Immanuel Kant is a key thinker in the History of Western Philosophy whose ideas continue to fascinate contemporary English-speaking academic philosophers. One such idea is Kant's conception of transcendental arguments. Although these arguments do not originate in Kant's philosophy, Kant's conception of them occupies a special place in the English-speaking literature on the topic. A growing trend in this literature is to claim that Kant's transcendental arguments are unique because they aim to achieve an anti-skeptical end through deductive (...) means. I call the basic assumption behind readings of transcendental arguments like these the deductive/anti-skeptical assumption. This assumption claims that deduction is the best means to achieve an anti-skeptical end. In this thesis, I argue that accepting this assumption is one way to misinterpret transcendental arguments because—even though it seems compelling at first blush—it must be false. The resultant twist is that transcendental arguments cannot be deductive, which, in turn, means that understanding that Kant's transcendental arguments are not deductive in nature is itself no small detail for understanding the version of Kant's 'not-deductive' solution to skepticism developed here. (shrink)

From the second half of the last century, there has been a widespread view in the Anglophone world that Kant’s transcendental deduction (aka TD) aims to vindicate our common-sense view of the world as composed of public and objective particulars against some unqualified forms of skepticism. This widespread assumption has raised serious doubt not only about the success of TD but also about the very nature of its argument in both editions of the Critique. Yet, if there is (...) a connection between TD and global skepticism, the intriguing question is: Who is this skeptic? According to Strawson, “the skeptic” is a hypothesis of a purely sense-datum experience. In contrast, the fact that TD turns on the key notion of self-consciousness has induced several other scholars to assume that the skeptic is no none but a Cartesian external-world skeptic. None of those readings find textual support or are compatible with the very structure of the first Critique. The question is: Does this mean that TD aims only to undermine empiricism, as Guyer suggests? I do not believe so. I am pretty convinced that TD addresses a peculiar form of global skepticism, namely “Hume’s challenge to reason.” Assuming that we cognize (erkennen) and experience (erfahren) appearances as objects as a requirement of Newtonian physics, TD aims to provide a justification of the principle that nature is uniform that is superior to Hume’s justification. (shrink)

One of the principle aims of the B version of Kant’s transcendental deduction is to show how it is possible that the same “I think” can accompany all of my representations, which is a transcendental condition of the possibility of judgment. Contra interpreters such as A. Brook, I show that this “I think” is an a priori (reflected) self-consciousness; contra P. Keller, I show that this a priori self-consciousness is first and foremost a consciousness of one’s personal (...) identity from a first person point of view. (shrink)

Many interpretations of Kant’s first Critique fail to appreciate the revolutionary nature of his account of knowledge and its implications for skepticism, givenness and mind-independence, because they read Kant as holding a compositional account of knowledge. I contend that the reason for this is that this account is both naturally appealing in its own right, and fits an influential reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. On this reading, the Deduction aims to respond to a skeptical worry which issues (...) from the empiricist version of epistemic compositionalism and which questions the intelligibility of the claim to knowledge of our judgements. Against this, I argue that what Kant’s Deduction actually aims to address is a radicalization of this epistemic worry, which instead questions the intelligibility of the objective purport of our judgements. I contend that the compositional account is unable to respond to this more radical worry, thereby putting it into question both as a reading of Kant, and as an account of knowledge generally. To corroborate this, I provide a reading of the Deduction that overcomes epistemic compositionalism by thinking through its shortcomings in order to arrive at a more adequate successor account: the hylomorphic account of knowledge, which, I contend, is able to dissolve both the more radical and the epistemic worry. I suggest that this implies generally that the epistemic worry issuing from the compositional account is not self-contained, but must give way to Kant’s more radical worry, which I argue can only be addressed within the underappreciated framework of epistemic hylomorphism. (shrink)

The deduction of categories in the 1781 edition of the Critique of the Pure Reason (A Deduction) has “two sides”—the “objective deduction” and the “subjective deduction”. Kant seems ambivalent about the latter deduction. I treat it as a significant episode of Kant’s thinking about categories that extended from the early 1770s to around 1790. It contains his most detailed answer to the question about the origin of categories that he formulated in the 1772 letter to (...) Marcus Herz. The answer is that categories are generated a priori through a kind of intellectual “epigenesis”. This account leaves unexplained why precisely such and such categories should be generated. While this observation caused Kant to worry about the hypothetical status of the subjective deduction in 1781, he would come to acquiesce in the recognition that the ground of the possibility of categories is itself inscrutable. I call this his “methodological skepticism”. (shrink)

The deduction of categories in the 1781 edition of the Critique of the Pure Reason (A Deduction) has “two sides”—the “objective deduction” and the “subjective deduction”. Kant seems ambivalent about the latter deduction. I treat it as a significant episode of Kant’s thinking about categories that extended from the early 1770s to around 1790. It contains his most detailed answer to the question about the origin of categories that he formulated in the 1772 letter to (...) Marcus Herz. The answer is that categories are generated a priori through a kind of intellectual “epigenesis”. This account leaves unexplained why precisely such and such categories should be generated. While this observation caused Kant to worry about the hypothetical status of the subjective deduction in 1781, he would come to acquiesce in the recognition that the ground of the possibility of categories is itself inscrutable. I call this his “methodological skepticism”. (shrink)

Abstract: My aim is to reconstruct Kant's argument for the principle of the synthetic unity of apperception. I reconstruct Kant's argument in stages, first showing why thinking should be conceived as an activity of synthesis (as opposed to attention), and then showing why the unity or coherence of a subject's representations should depend upon an a priori synthesis. The guiding thread of my account is Kant's conception of enlightenment: as I suggest, the philosophy of mind advanced in the Deduction (...) belongs to an enlightenment epistemology. Kant's conception of enlightenment turns on the requirement that a subject be able to recognize herself as the source of her cognitions. The argument for the apperception principle is reconstructed under the guidance of this conception of the ideal of enlightenment. (shrink)

A puzzle arises when we consider that, for Kant, the categories are 'original acquisitions' of our understanding to which we must nevertheless prove our entitlement via 'deduction', on pain of dogmatism. I resolve this puzzle by articulating skepticism’s role in the transcendental deduction, drawing on Kant’s construal of the skeptical 'question quid juris' in the juridical terms of entitlement to property. I then situate skepticism’s transformative potential within what Kant regards as reason’s 'maturation' from dogmatism toward self-knowledge. (...) Finally, I contrast Hegel’s account of spirit’s progress toward 'absolute knowledge', which shifts both the mode of skepticism and the prospect of maturation. (shrink)

: According to Kant, the arguments of rational psychology are formal fallacies that he calls transcendental paralogisms. It remains heavily debated whether there actually is any formal error in the inferences Kant presents: according to Grier and Allison, they are deductively invalid syllogisms, whereas Bennett, Ameriks, and Van Cleve deny that they are formal fallacies. I advance an interpretation that reconciles these extremes: transcendental paralogisms are sound in general logic but constitute formal fallacies in transcendental logic. By (...) formalising the paralogistic inference, I will pinpoint the error as an illegitimate existential presupposition. Since - unlike transcendental logic - general logic abstracts from all objects, this error can only be detected in transcendental logic. (shrink)

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)

Kant's writings on logic illustrate the comparison argument about truth, which goes as follows. A truth-bearer p is true if and only if it corresponds, or it agrees, with a portion of reality: the object(s), state(s) of affairs, or event(s) p is about. In order to know whether p agrees with that portion of reality, one must check if that portion of reality is as p states. Using the terms of the comparison argument, one must compare p with that portion (...) of reality. This is impossible, because the only knowledge of reality we can have is in the form propositions, beliefs, or judgments, whose agreement with reality is as much in need of justification as the agreement of p with reality. Therefore, it is impossible to know which truth-bearers are true. This paper reconstructs Kant's version of the comparison argument. It is argued that, according to Kant, the argument is sound only under the assumption of transcendental realism. Transcendental idealism avoids the sceptical consequences of the comparison argument. (shrink)

Kant's A-Edition objective deduction is naturally (and has traditionally been) divided into two arguments: an " argument from above" and one that proceeds " von unten auf." This would suggest a picture of Kant's procedure in the objective deduction as first descending and ascending the same ladder, the better, perhaps, to test its durability or to thoroughly convince the reader of its soundness. There are obvious obstacles to such a reading, however; and in this chapter I will argue (...) that the arguments from above and below constitute different, albeit importantly inter-related, proofs. Rather than drawing on the differences in their premises, however, I will highlight what I take to be the different concerns addressed and, correspondingly, the distinct conclusions reached by each. In particular, I will show that both arguments can be understood to address distinct specters, with the argument from above addressing an internal concern generated by Kant’s own transcendental idealism, and the argument from below seeking to dispel a more traditional, broadly Humean challenge to the understanding’s role in experience. These distinct concerns also imply that these arguments yield distinct conclusions, though I will show that they are in fact complementary. (shrink)

This work examines Kant’s remarkable decision to rewrite the core argument of the first Critique, the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. I identify a two-part structure common to both versions: first establishing an essential role for the categories in unifying sensible intuitions; and then addressing a worry about how the connection between our faculties asserted in the first part is possible. I employ this structure to show how Kant rewrote the argument, focusing on Kant’s response to the concerns (...) raised in an early review by Johann Schultz. Schultz’s dissatisfaction with the original Deduction lies in its second part, and Kant’s subsequent revisions are focused on providing a better answer to this how-possible question. The new Deduction offers a more direct and convincing account of how our faculties work together to make experience possible. (shrink)

In his early writings, Kant says that the solution to the puzzle of how morality can serve as a motivating force in human life is nothing less than the “philosophers’ stone.” In this dissertation I show that for years Kant searched for the philosophers’ stone in the concept of “respect” (Achtung), which he understood as the complex effect practical reason has on feeling. -/- I sketch the history of that search in Chapters 1-2. In Chapter 3 I show that Kant’s (...) analysis in Groundwork I is incomplete because it does not explain how respect functions as a feeling in motivating choice. In Chapter 4 I argue that Kant’s subsequent attempt to sidestep this explanation in Groundwork III is unsuccessful, and that his position remains open to a skeptical threat. The argument in the second Critique, which I reconstruct in Chapters 5-6, overcomes this threat, and in doing so explains how the feeling of respect is both painful and pleasurable. -/- In the course of defending these claims, I provide an alternative reading of the shift in Kant’s ethical project from the Groundwork of 1785 to the second Critique of 1788 Against a common view in the literature, I argue that the shift does not concern the direction of Kant’s deduction (from freedom to morality, or morality to freedom); rather, it concerns his view of human sensibility and the resources he thinks we have to make our practical self-understanding intelligible. In the second Critique, I argue, Kant develops a novel approach to moral feeling from the perspective of the human agent; and this in turn clears room in his ethics for a new kind of a priori knowledge—namely, knowledge of what the activity of practical reason must feel like. By way of conclusion, I offer a few reasons for why the form of Kant’s argument in the second Critique is still relevant today, as it shows why we can only address moral skepticism from a first-personal perspective. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s primary epistemological concern in the Critique of Pure Reason’s transcendental deduction is empirical cognition. I show how empirical cognition is best understood as “rational sensory discrimination”: the capacity to discriminate sensory objects through the use of concepts and with a sensitivity to the normativity of reasons. My dissertation focuses on Kant’s starting assumption of the transcendental deduction, which I argue to be the thesis that we have empirical cognition. I then show how (...) Kant’s own subjective deduction fleshes out his conception of empirical cognition and is intertwined with key steps in the transcendental deduction’s arguments that the categories have objective validity and that we have synthetic a priori cognition. (shrink)

This essay partly builds on and partly criticizes a striking idea of Dieter Henrich. Henrich argues that Kant's distinction in the first Critique between the question of fact (quid facti) and the question of law (quid juris) provides clues to the argumentative structure of a philosophical "Deduction". Henrich suggests that the unity of apperception plays a role analogous to a legal factum. By contrast, I argue, first, that the question of fact in the first Critique is settled by the (...) Metaphysical Deduction, which establishes the purity of origin of the Categories, and, second, that in the second Critique, the relevant factum is the Fact of Reason, which amounts to the fact that the Moral Law is pure in origin. (shrink)

Dieter Henrich’s reconstruction of the transcendental deduction in "Identität und Objektivität" has been criticised (probably unfairly) by Guyer and others for assuming that we have a priori Cartesian certainty about our own continuing existence through time. In his later article "The Identity of the Subject in the Transcendental Deduction", Henrich addresses this criticism and proposes a new, again entirely original argument for a reconstruction. I attempt to elucidate this argument with reference to Evans’s theory of the (...) Generality Constraint and a remark of Strawson’s in Individuals. Its logical form of a sentence-operator requires that the "I think" be capable of accompanying every thought that we can form. Henrich seems to rely on this point, claiming in addition that we must be aware of this property of the "I think". I object that we cannot assume everyone to be capable of doing the philosophy of her own situation. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the debate on Kant and nonconceptual content. Inspired by Kant’s account of the intimate relation between intuition and concepts, McDowell (1996) has forcefully argued that the relation between sensible content and concepts is such that sensible content does not severally contribute to cognition but always only in conjunction with concepts. This view is known as conceptualism. Recently, Kantians Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, among others, have brought against this view the charge that it neglects the (...) possibility of the existence of essentially nonconceptual content that is not conceptualised or subject to conceptualisation. Their critique of McDowell amounts to nonconceptualism. However, both views, conceptualist and nonconceptualist, share the assumption that intuition is synthesised content in Kant’s sense. My interest is not in the validity of the philosophical positions of conceptualism or nonconceptualism per se. I am particularly interested in the extent to which the views that McDowell and Hanna and Allais respectively advance are true to Kant, or can validly be seen as Kantian positions. I argue that although McDowell is right that intuition is only epistemically relevant in conjunction with concepts, Hanna and Allais are right with regard to the existence of essentially nonconceptual content (intuitions) independently of the functions of the understanding, but that they are wrong with regard to non-conceptualised intuition being synthesised content in Kant’s sense. Kantian conceptualists (Bowman 2011; Griffith 2012; Gomes 2014) have responded to the recent nonconceptualist offensive, with reference to A89ff./B122ff. (§13)—which, confusingly, the nonconceptualists also cite as evidence for their contrary reading—by arguing that the nonconceptualist view conflicts with the central goal of the Transcendental Deduction, namely, to argue that all intuitions are subject to the categories. I contend that the conceptualist reading of A89ff./B122ff. is unfounded, but also that the nonconceptualists are wrong to believe that intuitions as such refer strictly to objects independently of the functions of the understanding, and that they are mistaken about the relation between figurative synthesis and intellectual synthesis. I argue that Kant is a conceptualist, albeit not in the sense that standard conceptualists assume. Perceptual knowledge is always judgemental, though without this resulting in the standard conceptualist claim that, necessarily, all intuitions or all perceptions per se stand under the categories (strong conceptualism). I endorse the nonconceptualist view that, for Kant, perception per se, i.e. any mere or ‘blind’ intuition of objects (i.e. objects as indeterminate appearances) short of perceptual knowledge, does not necessarily stand under the categories. Perception is not yet perceptual knowledge. In this context, I point out the common failure in the literature on the Transcendental Deduction, both of the conceptualist and nonconceptualist stripe, to take account of the modal nature of Kant’s argument for the relation between intuition and concept insofar as cognition should arise from it. (shrink)

I argue that Kant thought his Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts could reach skeptical empiricists like Hume by providing an overlooked explanation of the mind's a priori relation to the objects of experience. And he thought empiricists may be motivated to listen to this explanation because of an instability and dissatisfaction inherent to empiricism. This article is a précis of my "Kant's Offer to the Skeptical Empiricist" in Journal of the History of Philosophy.

The chapter examines Kant’s thesis about the ‘radical evil in human nature’ developed in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. According to this thesis, the human moral condition is corrupt by default and yet by own deed; and this corruption is the origin (root, radix) of human badness in all its variety, banality, and ubiquity. While Kant clearly takes radical evil to be endemic in human nature, controversy reigns about how to understand this. Some assume this can only (...) be a synthetic a priori claim about the necessity of radical evil (and thus one requiring a transcendental deduction). However, Kant indicates that while radical evil is inevitable it is not, for that, strictly necessary. The best way to understand this is through a teleological approach that explains how we inevitably bring this corruption upon ourselves in the course of our development. The chapter thereby joins other teleological accounts, but distinctively argues that Kant draws on Stoic natural teleology (specifically the doctrine of oikeiōsis), which he knows through Seneca and Cicero. This background allows us to make sense of the structure of Kant’s argument in ways that shed fresh light on the philosophical content of the thesis about radical evil. It also allows us to see that another hotly debated issue — namely, whether radical evil should be understood in ‘psychological’ or ‘social’ terms — is spurious: we see that these are flip sides of one coin, and are better placed to register the broader ethical significance of this result. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, if transcendental arguments are to proceed from premises that are acceptable to the skeptic, the Transcendental Premise, according to which “X is a metaphysically necessary condition for the possibility of Y,” must be grounded in considerations of conceivability and possibility. More explicitly, the Transcendental Premise is based on what Szabó Gendler and Hawthorne call the “conceivability-possibility move.” This “inconceivability-impossibility” move, however, is a problematic argumentative move when advancing transcendental arguments for (...) the following reasons. First, from “S cannot conceive of P” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is inconceivable. Second, from “P is inconceivable” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is metaphysically impossible. Third, rather than block skeptical doubts, the conceivability-possibility move introduces skeptical doubts. For these reasons, transcendental arguments fail to deliver on their promise to overcome skeptical doubts. (shrink)

In this chapter I advance a moderately conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s account of the threefold synthesis in the A-Deduction. Often the first version of TD, the A-Deduction, is thought to be less conceptualist than the later B-version from 1787 (e.g. Heidegger 1991, 1995). Certainly, it seems that in the B-Deduction Kant puts more emphasis on the role of the understanding in determining the manifold of representations in intuition than he does in the A-Deduction. It also appears (...) that in the A-Deduction the seemingly pre-conceptual aspects of a priori synthesis, namely those of the synthesis of apprehension and the imagination, are more prominently featured than in the B-Deduction. And the fact that in the A-Deduction judgement does not appear to play any significant role reinforces the view that the A-Deduction is less strongly conceptualist. I believe that Kant is a conceptualist also in the A-Deduction (as much as in the B-Deduction) in the sense that all syntheses, which are expounded in the second section of the A-Deduction, must be seen as involving the categories or the understanding as the seat of the categories. However, despite some apparent strong modal claims regarding apperception in the A-Deduction, I argue that Kant is a moderate conceptualist in the sense that he allows for the real possibility that some representations are apprehended that are not subsumed or subsumable under the categories, or determined or determinable by the understanding as the seat of the categories. Not all representations must be synthesised and hence be conceptualised (by means of the categories), nor are all representations necessarily conceptualisable (by means of the categories). Often it is argued that the application of the categories must be seen as separate from or prior to conceptualisation (that is, employment of concepts in a judgement), so that the categories must be considered to apply to representations at least to the extent that the productive imagination or recognitive synthesis is involved, even if no empirical concepts are applied in an actual judgement. But it is difficult to see how categories can apply outside the context of an actual judgement in which ipso facto empirical concepts are employed, because, after all, categories are nothing but logical functions of judgement (e.g. B143). More in particular, I shall argue for the claims that (1) appearances to the contrary, all three levels of syntheses in the A-Deduction, including the synthesis of recognition, are interdependent and are not to be seen as operating singly or independently of each other, and hence of the categories; (2) ‘mere’ apprehension, or ‘mere’ intuition, is not dependent on the understanding and the application or possible application of the categories; and that (3) ‘mere’ apprehension does not even invoke a priori synthesis of apprehension and hence is as such fully lawless in terms of Kantian a priori laws. In this context, I also address Kant’s argument in the A-Deduction about the role of the imagination in the production of spatial objects and explain his apt use of the example of cinnabar to show that the kind of association that is at issue here concerns the possibility of knowledge, not the possibility of mere association, as is often assumed. (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)

How the mind works is the ultimate mystery for human beings. To answer this question, one of the most significant insights is Kant’s argument that we can only perceive phenomena but not the essence of the external world. Following this idea, we formulated a novel computational framework to model the mind based on two assumptions: 1) There is no presupposition of the existence of the external objective world and the main task of the mind is to explore, establish and utilize (...) persistent relationships between senses and actions. 2) Symbolic intermediate-level representation is necessary. We call this framework the self-programming system. Based on the self-programming system, we interpreted the nature of concepts, time, space, causality, and consciousness. Besides that, we also draw a conclusion to the mind-body problem. Specifically, the perspective that considers subjective experience as fundamental is compatible with the existence of the external world and that the physical body serves as the substrate of the mind. However, since the relationship is “compatible” rather than “cause”, skepticism can never be ruled out in principle. Furthermore, we have elucidated the nature of interpretation within the context of reductive physicalism. This serves to provide a clear understanding as to why the hard problem of consciousness is inherently unsolvable. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

‘Performative’ transcendental arguments exploit the status of a subcategory of self-falsifying propositions in showing that some form of skepticism is unsustainable. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between performatively inconsistent propositions and transcendental arguments, and then to compare performative transcendental arguments to modest transcendental arguments that seek only to establish the indispensability of some belief or conceptual framework. Reconceptualizing transcendental arguments as performative helps focus the intended dilemma for the skeptic: performative (...) transcendental arguments directly confront the skeptic with the choice of abandoning either skepticism or some other deep theoretical commitment. Many philosophers, from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas to Jaakko Hintikka, C.I. Lewis, and Bernard Lonergan, have claimed that some skeptical propositions regarding knowledge, reason, and/or morality can be shown to be self-defeating; that is to say, they have claimed that the very upholding of some skeptical position is in some way incompatible with the position being upheld, or with the implied, broader dialectical position of the skeptic in question. Statements or propositions alleged to have this characteristic also sometimes are called ‘self-falsifying,’ ‘self-refuting,’ ‘self-stultifying,’ ‘self-destructive,’ or ‘pointless.’ However, proponents of the strategy of showing skepticism to be self-defeating have not in general adequately distinguished between two types of self-defeating proposition: self-falsifying and self-stultifying. In the first part of this paper I distinguish between self-falsifying and self-stultifying propositions, and introduce the notion of performative self-falsification. In the second part I discuss classical transcendental arguments, ‘modest’ transcendental arguments, and objections to each. In the third part I introduce two types of transcendental argument—each labeled “performative”—corresponding to two types of performatively self-falsifying proposition, and I compare them to modest transcendental arguments. (shrink)

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant's stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have a transcendental form (called (...) quasi‐transcendental because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories (a dangerous interpretation it turns out), based primarily on the “two-step” argument of the B deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason. I undertake to show that Kant’s distinction between the “pure forms of intuition” and “pure formal intuition” is successful in its attempt to prove that all sensible intuitions presuppose the a priori categories, in a way which is compatible, I claim, (...) with Kant’s statements (in the Aesthetic and elsewhere) that sensible intuition is prior to all concepts; and therefore that the Transcendental Aesthetic presupposes the Transcendental Analytic. Thus my Interpretation is a "conceptualist" reading of the deduction, in holding that perception, as receptivity, presupposes an underlying spontaneity of the pure understanding and categories. The categories are held to be not just compatible with all possible sensible intuitions, but through their "transcendental content" constitutive of the relation of sensible intuitions to objects - and this explains how our thought can represent objects a priori. It is one of the claims of my interpretation that the logical forms of judgment of general logic derive from the pure categories of transcendental logic, rather than vice-versa. I.e. that the logical forms through which we make empirical judgments by combining analytical concepts in inner sense in time, are originally grounded in an atemporal categorial synthesis in pure intuition (i.e. in the form of time but not the dimension of time), referring an outer intuition in general to the transcendental object of intuition (as “something in general” outside sensibility or receptivity), thereby providing the synthetic unity of the manifold which “..all analysis presupposes.” My conceptualist reading of the deduction, I claim, avoids the problems associated with other conceptualist readings, for example inconsistency with the text (“Intuitions are prior to all concepts.” etc.) and blurring of the distinction between receptivity and spontaneity. In my paper I prove that the categories can correctly be held to provide the a priori unity of intuitions, notwithstanding the fact that the latter are “prior to all concepts,” because this unity is not provided by the categories as fully-fledged concepts in the empirical subject, but as the transcendental logical form of these concepts, as a unity in the pure understanding - and the categories therefore require their empirical content or application for their objective reality as concepts. I.e. the categories, as logical functions of judgment for transcendental apperception, in the pure forms of intuition, are prior to all "concepts", correctly speaking, as well as prior to all intuitions, and provide the necessary unity of both. Likewise, at the empirical level my version of conceptualism cannot be accused of blurring the distinction between receptivity and spontaneity, or sensibility and understanding, because although the transcendental content of the categories, as a logical function of judgment in the pure forms of intuition, in transcendental apperception, is in necessary relation to sensibility (in combining the manifold in the pure or formal representation of the transcendental object) their empirical content is not. - At the empirical level the divide between spontaneity (as judgment in the empirical subject) and receptivity (as the effect of transcendental synthesis and the transcendental object on outer and inner sense) remains intact. Conceptualist readings of the deduction also have to avoid infringing Kant’s requirement that the sensible manifold originally be given prior to and independently of all acts of the understanding, or otherwise to qualify the requirement in some way - e.g. by taking a Hegelian direction, such as that taken by John McDowell.1 On my reading of the deduction the sensible manifold given indeterminately in the pure forms of space and time must be given prior to the categorial synthesis of the manifold in the pure representation of the transcendental object, i.e. in the pure 'concept' of an object in general affecting sensibility. Therefore Kant’s requirement for an undetermined manifold given prior to, and independently of, all acts of the understanding (“..the manifold to be intuited must be given prior to the synthesis of understanding, and independently of it. How this takes place, remains here undetermined” [cf.B145/146]) is not infringed. In a later section of the paper, however, I will argue that the transcendental object (of intuition) does have pure theoretical reason as one of its two interacting immanent aspects, but is distinct from pure theoretical reason in the other of its (the transcendental object of intuition's) two interacting immanent aspects, i.e. pure will, which adds a Schopenhauerian element to my interpretation (which will be argued for in a way which supports Kantian optimism over Schopenhauerian pessimism however, in regard to the freedom of the will). Another perceived inconsistency in the deduction, which my interpretation can explain, is Kant’s description (in the B deduction) of the principle of the necessary synthetic unity of apperception as analytic, while in the A deduction it is described as synthetic. I explain this as a difference in the reference of terms such as “my representations” in the two versions - a transcendental reference in the B version but an empirical and transcendental reference in the A version of the principle. I also show that the first part of the two-step B deduction can correctly be characterised by Kant as analytic and the second, concluding part, synthetic (a point of dispute amongst Kant scholars) because transcendental logic (which refers to both the analytic and synthetic aspects of the principle of apperception) “does not abstract from the pure content of knowledge.” While being a “double aspect” rather than “two world” view of transcendental Idealism (because objects of intuition are comprised of both the empirical and transcendental object, i.e. transcendental referent, of intuition, my view differs significantly from the “double aspect” interpretation of Henry Allison (which distinguishes empirical reality from the “God’s eye” view). The view of transcendental idealism resulting from my reading of the deduction, I claim, allows a full empirical realism, because empirical intuitions, as objects of cognition, are the appearance of both the transcendental subject and the transcendental object (i.e. transcendental referent ) of transcendental synthesis (both as “something in general” outside sensibility or receptivity, or rather outside sensibility as receptivity). I conclude that Kant succeeds (although only with the addition of what I have called my 'Schopenhauerian element') in his attempt to prove that we have a transcendental unity of apperception which both constitutes, and is constituted by, the relation of sensible representations to objects, and that since transcendental apperception is the a priori underlying ground of empirical apperception, the categories (as the logical functions of judgment by which transcendental apperception relates sensible representations to objects) are the a priori underlying ground of all experience, and are therefore valid synthetically a priori for all objects of experience. 1 E.g. in “On Pippin’s Postscript.” European Journal of Philosophy 15:3 pp. 395-410. (shrink)

I argue that Kant tries to change the mind of skeptical empiricists like Hume by offering, rather than compelling acceptance of, an alternative conception of our knowledge, and that his offer can appeal because of an instability inherent to the skeptic’s position. This article is a short précis of my "Kant's Offer to the Skeptical Empiricist" in Journal of the History of Philosophy.

Existing interpretations of Kant’s appeal to the spontaneity of the mind focus almost exclusively on the discussion of pure apperception in the Transcendental Deduction. The risk of such a strategy lies in the considerable degree of abstraction at which the argument of the Deduction is carried out: existing interpretations fail to reconnect adequately with any ground-level perspective on our cognitive lives. This paper works in the opposite direction. Drawing on Kant’s suggestion that the most basic picture we (...) can have of our cognitive capacity already makes reference to its state of excellence, or health (“sound understanding”), I set out by assembling Kant’s normative ground-level view of our cognitive lives, and then search for the fundamental condition of its possibility. This leads me to Kant’s conception of reflection as a normative requirement of judgment. Through examination of Kant’s remarks on reflection, I connect Kant’s preoccupation with the enlightenment ideal of originality (thinking for oneself) with his central appeal to the spontaneity of the mind. (shrink)

Presented in the “Critique of Pure Reason” transcendental philosophy is the first theory of science,which seeks to identify and study the conditions of the possibility of cognition. Thus, Kant carries out a shift to the study of ‘mode of our cognition’ and TP is a method, where transcendental argumentation acts as its essential basis. The article is devoted to the analysis of the transcendental arguments. In § 2 the background of ТА — transcendental method of Antiquity (...) and Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason — are analyzed and their comparison with ТА is given. § 3 is devoted to the analysis of TA in the broad and narrow senses; a formal propositional and presupposition models are proposed. In § 4 I discuss the difference between TA and metaphysics’ modes of reasoning. It analyzes the Kant’s main limitations of the use TA shows its connection with the Modern Age and contemporary science. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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I argue that Kant’s distinction between the cognitive roles of sensibility and understanding raises a question concerning the conditions necessary for objective representation. I distinguish two opposing interpretive positions—viz. Intellectualism and Sensibilism. According to Intellectualism all objective representation depends, at least in part, on the unifying synthetic activity of the mind. In contrast, Sensibilism argues that at least some forms of objective representation, specifically intuitions, do not require synthesis. I argue that there are deep reasons for thinking that Intellectualism is (...) incompatible with Kant's view as expressed in the Transcendental Aesthetic. We can better see how Kant’s arguments in the first Critique may be integrated, I suggest, by examining his notion of the 'unity' [Einheit] of a representation. I articulate two distinct ways in which a representation may possess unity and claim that we can use these notions to integrate Kant’s arguments in the Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction without compromising the core claims of either Sensibilism or Intellectualism—that intuition is a form of objective representation independent of synthesis, and that the kind of objective representations that ground scientific knowledge of the world require synthesis by the categories. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to resolve the Frierson-Grenberg debate on the nature of Kant’s account of moral motivation that took place in the third issue of Con-textos Kantianos. In their respective interpretations, Frierson and Grenberg fail to accommodate the a priori status of moral feeling when incorporating it into Kant’s moral motivational structure. In response, I provide a novel transcendental interpretation – one that takes the a priori moral feeling both as an incentive of morality and as that (...) which conditions the possibility of morality in human agents. I argue that Kant developed the notion of moral feeling solely in order to resolve the problem of motivational skepticism concerning the moral law. Since this problem occurs as a part of Kant’s search for the supreme principle of morality, the notion of moral feeling becomes a part of both Kant’s moral motivational structure and his argument to justify the moral law. (shrink)

In the first Critique, Kant attempts to prove what we can call the "Principle of Intensive Magnitudes," according to which every possible object of experience will possess a determinate "degree" of reality. Curiously, Kant argues for this principle by inferring from a psychological premise about internal sensations (they have intensive magnitudes) to a metaphysical thesis about external objects (they also have intensive magnitudes). Most commentators dismiss the argument as a failure. In this article I give a reconstruction of Kant's argument (...) that attempts to rehabilitate the argument back into his broader transcendental theory of experience. I argue that we can make sense of the argument's central inference by appeal to Kant's theory of empirical intuition and by an analysis of the way in which Kant thinks sensory matter constitutes our most basic representations of objects. (shrink)

This paper assesses the role of the Refutation of Idealism within the Critique of Pure Reason, as well as its relation to the treatment of idealism in the First Edition and to transcendental idealism more generally. It is argued that the Refutation is consistent with the Fourth Paralogism and that it can be considered as an extension of the Transcendental Deduction. While the Deduction, considered on its own, constitutes a 'regressive argument', the Refutation allows us to (...) turn the Transcendental Analytic into a 'progressive argument' that proceeds by the synthetic method. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are multiple principles of apperception which jointly constitute the foundation of Kant's argument in the transcendental deduction.

I have developed transcendental arguments to refute several versions of Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis. I called some of these arguments the SIM-style argument. In this paper, I have four main aims. First, I employ the SIM-style argument to remedy a defect in Hilary Putnam’s Brain-in-vat argument. Second, I show that the most radical skepticism, which Tim Button called the nightmarish Cartesian skepticism, can be refuted by the SIM-style argument or by another transcendental argument I develop here. Third, I (...) compare my approach to radical skepticisms with Donald Davidson’s, as it is often regarded as an exemplar of transcendental arguments. Fourth, I explain how the prominent objections, mainly developed by Barry Stroud, to transcendental arguments can incur two undesirable results: psychologism and Kantian skepticism. (shrink)

James Van Cleve has argued that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories shows, at most, that we must apply the categories to experience. And this falls short of Kant’s aim, which is to show that they must so apply. In this discussion I argue that once we have noted the differences between the first and second editions of the Deduction, this objection is less telling. But Van Cleve’s objection can help illuminate the structure of the B (...) class='Hi'>Deduction, and it suggests an interesting reason why the rewriting might have been thought necessary. (shrink)

This essay examines one of the most obscure and controversial tenets of Kant’s critical philosophy, his claim in the Critique of Practical Reason that the moral law is immediately and unquestionably valid as an a priori fact of reason (Factum der Vernunft). This argument curiously inverts Kant’s earlier stance in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in which he justifies the reality of the categorical imperative through a much more cautious and qualified authentication of transcendental freedom. Against constructivist (...) readings which tend to downplay the justificatory burden of the Factum, I claim that Kant’s position is best understood as a transcendental argument. In other words, he argues from a given or assured conditioned, consciousness of binding moral obligation, to the sole condition of its possibility in transcendental freedom. In order to rebut the standard objections prompted by this line of interpretation, I emphasize the technical function of Kant’s Factum as both a deed (Tat) and product (Tatsache) of practical reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a quasi-transcendental argument to justify Kant’s infamous claim “man is evil by nature.” The cornerstone of my reconstruction lies in drawing a systematic distinction between the seemingly identical concepts of “evil disposition” (böseGesinnung) and “propensity to evil” (Hang zumBösen). The former, I argue, Kant reserves to describe the fundamental moral outlook of a single individual; the latter, the moral orientation of the whole species. Moreover, the appellative “evil” ranges over two different types of moral (...) failure: while an “evil disposition” is a failure to realize the good (i.e., to adopt the motive of duty as limiting condition for all one’s desires), an “evil propensity” is a failure to realize the highest good (i.e., to engage in the collective project of transforming the legal order into an ethical community). This correlation between units of moral analysis and types of obligation suggests a way to offer a deduction of the universal propensity on behalf of Kant. It consists in tracing the source of radical evil to the same subjective necessity that gives rise to the doctrine of the highest good. For, at the basis of Kant’s two doctrines lies the same natural dialectic between happiness and morality. While the highest good brings about the critically acceptable resolution of this dialectic, the propensity to evil perpetuates and aggravates it. Instead of connecting happiness and morality in an objective relation, the human will subordinatesmorality to the pursuit of happiness according to the subjective order of association. If this reading is correct, it would explain why prior attempts at a transcendental deduction have failed: interpreters have looked for the key to the deduction in the body of Kant’s text, where it is not to be found, for it is tucked, instead, in the Preface to the first edition. (shrink)

This chapter considers Kant's relation to Hume as Kant himself understood it when he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena. It first seeks to refine the question of Kant's relation to Hume's skepticism, and it then considers the evidence for Kant's attitude toward Hume in three works: the A Critique, Prolegomena, and B Critique. It argues that in the A Critique Kant viewed skepticism positively, as a necessary reaction to dogmatism and a spur toward critique. In his (...) initial statement of the critical philosophy Kant treated Hume as an ally in curbing dogmatism, but one who stopped short of what was really needed: a full critique of reason, to establish the boundaries of metaphysical cognition. Kant found fault with Hume's analyses of cognition and experience, and specifically his failure to see the crucial importance of synthetic a priori cognition in metaphysics. In particular, he held that Hume's empiricist account of cognition could neither explain the synthetic a priori cognition actually found in mathematics and natural science, nor provide a principled account of the limits on what can be known--and what can be thought--through the pure concepts of the understanding. According to Kant, Hume therefore failed in his attempt to determine the limits of metaphysics, whereas he was able to succeed because his transcendental philosophy provided a thorough account of cognition, its structure and limits. In the Prolegomena and the B Critique Kant distinguished his position more sharply from Hume's. He also adopted a more negative attitude toward "skeptical idealism" than before; but he attributed such skepticism to Descartes, not Hume. Prior to the B Critique Kant did not see Hume as attacking natural science or ordinary cognition. In none of the three works was Kant's main aim to "answer the skeptic." His primary aim was to firmly establish the boundary of metaphysics, by discovering the elements of human cognition and fixing its proper domain. His purported discoveries about the limits of metaphysical cognition meant that the traditional objects of metaphysical knowledge, God, the soul, and the world as it is in itself, are unknowable, hence that traditional metaphysics itself is impossible. Besides settling the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, his findings would also prevent the illegitimate extension of principles of sensibility to God and the noumenal self, an extension that would threaten the metaphysics of morals by incorrectly denying the thinkability of noumenal freedom, and that might otherwise lead to "materialism, fatalism, atheism, and freethinking unbelief" (B xxxiv). (shrink)

review of Scott Stapleford's 'Kant's Transcendental Arguments: Disciplining Pure Reason'.

The central question of this paper is: what has Kant’s Refutation of Idealism argument proven, if anything? What is the real scandal of philosophy and universal human reason? I argue that Kant’s Refutation argument can only be considered sound if we assume that his target is what I call ‘metaphysical external-world skepticism.’ What is in question is not the ‘existence’ of outside things but their very ‘nature,’ that is, the claim that the thing outside us, which appears to us as (...) a persistent body in space, exists in itself _as a substantia noumenon_. Assuming the indirect-realist view that we only immediately know ideas and that their putative objects are known by inference, the metaphysical external-world skeptic doubts that the nature of things outside oneself is mind-independent. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This is a pre-print. Please cite only the revised published version. This paper presents an original, ambitious, truth-directed transcendental argument for the existence of an ‘external world’. It begins with a double-headed starting-point: Stroud’s own remarks on the necessary conditions of language in general, and Hegel’s critique of the “fear of error.” The paper argues that the sceptical challenge requires a particular critical concept of thought as that which may diverge from reality, and that (...) this concept is possible only through reflection on situations of error, in which how things are thought to be diverges from how things really are with independent items in an objective world. The existence of such a world is therefore a necessary condition of the possibility of scepticism: such scepticism is therefore false. I defend the argument against objections from Stroud’s sceptic and others. Drawing on Heidegger, the paper concludes by indicating that the chain of necessary conditions includes practical engagement with the world. (shrink)

Can sensibility, as our capacity to be sensibly presented with objects, be understood independently of the understanding, as the capacity to form judgments about those objects? It is a truism that for judgments to be empirical knowledge they must agree with what sensibility presents. Moreover, it is a familiar thought that objectivity involves absolute independence from intellectual acts. The author argues that together these thoughts motivate a common reading of Kant on which operations of sensibility are conceived as intelligible independently (...) of acts of the understanding, so that their supposed objectivity can validate judgments as empirical knowledge. He contends that there are two reasons why this epistemic compositionalism is implausible both as a reading of Kant and in itself. First, read compositionally, Kant’s Transcendental Deduction is unable to fulfill its stated aim of showing that the categories are objectively valid, that is, exemplified by the objects that sensibility presents. Second, Kant sees that sensibility by itself cannot be understood to even purport to present objects, thus undermining the very intelligibility of compositionalism. The author argues that, given these challenges, Kant’s Deduction develops an alternative account, on which operations of sensibility and acts of the understanding can be understood only together. He contends that this epistemic hylomorphism transforms the familiar thought underlying compositionalism: objectivity simultaneously involves formal agreement with intellectual acts in general and material independence from any specific such act. He thus shows how Kant reconceives our conception of objectivity by overcoming compositionalism in favor of hylomorphism. (shrink)

I take up Kant's remarks about a " transcendental deduction" of the "concepts of space and time". I argue for the need to make a clearer assessment of the philosophical resources of the Aesthetic in order to account for this transcendental deduction. Special attention needs to be given to the fact that the central task of the Aesthetic is simply the "exposition" of these concepts. The Metaphysical Exposition reflects upon facts about our usage to reveal our (...) commitment to the idea that these concepts refer to pure intuitions. But the legitimacy of these concepts still hangs in the balance: these concepts may turn out to refer to nothing real at all. The subsequent Transcendental Exposition addresses this issue. The objective validity of the concepts of space and time, and hence their transcendental deduction, hinges on careful treatment of this last point. (shrink)

Kant’s Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories justifies their apriority, i.e. that their contents originate in the understanding itself, while the Transcendental Deduction justifies their objectivity, both in that they purport to represent objects of experience and that they do so successfully. The apriority of the categories, as explained in terms of acts of synthesis required for having sensible intuitions of objects, is justified by establishing their generic identity with logical functions of judgment, i.e. acts of judgment required (...) for referring concepts to objects. The objective purport of the categories is justified by establishing that sensible intuitions fall under them. To finally justify that the categories represent successfully, i.e. that the objects of our intuitions fall under them, it is established that the representations of space and time do, namely by showing that the features addressed in their Metaphysical Expositions, too, are to be explained in terms of acts of synthesis. (shrink)

From Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals and Critique of practical reason, we can deduce Kant's interpretation of the concept of freedom, which has undergone a change from practical freedom to transcendental freedom, and the deduction of freedom has been perfected, the rational facts have been put forward to provide the basis of free deduction. The reason for the change is that freedom as the basis of theoretical practice is assumed and predetermined, how the cause and effect (...) of freedom as will may not be explained, and the nature of freedom is not defined clearly, the legitimacy and authority of the moral law is not established. After the transformation, the problem was solved. Although rigour raises questions about the universality of Kant’s moral law, Onora Sylvia O’Neill and others argue that Kant’s moral law is a product of virtue ethics, not a normative ethic, Kant's moral law still can instruct us in ethical life. (shrink)