Our doxastic states are our belief-like states, and these include outright doxastic states and degreed doxastic states. The former include believing that p, having the opinion that p, thinking that p, being sure that p, being certain that p, and doubting that p. The latter include degrees of confidence, credences, and perhaps some phenomenal states. But we also have conviction (being convinced simpliciter that p) and degrees of conviction (being more or less convinced that p). This volume shows: how and (...) why all of the outright doxastic states mentioned above can be reduced to conviction thresholds; what degrees of conviction fundamentally are (degreed reliance-dispositions); why degrees of conviction are not credences; when suspending a belief is compatible with continuing to believe; and the surprising extent to which Kant endorsed the theory of conviction that emerges in this volume. (shrink)

In the 3rd Analogy, Kant claims that I can perceive that things coexist by synthesizing my perceptions in an order-indifferent way. Reigning orthodoxy holds that I first successively perceive different things, and then (through some further act) determine that the things I perceive coexist. Focusing on prominent examples of this approach, I argue that these accounts fail to do justice to the order-indifferent synthesis that Kant describes: Strawson explains the synthesis in a way which renders Kant’s argument in the 3rd (...) Analogy obviously unconvincing, Watkins makes the synthesis irrelevant to Kant’s argument, while Longuenesse and Allison make the unity of the synthesis obscure. The problems with these views, I contend, show that Kant thinks the rule for synthesizing my perceptions is already operative in the successive perceptions, such that the fundamental act of perception already involves ‘objective time-determinations.’ This connects with the recent dispute about whether Kant is a conceptualist: my argument provides additional evidence that Kant is a conceptualist, while also extending the conceptualist reading to the 3rd Analogy in a novel way. For those who think conceptualism is wrong, my argument serves as a critical notice that non-conceptualists have yet to offer a satisfying interpretation of the 3rd Analogy. (shrink)

The logical problem of artificial intelligence—the question of whether the notion sometimes referred to as ‘strong’ AI is self-contradictory—is, essentially, the question of whether an artificial form of life is possible. This question has an immediately paradoxical character, which can be made explicit if we recast it (in terms that would ordinarily seem to be implied by it) as the question of whether an unnatural form of nature is possible. The present paper seeks to explain this paradoxical kind of possibility (...) by arguing that machines can share the human form of life and thus acquire human mindedness, which is to say they can be intelligent, conscious, sentient, etc. in precisely the way that a human being typically is. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

The paper investigates the distinction between form and matter in Kant’s theoretical philosophy – his adoption of an Aristotelian hylomorphism. This connection to Aristotle is sometimes recognized in Kant scholarship, though most proponents claim that against the backdrop of a structural analogy, Kant and Aristotle also differ in an important respect: according to them, while Aristotle puts forth a hylomorphic conception of being, Kant merely offers a hylomorphic conception of cognition in which sensibility provides the matter and understanding the form. (...) Against this, the paper claims that this “interiorization” of form cannot be squared with Kant’s actual views. Form is not internal for Kant, but neither is it external. Rather, it is “original form”. This interpretation ascribes a “hylomorphism all the way down” to Kant, meaning that the form and the matter of cognition are jointly actualized in virtue of each other. The understanding cannot be understood apart from its part in a hylomorphic unity with sensibility. Therefore, a proper appreciation of this unity enables us to see that it is impossible to distinguish the form that objects have as objects of cognition from the form they have in themselves. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that Kant’s moral psychology draws from the dualist tradition of Plato and Aristotle, which takes there to be distinct rational and non-rational parts of the soul. My aim is to challenge the air of obviousness that psychological dualism enjoys in neo-Kantian moral psychology, specifically in regard to Tamar Schapiro’s account of the nature of inclination. I argue that Kant’s own account of inclination instead provides evidence of his commitment to psychological monism, the idea that the mentality (...) of an adult human being is rational through and through. I first consider Schapiro’s “intuitions” in favour of dualism: inclination must have a non-rational source, she contends, because they assail us unbidden and are not immediately responsive to volition, and because we are not responsible simply for having inclinations (only for acting on them). I explain how a monistic account of the nature of inclination can accommodate the first two points, and explain why the third neither is a point a Kantian can accept, nor is its denial the affront to common sense that Schapiro supposes. Then I turn to Schapiro’s aim to conceive of reflection as non-rational and thus independent of justificatory thought, and yet such as to induce rational reflection. I argue that it remains mysterious how inclination, on her account, could be resourced to play this role; and with that criticism in mind, I conclude by making a positive case for Kant’s conceiving of inclination in monistic terms, as an expression of rational mindedness. (shrink)

A variety of interpreters have argued that Kant construes the animality of human beings as ‘transformed’, in some sense, through the possession of rationality. I argue that this interpretation admits of multiple readings and that it is either wrong, or doesn't result in the conclusion for which its proponents argue. I also explain the sense in which rationality nevertheless significantly differentiates human beings from other animals.

This essay considers Kant’s theory of modality in light of a debate in contemporary modal metaphysics and modal logic concerning the Barcan formulas. The comparison provides a new and fruitful perspective on Kant’s complex and sometimes confusing claims about possibility and necessity. Two central Kantian principles provide the starting point for the comparison: that the possible must be grounded in the actual and that existence is not a real predicate. Both are shown to be intimately connected to the Barcan formulas, (...) and Kant’s views on what he distinguishes as three different kinds of modality are then considered in light of this connection. (shrink)

In this paper, we first extract from Susan Carey’s seminal account of the origin of concepts a notion of rationality, which is applicable to human infants and non-human animals; significantly different from the notions of rationality prevalent in behavioral ecology and yet, like these notions, amenable to empirical testing; conceptually more fundamental than the latter notions. Relatedly, this notion underlies a proto-conceptuality ascribable, by a key component of Carey’s account, to human infants and non-human animals. Based on a Kantian-inspired analysis (...) of fully-fledged conceptuality and the type of rationality underlying it, we then show the profound difference between the type of rationality extracted from Carey’s account and the rationality of human adults; related fundamental differences between the types of conceptual representation that these types of rationality respectively ground. By showing this, we highlight fundamental aspects of conceptual representations that are missing from Carey’s account of the origin of concepts. Based on this, we finally argue that, as ingenious and explanatorily valuable as Carey’s account of the origin of concepts is, it is only a partial account of this origin. (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)

In this article I offer an opinionated overview of the central elements of Kant’s philosophical methodology during the critical period. I begin with a brief characterization of how Kant conceives of the aims of human inquiry – focusing on the idea that inquiry ideally aims at not just cognition (Erkenntnis), but also the more demanding cognitive achievements that Kant labels insight (Einsehen) and comprehension (Begreifen). Then I explore the implications of this picture for philosophy — emphasizing Kant’s distinction between critical (...) and doctrinal phases of philosophical inquiry, with the first of these playing both a negative and a positive role with respect to the second. Then, I will argue that this positive role is possible, according to Kant, only insofar as philosophy follows what I call a “capacities-first” methodology – that is, one that treats basic cognitive capacities (such as reason) and their self-conscious activities as fundamental (in both a cognitive sense and in an explanatory sense) for the sort of philosophy human beings are capable of. It is this methodology, I will argue, that allows Kant to introduce the first principles that philosophy in its doctrinal phase requires in a manner that is neither arbitrary nor (at least obviously) incompatible with Kant’s own critical restrictions on cognition. I conclude by discussing some of the implications of this methodological picture – including the methodological significance of self-consciousness and regressive or “transcendental” arguments, Kant’s distinction between analytic and synthetic methods in philosophy, and Kant’s conception of reason as autonomous. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, a group of philosophers associated with the University of Pittsburgh—Robert Brandom, James Conant, John Haugeland, and John McDowell—have developed a novel reading of Kant. Their interest turns on Kant’s problem of objective purport: how can my thoughts be about the world? This paper summarizes the shared reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction by these four philosophers and how it solves the problem of objective purport. But I also show these philosophers radically diverge in how they view (...) Kant’s relevance for contemporary philosophy. I highlight an important distinction between those that hold a quietist response to Kant, evident in Conant and McDowell, and those that hold a constructive response, evident in Brandom and Haugeland. The upshot is that the Pittsburgh Kantians have a distinctive approach to Kant, but also radically different responses to his problem of objective purport. (shrink)

Kant's readers have disagreed about whether, according to his account of cognition, concepts, representations of the understanding, are involved in intuitions, representations of sensibility. But proponents of the affirmative 'conceptualist' answer and those of the negative 'non-conceptualist' answer have alike presupposed that such involvement should be construed in a particular way: i.e., as the involvement of particular concepts in particular exercises of sensibility. I argue, on the contrary, that it should not be: that though, for Kant, no concepts are applied (...) in exercises of sensibility, nonetheless the understanding, the faculty of concepts, is teleologically internal to sensibility and, therefore, to its exercises. That is, those exercises are per se directed towards the provision to the understanding of objects to which its fundamental concepts, the categories, are applicable, though no act of categorical application is internal to them. This conception of sensibility, available only in light of a careful distinction between capacities and acts, is demanded, I argue, by Kant's conception of a priori knowledge as elaborated in his Transcendental Deduction. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Two essential Kantian insights are the significance for rationality of the capacity for criticism and the limits of cognition, discovered when criticism is pursued methodically, that are due to the perspectival character of the human standpoint. After a period of disparagement, these Kantian insights have been sympathetically construed and are now discussed within contemporary analytic philosophy. However, if Kant’s assumption of a single, immutable, human framework is jettisoned, then the rationality of historical succession is called into question. Moreover, if the (...) revolutionary character of framework transitions is acknowledged, then reason is historicized and even its character as reason is threatened. I argue that Menachem Fisch’s approach to criticism and rationality offers an escape from this post-Kantian predicament that acknowledges revolutionary framework transitions and that draws upon the dialogical traditions of Jewish thought, and I also argue that Fisch’s approach should be seen as thematizing, to use the terms of Kant’s aesthetics and of Fichte’s account of natural right, the reflecting rather than determining status of critical judgement, which involves second-personal address. (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a novel way of thinking about Kant’s philosophical methodology during the critical period. According to this interpretation, the critical Kant can generally be understood as operating within a “capacities‐first” philosophical framework – that is, within a framework in which our basic rational or cognitive capacities play both an explanatorily and epistemically fundamental role in philosophy – or, at least, in the sort of philosophy that limited creatures like us are capable of. In discussing this idea, (...) I consider the complicated relationship between the explanatory and epistemic roles that such capacities play in Kant. I also sketch how this way of thinking about Kant’s methodology can illuminate the foundations of both his theoretical and his practical philosophy, before discussing some of Kant’s reasons for finding this approach to philosophy attractive. I close with a brief discussion of the contemporary relevance of this approach. (shrink)

In this essay, I focus on two questions. First, what is Kant's understanding of the sense in which our faculties form a unified system? And, second, what are the implications of this for the metaphysical relationships between the faculties within this system? To consider these questions, I begin with a brief discussion of Longuenesse's groundbreaking work on the teleological unity of the understanding as the faculty for judgment. In doing so, I argue for a generalization of Longuenesse's account along two (...) dimensions. The result is a picture of our faculties as forming a teleological system—unified under the overarching aims of reason as the highest rational faculty. Then I discuss the recent debate between “additive” and “transformative” interpretations of the relationship between sensibility and the understand- ing, before proposing that we should interpret Kant as endorsing a moderate form of the “transformative” reading, which captures important elements of both the “additive” and the “transformative” account. (shrink)

Overview of the (non)conceptualism debate in Kant studies.

In the context of a critique of James Conant’s (2016) important new reading of the main argument of the Deduction, I present my current, most detailed interpretation of the well-known Leitfaden passage at A79, which in my view has been misinterpreted by a host of prominent readers. The Leitfaden passage is crucial to understanding the argument of, not just the so-called Metaphysical Deduction, but also the Transcendental Deduction. This new account expands and improves upon the account of the Leitfaden I (...) gave in Chap. 5 of Kant’s Deduction From Apperception. While I agree with the core of Conant’s critique of what he calls the ‘layer-cake’ reading of the Deduction argument, in this new account I make clearer my position on why the unity of judgement, in which concepts and intuitions are a priori synthetically unified, is wholly determined in virtue of the unity of apperception as the unitary function of the understanding, without this leading to a strong form of conceptualism such as that of Conant and others. (shrink)

Kant is famous for his universalist moral theory, which emphasizes human dignity, equality, and autonomy. Yet he also defended sexist and (until late in his life) racist views. In this essay, I address the question of how current readers of Kant should deal with Kant’s sexism and racism. I first provide a brief description of Kant’s views on sexual and racial hierarchies, and of the way they intersect. I then turn to the question of whether we should set aside Kant’s (...) sexism and racism or ‘translate’ his egalitarian principles into inegalitarian ones. I argue for a third position, namely, that we should highlight the tensions that pervade Kant’s theory. In the final section, I argue that the use of inclusive language and female pronouns in recent discussions of Kant’s moral and political philosophy carries significant risks. I end by articulating several preconditions for fruitfully using Kant’s moral principles to criticize sexism and racism. (shrink)

Does Kant hold that we can have intuitions independently of concepts? A striking passage from § 13 of the Critique of Pure Reason appears to say so explicitly. However, it also conjures up a scenario where the categories are inapplicable to objects of intuition, a scenario presumably shown impossible by the following Transcendental Deduction. The seemingly non-conceptualist claim concerning intuition have therefore been read, by conceptualist interpreters of Kant, as similarly counterpossible. I argue that the passage in question best supports (...) an underappreciated middle position where intuition requires a pre-conceptual use of the understanding. Such pre-conceptual use of the understanding faces both textual and systematic objections. I show that these objections can be rebutted. (shrink)

We begin by considering two common ways of conceiving critical metaphysics. According to the first (and polemical) conception, critical metaphysics analyzes nothing more than the form of thought and thereby misses the proper point of metaphysics, namely to investigate the form of reality. According to the second (and affirmative) conception, critical metaphysics starts from the supposed insight that the form of reality cannot be other than the form of thought and is thus not required to analyze anything but that form. (...) We argue that the first conception is too weak while the second is too strong. Then we sketch an alternative conception of critical metaphysics, a conception we find expressed both in Kant’s B-Deduction and in the way Barry Stroud has recently investigated the possibility of metaphysics. According to such a conception, a properly critical metaphysics needs to proceed in two steps: first, it needs to analyze the most general and necessary form of any thought that is about an objective reality at all; second, it needs to investigate how that form of thought relates to the reality it purports to represent. But unlike Kant, Stroud remains sceptical regarding the possibility of a satisfying transition from thought to reality in metaphysics. We argue that this dissatisfaction can be traced back to a notion of objectivity and reality in terms of complete mind-independence. Then we sketch an alternative notion of objectivity and reality in terms of distinctness from subjects and acts of thinking, and argue that it is that notion that allows Kant, with his Transcendental Idealism, to make the transition required for any satisfying metaphysics, namely that from the form of thought to reality. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to critiques of my book Kant’s Radical Subjectivism: Perspectives on the Transcendental Deduction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). I address issues that are raised concerning objectivity, the nature of the object, the role of transcendental apperception and the imagination, and idealism. More in particular I respond to an objection against my reading of the necessary existence of things in themselves and their relation to appearances. I also briefly respond to a question that relates to the debate (...) on Kantian nonconceptualism, more in particular, the question whether Kant allows animals objective intentionality. Lastly, I respond to one objection against my reading of Hegel’s critique of Kant. (The copy uploaded here is an English translation of the original Dutch version that is published in the journal.). (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This dissertation articulates our human capacity to judge as a capacity for knowledge, specifically for empirical knowledge, and for knowledge of itself as such. I interpret and draw on the account of such knowledge presented by Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, situate this account historically, and relate it to relevant contemporary debates. The first chapter motivates my project by assessing the insights and shortcomings of Cartesian epistemology. I argue that while Descartes draws on the essential self-consciousness of judgement to show (...) that the cogito is knowledge, he fails, by his own standards, to secure this status for any judgement beyond the cogito. I conclude that self-consciousness alone is empty, but that, since we can judge beyond the cogito, judgement can be given content from elsewhere. The next chapter evaluates the empiricist doctrine that operations of the senses by themselves give content to judgement and can vindicate it as empirical knowledge. I contend that Kant deepens Hume’s finding, that empiricism fails to enable us to explain empirical knowledge, into the more radical insight that empiricism fails to enable us to understand the senses as providing any content. I conclude that the senses alone are blind and that our account of empirical knowledge must privilege neither sensory givenness nor intellectual self-consciousness. The third chapter contrasts two readings of Kant on the cooperation between sensibility and understanding in empirical knowledge. I argue, against many Kantians, that the Transcendental Deduction shows that instead of understanding this cooperation compositionally – so that operations of sensibility are intelligible independently of acts of the understanding – we must conceive of it hylomorphically – so that the operations of sensibility and understanding constitute the mutually dependent matter and form of empirical knowing respectively. The final chapter substantiates this hylomorphism by explicating the form of knowledge as synthesis. Following Kant, I argue that inference is a species of synthesis and provide a synthetic explanation of inference. The resulting account simultaneously illustrates synthesis, addresses a prominent contemporary problem regarding the nature of inference, and explains how our capacity to know provides not just isolated glimpses of empirical reality, but a unified conception of it. (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)

C. I. Lewis’s distinction between the given and the concept is often exposed as the key element of his treatment of the problem of intentionality in that the given and the concept would be necessary and sufficient conditions for objective purport. Such an account nonetheless offers a truncated picture of Lewis’s treatment of the problem of intentionality. The best way to appreciate this verdict is to state the predicament this account is confronted with: If the distinction between the given and (...) the concept apparently leads to a version of the same problem it was designed to address, how could it be the key element contributing to answering the problem of intentionality? Indeed, according to Lewis, the given and the concept are mutually independent so that prima facie nothing guarantees that concepts are applicable to the given. The difficulty is what Lewis calls “the problem of the a priori”: how to guarantee that our concepts can be imposed upon a content of experience which is independent and not yet given? This is a version of the problem that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction addresses: How can categories, as subjective conditions of experience, be objectively valid? A natural question is then: How does Lewis address the problem of the a priori? The main purpose of this essay is then to investigate how C. I. Lewis’s addresses the problem of the a priori and to contribute to restoring an appropriate understanding of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Famously, Kant is a transcendental idealist. Yet he also endorses empirical realism, and even boasts that only the transcendental idealist can be an empirical realist. The difficulty of making sense of those commitments together leads many interpreters to begin by attributing to Kant some variant of conventional, subjective idealism. That in turn requires that Kant's empirical realism be at best a merely ersatz or quasi-realism. But that drains Kant's boast of its significance. For any idealist can be a realist if (...) the 'realism' in question is defined in terms of a prior commitment to idealism. Thus I argue, on the contrary, that we must begin the interpretation of Kant's Critical philosophy by taking his empirical realism to be a genuine, common-sense realism about empirical things. That approach yields a consistent, satisfying, and novel reading of the Critical enterprise, including transcendental idealism, as explaining how empirical realism is possible. Along the way I show, among other things, (1) how to make systematic sense of Kant's controversial theory of meaning, which is standardly either downplayed or regarded as grossly inconsistent with his other core commitments; (2) how to dispense with the centuries-old Neglected Alternative objection; and (3) how to account for the syntheticity of the moral law and its role in conferring experience-immanent meaning on the practical postulates (e.g., of the existence of God). (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Kant claims repeatedly that experience involves sensations being ‘ordered and placed’ in space. This paper considers what this surprising claim could possibly mean. After presenting the relevant textual evidence and rejecting two candidate interpretations of it, I defend a qualia or ‘mental paint’ interpretation, according to which experience involves a direct, conscious ‘acquaintance’ with sensations arrayed in a ‘phenomenal space.’ This interpretation allows us to take literally many of Kant's claims about sensation: that it is the matter of both intuition (...) and appearance, that we are conscious of sensation in perception, and that sensible qualities like color are sensations. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.