Call the idea that states of perceptual awareness have intentional content, and in virtue of that aim at or represent ways the world might be, the ‘Content View.’ I argue that though Kant is widely interpreted as endorsing the Content View there are significant problems for any such interpretation. I further argue that given the problems associated with attributing the Content View to Kant, interpreters should instead consider him as endorsing a form of acquaintance theory. Though perceptual acquaintance is controversial (...) in itself and in attribution to Kant, it promises to make sense of central claims within his critical philosophy. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

It has become typical to read Kant and Merleau-Ponty as offering competing approaches to perceptual experience. Kant is interpreted as an ‘intellectualist’ who regards perception as conceptual ‘all the way out’, while Merleau-Ponty is seen as Kant’s challenger, who argues that perception involves non-conceptual, embodied ‘coping’. In this paper, however, I argue that a closer examination of their views of perception, especially with respect to the notion of ‘schematism’, reveals a great deal of historical and philosophical continuity between them. By (...) analyzing Kant’s theory of schematism, the interpretation of it by the Neo-Kantian Pierre Lachièze-Rey, and Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the body schema, we find that aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception are better understood as a development of Kant’s theory of perception. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant describes schematism as a (A141/B180–1). While most commentators treat this as Kant's metaphorical way of saying schematism is something too obscure to explain, I argue that we should follow up Kant's clue and treat schematism literally as Kunst. By letting our interpretation of schematism be guided by Kant's theoretically exact ways of using the term Kunst in the Critique of Judgment we gain valuable insight into the nature of schematism, as well as its (...) connection to Kant's concerns in the third Critique. (shrink)

Kant’s conception of the centrality of intellectual self-consciousness, or “pure apperception”, for scientific knowledge of nature is well known, if still obscure. Here I argue that, for Kant, at least one central role for such self-consciousness lies in the acquisition of the content of concepts central to metaphysical theorizing. I focus on one important concept, that of <substance>. I argue that, for Kant, the representational content of the concept <substance> depends not just on the capacity for apperception, but on the (...) actual intellectual awareness of oneself in such apperception. I then defend this interpretation from a variety of objections. (shrink)

Close attention to Kant’s comments on animal minds has resulted in radically different readings of key passages in Kant. A major disputed text for understanding Kant on animals is his criticism of G. F. Meier’s view in the 1762 ‘False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures’. In this article, I argue that Kant’s criticism of Meier should be read as an intervention into an ongoing debate between Meier and H. S. Reimarus on animal minds. Specifically, while broadly aligning himself with (...) Reimarus, Kant distinguishes himself from both Meier and Reimarus on the role of judgement in human consciousness. (shrink)

Phenomenalist interpretations of Kant are out of fashion. The most common complaint from anti-phenomenalist critics is that a phenomenalist reading of Kant would collapse Kantian idealism into Berkeleyan idealism. This would be unacceptable because Berkeleyan idealism is incompatible with core elements of Kant’s empirical realism. In this paper, I argue that not all phenomenalist readings threaten empirical realism. First, I distinguish several variants of phenomenalism, and then show that Berkeley’s idealism is characterized by his commitment to most of them. I (...) then make the case that two forms of phenomenalism are consistent with Kant’s empirical realism. The comparison between Kant and Berkeley runs throughout the paper, with special emphasis on the significance of their theories of intentionality. (shrink)

In the first part of this chapter, I summarise some of the issues in the philosophy of mind which are addressed in Kant’s Critical writings. In the second part, I chart some of the ways in which that discussion influenced twentieth-century analytic philosophy of mind and identify some of the themes which characterise Kantian approaches in the philosophy of mind.

I present an argument for an interpretation of Kant's views on the nature of the ‘content [Inhalt]’ of ‘cognition [Erkenntnis]’. In contrast to one of the longest standing interpretations of Kant's views on cognitive content, which ascribes to Kant a straightforwardly psychologistic understanding of content, and in contrast as well to the more recently influential reading of Kant put forward by McDowell and others, according to which Kant embraces a version of Russellianism, I argue that Kant's views on this topic (...) are of a much more Fregean bent than has traditionally been admitted or appreciated. I conclude by providing a sketch of how a better grasp of Kant's views on cognitive content in general can help bring into sharper relief what is, and what is not, at stake in the recent debates over whether Kant accepts a particular kind of cognitive content—namely, non-conceptual content. (shrink)

In the first Critique, Kant attempts to prove what we can call the "Principle of Intensive Magnitudes," according to which every possible object of experience will possess a determinate "degree" of reality. Curiously, Kant argues for this principle by inferring from a psychological premise about internal sensations (they have intensive magnitudes) to a metaphysical thesis about external objects (they also have intensive magnitudes). Most commentators dismiss the argument as a failure. In this article I give a reconstruction of Kant's argument (...) that attempts to rehabilitate the argument back into his broader transcendental theory of experience. I argue that we can make sense of the argument's central inference by appeal to Kant's theory of empirical intuition and by an analysis of the way in which Kant thinks sensory matter constitutes our most basic representations of objects. (shrink)

In the section ‘Unity and Objectivity’ of The Bounds of Sense, P. F. Strawson argues for the thesis that unity of consciousness requires experience of an objective world. My aim in this essay is to evaluate this claim. In the first and second parts of the essay, I explicate Strawson's thesis, reconstruct his argument, and identify the point at which the argument fails. Strawson's discussion nevertheless raises an important question: are there ways in which we must think of our experiences (...) if we are to self-ascribe them? In the third part of the essay, I use Kant's remarks concerning the passivity of experience to suggest one answer to this question: in self-ascribing experiences, we must be capable of thinking of them as passive to their objects. This can be used to provide an alternative route from unity to objectivity. (shrink)

Human consciousness usually displays a striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness . More generally, it is consciousness not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but (...) of A-and-B- and-C together, as the contents of a single conscious state. (shrink)

Since his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft was first published in 1786, controversy has surrounded Immanuel Kant’s conception of matter. In particular, the justification for both his dynamical theory of matter and the related dismissal of mechanical philosophy are obscure. In this paper, I address these longstanding issues and establish that Kant’s dynamism rests upon Leibnizian, metaphysical commitments held by Kant from his early pre-Critical texts on natural philosophy to his major critical works. I demonstrate that, throughout his corpus and inspired (...) by Leibniz, Kant endorses the a priori law of continuity of alteration as a truth of metaphysics, according to which all alterations in experience must occur gradually through all intervening degrees. The principle thus legislates against mechanical philosophy’s absolutely impenetrable atoms, as they would would involve instantaneous changes of velocity in impact. This reveals the metaphysical incoherencies in mechanical philosophy and leaves Kant’s own dynamical theory of matter, grounded on material forces, as the only viable approach to physical explanation. Subsequently, I demonstrate that Kant nevertheless made conceptual space in his system for the theoretical consideration of mechanical explanations, which makes manifest one of the positive roles that the faculty of reason can play with respect to natural science. (shrink)

In the part of the first Critique known as “The Paralogisms of Pure Reason” Kant seeks to explain how even the most acute metaphysicians could have arrived, through speculation, at the ruefully dogmatic conclusion that the self (understood as the subject of thoughts or "thinking I") is a substance. His diagnosis has two components: first, the positing of the phenomenon of “Transcendental Illusion”—an illusion, modelled on but distinct from, optical illusion--that predisposes human beings to accept as sound--and as known to (...) sound--certain in fact flawed arguments for substantive theses about the nature of the self; second, the identification of the fallacy we commit when we succumb to this illusion. It is explained how these two elements combine to produce a central instance of (what Kant sees as) dogmatic speculative metaphysics, namely, the doctrine that the self is a substance in the sense of a necessarily non-inhering subject of inherence. It is argued that Kant has a novel, ingenious, and even somewhat plausible account of the route by which the rational psychologist arrives--or might arrive--at this view, an account that involves identifying a rather deep-rooted confusion about the very nature of conceivability. (shrink)

Officially, for Kant, judgments are analytic iff the predicate is "contained in" the subject. I defend the containment definition against the common charge of obscurity, and argue that arithmetic cannot be analytic, in the resulting sense. My account deploys two traditional logical notions: logical division and concept hierarchies. Division separates a genus concept into exclusive, exhaustive species. Repeated divisions generate a hierarchy, in which lower species are derived from their genus, by adding differentia(e). Hierarchies afford a straightforward sense of containment: (...) genera are contained in the species formed from them. Kant's thesis then amounts to the claim that no concept hierarchy conforming to division rules can express truths like '7+5=12.' Kant is correct. Operation concepts ( ) bear two relations to number concepts: and are inputs, is output. To capture both relations, hierarchies must posit overlaps between concepts that violate the exclusion rule. Thus, such truths are synthetic. (shrink)

What method should we use to determine the nature of perceptual experience? My focus here is the Kantian thought that transcendental arguments can be used to determine the nature of perceptual experience. I set out a dilemma for the use of transcendental arguments in the philosophy of perception, one which turns on a comparison ofthe transcendental method with the first-personal method of early analytic philosophy, and with the empirical methods of much contemporary philosophy of mind. The transcendental method can avoid (...) this dilemma only if it commits to our possessing a capacity for imaginative reflection, one which is capable of identifying certain formal properties of experience.This result indicates some of the commitments which must be made if transcendental arguments are to be used in the philosophy of perception, and it has implications for those views that take the philosophy of perception to be autonomous of the empirical science of perception. (shrink)

Scholars working on Kant’s Anticipations of Perception generally attribute to him an argument that invalidly infers that objects have degrees of intensive magnitude from the premise that sensations do. I argue that this rests on an incorrect disambiguation of Kant’s use of Empfindung as referring to the mental states that are our sensings, rather than the objects that are thereby sensed. Kant’s real argument runs as follows. The difference between a representation of an empty region of space and/or time and (...) a representation of that same region as occupied by an object entails that, in addition to their extensive magnitude, objects must be represented as having a matter variable in intensive magnitude. Since it is the presence of sensation in a cognition that marks the difference between representing only the extensive magnitude of the object and the object as a whole, it is sensation that represents its intensive magnitude. (shrink)

In theCritique of Pure Reason,Kant argues for two principles that concern magnitudes. The first is the principle that ‘All intuitions are extensive magnitudes,’ which appears in the Axioms of Intuition (B202); the second is the principle that ‘In all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has an intensive magnitude, that is, a degree,’ which appears in the Anticipations of Perception (B207). A circle drawn in geometry and the space occupied by an object such as a book are (...) paradigm examples of extensive magnitudes, while the intensity of a light is a paradigm example of an intensive magnitude. These principles justify and explain the possibility of applying mathematics to objects of experience. The Axioms principle also explains the possibility of any mathematical cognition at all. (shrink)

At A71/B96–7 Kant explains that singular judgements are ‘special’ because they stand to the general ones as Einheit to Unendlichkeit. The reference to Einheit brings to mind the category of unity and hence raises a spectre of circularity in Kant’s explanation. I aim to remove this spectre by interpreting the Einheit-Unendlichkeit contrast in light of the logical distinctions among universal, particular and singular judgments shared by Kant and his logician predecessors. This interpretation has a further implication for resolving a controversy (...) over the correlation between the logical moments of quantity (universal, particular, singular) and the categorial ones (unity, plurality, totality). (shrink)

Many scholars claimed that, according to Immanuel Kant, some judgements lack a truth-value: analytic judgements, judgements about items of which humans cannot have experience, judgements of perception, and non-assertoric judgements. However, no one has undertaken an extensive examination of the textual evidence for those claims. Based on an analysis of Kant's texts, I argue that: (1) according to Kant, only judgements of perception are not truth-apt. All other judgements are truth-apt, including analytic judgements and judgements about items of which humans (...) cannot have experience. (2) Kant sometimes states that truth-apt judgements are actual bearers of truth or falsity only when they are taken to state what is actually the case. Kant calls these judgements assertoric. Other texts ascribe truth and falsity to judgements, regardless of whether they are assertoric. Kant's views on truth-aptness raise challenges for correspondentist and coherentist interpretations of Kant's theory of truth; they rule out the identification of Kant's crucial notion of objective validity with truth-aptness; and they imply that Kant was not a verificationist about truth or meaning. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive book on the philosophy of time. Leading philosophers discuss the metaphysics of time, our experience and representation of time, the role of time in ethics and action, and philosophical issues in the sciences of time, especially quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third-man regress. Siding with those who think that the mid-way posit of the Critique of Pure Reason's schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant's transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyse a form/matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity.

In The Philosophical Criticism, Alois Riehl developed a realistic interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism based on his theory of space and time. In doing so, more than 100 years ago, he formulated an interpretation of the relation between the thing in itself and appearances that is discussed in current research as the metaphysical „dual aspect“ interpretation, although it is rarely attributed to Riehl. To reconstruct Riehl’s position, the research results of comparative studies on Moritz Schlick are systematically extended and applied (...) to the current debate on Kant’s transcendental idealism. (shrink)

In his lectures on general logic Kant maintains that the generality of a representation (the form of a concept) arises from the logical acts of comparison, reflection and abstraction. These acts are commonly understood to be identical with the acts that generate reflected schemata. I argue that this is mistaken, and that the generality of concepts, as products of the understanding, should be distinguished from the classificatory generality of schemata, which are products of the imagination. A Kantian concept does not (...) provide mere criteria for noting sameness and difference in things, but instead reflects the inner nature of things. Its form consists in the self-consciousness of a capacity to judge (i.e. the Concept is the ‘I think’). (shrink)

I argue that the physiological, phenomenal and conceptual constitute a trichotomous hierarchy of emergent categories. I claim that each category employs a distinctive type of interactive mechanism that facilitates a meaningful kind of environmental discourse. I advocate, therefore, that each have a causal relation with the environment but that their specific class of mechanism qualifies distinctively the meaningfulness of that interaction and subsequent responses. Consequently, I argue that the causal chain of physical interaction feeds distinctive value-laden constructions that are ontologically (...) distinct for each category. Within the limitations of the interactive mechanisms of each category, increasingly sophisticated forms tend to evolve. The increase in sophistication in each category inevitably leads to the emergence of the novel mechanism particular to the next in the hierarchy. In essence, there is an emergent hierarchy of evolving categories delineated by the nature of their mechanism of environmental engagement. I argue that biochemical mechanisms have a tendency to evolve meaningfully, specifically in a way that is both qualitatively relevant and responsive to environmental particulars. I explain that these mechanisms set in play an organisational imperative that leads to the emergence of the capacity to evaluate and prioritise qualitative biochemical assimilations which, inevitably, generates a subjectively individuated experience phenomenon. I then relate this to the novel characteristics of the human perspective. (shrink)

The paper aims to cast light on the kind of proof involved in central transcendental arguments. It is suggested that some of the difficulty associated with such arguments may result from the tendency to construe them simply as articulating relations between concepts or propositional contents. A different construal, connected with phenomenological description, is outlined, as a way of bringing out the force of these arguments. It is suggested that it can be fruitful to think in terms of this construal in (...) understanding some of Kant's transcendental proofs. The recommended construal also helps to understand the nature of the link between transcendental arguments and transcendental idealism. (shrink)

We are able to think of empirical objects as capable of existing unperceived. What explains our grasp of this conception of objects? In this paper I examine the claim that experience explains our understanding of objects as capable of existing unperceived with reference to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that standard accounts of experience’s explanatory role are unsatisfactory, but that an alternative account can be extracted from the first Critique – one which relies on Kant’s transcendental idealism.

Despite widespread confusion over its meaning, the notion of a conceptual scheme is pervasive in Anglo-American philosophy, particularly amongst those who call themselves ' conceptual relativists'. In this paper, I identify three different ways to understand conceptual schemes. I argue that the two most common models, deriving from Kant and Quine, are flawed, and, in addition, useless for the relativist. Instead, I urge adoption of a 'neo-Kantian', broadly Wittgensteinian model, which, it is ' argued, is immune from Davidsonian objections to (...) the very idea of a scheme. (shrink)

In the absence of any plausible reductionist account of consciousness in nonmentalistic terms, the HOT theory says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought (or awareness) that one is in that state. I discuss HOT theory with special attention to how Leibnizian theses can help support it and how it can shed light on Leibniz's theory of perception, apperception, and consciousness. It will become clear how treating Leibniz as (...) a HOT theorist can solve some of the problems he faced and some of the puzzles posed by commentators, e.g. animal mentality and the role of reason and memory in self-consciousness. (shrink)

Kant''s claim that the justification of transcendental philosophy is a priori is puzzling because it should be consistent with (1) his general restriction on the justification of knowledge, that intuitions must play a role in the justification of all nondegenerate knowledge, with (2) the implausibility of a priori intuitions being the only ones on which transcendental philosophy is founded, and with (3) his professed view that transcendental philosophy is not analytic. I argue that this puzzle can be solved, that according (...) to Kant transcendental philosophy is justified a priori in the sense that the only empirical information required for its justification can be derived from any possible human experience. Transcendental justification does not rely on any more particular or special observations or experiments. Philip Kitcher''s general account of apriority in Kant captures this aspect of a priori knowledge. Nevertheless, I argue that Kitcher''s account goes wrong in the link it specifies between apriority and certainty. (shrink)

Consider two competing interpretations of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: the epistemic and cognitive interpretations. The epistemic interpretation presents the first Critique as a work of epistemology, but what is more, it sees Kant as an early proponent of anti-psychologism—the view that descriptions of how the mind works are irrelevant for epistemology.2 Even if Kant does not always manage to purge certain psychological-sounding idioms from his writing, the epistemic interpretation has it, he is perfectly clear that he means his evaluation (...) of knowledge to be carried out independently of psychology.3 In contrast, the cognitive interpretation presents the first Critique as a description of the operation of human .. (shrink)

When the original Dutch version of this book was presented in 1971 to the University of Leiden as a thesis for the Doctorate in philosophy, I was prevented by the academic mores of that university from expressing my sincere thanks to three members of the Philosophical Faculty for their support of and interest in my pursuits. I take the liberty of doing so now, two and a half years later. First and foremost I want to thank Professor G. Nuchelmans warmly (...) for his expert guidance of my research. A number of my most im portant sources were brought to my attention by him. During the whole process of composing this book his criticism and encouragement were carried out in a truly academic spirit. He thereby provided working conditions that are a sine qua non for every author who is attempting to approach controversial matters in a scientific manner, conditions which, however, were not easily available at that time. In a later phase I also came into contact with Professors L. M. de Rijk and J. B. Ubbink, with both of whom I had highly stimulating discussions and exchanges of ideas. The present edition contains some entirely new sections, viz. 1-9, IV-29, V-9, V-20, VII-14 (iii), (iv), VII-17 (i), VIII-22, IX-17, IX-19, X-9 and XI-8. Section X-9 was inspired by a remark made by Professor A. (shrink)

One of the characteristic features of contemporary logic is that it incorporates the Frege‐Russell thesis according to which verbs for being are multiply ambiguous. This thesis was not accepted before the nineteenth century. In Aristotle existence could not serve alone as a predicate term. However, it could be a part of the force of the predicate term, depending on the context. For Kant existence could not even be a part of the force of the predicate term. Hence, after Kant, existence (...) was left homeless. It found a home in the algebra of logic in which the operators corresponding to universal and particular judgments were treated as duals, and universal judgments were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse. Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The orphaned notion of existence thus found a new home in the existential quantifier. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes two short texts in which Peirce sketches out an anti-skeptical argument inspired by Kant’s refutation of idealism. The chapter will first consider why Peirce found Kant’s argument interesting and promising, given that it is often regarded as problematic and unsuccessful. It will then briefly reconstruct Kant’s refutation, highlighting its most problematic passages. Moreover, since Peirce’s own version of the argument relies on Kant’s views regarding the temporal structure of consciousness, the chapter will explain how Peirce tackles this (...) issue in “The Law of Mind.” Finally, the chapter considers Peirce’s own anti-skeptical argument and examines whether and how it can be seen as appropriating Kant’s strategy. (shrink)

Many interpretations of Kant’s first Critique fail to appreciate the revolutionary nature of his account of knowledge and its implications for skepticism, givenness and mind-independence, because they read Kant as holding a compositional account of knowledge. I contend that the reason for this is that this account is both naturally appealing in its own right, and fits an influential reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. On this reading, the Deduction aims to respond to a skeptical worry which issues from the empiricist (...) version of epistemic compositionalism and which questions the intelligibility of the claim to knowledge of our judgements. Against this, I argue that what Kant’s Deduction actually aims to address is a radicalization of this epistemic worry, which instead questions the intelligibility of the objective purport of our judgements. I contend that the compositional account is unable to respond to this more radical worry, thereby putting it into question both as a reading of Kant, and as an account of knowledge generally. To corroborate this, I provide a reading of the Deduction that overcomes epistemic compositionalism by thinking through its shortcomings in order to arrive at a more adequate successor account: the hylomorphic account of knowledge, which, I contend, is able to dissolve both the more radical and the epistemic worry. I suggest that this implies generally that the epistemic worry issuing from the compositional account is not self-contained, but must give way to Kant’s more radical worry, which I argue can only be addressed within the underappreciated framework of epistemic hylomorphism. (shrink)

This article considers an apparent Achilles heel for Kant’s transcendental idealism, concerning his account of how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. The problem is that while Kant’s distinctive attempt to explain synthetic a priori knowledge lies at the heart of his transcendental idealism, this explanation appears to face a dilemma: either the explanation generates a problematic regress, or the explanation it offers gives us no reason to favour transcendental idealism over transcendental realism. In the article, I consider G. E. (...) Moore’s version of the problem, which I argue has not yet received an adequate response. Instead, I offer a way out of this dilemma by focusing on the normativity rather than the metaphysics of the mind. (shrink)

In his table of judgements, Kant added infinity as a third quality. An infinite judgement ‘All S are non-P’ is said to differ from the affirmative ‘All S are P’ because it ascribes a negative predicate; and it differs from the negative ‘No S is P’ because it has a richer content. The present paper puts three interpretations of this surplus content to six tests. Among other things, it is examined whether these interpretations marry up with Kant’s solution to the (...) first antinomy, his conception of analyticity and the principle of complete determination. The unpleasant conclusion is that none of the interpretations can make its mark as the most adequate one. It thus remains unclear what Kant had in mind when positioning infinite judgements besides affirmative and negative ones. (shrink)

Kant insists that the use of concepts must be subject to empirical conditions if they are to have objective validity. This article analyses Kants distinction between empirical and transcendental truths. Since transcendental concepts are pure concepts without spatio-temporal content, their objective validity is of the same second-order kind as that of unschematized categories. This characteristic of transcendental concepts implies that the cognitive powers picked out by them are not particular psychological mechanisms, but rather abstract functional structures. Transcendental concepts owe their (...) objective validity to the realizability of the functional structures by empirical cognizers like humans. This relation in turn helps to explain the nature of transcendental truths. (shrink)

Kant defined ‘sensation’as ‘the effect of an object on the representative capacity, so far as we are affected by it.’ This is, to put it mildly, not one among his more elegant, clear or helpful sayings. And it is merely an instance of a more general malaise. Kant did not say as much about sensation as he should have, and his account-or lack of it-can be seen at the root of many of the difficulties that have plagued his readers.

The metaphysical “Law of Continuity of Alterations” says that whenever an object alters from one state to another, it passes through a continuum of intermediate states. Kant treated LCA as a transcendental law of understanding. The primary purpose of the paper is to reconstruct and evaluate Kant’s three arguments for LCA. All three are found to be inadequate. However, a secondary goal of the paper is to show that LCA would have more naturally been construed as a regulative principle of (...) reason. I conclude with some remarks about how this could work. (shrink)

I argue for a novel, non-subjectivist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Kant’s idealism is often interpreted as specifying how we must experience objects or how objects must appear to us. I argue to the contrary by appealing to Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. Kant’s Deduction is the proof that the categories are not merely subjectively necessary conditions we need for our cognition, but objectively valid conditions necessary for objects to be appearances. My interpretation centres on two claims. First, Kant’s method of self-knowledge (...) consists in his determining what makes our cognitive faculty finite in contrast to God’s infinite cognitive faculty. Second, Kant’s limitation of our knowledge to appearances consists in his developing an account according to which appearances and our finite cognitive faculty are conceived of in terms of each other and in contrast to noumena in the positive sense and God’s infinite cognitive faculty. (shrink)

According to Kant, the division of the categories “is not the result of a search after pure concepts undertaken at haphazard,” but is derived from the “complete” classification of judgments developed by traditional logic. However, the sorts of judgments that he enumerates in his table of judgments are not all ones that traditional logic has dealt with; consequently, we must say that he chose the sorts of judgments in question with a certain intention. Besides, we know that his choice of (...) judgments and categories is strongly influenced by certain views of natural science that he fully accepts. For this reason, his argumentations are sometimes seriously inconsistent. As to Kant’s argumentations of categories, many problems have already been pointed out, but in this paper, I take up the categories of quantity and quality once more, and make clear his argumentations’ hidden logic and its distortion from the point of view of the history of logic and natural science. First, I confirm that there are non-negligible problems in his explanation to the effect that his derivation of the categories of quantity and quality is based on the quantity and quality of judgments. Next, I reconsider the meaning of his treating the categories of quantity and quality as pure concepts of the understanding. Finally, I conclude that by having recourse to the categories of quantity and quality Kant tried unjustly to apriorize the distinction between the “extensive magnitude” and “intensive magnitude” that has a long formational history since Aristotle. (shrink)

In this conversation, American philosopher Robert Brandom talks about the historical background of his inferentialism, reconstructing the influence of his teachers Wilfrid Sellars and Richard Rorty.

This paper puts together an ancientand a recent approach to classificatory language, thought, and ontology.It includes on the one hand an interpretation of Aristotle's ten categories,with remarks on his first category, called (or translated as) substancein the Categories or What a thing is in the Topics. On the other hand is the ideaof domain-specific cognitive abilities urged in contemporary developmentalpsychology. Each family of ideas can be used to understand the other. Neitherthe metaphysical nor the psychological approach is intrinsically morefundamental; they (...) complement each other. The paper incidentally clarifies distinct uses of the word category in different disciplines, and also attempts to make explicit several notions of domain. It also examines Aristotle's most exotic and least discussed categories, being-in-a-position (e.g., sitting) and having-(on) (e.g., armour). Finally the paper suggests a tentative connectionbetween Fred Sommers' theory of types and Aristotle's first category. (shrink)

The book addresses two main areas of Kant’s theoretical philosophy: the doctrine of transcendental idealism and various central aspects of the arguments from the Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions, as well as the relation between the deduction argument and idealism. -/- Among the topics covered are the nature of objective validity, the role and function of transcendental logic in relation to general or formal logic, the possibility of contradictory thoughts, the meaning of the Leitfaden at A79 and the unity of cognition, (...) the two-steps-in-one-proof interpretation and categorial instantiation, categorial illusion, Strawson’s transcendental argument, the persistently perplexing question of the derivation of the categories, and the relation between apperception, objectivity, judgement, and idealism. -/- With regard to idealism in particular, the focus is on the metaphysical two-aspect interpretation and its problems, on the merits and demerits of the controversial phenomenalist reading of Kant’s idealism, and on the topic of subjectivism and epistemic humility. -/- In all of the aforementioned topics, the book presents wholly novel interpretations compared to the standard or mainstream interpretations. (shrink)