular in terms of some basic principles of cognitive psychology. It is my position that while there may be an external basis for understanding mathematics, the results are somewhat disappointing and fail to reveal the full measure of meaning buried within that equation. (shrink)

An exponential $\exp $ on an ordered field $$. The structure $$ is then called an ordered exponential field. A linearly ordered structure $$ is called o-minimal if every parametrically definable subset of M is a finite union of points and open intervals of M.The main subject of this thesis is the algebraic and model theoretic examination of o-minimal exponential fields $$ whose exponential satisfies the differential equation $\exp ' = \exp $ with initial condition $\exp = 1$. This study (...) is mainly motivated by the Transfer Conjecture, which states as follows:Any o-minimal exponential field $$ whose exponential satisfies the differential equation $\exp ' = \exp $ with initial condition $\exp =1$ is elementarily equivalent to $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$.Here, $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$ denotes the real exponential field $$, where $\exp $ denotes the standard exponential $x \mapsto \mathrm {e}^x$ on $\mathbb {R}$. Moreover, elementary equivalence means that any first-order sentence in the language $\mathcal {L}_{\exp } = \{+,-,\cdot,0,1, <,\exp \}$ holds for $$ if and only if it holds for $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$.The Transfer Conjecture, and thus the study of o-minimal exponential fields, is of particular interest in the light of the decidability of $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$. To the date, it is not known if $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$ is decidable, i.e., whether there exists a procedure determining for a given first-order $\mathcal {L}_{\exp }$ -sentence whether it is true or false in $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$. However, under the assumption of Schanuel’s Conjecture—a famous open conjecture from Transcendental Number Theory—a decision procedure for $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$ exists. Also a positive answer to the Transfer Conjecture would result in the decidability of $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$. Thus, we study o-minimal exponential fields with regard to the Transfer Conjecture, Schanuel’s Conjecture, and the decidability question of $\mathbb {R}_{\exp }$.Overall, we shed light on the valuation theoretic invariants of o-minimal exponential fields—the residue field and the value group—with additional induced structure. Moreover, we explore elementary substructures and extensions of o-minimal exponential fields to the maximal ends—the smallest elementary substructures being prime models and the maximal elementary extensions being contained in the surreal numbers. Further, we draw connections to models of Peano Arithmetic, integer parts, density in real closure, definable Henselian valuations, and strongly NIP ordered fields.Parts of this thesis were published in [2–5].Abstract prepared by Lothar Sebastian KrappE-mail: [email protected]: https://d-nb.info/1202012558/34. (shrink)

The invention of mathematical transcendence in the seventeenth century is linked to Leibniz, who always claimed it to be his own creation. However, Descartes had created a completely new symbolic frame in which one considers plane curves, which was a real upheaval. Leibniz initially appreciated this Cartesian frame. Although, as we see in the book, during his research he was confronted with inexpressible contexts he then called 'transcendent'. The development of a concept of mathematical transcendence is at the core of (...) this book. The description follows a pragmatic path by highlighting how and why aspects of the concept were developed and which obstacles were encountered by mathematicians. Also, there were some dead ends which are described here. Leibniz exceeded Descartes' ideas on a symbolical level (transcendent expressions), a geometrical level (transcendent curves) as well as a numerical level (transcendent numbers) those are also examined in detail. (shrink)

The distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions, and with that the distinction between a priori and a posteriori truth, is being abandoned in much of analytic philosophy and the philosophy of most of the sciences. These distinctions should also be abandoned in the philosophy of mathematics. In particular, we must recognize the strong empirical component in our mathematical knowledge. The traditional distinction between logic and mathematics, on the one hand, and the natural sciences, on the other, should be dropped. Abstract (...) mathematical objects, like transcendental numbers or Hilbert spaces, are theoretical entities on a par with electromagnetic fields or quarks. Mathematical theories are not primarily logical deductions from axioms obtained by reflection on concepts but, rather, are constructions chosen to solve some collection of problems while fitting smoothly into the other theoretical commitments of the mathematician who formulates them. In other words, a mathematical theory is a scientific theory like any other, no more certain but also no more devoid of content. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this article was to develop an interpretation of the relation between Deleuzian transcendental empiricism and Deleuze-Guattarian political philosophy in the “Treatise on Nomadology,” which focuses on the concept of the nomadic war machine. To understand this concept, it is necessary to keep in mind that this is a transcendental Idea or virtual multiplicity, correlated of an effondement (‘ungrounding’), which sustains a difference by right in relation to the State apparatus and the military institution. On (...) the basis of this premise, the three aspects of the nomadic war machine are analyzed: a spatial-geographical one (the smooth space), a numerical one (the numbering number), and an affective one (the weapons). Finally, we conclude with an examination of the authors’ critical reading of the notion of absolute war in Clausewitz, which allows us to strengthen the interpretation of the concept of nomadic war machine as transcendental Idea. (shrink)