In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the (...) validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Kant’s account of freedom fits with his theory of the human sciences. Several Kant scholars have recently acknowledged a tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his works on anthropology in particular. I believe that in order to clarify the issue at stake, the tension between Kant’s metaphysics and his anthropology should be broken down into three distinct problems. -/- First, Kant’s Anthropology studies the human being ‘as a freely acting being.’5 This approach (...) thus presupposes that such an inquiry can acknowledge freedom and appeal to it in its accounts of human behaviour. Yet the Critique of Pure Reason clearly asserts that ‘as regard [man’s] empirical character there is no freedom; and yet it is only in the light of this character that man can be studied.’ This, in contrast, seems to indicate that the human sciences should be carried out independently of freedom. -/- Second, the Anthropology seems to suggest that empirical factors encompassed by culture, civilisation and mores can have an impact on the human being’s moral status by generating some form of moral progress. Yet if freedom and moral agency are restricted to the domain of the intelligible, they cannot be influenced by anything empirical. -/- Third, the Anthropology provides numerous moral and prudential recommendations as to how one should behave in particular circumstances. Thus it seems to presuppose that anthropological knowledge, as well as the practical guidance based on this knowledge, can have an impact on the free choices we make. Yet how can the human sciences be legitimately, and efficaciously, prescriptive vis-à-vis our free choices? -/- Regarding the first problem, which I tackle in section I, I will hold that the human sciences can legitimately refer to ‘practical freedom’ understood as the power to determine one’s aims and to act independently of sensuous impulses, through intentions and the representation of purposes. I will address the second and third problems in two steps. Section II will tackle them negatively through a distinction between the conditions of moral agency and the conditions of moral improvement. It will allow me to argue that the possibility of any direct influence of the empirical on the intelligible is metaphysically invalid in principle, and hence, that empirical factors cannot effect any direct change in one’s moral character. In the third section, I will turn to the positive side of my account by focusing on the issue of the moral relevance of culture and civilisation as well as that of the human sciences (which study their influence), and suggest that they are morally relevant insofar as they make us more morally efficacious. (shrink)

Once a standard tool in the epistemologist’s kit, the analytic/synthetic distinction was challenged by Quine and others in the mid-twentieth century and remains controversial today. But although the work of a lot contemporary philosophers touches on this distinction – in the sense that it either has consequences for it, or it assumes results about it – few have really focussed on it recently. This has the consequence that a lot has happened that should affect our view of the analytic/synthetic distinction, (...) while little has been done to work out exactly what the effects are. All these features together make the topic ideal for either a survey or research seminar at the graduate level: it can provide an organising theme which justifies a spectrum of classic readings from Locke to Williamson, passing though Kant, Frege, Carnap, Quine and Kripke on the way, but it could also provide an excuse for a much more narrowly construed research seminar which studies the consequences of really contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics for the distinction. (shrink)

What sort of property did Locke take colors to be? He is sometimes portrayed as holding that colors are wholly subjective. More often he is thought to identify colors with dispositions—powers that bodies have to produce certain ideas in us. Many interpreters find two or more incompatible strands in his account of color, and so are led to distinguish an “official,” prevailing view from the conflicting remarks into which he occasionally lapses. Many who see him as officially holding that colors (...) are dispositions concede that some of his remarks imply that colors are in us rather than in objects. After raising some difficulties for these readings, I offer an alternative. I will argue that Locke takes colors to be relational, but not dispositional, properties of the objects around us. On his view, an object is red if and only if it is actually causing a certain sensation in some observer. (shrink)

Reading is not a peripheral philosophical pastime; it constitutes most of what we do when we do philosophy. And the experience of reading philosophy is much more than just a series of interpretative acts: the philosopher-reader is subject to, among other things, sensations, passions, emendations, and transformations. In this essay, I argue that a full account of philosophical reading should outline some of the sociological structures that determine how different communities of philosophers construct such experiences, as well as describe in (...) detail the ways in which philosophers encounter truths while reading. It should, that is, describe ways in which philosophy acts upon readers and the various effects that result. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Whereas many philosophers take backwards causation to be impossible, the few who maintain its possibility either take it to be absent from the actual world or else confined to theoretical physics. Here, however, I argue that backwards causation is not only actual, but common, though occurring in the context of our social institutions. After juxtaposing my cases with a few others in the literature and arguing that we should take seriously the reality of causal cases in these contexts, I consider (...) several objections. These objections involve whether the cases should be reinterpreted, whether they are properly within the institution, whether they involve necessitation or else Cambridge changes, whether and how they involve changing the past, and whether this should call us to question institutional reality. I end by suggesting that it is a virtue of our institutions that they allow backwards causation, that this is a kind of technology that they are often built to incorporate. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 3-14, January 2022. Advocates for the psychological construction of emotion view themselves as articulating a non-essentialist alternative to basic emotion theory's essentialist notion of affect programs. Psychological constructionists have also argued that holding essentialist assumptions about emotions engenders misconceptions about the psychological constructionist viewpoint. If so, it is important to understand what psychological constructionists mean by “essentialism” and “non-essentialism.” To advance the debate, I take a deeper dive into non-essentialism, comparing the non-essentialist views (...) of the early empiricists with those of the psychological constructionists, focusing on the theories of James Russell and Lisa Barrett. Using Lakatos’ notion of scientific research programs, I also describe how Russell's and Barrett's views have evolved into different and potentially competing research programs under the psychological constructionist banner. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of reason in Shepherd's account of acquiring knowledge of the external world via first principles. Reason is important, but does not have a foundational role. Certain principles enable us to draw the required inferences for acquiring knowledge of the external world. These principles are basic, foundational and, more importantly, self‐evident and thus justified in other ways than by demonstration. Justificatory demonstrations of these principles are neither required, nor possible. By drawing on textual and contextual evidence, (...) I will show that Shepherd should have said that we know the first principles of any science, in general, and that “everything which begins to exist must have a cause”, in particular, via intuition, not via reason. Reasoning about such principles can help their self‐evidence shine through in certain cases; their justification, and our being justified in believing them, does not come from this reasoning, however. (shrink)

I argue that Nietzsche puts forward a pandispositionalist view that can be seen as the conjunction of two basic claims: that powers are the basic constituents of reality, on the one hand, and that the only properties things possess are relational qua dispositional, on the other hand. As I believe that such a view is, at least in part, motivated by his rejection of Kant’s notion of things in themselves, I start by sketching the metaphysics of Kant’s transcendental idealism and (...) by presenting Nietzsche’s critical reaction to it. After that, I start to work out Nietzsche’s pandispositionalist view by considering first the case of physical reality and second that of psychological reality. I then argue that in both cases that view does not conflict with Nietzsche’s naturalism. In the last part of the paper I explore how his notion of will to power fits into such a pandispositionalist picture. Here, I shall argue, some serious tension does arise, for the claim that Nietzsche sometimes makes to the effect that the will to power is a fundamental physical force seems to clash with central aspects of his mature thought. However, whereas he repeatedly entertains that claim in his unpublished notes, it is far from clear that he ever meant to endorse it in his published work. Thus, I conclude that the available textual evidence only justifies attributing to Nietzsche the kind of pandispositionalist view spelled out in the first sections of the present paper, and not also the further claim that the will to power is a fundamental physical force. (shrink)

This article examines the distinction that Russell drew between his work as a philosopher and his work as a journalist. It explains why, when warning against the threat posed by a nuclear arms race, Russell thought it better to write as a journalist (speaking on behalf of common sense) rather than as a philosopher. It is argued that to put aside philosophy in favour of common sense is, in this instance, a mistake.

Newton’s absolute pace-time view is the basis of his classical mechanics, and his description of relative motion is based on absolute space. However, the existence of this absolute space has been questioned by the academic circles. In order to defend its theoretical foundation, Newton established a famous bucket experiment to prove the existence of absolute space. But his experiment was also questioned, and the experiment is also divided into different opinions. This paper hopes to find the answer to the question (...) from Kantian perspective. (shrink)

Fichte argues that the conclusion of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories is correct yet lacks a crucial premise, given Kant’s admission that the metaphysical deduction locates an arbitrary origin for the categories. Fichte provides the missing premise by employing a new method: a genetic deduction of the categories from a first principle. Since Fichte claims to articulate the same view as Kant in a different, it is crucial to grasp genetic deduction in relation to the sorts of deduction that (...) Kant offers. I propose to interpret genetic deduction as the simultaneous fulfillment of two tasks: answering the question quid facti by deriving the categories from the I and answering the question quid juris by establishing our entitlement to the categories as conditions of experience. While the second task represents Fichte’s agreement with Kant’s transcendental deduction, the first reflects his correction of Kant’s metaphysical deduction. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant claims that causal judgments, including judgments about forces, must have an a priori basis. It is less well known that Kant claims that we can perceive the repulsive force of bodies through the sense of touch. Together, these claims present an interpretive puzzle, since they appear to commit Kant to both affirming and denying that we can have perceptions of force. My first aim is to show that both sides of the puzzle have deep (...) roots in Kant's philosophy. My second aim is to present three potential solutions to the puzzle and show that each faces problems. (shrink)

Although at present analytic philosophy is practiced mainly in the English-speaking world, it is to a considerable part the invention of German speakers. Its emergence owes much to Russell, Moore, and American Pragmatism, but even more to Frege, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. No one would think of analytic philosophy as a specifically Anglophone phenomenon, if the Nazis had not driven many of its pioneers out of central Europe.

A philosopher once wrote the following words:If I examine the PTOLOMAIC and COPERNICAN systems, I endeavour only, by my enquiries, to know the real situation of the planets; that is, in other words, I endeavour to give them, in my conception, the same relations, that they bear towards each other in the heavens. To this operation of the mind, therefore, there seems to be always a real, though often an unknown standard, in the nature of things; nor is truth or (...) falsehood variable by the various apprehensions of mankind. Though all human race should for ever conclude, that the sun moves, and the earth remains at rest, the sun stirs not an inch from his place for all these reasonings; and such conclusions are eternally false and erroneous. (shrink)

This article shows that there are square circles in the sense that there are mathematical objects that are at the same time both perfectly circular and perfectly square. The philosophical significance of this is discussed, especially in view of philosophy's widespread use of “square circle” as a typical example of an impossibility. In particular, the focus is on what the existence of square circles means for the possibility of conceptual analysis, and more generally what we can learn about the nature (...) of non-formal concepts and their use in philosophy. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe main subject examined in this paper is Immanuel Kant's controversy withPhilosophisches Magazinregarding Kant's new theory of judgments. J. A. Eberhard, editor ofPhilosophisches Magazin, and his colleagues wanted to vindicate the Wollfian traditional concept of judgments by undermining Kant's claims. As will be demonstrated, their arguments were effective mainly in exposing the ambiguity that was inherent in Kant's concept of the synthetic a priori; an ambiguity that resulted from Kant's desire—central to his critique of metaphysics—to present judgments pertaining to (...) mathematics, (dogmatic) metaphysics, and pure natural science as judgments which shared a common form. Exposing this ambiguity was not the intended result, and it was insufficient for the purpose of vindicating the Wollfian tradition. The contributors toPhilosophisches Magazinignored the important properties shared by the class of judgments falling under Kant's concept of synthetic a priori judgments. They also ignored the fact that their position was unable to account for the logical phenomena that motivated Kant to present a new theory of judgments. On the other hand, Kant's theory of judgments was insensitive to the important differences that exist among the distinct types of judgments falling under his concept of a synthetic a priori judgment. This latter point is clearly shown in the controversy regarding the novelty of Kant's concept of a synthetic a priori judgment, and in the controversy regarding the function of intuitions within synthetic judgments.A result of the controversy was that Kant's concept of the synthetic a priori, which he believed to be an exact concept, was revealed to be a metaphor: no more than an invitation to view certain intellectual fields in the light of others. On the other hand, Eberhard and his colleagues failed to come up with satisfactory answers to Kant's questions within their traditional concept of judgment. Both parties refused to acknowledge this result. Consequently, the search for a new logic, a new architectonic order, and a new unity within reason became a general problem for the new generation of philosophers. (shrink)

It is pointed out that the probabilistic character of a theory does not indicate by itself a distancing with respect to the norms of objectification. Instead, the very structure of the calculation of probabilities utilised by this theory is capable of bearing the trace of a constitution of objectivity in Kant’s sense. Accordingly, the procedure of the constitution of objectivity is first studied in standard and in quantum cases with due reference to modern cognitive science. Then, an examination of the (...) differences between classical and quantum probabilities is performed. It is shown that the form of the quantum calculation of the probabilities carries the mark of the contextuality of the phenomena on which it bears. Conversely, certain conditions that have the form of Bell’s inequalities carry the mark of decontextualization. (shrink)

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, philosophers of various sorts, including Helmholtz, Avenarius, Husserl, Russell, Carnap, Neurath, and Heidegger, were united in promulgating a new, “scientific” philosophy. This article documents some of the varieties of scientific philosophy and argues that the history of scientific philosophy is crucial to the development of analytic philosophy and the division between analytic and continental philosophy. Scientific philosophy defined itself via criticisms of old-fashioned systematic metaphysics and, in the twentieth century, of Lebensphilosophie. It (...) offered a modernist vision of philosophy participating in a progressive, problem-solving, piecemeal, and collaborative scientific ethos. The article argues that the rise of scientific philosophy indicates a change of the conception of science as well as philosophy in the late nineteenth century and notes some tensions in the accounts of science offered by scientific philosophers. The article offers some preliminary lessons for the interpretation of logical empiricism and phenomenology as episodes within a larger history of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

THIS SURVEY WAS ORIGINALLY COMPOSED FOR (IN US TERMS) SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WHO ARE PREPARING FOR A NEWLY ESTABLISHED EXAMINATION IN PHILOSOPHY. ONE OF THE SET-BOOKS PRESCRIBED FOR THIS COURSE IS HUME’S FIRST "INQUIRY". "HUME’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION" THEREFORE CONTAINS NO MATERIAL NOT ALTERNATIVELY AVAILABLE: EITHER IN "HUME’S PHILOSOPHY OF BELIEF" (LONDON: ROUTLEDGE AND KEGAN PAUL, 1961); OR IN "DAVID HUME": "PHILOSOPHER OF MORAL SCIENCE" (OXFORD: BLACKWELL, 1986).

The aim of this paper is to confirm that it was Hamann's translation of Hume's "Treatise" (I.4.7) which triggered Kant's critical turn in 1768/69. If this is indeed so, then Kant's inaugural dissertation must be reassessed, in particular the doctrine, to be found there, that we have cognitive access to the intelligible world. This doctrine is part of a strategy for tackling the problem highlighted by Hume; that there may be conflicting principles at work in the human mind, i.e., an (...) antinomy. The dissertation's strategy failed and so raised the question of how categories can refer to objects. (shrink)

More than many other Austrians, Mises tried to found aprioristic methodology on a well defined and developed epistemology. Although references to Kant are scattered rather unsystematically throughout his works, he nevertheless used an unequivocal Kantian terminology. He explicitly defended the existence of ‘a priori knowledge’, ‘synthetic a priori propositions’, ‘the category of action’, and so forth.

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)

Rorty saw the course of philosophy in the twentieth century as an effort to part from two major philosophical trends, namely historicism and naturalism, only to inevitably return at the end of a tortuous path to these very same tendencies. If we can concede without major objections Rorty’s diagnosis of the trends in contemporary continental and analytical philosophy, which seem to reveal the exhaustion of modern philosophy, based as it has been on epistemology, we must, on the other hand, examine (...) carefully the three main questions that this diagnosis leaves open: How does Rorty reconcile continental idealist subjectivism with materialistic behaviorism? Is it really inevitable that philosophy blinded by Geist are unable to question prevalent beliefs? Finally, is the acceptance of a liberalism that is not able to give reasons for itself the most effective and pragmatic liberalism? In answering these questions, it may not be possible to avoid a non-dogmatic, but pragmatic, metaphysics: a vocabulary of vocabularies that allows Rorty to speak of the problems of justice in Plato and Rawls, of the soul in Aristotle and Descartes, of the dystopias in Moro and Orwell. On pragmatic terms, perhaps a modest version of a metaphysic’s “vocabulary” turns out to be as legitimate and practical as any other vocabulary. (shrink)

In _Scientific Ontology_, Chakravartty diagnoses a “dramatic conflict” between empiricism and metaphysics and aims to overcome that conflict by opting for a modern-day variant of Pyrrhonism, i.e. by appreciating the equal strength (_isostheneia_) of the arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, and by achieving tranquility (_ataraxia_) by suspending judgment or remaining speechless in the face of that _isostheneia_. In this paper, I want to argue that instead of remaining speechless in the face of the _isostheneia_ of the (...) arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, we should adopt a position that remains underrated in Chakravartty’s analysis: a position that amounts to a modern-day variant of the Kantian combination of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, and that like the original Kantian combination, is capable of solving many instances of the dramatic conflict between empiricism and metaphysics and, in particular, a conflict that is the talk of the town in philosophy of science these days—the conflict between ontic-structural realism and Lewisian metaphysics. (shrink)

This essay explores the relation between worldly orientation and rational comprehension in Kant. Both require subjective grounds of differentiation that were eventually developed into a contextualizing principle for reflective judgement. This kind of judgement can proceed either inductively to find new universals or by analogy to symbolically link different objective spheres. I will argue that the basic orientational function of reflective judgement is to modally differentiate the formal horizonal contexts of field, territory, domain and habitat laid out in the Introduction (...) to theCritique of the Power of Judgement. Assessing which context takes priority will be important in making aesthetic judgements and for applying practical reason to comprehend human affairs. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore Merleau-Ponty’s ambivalent relationship with Kant’s transcendental philosophy. I begin by looking at several points of convergence between Kant and Merleau-Ponty, focusing on the affinities between Kant’s account of transcendental realism and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of objective thought. I then show how Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of Kant’s paradox of asymmetrical objects points to a parallel in Kant’s thought to Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception. In the second part of the paper, I show why (...) Merleau-Ponty believes that, despite the promise of Kant’s thought, he fails to adequately escape from objective thought. After presenting the central claims of the transcendental deduction, I piece together Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of it by answering three questions: For Merleau-Ponty, how do we encounter the world prior to reflection? How is experience constituted? And what leads Kant to mischaracterise experience in his own transcendental philosophy? (shrink)

This paper seeks to widen the dialogue between the “epistemology of peer disagreement” and the epistemology informed by Wittgenstein’s last notebooks, later edited as On Certainty. The paper defends the following theses: not all certainties are groundless; many of them are beliefs; and they do not have a common essence. An epistemic peer need not share all of my certainties. Which response to a disagreement over a certainty is called for, depends on the type of certainty in question. Sometimes a (...) form of relativism is the right response. Reasonable, mutually recognized peer disagreement over a certainty is possible.—The paper thus addresses both interpretative and systematic issues. It uses Wittgenstein as a resource for thinking about peer disagreement over certainties. (shrink)

Ever since its first publication critics of Kant'sCritique of Pure Reasonhave been struck by certain strong formal resemblances between transcendental idealism and Berkeley's immaterialism. Both philosophers hold that the sensible world is mind-dependent, and that from this very mind-dependence we can draw a refutation of scepticism of the senses.

Is science in the truth business, discovering ever more about an independent and largely unobservable world? Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, two of the most important figures in science studies in the 20th century, gave accounts of science that are in some tension with the truth view. Their central claims about science are considered here, along with two arguments that bear directly on the truth question. One argument makes an appeal to past scientific failures to argue against the truth view; (...) the other makes an appeal to present scientific successes to argue for it. Both arguments are problematic. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider ways of responding to critiques of natural kinds monism recently suggested from the pluralist camp. Even if monism is determined to be untenable in certain domains (say, about species), it might well be tenable in others. Chemistry is suggested to be such a monist‐friendly domain. Suggestions of trouble for chemical kinds can be defused by attending to the difference between monism as a metaphysical thesis and as a claim about classification systems. Finally, I consider enantiomers (...) as a test case for the monism/pluralism debate. The question of whether enantiomers differ in kind does not appear easily answerable. I suggest that this legislates for pluralism in chemistry. (shrink)

This essay develops three key claims made in my 2018 book, Exceptional Technologies. Part one argues for ‘trivialising the transcendental’, to remove stigmas attached to the word ‘transcendental’ in philosophy in general and philosophy of technology in particular. Part two outlines the concept of ‘exceptional technologies’. These are artefacts and practices that show up as limit cases for our received pictures of what constitutes a ‘technology’ and that force us to reassess the conditions for the possibility of these pictures. I (...) focus on the case of autonomous vehicles here, arguing that Google Street View provides a relatively better picture for approaching philosophical issues at stake than the famous ‘Trolley Problem’. Part three then concludes with a focus on Heidegger’s ‘Question Concerning Technology’ essay. Heidegger asserts that philosophical questioning ‘builds a way’. I argue that philosophical approaches to technologies might better be considered in terms of a multidimensional problem space. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of the radical enactivism of Daniel Hutto, Erik Myin, and their collaborators, insofar as their approach pertains to the hard problem of consciousness. I argue that their valiant attempt to discard the hard problem is ultimately unsuccessful. More specifically, I argue that the hard problem of consciousness is best construed as a transcendental challenge and that no phenomeno-physical identity theory, and no “logic of identity”, successfully eliminate this challenge. Finally, I argue that the theoretical stance (...) adopted by Hutto, Myin, and their colleagues is inherently unstable in that it inadvertently blends strong deflationary currents with an implicit commitment to substantive metaphysical revisionism. Since deflationism and revisionism are discordant partners their forced union results in a position whose overall coherence is compromised. Such disequilibrium, I believe, is a general characteristic of radical enactivist approaches to consciousness, of which the position discussed on the present occasion is one prominent representative. (shrink)

Ever since its first publication critics of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason have been struck by certain strong formal resemblances between transcendental idealism and Berkeley's immaterialism. Both philosophers hold that the sensible world is mind-dependent, and that from this very mind-dependence we can draw a refutation of scepticism of the senses.

The purpose of the third section of Kant’s Groundwork is to prove the possibility of the categorical imperative. In the end of the second section, Kant establishes that a proof like this is necessary to show that morality is ‘something’ and ‘not a chimerical idea without any truth’ or a ‘phantom’. Since the categorical imperative was established as a synthetic a priori practical proposition, in order to prove its possibility it is necessary ‘to go beyond cognition of objects to a (...) critique of the subject, that is, of pure practical reason’. Kant names this kind of proof a deduction. The present paper intends to show the argument whose purpose is to justify the categorical imperative; show that the argument is a transcendental deduction; present the argument as it is reconstructed by Allison, and show that, although it seems compelling, the position of the commentator could not be accepted by Kant himself. (shrink)

In a crucial paragraph (KrV, A 663-664 / B 691-692) of the first part of the “Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic”, Kant discusses the specific status of the principles of homogeneity, specification, and continuity. In doing so, he refers to an already proven argument and thus to other passages of the Critique of Pure Reason. In search of this argument the “Transcendental Analytic” but in particular the “first book” of the “Transcendental Dialectic” turn out to be possible reference points. Although (...) this contextualisation demands further systematic and editorial reflections, it also allows the clarification of the status of the principles and their justification in relation to a subjective deduction. Kant offers with the subjective deduction, as introduced in the “Preface” (of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason) and again in the “first book” of the “Transcendental Dialectic”, a first argumentative strategy, which differs from the objective one but provides “some objective validity” (KrV, A 664 / B 692; Kant, 1998, p. 602) and therefore has systematic importance for the principles of homogeneity, specification, and continuity. My aim is to offer immanent strategies for a justification of the principles of homogeneity, specification, and continuity in the framework of the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

The movement for the revival of the Scholastic tradition (Neo-Scholasticism) was a reaction to devastating criticism by the representatives of Enlightenment which led to the destruction of traditional metaphysics and of epistemological optimism, the two pillars of European religious philosophy. Reception of Kantian ideas in Neo-Scholasticism varied from total rejection to its use in renewing the philosophical foundation of religious philosophy. In this regard the legacy of the Polotsk Jesuit Academy was one of the first attempts to interpret Kant’s ideas (...) and confront them in the framework of the Scholastic tradition. It is therefore not irrelevant to look at how Kant’s programmatic ideas were perceived at the Polotsk Jesuit Academy, one of the few centres of Jesuit philosophy that survived in the territory of the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century. The object of this study is the attempt at a critical analysis of Kant made in the Philosophical Instructions for Students at the Polotsk Academy by the Academy’s professor, Giuseppe Angiolini. Angiolini constantly refers to Kant in his reasoning and sees him as his main ideological rival. The ideas articulated in the Philosophical Instructions influenced the philosophical positions of the Academy’s graduates who in turn made a tangible contribution to the development of the Belarusian intellectual tradition. The relationship between Kant’s ideas and the ideas Angiolini drew from the Scholastic tradition is analysed through the use of the concepts that are common to both trends, such as the transcendental, the empirical and the sensible, self-evident truths and common sense. (shrink)

I have applied a fairly general, learning theoretic perspective to some questions raised by Reichenbach's positions on induction and discovery. This is appropriate in an examination of the significance of Reichenbach's work, since the learning-theoretic perspective is to some degree part of Reichenbach's reliabilist legacy. I have argued that Reichenbach's positivism and his infatuation with probabilities are both irrelevant to his views on induction, which are principally grounded in the notion of limiting reliability. I have suggested that limiting reliability is (...) still a formidable basis for the formulation of methodological norms, particularly when reliability cannot possibly be had in the short run, so that refined judgments about evidential support must depend upon measure-theoretic choices having nothing to do in the short run with the truth of the hypothesis under investigation. To illustrate the generality of Reichenbach's program, I showed how it can be applied to methods that aim to solve arbitrary assessment and discovery problems in various senses. In this generalized Reichenbachian setting, we can characterize the intrinsic complexity of reliable inductive inference in terms of topological complexity. Finally, I let Reichenbach's theory of induction have the last say about hypothetico-deductive method. (shrink)

In this essay I critique two influential accounts of rational autonomy in common schooling that conceive liberalism as an ideal form of life, and I offer an alternative approach to democratic education that views liberal theory as concerned with coexistence among rival ways of living. This view places moral agency, not rational autonomy, at the heart of schooling in liberal societies—a moral agency grounded in initiation into dynamic traditions that enable self-definition and are accompanied by exposure to life-paths other than (...) one’s own. This alternative challenges the tendency in large diverse democracies (such as those of the US and the UK) to prefer common to particularistic schools, thereby placing many types of faith and secular schools on a more equal footing and providing moral justification for education in the national cultures of small liberal republics (such as Denmark, Israel and Lithuania) that maintain special relationships to particular groups while acknowledging the rights of all citizens. I call this approach the pedagogy of difference. (shrink)

This paper explains the nature and role of common sense in Reid and uses the exposition to answer some of Reid's critics. The key to defending Reid is to distinguish between two kinds of priority that common sense beliefs are supposed to enjoy. Common sense beliefs enjoy epistemological priority in that they constitute a foundation for knowledge; i.e. they have evidential status without being grounded in further evidence themselves. Common sense beliefs enjoy methodological priority in that they constrain philosophical theory: (...) they serve as pre-theoretical commitments that philosophical theories ought to respect in the absence of good reasons for rejecting them. (shrink)