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)

According to Kant, we gain mathematical knowledge by constructing objects in pure intuition. This is true not only of geometry but arithmetic and algebra as well. Construction has prominent place in scholarly accounts of Kant’s views of mathematics. But did Kant have a clear vision of what construction is? The paper argues that Kant employed two different, even conflicting models of construction, depending on the philosophical issue he was dealing with. In the equivalence model, Kant claims that the object constructed (...) in intuition is equivalent to the properties included in the conceptual rule. In the overstepping model of construction, Kant argues that construction goes beyond the concept which is a “mere definition”. What is more, both models of construction can be found in the Doctrine of Method in the first Critique. The paper examines reasons that have led Kant to adopt the two models of construction, and proposes a reading that alleviates the apparent contradiction between the two models. (shrink)

The verificationist defense of Kant's refutation of idealism is a specimen of the reconstructive work that needs to be done in evaluating Kant's transcendental philosophy. It is necessary to proceed piecemeal in the critical examination of each of Kant's arguments, fitting it to the proposed indirect proof model, and rethinking its soundness or unsoundness. There may be few conclusions that can stand just as they are. The justification of Kant's transcendental proof that there are unknowable things in themselves establishes an (...) important first step in this continuing inquiry. (shrink)

Festschrift for prof. Helge Malmgren. -/- Contents: • Kristoffer Ahlström: Two Levels of Epistemic Inquiry; • Jan Almäng: Till frågan om trancendentala argument; • Kent Gustavsson: Perceptionens gåta; • Björn Haglund: Some Notes on Induction; • Ingvar Johansson: Money and Fictions; • Frank Lorentzon: Intuition och kunskap; • Ingmar Persson: Double Effect Troubles; • Filip Radovic: Wittgenstein om tautologier och andra logiska satser; • Claes Strannegård: Anthropomorphic Artificial Intelligence; • Bolof Stridbeck: Den motbjudande slutsatsen & den plågade filosofen; • Christer (...) Svennerlind: Armstrong on Instantiation as Partial Identity; • Anders Tolland: Mr Darcys berättigade stolthet; • Björn Vickhoff: H-speech: the Musical Self - A Phenomenological Approach to Music & Emotion; • Dag Westerståhl: On the Aristotelian Square of Opposition; • Carl-Gustaf Wikstrand: On Pain States & Mental Causation;. (shrink)

Le présent article se propose de montrer en quoi l'argument transcendantal (Strawson) peut modifier notre compréhension de certains débats en économie. Pour donner corps à cette hypothèse, l'article recense tout d'abord les principaux écueils épistémologiques auxquels se heurte l'économiste ; il propose ensuite une nouvelle version de l'argument transcendantal ; il montre, enfin, en quoi cet argument transcendantal permet à la fois de dépasser certaines apones rencontrées et d'ouvrir des perspectives sur la question de la rationalité des agents.

The idea of philosophical topology, or topography as I call it outside of the Heideggerian context, has become increasingly central to my work over the last twenty years. While the idea is not indebted only to Heidegger’s thinking, it is probably Heidegger to whom I owe the most. Moreover, one of my claims, central to _Heidegger’s Topology_, is that Heidegger’s own work cannot adequately be understood except as topological in character, and so as centrally concerned with place – _topos, Ort, (...) Ortschaft_ (which, I should emphasize, is not the same as a concern with space nor with time taken apart from one another, but I shall say more on this below). I do not regard myself as the only person to make this claim, or something like it. In the 1980s, both Joseph Fell and Reiner Schürmann, from very different perspectives, advanced topological readings of Heidegger, or elements of such readings. My own work aims to provide a definitive case for the topological reading of Heidegger’s thinking in its entirety, as well as to articulate an account of topology or topography as itself central to philosophical inquiry. On my account, the attempt to think place, and to think in accord with place, is at the heart of philosophy as such. (shrink)

Transcendental philosophy has traditionally sought to provide non-contingent grounds for certain aspects of cognitive, moral, and social life. Further, it has made a claim to being 'ultimately' grounded in the sense that its account of experience should provide a non-dogmatic account of its own possibility. Most current approaches to transcendental philosophy seek to do justice to these twin aspects of the project by making an 'intersubjective turn', taking the structure of dialogue or social practice rather than the 'I think' or (...) consciousness as the locus of ultimate grounds. After examining the recent debate over transcendental arguments in order to illuminate the relations between two important versions of transcendental philosophy- the neo-Kantian version oriented toward justification of principles and the phenomenological version oriented toward clarification of meaning- this paper criticizes internally connected aspects of the intersubjective turn in K. O. Apel, Bernhard Waldenfels, and a recent 'practical' interpretation of Husserl. It is shown that the twin demands of the project can be redeemed only if ultimate grounding is seen first of all not as an epistemological or ontological question but as an ethical one. This requires modification of the appeal to intersubjectivity and a qualified return to the first-person perspective. (shrink)