I examine a range of issues concerning Kant's conception of cognitive spontaneity. I consider whether we can cognize or know ourselves as spontaneous cognizers, and why Kant seems to regard the notion of cognitive spontaneity as less problematic than the idea of moral spontaneity. As an organizing theme of my discussion, I use an apparent tension between the A-edition and the B-edition of the first Critique. Against common interpretations, I argue that in the B-edition Kant does not revoke his claim (...) that we can cognize, and even know, that our noumenal selves are absolutely spontaneous cognitive agents. (shrink)

Kant famously argues that transcendental idealism allows us to solve the problem of free will. The basic outlines of the solution are as follows: while freedom and determinism are incompatible, we can consistently predicate them of one and the same being if we take the former to be a quality of the human being as it is in itself and the latter a quality of the human being as it appears. In this paper, I look at three different readings of (...) transcendental idealism—the two-object reading, the two-property reading, and the epistemological reading—and argue that none of them—at least in their standard forms—are able to make sense of this solution. I then draw on my alternative, semantic reading of transcendental idealism to propose a new way of understanding Kant's solution. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show how Kant’s epistemological conception of the transcendental faculties of cognition relates to his ontological conception of the transcendental distinction between mind-dependent, ideal appearances (viz., empirical objects) and mind-independent, transcendentally real things in themselves, as they relate to the self. I engage the metaphysical foundations of Kant’s account of self-consciousness and how this account relates to the self as an empirically perceivable and conceptualizable object of observation. This paper also connects Kant’s work in the Transcendental Deduction (...) on the transcendental unity of apperception with Kant’s work on “clear” and “obscure” representations. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show how Kant’s epistemological conception of the transcendental faculties of cognition relates to his ontological conception of the transcendental distinction between mind-dependent, ideal appearances (viz., empirical objects) and mind-independent, transcendentally real things in themselves, as they relate to the self. I engage the metaphysical foundations of Kant’s account of self-consciousness and how this account relates to the self as an empirically perceivable and conceptualizable object of observation. This paper also connects Kant’s work in the Transcendental Deduction (...) on the transcendental unity of apperception with Kant’s work on “clear” and “obscure” representations. (shrink)

This study aims, first, to delimit the seemingly synonymous concepts of “phenomenon” and “appearance” and second, to trace the functions of each in Kant’s philosophy and the phenomenological tradition. The analy­sis is based on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and the central works of Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink. Kant does not explicitly distinguish the two terms and only speaks about phenomena when he deals with the categorial application of reason. With Husserl, appearance is linked with the area of (...) the natural attitude while the phenomenon is absolute. Fink’s position is interesting in that it differs from the views of the main representatives of transcendental philosophy, Kant and Husserl. According to Fink, appearing is the foundation of the fact that what exists is and that appearing is being. Fink takes a different approach to the meanings of appearance as opposing the thing in itself which possesses true but unknowable being and appearance as taking place in the “relative” sphere of the natural attitude : with Fink, appearance turns out to be the condition of the existence of objects. Appearance, understood through the prism of the human being which perceives something as Vorschein, implies an inherently open world. Following Fink, I analyse these provisions and examine, first, light as the metaphysical source of cognition, second, the human being as a special kind of being, third, the pre-Socratic treatment of being and, fourth, the formation of a distinct phenomenological idiom. I come to the conclusion that the metaphysical-ontological method of phenomenological analysis of appearance proposed by Fink affords a new insight into the a priori principle and the nature of Kant’s “thing in itself” and proposes a new grounding of Husserl’s thesis which questions Kant’s agnosticism. (shrink)

In the Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, Plato outlines the controversial thesis of a priori knowledge that all learning is a form of recollection—anamnesis. He uses this as an argument for the immortality of the soul via reincarnation. Because of this latter claim, the thesis is widely mocked by contemporary evolutionarily-informed materialists. But we can safely reject the metaphysical claim without abandoning the insight of the epistemological one. And indeed, modern evolutionary theory can explain how learning—at least of the sort that (...) depends on certain a priori concepts—can be a kind of recollection. Through this metaphor, natural selection is a process by which information about the world is transmitted across time. When we learn by reasoning about a priori knowledge, then, we in an important sense rely on information in our genomes—if not our souls—information acquired by the process of natural selection—if not conscious acquisition. Thinking of a priori knowledge with the metaphor of anamnesis elucidates two essential features of the relationship between epistemology and ontology. First, it emphasizes that there is necessarily a time-delay between our a priori knowledge and the universe to which it bears a relationship, if any. Second, it clarifies that a priori knowledge is knowledge that enhances reproductive fitness—which could well be because it reflects ontology faithfully, but could as easily be a kind of innate nominalism. (shrink)