In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant draws a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, characterizing the latter as uncognizable. While arguing that all we can cognize are appearances, Kant nevertheless maintains that there are thing in themselves. This has struck many as questionable: how can we be in a position to affirm, of things stipulated to be uncognizable, that they exist? In this paper, I take up the challenge of establishing the existence of things in themselves. I begin (...) by making the case that, given Kant’s epistemological strictures, the existence of things in themselves must follow analytically from the existence of appearances. After examining the pitfalls of a recent attempt at establishing the existence of things in themselves, I go on to argue that the feature of appearances in virtue of which their existence analytically entails the existence of themselves is the subjectivity of their form. It is implicit in the notion of something with a subjective form that its matter is provided via affection from without. Moreover, the things providing the matter of appearances can’t be located in space and time, because appearances themselves depend on our sensibility for their formal features. (shrink)

In a calculation involving imaginary numbers, we begin with real numbers that represent concrete measures and we end up with numbers that are equally real, but in the course of the operation we find ourselves walking “as if on a bridge that stands on no piles”. How is that possible? How does that work? And what is involved in the as-if stance that this metaphor introduces so beautifully? These are questions that bother Törless deeply. And that Törless is bothered by (...) such questions is a central question for any reader of Törless. Here I offer my interpretation, along with a reconstruction of the philosophical intuition that lies behind it all. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville is known for his strange liberalism. One of the reasons therefore has to be found in his lesser known strange religious belief. The three main elements that determined his belief were his aristocratic and profoundly religious education, the dramatic loss of his faith after reading eighteenth century French philosophers and his conviction that the stability of the American democracy was mainly due to religious mores. These elements explain why Tocqueville appeared in his publications as an obvious believer, (...) hardly bothered by any dubiety, while internally he was a restless doubter, sometimes a panicky infidel and occasionally some sort of believer anyway. The focus of this article is a meticulous dissection of Tocqueville’s personal belief by contrasting it with approaches of religion that look familiar at first sight. Although Tocqueville had the highest esteem for Pascal, his wager was not really tempting to him. James’ will to believe seemed far more attractive, yet Tocqueville’s thinking was too empirical to fit with it. Kant furnished strong arguments to overcome this obstacle, and in that respect he offered a solid philosophical ground to consider Tocqueville’s outlook on religion as an authentic religious belief. But what Tocqueville has never found was a religious ground to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Christianity was Tocqueville’s philosophical belief, rather than his religious belief. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s commitment to the existence of things in themselves takes the form of a commitment short of knowledge that does not violate the limitations on knowledge which he lays down. I will argue that Kant’s commitment fits his description of what he calls “doctrinal belief”: acceptance of the existence of things in themselves which is subjectively sufficient but not objectively sufficient. I outline two ways in which we accept the existence of things in themselves which are subjectively (...) sufficient. First, we must accept the existence of appearances, which requires us to accept the existence of things in themselves. Second, we must accept the existence of an unconditioned ground of appearances. (shrink)

SummaryAn accurate framework for interpreting Kant's theory of knowledge must clearly distinguish between the six terms he uses to describe the various stages in the epistemological development of the‘object’of knowledge. Kant portrays the object transcendentally in the first Critique as passing from an unknowable‘thing in itself through the intermediate stage of being a‘transcendental object’, and finally attaining the ideal status of an‘appearance’. When the object is considered empirically, it passes through three corresponding stages: the‘phenomenon’is the real object as known in (...) experience, the‘negative noumenon’limits our knowledge to its intuitive manifestation, and the‘positive noumenon’is that aspect of the known object which remains ultimately transcendent. (shrink)

In this paper I do three things. Firstly, I defend the view that in his most familiar arguments about morality and the theological postulates, the arguments which appeal to the epistemological doctrines of the first Critique, Kant is as much of a fictionalist as anybody not working explicitly with that conceptual apparatus could be: his notion of faith as subjectively and not objectively grounded is precisely what fictionalists are concerned with in their talk of nondoxastic attitudes. Secondly, I reconstruct a (...) logically distinct argument to a fictionalist conclusion which I argue Kant also gives us, this time an argument to the conclusion that it is a good thing if our commitment to the existence of God is nondoxastic. And finally, I argue that this argument is of continuing interest, to Kantians and non-Kantians alike, not only because it raises interesting questions about the relation of morality to belief in God (which go in the opposite direction to most discussions, which focus on whether and to what extent belief in God can be an aid to morality), but also because this ‘Moral Hazard Argument’ seems to be available to religious realists and non-realists alike, thus suggesting that religious fictionalism is not by any means just an interesting version of religious non-realism. (shrink)

Nietzsche is not a nihilist as Heidegger interprets Nietzsche to be.

Kant claims that things-in-themselves produce in us sensible representations. Unfortunately, this “transcendental affection” appears to be inconsistent with Kant’s prohibition against applying the category of causality to things-in-themselves. This paper gives an account of transcendental affection that does not require it to be seen as a type of causation. Transcendental affection, properly understood, is the logical relation of the ground of things-in-themselves to the consequent of an affected subject. This relation is what one gets when one de-schematizes causation, revealing the (...) underlying hypothetical form of judgment. So conceived, transcendental affection no longer poses a potentially debilitating problem for the interpreter of Kant who contends that things-in-themselves enjoy an independent objective existence. The paper, then, is a partial defense of such an interpreter against the Kantian interpreter who contends that the thing-in-itself is merely a limiting concept useful for the regulation of thought. (shrink)

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)