This paper offers an introduction to Hermann Cohen’s Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode, and recounts the history of its controversial reception by Cohen’s early sympathizers, who would become the so-called ‘Marburg school’ of Neo-Kantianism, as well as the reactions it provoked outside this group. By dissecting the ambiguous attitudes of the best-known representatives of the school, as well as those of several minor figures, this paper shows that Das Princip der Infinitesimal-Methode is a unicum in the history of philosophy: it represents (...) a strange case of an unsuccessful book’s enduring influence. The “puzzle of Cohen’s Infinitesimalmethode,” as we will call it, can be solved by looking beyond the scholarly results of the book, and instead focusing on the style of philosophy it exemplified. Moreover, the paper shows that Cohen never supported, but instead explicitly opposed, the doctrine of the centrality of the ‘concept of function’, with which Marburg Neo-Kantianism is usually associated. (shrink)

This paper compares Cohen’s Logic of Pure Knowledge and Cassirer’s Substance and Function in order to evaluate how in these works Cohen and Cassirer go beyond the limits established by Kantian philosophy. In his Logic, Cohen seeks to ground in pure thought all the elements which Kant distinguishes in empirical intuition: its matter (sensation) as well as its form (time and space). In this way, Cohen tries to provide an account of knowledge without appealing to any receptivity. In accordance with (...) Cohen’s project of reformulating the Kantian theory of sensibility, Cassirer undertakes in Substance and Function the task of developing an alternative doctrine of pure and empirical manifolds. But whereas Cohen analyzes the laws of pure thought, Cassirer aims to highlight the functional character of concepts in the development of modern mathematics and physics. I will discuss these two different approaches to the problems raised by Kantian philosophy and I will argue that Cassirer went further than Cohen in the project of critical idealism. (shrink)

Cassirer’s neo-Kantian epistemology has become a classical reference in contemporary history and philosophy of science. However, the historical aspects of his thought are sometimes seen to be in some tension with his defence of a priori elements of knowledge. This paper reconsiders Cassirer’s strategy to address this tension by positing functional dependencies at the core of the notion of objectivity. This requires the epistemologist to account for the determination of the objects of knowledge within given scientific theories, but also for (...) conceptual changes over time. (shrink)

Over the course of three books—Wandering Significance, Physics Avoidance, and most recently Imitation of Rigor—Mark Wilson seeks to rectify what he takes to be a century of error regarding analytic philoso-phy’s understanding of scientific theorizing. This is largely framed in terms of a sustained attack on what Wilson terms ‘theory T thinking’, which he uses to refer to a melange of philosophical tendencies that he argues fail to do justice to the nuances of how world–theory relations are forged in the (...) physical sciences. In its place, Wilson puts forward an intricate account of the shifting explanatory strategies scientists and mathematicians utilize, strategies that result in the morphing of the semantic import of our scientific terms. In the aftermath an important question emerges: what is to become of scientific realism? Despite numerous pronunciations of his own ‘stout’ realist stance, it remains unclear what Wilson’s position might actually entail. -/- I first sketch Wilson’s disputes with theory T thinking and demonstrate how his rejection of the main tenets of most contemporary realist accounts leaves a question as to what his own realist avowals could mean, further arguing that these are largely attempts to distance himself from any whiff of neo-Kantianism. In the remainder of the article, I turn to discuss a neo-Kantian account that I argue is both complementary to Wilson’s viewpoint and provides a foundation for a post-theory T realism: Ernst Cassirer’s account of concept-formation in the natural sciences. By fleshing out Cassirer’s notion of the transformation of the given and the particular role he attributes to theoretical idealization, I reconstruct his account in a way that draws out a number of fruitful parallels between his philosophy and Wilson’s. The upshot is that a post-theory T scientific realism can plausibly be brought into line with neo-Kantian conceptions. (shrink)