1,721,157 research outputs found
Existence and Modality in Kant: Lessons from Barcan
Full text linkThis essay considers Kant’s theory of modality in light of a debate in contemporary modal metaphysics and modal logic concerning the Barcan formulas. The comparison provides a new and fruitful perspective on Kant’s complex and sometimes confusing claims about possibility and necessity. Two central Kantian principles provide the starting point for the comparison: that the possible must be grounded in the actual and that existence is not a real predicate. Both are shown to be intimately connected to the Barcan formulas, and Kant’s views on what he distinguishes as three different kinds of modality are then considered in light of this connection
Kant on the Object-Dependence of Intuition and Hallucination
Full text linkAgainst a view currently popular in the literature, it is argued that Kant was not a naïve realist about perceptual experience. Naive realism entails that perceptual experience is object-dependent in a very strong sense. In the first half of the paper, I explain what this claim amounts to and I undermine the evidence that has been marshalled in support of attributing it to Kant. In the second half of the paper, I explore in some detail Kant's account of hallucination and argue that no such account is available to someone who thinks that veridical perceptual experience is object-dependent in the naïve realist sense. Kant's theory provides for a remarkably sophisticated, bottom-up explanation of the phenomenal character of hallucinatory episodes and is crucial for gaining a proper understanding of his model of the mind and its place in nature.</p
A Deduction from Apperception?
No full textI discuss three elements of Dennis Schulting’s new book on the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding, or categories. First, that Schulting gives a detailed account of the role of each individual category. Second, Schulting’s insistence that the categories nevertheless apply ‘en bloc’. Third, Schulting’s defence of Kant’s so-called reciprocity thesis that subjective unity of consciousness and objectivity in the sense of cognition’s objective purport are necessary conditions for the possibility of one another. I endorse these fascinating but unfashionable claims and sketch my own version of what they amount to, which is quite different to Schulting’s own construal. I point to some fundamental limitations and problems for Schulting’s position and argue that his project needs to be reshaped or at least reconceived in the face of them. Even if Schulting’s argument is sound, it does not provide a deduction, properly speaking, of the categories
Transcendental knowability and a priori luminosity
Full text linkThis paper draws out and connects two neglected issues in Kant’s conception of a priori knowledge. Both concern topics that have been central to contemporary epistemology and to formal epistemology in particular: knowability and luminosity. Does Kant commit to some form of knowability principle according to which certain necessary truths are in principle knowable to beings like us? Does Kant commit to some form of luminosity principle according to which, if a subject knows a priori, then they can know that they know a priori? I defend affirmative answers to both of these questions. And by considering the special kind of modality involved in Kant’s conceptions of possible experience and the essential completability of metaphysics, I argue that the combination of knowability and luminosity principles leads Kant into difficulty
Logicism, Possibilism, and the Logic of Kantian Actualism
Full text linkIn this extended critical discussion of 'Kant's Modal Metaphysics' by Nicholas Stang (OUP 2016), I focus on one central issue from the first chapter of the book: Stang’s account of Kant’s doctrine that existence is not a real predicate. In §2 I outline some background. In §§3-4 I present and then elaborate on Stang’s interpretation of Kant’s view that existence is not a real predicate. For Stang, the question of whether existence is a real predicate amounts to the question: ‘could there be non-actual possibilia?’ (p.35). Kant’s view, according to Stang, is that there could not, and that the very notion of non-actual or ‘mere’ possibilia is incoherent. In §5 I take a close look at Stang’s master argument that Kant’s Leibnizian predecessors are committed to the claim that existence is a real predicate, and thus to mere possibilia. I argue that it involves substantial logical commitments that the Leibnizian could reject. I also suggest that it is danger of proving too much. In §6 I explore two closely related logical commitments that Stang’s reading implicitly imposes on Kant, namely a negative universal free logic and a quantified modal logic that invalidates the Converse Barcan Formula. I suggest that each can seem to involve Kant himself in commitment to mere possibilia
Kant on Non-Veridical Experience
No full textIn this paper I offer an interpretation of Kant’s theory of perceptual error based on his remarks in the Anthropology. Both hallucination and illusion, I argue, are for Kant species of experience and therefore require the standard co-operation of sensibility and understanding. I develop my account in a conceptualist framework according to which the two canonical classes of non-veridical experience involve error in the basic sense that how they represent the world as being is not how the world is. In hallucination this is due to the misapplication of categories and in illusion to the misapplication of empirical concepts. Yet there is also room in this framework for a distinction in terms of cognitive functionality between the level of experience, which is merely judgementally structured, and that of judgement proper, which involves the free action of a conscious agent. This distinction enables Kant to allow for the otherwise problematic phenomenon of self-aware non-veridicality
On the Relation of Intuition to Cognition
No full textRecent debates in the interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy have focused on the nature of Kantian intuition and, in particular, on the question of whether intuitions depend for their existence on the existence of their objects. In this chapter, Gomes and Stephenson show how opposing answers to this question determine different accounts of the nature of Kantian cognition. They suggest that progress can be made on determining the nature of intuition by considering the implications different views have for the nature of cognition. Topics of discussion are the relation of cognition to our contemporary conception of knowledge, the role of real possibility and Kant’s modal condition on cognition and the structure and purpose of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories.</p
Manifest reality:: Kant's idealism and his realism, by Lucy Allais
Full text link'This eagerly awaited book is an important addition to the literature on Kant’s transcendental idealism and is sure to generate a lot of discussion. Drawing together her influential previous work alongside substantial new material, Allais presents a comprehensive and novel account of Kant’s signature doctrine, its structure, nature, and purpose, as well as Kant’s master argument for the view. Allais’s interpretation is textually well supported and philosophically sophisticated. The overarching aim, as the subtitle of the book suggests, is an account of transcendental idealism that fully respects both Kant’s idealism and his realism, and one of the best things about the book is how it takes various extant interpretations to task for failing in this regard...
How to solve the knowability paradox with transcendental epistemology
No full textA novel solution to the knowability paradox is proposed based on Kant’s transcendental epistemology. The ‘paradox’ refers to a simple argument from the moderate claim that all truths are knowable to the extreme claim that all truths are known. It is significant because anti-realists have wanted to maintain knowability but reject omniscience. The core of the proposed solution is to concede realism about epistemic statements while maintaining anti-realism about non-epistemic statements. Transcendental epistemology supports such a view by providing for a sharp distinction between how we come to understand and apply epistemic versus non-epistemic concepts, the former through our capacity for a special kind of reflective self-knowledge Kant calls ‘transcendental apperception’. The proposal is a version of restriction strategy: it solves the paradox by restricting the anti-realist’s knowability principle. Restriction strategies have been a common response to the paradox but previous versions face serious difficulties: either they result in a knowability principle too weak to do the work anti-realists want it to, or they succumb to modified forms of the paradox, or they are ad hoc. It is argued that restricting knowability to non-epistemic statements by conceding realism about epistemic statements avoids all versions of the paradox, leaves enough for the anti-realist attack on classical logic, and, with the help of transcendental epistemology, is principled in a way that remains compatible with a thoroughly anti-realist outlook
- …
