Kant's lectures

Today a came across a very interesting website by Steve Naragon that is concerned with Kant's lectures. It contains vast amounts of material, including "information on the notes themselves, as well as material for understanding their context, primarily the nature of university studies in 18th century Prussia and the academic lives of the professors and students."

RIP Kant conference

I just found out that the 2007 Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Conference will be about Kant. The title of the conference is "Kant and Philosophy of Science Today". It will take place in London on 2-3 July 2007.

The speakers are:

Emily Carson (McGill University)
Hasok Chang (UCL)
Michael Friedman (Stanford University)
Marcus Giaquinto (UCL)
Michela Massimi (UCL)
Margaret Morrison (University of Toronto)
Carl Posy (Hebrew University)
Thomas Ryckman (Stanford University)
Roberto Torretti (University of Puerto Rico)
Friedel Weinert (University of Bradford)

The programme, as well as booking form, can be found online.

The Formality of Logic

As announced on the Leiter blog, Josh Dever has created a page with links to PhD dissertations. It includes a very interesting dissertation by John G. MacFarlane which is entitled "What does it mean to say that logic is formal?". Particularly interesting is Chapter 4 on 'Kant and the formality of logic'. He argues that Kant invented formal logic and did so because of his transcendental idealism. "Not only did Kant invent logical hylomorphism, but he invented it because his transcendental idealism required it!" (p. 126)

I also like what he says about his historical approach. In justifying this approach to the study of logic MacFarlane modifies the well-known Kantian slogan so that it says: "intellectual history without conceptual analysis may be empty, but analysis without history is blind." (p. 26)