Transcendental Idealism

Transcendental idealism

2007-04-09T19:06:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I attended the Transcendental Idealism workshop in London, which was organised by the Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism project. The workshop was truly excellent. The papers were great, the discussions fruitful and the workshop atmosphere was very congenial. There were five talks in total; one on Friday afternoon and four on Saturday. Some of the papers and abstracts are available online on the TPN webpage and there are summaries of the papers at the TPN blog.

An interesting question that came up in some of the discussions concerned the nature of transcendental idealism. While many accepted that the distinction between noumena and phenomena was a metaphysical distinction, there was some dispute as to whether or not transcendental idealism should be understood as a metaphysical or an epistemological question. McDaniel claimed that transcendental idealism is the thesis that we are ignorant of the mind-independent properties of objects. That is, he takes it to be an epistemological thesis that appeals to a metaphysical distinction about properties.

I tend to think that transcendental idealism is a metaphysical view that amounts to claiming that there is a distinction between noumena and phenomena. That is, it is a metaphysical theory that distinguishes between things that are transcendentally real and things that though empirically real are transcendentally ideal. This is particularly clear when Kant claims that it was unfortunate that he chose the term 'transcendental idealism' since it is liable to be misunderstood, and that it would have been better to label his system 'critical idealism' or 'formal idealism'. In a letter to J. S. Beck he claims that transcendental idealism amounts to the claim that the forms of intuition are ideal. This ideality of space and time seems for Kant to be definitive of transcendental idealism.

That transcendental idealism is a metaphysical view comes out particularly clearly when considering the relation between the Inaugural Dissertation and the first Critique. The metaphysical system outlined in the Inaugural Dissertation already endorses the ideality of space and time and it distinguishes between noumena and phenomena. At that time, however, Kant did not make any claims about our ignorance of noumena, but rather thought that knowledge of noumena was possible by means of the understanding.

The epistemological limitations were only introduced as a result of the discursivity thesis. Ignorance of noumena followed because Kant claimed that knowledge requires both intuitions and concepts. By means of the discursivity thesis, knowledge of noumena via the understanding was no longer possible. Sensibility and understanding must work together for knowledge, and since sensibility is limited to that which is in space and time and therewith transcendentally ideal, it follows that we can only know phenomena. That is, ignorance of noumena follows from the conjunction of transcendental idealism and the discursivity thesis.

Idealism and normativity workshop

2007-03-26T20:43:00.000+01:00

The German Idealism and Normativity workshop at University College Dublin was very interesting and enjoyable. On Wednesday there were two talks: one by Paul Franks which concerned Fichte's response to Jacobi's worries about nihilism. Jacobi criticised holistic systems like that of Kant for their commitment to the claim that objects only possess relational properties. This approach seemed to raise the threat of nihilism for Jacobi since he thought that all objects required both relational and intrinsic properties. Fichte then takes up this challenge, according to Franks, by trying to make room for individuality that arises as a result of a summons (Aufforderung).

The other talk was by Frederick Beiser who presented a very nice story of two German philosophers that have by now been virtually forgotten in the English-speaking world. These are Windelband and Rickert. Both of these post-Kantians struggled seriously with the attempt of making room for normativity and integrating the realms of fact and value. However, both ultimately failed - Windelband recanted his earlier criticisms of Hegel, while Rickert simply asserted the unanswerability and unexplicability of the relation between fact and value. Beiser takes this to be an instructive story that highlights some of the difficulties that normative approaches face and which have so far not been addressed by many contemporary interpreters. What was particularly interesting was his claim that the fact/value problem equally applies to one-world and two-world interpretations. Also of interest was his characterisation of Rickert as a proponent of the epistemological or methodological reading that has most of the strengths of Allison's approach without being subject to the weaknesses.

On Thursday, I only managed to attend the first three talks as I had to get a flight to go to London for the Transcendental Idealism workshop. In the morning there was an interesting exchange which Gerhard Seel nicely characterised as 'les querelles allemandes'. Marcus Willaschek gave the first paper, entitled 'Kant on Right Without Ethics' in which he argued for the revisionist interpretation of the relation between the doctrine of ethics and the doctrine of right (this view is also espoused by, amongst others, Wood, Pogge and Ripstein). He argued that it was not possible to derive right from morality and that Kant had changed his views on this issue by the time of writing the Metaphysics of Morals, even though the architectonic still remained unchanged and even though the implications of the new approach were not fully worked out. That is, while Kant held until the early 1790s that the doctrine of right followed from the doctrine of ethics and was justified by the categorical imperative, he later believed that such a derivation was not possible and that these two doctrines were independent of each other. The discussion after the talk turned largely on the question whether this implies that the doctrine of right would have to be dropped as a result of lacking a foundation or whether an independent justification could be found, thereby undermining the unity of the Kantian system.

Gerhard Seel's paper was a response to the challenge raised by Willaschek. He claimed that the doctrine of right could be justified by appealing to the categorical imperative and that this was the only possible justification. His proposed solution did however come at quite a high price, namely the rejection of all imperfect duties. These two talks nicely showed how difficult the relation between the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue really is and that any solution will have to pay a high price, either in the form of undermining the unity and architectonic of the Kantian system or by rejecting certain Kantian doctrines.

After the lunch break Robert Stern gave a paper about realism and constructivism in Kant's and Hegel's ethical thought. The background of the paper was the recent dispute between McDowell and Pippin regarding the question as to whether or not one should give a realist interpretation of Hegel, McDowell arguing that this should be done while Pippin claimed that self-legislation was fundamental to Hegel's ethical thought and implied a constructivist reading. Stern sided with McDowell, providing a defence of the realist position as well as criticisms of the constructivist approach. The main problem with the realist position was seen to lie in its apparent inability to make sense of the obligatoriness of morality, something that according to the Kantian requires the self-imposition of moral commands. Stern attempted to meet this objection by claiming that obligatoriness is not essential as can be seen from the case of the holy will for whom the moral law is descriptive and not prescriptive. Stern's critique of the constructivist position was based on the claim that such an approach would ultimately collapse into realism if it is to avoid the problem of an unconstrained and arbitrary voluntarism.

German and Transcendental Idealism

2007-03-06T16:59:00.000Z

Next week is set to be rather frantic. On Saturday I will be heading to Ireland, where the PutnamFest will take place, followed by a workshop on German Idealism and Normativity. The latter will feature: Georg Mohr, Marcus Willachek, Frederick Beiser, Paul Franks, Robert Stern and Gerhard Seel. This will directly be followed by a workshop on Transcendental Idealism taking place in London. This workshop is organised by the Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism project at Essex. The speakers are: Karl Ameriks, Johannes Haag, Kris McDaniel, Adrian Moore and Tobias Rosefeldt.

NDPR: The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy

2007-02-21T12:43:00.000Z

A review of The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (ed. P. Guyer) is now available online at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Keep Kant in Gothic

2007-02-21T12:36:00.000Z

I just found out that the people at de Gruyter are planning to publish the new Akademie-Ausgabe editions of the three Critiques in Roman font, rather than the original Gothic, and that they want to use italics. Their reasoning is that Gothic is unfamiliar and alien to Anglo-American readers.

The new editions of the Critiques will be closer to the originals, reversing many misguided emendations and additions made by previous editors. It is a shame that this positive trend towards greater scholarly accuracy and faithfulness to the original text should be compromised by a sacrifice of the original aesthetics.

Moreover, and most importantly, Kant himself maintained in the Conflict of the Faculties that German texts should not be typeset in Roman font and that the use of italics should be avoided.

If you think that authenticity should be preserved and that Kant's wishes should be respected, then please send e-mails to Dr. Tanja Gloyna (gloyna@bbaw.de) of the Berliner Akademie to express your disapproval.

The noumena/phenomena distinction

2007-02-04T16:36:00.000Z

Transcendental idealism, whether it is an epistemological thesis or not, has obviously many epistemological implications, such as the need for epistemic humility resulting from the ignorance of things in themselves. However, whether the distinction between noumena and phenomena is merely an epistemological or methodological distinction or a more substantive metaphysical doctrine is a much-debated issue. The debate regarding the noumena/phenomena relation is often phrased in terms of the number of worlds that result from particular theories, so that epistemological interpretations are seen as `one-world' views, whereas metaphysical interpretations are considered to be `two-world' views. This classification is rather inadequate and it is better to differentiate theories on the basis of whether or not they are epistemological or metaphysical in nature, since this distinction is more fundamental. A fully adequate classification, however, must classify interpretations along both dimensions since they run orthogonal to each other.

The distinction between noumena and phenomena can either be seen as a metaphysical or as an epistemological distinction. According to metaphysical interpretations, the distinction between noumena and phenomena is a distinction that derives from the objects. It is not based on the way we consider or conceive of the objects. Instead, there is some metaphysical distinction or difference that pertains to the objects and which lies at the basis of the noumena/phenomena distinction. Proponents of the epistemological or methodological interpretation claim that the distinction is a distinction between ways of considering the same objects. They claim that we view it from different viewpoints, that in thinking about them we occupy different standpoints, namely the transcendental and empirical standpoints. When we consider things as they are in themselves we are abstracting from the conditions of our sensibility. Thus, the terms `noumena' and `phenomena' refer to different entities or metaphysical features of entities, if one takes the former approach, while they refer to different ways of conceiving, considering or knowing entities, according to the latter approach.

Interpretations of transcendental idealism are usually distinguished by assessing the number of worlds that they imply. This criterion is slightly problematic in that it might be better to talk about domains of discourse, rather than about `worlds'. This is because there are positions, such as the `virtual object' view espoused by van Cleve, that do not really classify as two-worlds views even though there are two separate domains. In the case of van Cleve's interpretation there is only one world, but there are two ontological domains or domains of discourse. There are two sets of entities, but only one set consists of real existents, whereas the other's members are virtual objects. As long as we have a very weak understanding of worlds, i.e. no substantial ontological reading of worlds, these will amount to the same. (Though the terminology of `worlds' is slightly misleading, it has become so entrenched in the literature that I will stick to it, with the proviso that one should keep in mind that a weak reading of worlds is used that does not have any serious ontological import.)

The metaphysical/epistemological and the one-world/two-worlds distinctions constitute two orthogonal distinctions that can be combined, giving us four possible groups of interpretations of the distinction between noumena and phenomena. Metaphysical interpretations can be classified as one-world or two-world theories and the same applies to epistemological approaches. These four options are illustrated in the diagram below:

Metaphysical interpretations can be either one-world theories or two-world theories. Usually, they imply the existence of two-worlds, but there are also some well-known metaphysical one-world approaches. The most straightforward metaphysical view is that noumena and phenomena are different objects. They are ontologically distinct entities. This option then, of course, brings with it the well-known two-worlds view. Within this broad category of metaphysical two-worlds views, there is a vast range of more particular views that differ in the account they give of the nature of noumenal objects and phenomenal objects, as well as the relation that exists between them.

If the distinction between noumena and phenomena is a metaphysical distinction, then this implies that noumena and phenomena must be distinct, but it does not mean that we have distinct objects and distinct worlds occupied by these different objects. Noumena and phenomena can be distinct aspects or parts of the same object. For example, Warren and Langton argue that there is one object, but that noumena are collections of intrinsic properties of objects, whereas phenomena are collections of the relational properties of the same objects. On this view, phenomena and noumena are not distinct objects, but rather refer to bundles or sets of properties. We can talk about the `phenomenal object', as long as this `object' is not understood as a mereological unity, as an object in the full-blown sense. Only noumenal objects are objects in the full-blown sense and this explains their ontological priority. So, we have a clear metaphysical distinction between two kinds of properties.

There are several other candidate distinctions that can be appealed to in order to arrive at metaphysical one-world views. Possible options include views according to which Kant was concerned with different essences, or that the distinction between noumena and phenomena is simply the distinction between substrata and their properties. A further one-world possibility is to treat it as a distinction between different mereological parts of objects (whereby the notion of parthood has to be understood in a non-spatial way, i.e. no reference to overlap etc.).

Epistemological interpretations can also be combined with one-world and two-world ontologies. That is, the distinction between noumena and phenomena is a distinction between ways of considering or conceiving of entities and this understanding can be combined with a belief in the existence of different ontological domains. After all, it is an epistemological or methodological issue and as such should not decide the metaphysical question how many worlds there are. Usually, epistemological interpretations are part of one-world theories since the main motivation for accepting an epistemological understanding of the noumena/phenomena distinction is to avoid the `crazy' metaphysics of transcendental idealism. While they are mostly one world views, it is clearly possible to combine them with two-worlds, for example in order to account for Kant's metaphysical claims that are based on ethical considerations regarding freedom, God and immortality. In this case the two worlds will not be described as the noumenal world and the phenomenal world since the terms `noumenal' and `phenomenal' describe the ways a world can be considered. Instead, the worlds can be described as the transcendental world and the transcendent world, whereby the later one includes God and similar objects that are beyond the bounds of experience. The former world is a world of things that can be regarded as phenomena or as noumena, as they appear to us or as they are in themselves, whereas the the later world is a world in which there are things that do not appear to us and can only be considered as they are in themselves. Thus, the epistemological interpretation implies that there is one world of entities that can be considered as phenomena and as noumena, but this does not imply that there cannot be other worlds inhabited by objects that can only be considered as noumena. While this latter option does not have much appeal since epistemological readings are used to dispose of `outrageous' metaphysical claims, it seems nonetheless to be a coherent option.

Thus it seems that there are two different dimensions along which interpretations of the noumena/phenomena distinction can vary. The number of worlds criterion runs orthogonal to the criterion regarding the nature of the noumena/phenomena distinction. There are disputes along both dimensions. However, the dispute regarding the nature of the distinction appears to be more fundamental. There is much more similarity within metaphysical approaches, on the one hand, and epistemological approaches, on the other, than within one-world interpretations or two-world interpretations.

Handexemplar Critik der practischen Vernunft

2007-01-24T09:45:00.000Z

Kant's own copy of the Critique of Practical Reason, including his annotations, has been digitalised and is available online.

An amusing Reflexion

2007-01-17T11:36:00.001Z

"Myinda, das Blindekuhspiel, ist lustiger als die Schlägerey mit verbundenen Augen andabatarum." (R6350)

Some upcoming Kant events

2007-01-17T11:34:00.000Z

For those who will be in London next week it might be worthwhile noting the following events. On Monday Beatrice Longuenesse will be speaking to the Aristotelian Society about 'Kant on the identity of persons'. (the paper is available online) On Thursday Christine Korsgaard is talking about 'Natural motives and the motive of duty: Hume and Kant on our duties to others'. Unfortunately, I am rather busy at the moment and won't be able to make it down to London.

Philosophie Transcendentale ou Systeme d'Emmanuel Kant

2007-01-08T19:03:00.000Z

Today I stumbled across a very nice exposition of the Kantian system. The book is entitled "Philosophie Transcendentale ou Systeme d'Emmanuel Kant", written by L. F. Schön in 1831. It contains a nice description of the historical background and then outlines Kant's views of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement. The book can be downloaded in pdf format from google books.

Two-world views

2006-12-27T14:34:00.000Z

In his new book on Kant, Guyer makes an interesting claim about two-object views. He says that it is misleading to describe ontological interpretations of transcendental idealism as 'two-object' or 'two-world' views. "This makes it sound as if Kant is being supposed to have entirely made up a mysterious world behind the world of ordinary objects, to have needlessly duplicated the objects of our experience while at the same time stripping them of their most important properties. But, for Kant, as for virtually every philosopher in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there already were two sorts of objects to hand, namely, ordinary objects and our mental representation of them, and all that Kant was doing, as he saw it, was relocating spatial and temporal properties from one kind of object that everybody recognized - non-representations - to the other kind of object that everybody recognized - representations. So of course he held a 'two-object' view: everyone (except Berkeley) did, though few would have agreed with Kant's reassignment of spatio-temporal properties from ordinary objects to representations. Any interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism needs to take account of the fact that, like the vast majority of his contemporaries, he was in fact committed to a 'two-object' view independently of transcendental idealism." (Guyer: 2006, p. 69)

While I agree that Kant believed in the distinction between representations and objects, it is questionable to what extent this already implies a 'two-world' view and moreover, it is not clear whether Kant did transfer the primary properties from objects thus conceived to representations. As he says in the Prolegomena, he made these primary qualities into secondary qualities, but that does not mean that they are not in the object any longer. Rather, the object is seen as a construction out of the representations; it has these qualities, but what makes them secondary qualities is that they are due to the representations rather than due to the noumenal object. In a way we end up with three objects, namely (i) representations, (ii) their objects, and (iii) objects as they are in themselves. The distinction between primary and secondary properties is applicable within the phenomenal realm. We have to distinguish between representations and the phenomenal objects of these representations, i.e. the causal nexuses characteristic of Kant's scientific realism. This is usefully cashed out by van Cleve's distinction between objects1 and object2 - both of them are phenomenal. In addition to these two kinds of phenomenal objects we have noumenal objects. What is at issue is whether noumenal and phenomenal objects occupy different domains or worlds. The question is not whether representations and their objects occupy different domains since it is evident that they both belong to the phenomenal realm. That is, the distinction that Guyer appeals to is a distinction within the phenomenal realm and as such has no direct bearing on the dispute about how many worlds there are. What is special about Kant's system is that he proposes a bifurcation of reality into the noumenal and phenomenal realms. It is for that reason that the 'two-world' label is adequate and not for any reason regarding the relation between representations and phenomenal objects.

The right and the good

2006-12-17T11:51:00.000Z

Over at PEA Soup there is an interesting discussion about the role of values in Kant's ethics. In particular, the question is whether recent interpretations, such as those proposed by Wood, Guyer and Herman, are mistaken in taking the good as the ground of obligation and whether we should stick to the traditional understanding by denying that the right is grounded in the good.

Truth and Truthfulness

2006-11-30T19:23:00.000Z

A Kant-focused colloquium on Truth and Truthfulness will take place in St Andrews next Wednesday (6th December).

Jens Timmermann (St Andrews)
‘The Murderer at the Door – A Kantian Dilemma?’
Respondent: Peter Baumann (Aberdeen)

David Owens (Sheffield)
‘The Wrong of Untruthfulness’
Respondent: Ralf Bader (St Andrews)

Tamar Schapiro (Stanford)
‘Kantian Rigorism and Mitigating Circumstances’
Respondent: Carolyn Benson (St Andrews)

Zeitschriften der Aufklärung

2006-11-19T20:29:00.000Z

The Universität Bielefeld is running a project entitled Zeitschriften der Aufklärung which involves digitalising a vast number of journals, including the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek and the Berlinische Monatsschrift as well as many others.

Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek
Highlights include:

A review of Herz's Betrachtungen aus der spekulativen Weltweisheit by J. H. Lambert, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1773) pp. 227-229
A review of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Anhang Vols. 37-52, No. 2 (1783) pp. 838-862
A review of the Prolegomena by H. A. Pistorius, Vol. 59, No. 1 (1784) pp. 322-356
An anonymous review of the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Vol. 81, No. 2 (1788) pp. 343-354

Berlinische Monatsschrift
In this journal many of Kant's articles were originally published including:

Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. 1784, pp. 385-410
Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? 1784, pp. 481-494
Was heißt: sich im Denken orientiren? 1786, pp. 304-329
Ueber das radikale Böse in der menschlichen Natur. 1792, pp. 323-384
Ueber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis. 1793, pp. 201-284
Verkündigung des nahen Abschlusses eines Traktats zum ewigen Frieden in der Philosophie. 1796, pp. 485-504
Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen. 1797, pp. 301-314

The ideality of the self

2006-11-12T15:31:00.000Z

I just finished reading Ameriks's essay "A Common-Sense Kant?" (Chapter 5 of Kant and the Historical Turn, OUP: 2006). This is a nice paper in which he compares the philosophies of Reid and Kant, arguing that there are many methodological, epistemological and metaphysical positions shared by these two thinkers that have not been properly appreciated.

In his discussion of the ideality of the self, Ameriks makes an interesting claim. "Once Kant's idealism, even of the self, is expressed as relying essentially on the claim that our determinate self-knowledge is inevitably parasitic on spatial knowledge, then the issue between Kant and his opponents needs to be focused on making sense of the basic claim that even spatiality (and therefore the self simply in so far as it and its temporality is dependent on spatiality) can be 'mere appearance'." (Ameriks: 2006, pp. 126-127)

However, I do not agree that the ideality of the phenomenal self is in this way connected to the ideality of space. Kant thinks that we know ourselves only as we appear and not as we are in ourselves because of the ideality of time. Time is the form of inner intuition. Since time is transcendentally ideal, it follows that all knowledge gained by inner sense is restricted to knowledge of the phenomenal realm, in particular to knowledge of the phenomenal self.

Kant's emphasis on inner sense being parasitic on outer sense is part of the Refutation of Idealism and the General Note on the System of the Principles, both of which are additions to the B-Edition. The restriction to knowledge of the self as appearance, however, is already part of the Transcendental Aesthetic of the A-Edition, where it seems to be purely based on considerations regarding time. Moreover, even if self-knowledge is parasitic on spatial knowledge and if spatial knowledge is only of mere appearances, it does not seem to follow that we only know ourselves as we appear. To reach this conclusion we need to appeal to specific considerations regarding the transcendental ideality of time. According to the Refutation of Idealism, self-knowledge is parasitic on spatial knowledge insofar as consciousness of our existence as determined in time requires there to be an outer permanent in perception. This is because all time-determination presupposes a permanent and because permanence can only be outer. But merely because we appeal to something that is ideal in determining our existence in time does not yet imply that we can only know ourselves as appearances. For this we must appeal to the ideality of time. But given the ideality of time, no further reference need be made to how we determine things in time and whether or not this time-determination requires appealing to spatial knowledge of mere appearances. That is, the transcendental ideality of time is both necessary and sufficient for establishing Kant's conclusions and hence no appeal to spatial knowledge needs to be made.

Thus Ameriks seems to be mistaken to say that the temporality of the self is dependent on spatiality. We appeal to spatial knowledge in determining the temporality of the self, but this is not equivalent to its temporality depending on spatiality and therewith does not imply that ideality of spatiality transfers to ideality of temporality. The ideality of time is established independently of the ideality of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic.

Dissertations on Kant

2006-11-08T13:51:00.000Z

Josh Dever's Philosophy Dissertations page is still growing. In addition to MacFarlane's dissertation, it now includes two further dissertations concerned with Kant, namely a PhD by Melissa Merritt entitled 'Drawing from the sources: reflective self-knowledge in Kant's first Critique' as well as Andrew Carpenter's dissertation on 'Kant's earliest solution to the mind/body problem'.

Kant's lectures

2006-10-27T20:32:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-09T13:25:00.000+01:00

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

2006-10-05T09:21:00.000+01:00

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)

TPN conference

2006-09-27T10:48:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow I will be going to London for the TPN conference on the History of the Transcendental Turn. The keynote speakers are Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Robert Pippin and Stephen Darwall. All the conference papers are available online and there will be conference reports posted on the TPN blog afterwards.

Conference report: Amsterdam

2006-09-13T18:38:00.000+01:00

Last week I attended the Graduate Conference on Kant at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where I presented my paper "Time-determination and Outer Permanence".

The keynote speakers were Dieter Schönecker and Dina Emundts. Dieter Schönecker talked about methodological issues of Kant interpretation, arguing that we should distinguish much more clearly between interpreting Kant and assessing Kant's arguments. Interpretation for him consists of highly detailed textual analysis that proceeds by analysing a text sentence by sentence. Schönecker claims that this kind of textual analysis has not been performed by Kant scholars and that it is crucial for a proper understanding of Kant. A lively debate ensued.

The talk by Emundts focused on the primary and secondary quality distinction that can be drawn within the phenomenal realm. She suggested that the distinction is an empirical distinction that can be identified by means of the criterion whether a quality is dependent upon the particular constitution of a sense or not.

Most papers by graduate students were concerned with theoretical philosophy and there were surprisingly many that focused on the relation between Kant and Fichte. Two of the papers were of particular interest to me since they were closely related to topics I have been working on recently.

Alberto Vanzo gave a paper about Kant's nominal definition of truth (cf. A58/B82), discussing Kant's understanding of the distinctions between logical and real essences, as well as nominal and real definitions. He argued that the nominal definition of truth should be understood as identifying the meaning of 'is true', which features in the ordinary conception of truth. Accordingly, it would seem that appealing to the nominal definition of truth does not settle whether or not Kant held a correspondence theory of truth. In the discussion Dieter Schönecker suggested that the nominal definition of truth should not be understood in contrast with a real definition in this context, but rather in contrast with a material definition that provides a criterion for truth. Consequently, the 'nominal' definition of truth at A58/B82 is nominal not in Kant's technical sense and hence strongly supports a correspondence theory interpretation.

Samuel Kahn gave the only paper concerned with Kant's practical philosophy. He assessed the postulate for the immortality of the soul in the Critique of Practical Reason, arguing that it was flawed due to internal incoherence, resulting from Kant's conception of the highest good. He also pointing out several important variances between the argument for immortality in the first Critique and the argument in the second Critique. In the discussion we touched upon the rather puzzling question as to what the postulates are intended to show, which is closely related to the difficult distinction between logical and real possibility that Kant makes.

A non-moral 'fact of reason'

2006-09-06T17:28:00.000+01:00

If we allow for the adequacy of the 'fact of reason', understood as the consciousness of the bindingness of the moral law, then it appears that we must equally admit the possibility of a fact of reason based on the commands of non-moral reason. Why does it have to be a fact of practical reason, rather than simply any fact of reason, such as a fact of theoretical reason? Like we can be conscious of the bindingness of the moral law, so we can be conscious of the bindingness of non-moral reasons, as for example in the case of mathematics. If the necessity of the bindingness is sufficient to establish the reality of freedom in the one case, then it should also be sufficient in the other case. I think that Allison's claim is correct that if considerations of rational agency cannot do the job, then no appeal to specifically moral considerations could change this. "[I]t must be insisted that if the general argument from the presuppositions of rational agency fails to provide adequate support for an incompatibilist conception of freedom, then no subsequent appeals to specifically moral requirements or `facts' could conceivably do the job. Basically, this is because any claim to the effect that our general capacity to act on the basis of principles, frame ends or incorporate incentives etc. can be adequately accounted for in a naturalistic, causal fashion could easily be extended to our presumed capacity to act from duty alone." (Allison: 1996, p. 125)

Download the Classics

2006-09-01T10:35:00.000+01:00

Google has announced that many out-of-copyright books are now available for download on Google Book Search. Particularly noteworthy are the following:

Immanuel Kants Logik: Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen (edited by Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche, 1800)

Critik der practischen Vernunft (1792)

Sammlung einiger bisher unbekannt Gebliebner kleiner Schriften (edited by Friedrich Theodor Rink, 1800)

Critik der reinen Vernunft (1828)

Amsterdam Graduate Conference on Kant

2006-08-29T10:53:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow I will be going to Leeds for the Graduate workshop on Lewis which will be followed by the Royal Institute of Philosophy conference on metaphysics. Afterwards, I am headed to the Netherlands where I will attend the Graduate Conference on Kant at the Vrije Universiteit that will take place on 7th and 8th September. On Friday morning, I will be presenting a paper entitled "Time-determination and Outer Permanence". The keynote speakers are Dina Emundts who will be talking about "Kant and Objectivity" and Dieter Schönecker, whose talk is entitled "Philosophy or History of Philosophy. On Interpreting Kant".

The presupposition of freedom

2006-08-23T17:11:00.000+01:00

Allison argues that an incompatibilist conception of freedom is a general requirement of rational agency, rather than being only required for moral agency, for the possibility of acting from duty. In support of this he claims that "it must be insisted that if the general argument from the presuppositions of rational agency fails to provide adequate support for an incompatibilist conception of freedom, then no subsequent appeals to specifically moral requirements or 'facts' could conceivably do the job. Basically, this is because any claim to the effect that our general capacity to act on the basis of principles, frame ends or incorporate incentives etc. can be adequately accounted for in a naturalistic, causal fashion could easily be extended to our presumed capacity to act from duty alone." (Allison: 1996, p. 125)

The view that rational agency presupposes freedom is criticised by Guyer and Ameriks. According to Allison, both of them share a certain metaphysical assumption which makes them suspect of his claim. They assume that the presupposition of freedom is appealed to in order to explain the 'phenomenon' of rational agency, namely that we are capable of rational behaviour, such as deliberating and choosing maxims. On the basis of this assumption they can then, according to Allison, easily dismiss the argument since the noumenal explanations of rational behaviour are supposedly vacuous or incoherent and since the argument neglects naturalistic compatibilist accounts of rational agency.

Allison thinks that this is a cogent criticism, but that it does not undermine his view since he does not share the underlying metaphysical assumption. "According to my reading of Kant, however, the insistence on the connection between rational agency and freedom is to be understood as a conceptual claim rather than a putative metaphysical explanation." (Allison: 1996, p. 126)

Allison's response is rather puzzling. Given that he accepts the hypothetical nature of the connection between freedom and morality, it is hard to understand why he does not accept the same for the connection between freedom and rationality. He says that the argument for the reciprocity thesis is "completely hypothetical and consequently does not involve any claims concerning the reality of either freedom or an unconditional practical law." (Allison: 1990, p. 203) The same can be said, mutatis mutandis, about the relation between freedom and rationality.

Though freedom is not required to explain the phenomenon of 'rational' agency, it is required to explain the possibility of rationality and morality. We do not know whether rational or moral agency ever takes place, but we do know that if there is to be rational or moral agency, then freedom must exist. Thus, the argument based on the connection between rationality and freedom should not be seen as an argument that starts from the phenomenon of rationality and then argues from there to the reality of freedom. Instead, it is an argument that if we are in fact rational or moral, then we must be free since freedom is a necessary presupposition for the possibility of rationality and morality.

However, since we do not know whether we are actually rational or moral we cannot complete this argument so as to draw any conclusions about whether or not freedom does exist. Instead, we can only make the conditional claim that if there is rationality and morality, then there must be freedom. The connection between freedom and rationality and morality is not only a conceptual connection but also a metaphysical connection.

Allison quotes a claim made by Kant in the Metaphysics Lectures: "If I say I think, I act, etc., then either the word 'I' is used falsely or I am free. Were I not free, I could not say: I do it, but must rather say: I feel in myself an impulse to do it, which something has incited in me. If, however, I say: I do it, this signifies a spontaneity in the transcendental sense." (ML, 28:269, quoted by Allison: 1996, p. 127) Similarly, in R4225 Kant says that the "question whether freedom is possible is perhaps identical with the question whether the human being is a true person and whether the I is possible in a being of external determinations." (17:464 [1769-1770], Guyer translation) It is important to note that Kant says that the word 'I' would be used "falsely". If I were not free, then using 'I' would not just be a conceptual mistake. It would be false to say that I do something, it would be false that I think. As Kant says in the Groundwork, without freedom, rationality like morality would be nothing but a 'chimerical idea', a 'phantom of the brain' (4:445).

Thus, we can make metaphysical claims about the necessary connections between freedom, on the one hand, and rationality and morality on the other. However, we cannot make claims about the reality of either freedom or morality. Our subjective consciousness does not provide us with the basis for asserting the reality of freedom since we are unable to distinguish between the reality of morality and rationality and the chimerical plays that could be produced by psychological mechanisms.

It clearly seems to us to be the case that we are rational, that we act out of reason or out of duty, that we are bound by hypothetical and categorical imperatives. However, it might be the case that these are merely appearances and that there is no underlying reality conforming to them. The actual connections between freedom and rationality and morality are noumenal connections and are as such inaccessible to us. We can know what the conceptual connections are and what metaphysical connections must obtain if something is to be the case, but what actually is the case is unknown to us.

Reason and Reasons

2006-08-07T19:34:00.000+01:00

Whilst re-reading some of Allison's excellent book Kant's Theory of Freedom, I came across a rather strange argument regarding the causal efficacy of reason. According to Allison, it is not intelligible how reasons could be causes. Reasons do not seem to be the right kind of things to possess causal efficacy. Allison claims that “construing free actions as literally caused by reason makes nonsense of Kant’s position.” (Allison: 1990, p. 49) This is because “it is clear that principles do not themselves literally have causal efficacy. ... reasons can be causes in the sense that beliefs or belief states can be used to explain human actions but not in the sense that the content of what is believed (the principle on which an agent acts) is itself a cause.” (Allison: 1990, pp. 49-50) This argument appears to be highly problematic since there seems to be an illicit move from talking about the faculty of reason to reasons considered as abstract rational principles. While Allison is right in saying that it would be strange to attribute causal efficacy to abstract principles, this does not imply that the faculty of reason cannot be causally efficacious.

Cambridge Companions

2006-07-29T18:15:00.000+01:00

The Cambridge Companions to Philosophy are now online. This includes the "Companion to Kant", edited by Paul Guyer (1992), the "Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy", also edited by Paul Guyer (2006), and the "Companion to German Idealism", edited by Karl Ameriks (2000) (the last collection is mostly concerned with post-Kantian stuff, but it also includes some papers on Kant, in particular one by Allen Wood on Kant's practical philosophy).

ZetKIK

2006-07-24T21:17:00.000+01:00

I recently heard about a new research centre dedicated to Kant scholarship, namely the "Zentrum für Kommentarische Interpretationen zu Kant (ZetKIK)" at the Universität Siegen. This centre is concerned with detailed exegetical study of Kant's works and is run by Prof. Dr. Dieter Schönecker.

Transcendental Turn

2006-07-18T21:09:00.000+01:00

At the end of September there is going to be a conference on "The History of the Transcendental Turn", organised by the Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism project that is based at the University of Essex. The programme is now available online. This conference will take place on 29 & 30 September in London and I am sure that it will definitely be the highlight of the year.

Speakers include:

Henry Allison
Paul Guyer
Robert Pippin

So far, I have attended one event organised by the TPN, namely the Kant-workshop at Essex in January. The workshop was interesting and enjoyable. Three of the papers presented are available online. Joel Smith has blogged about the Kant-workshop at the TPN blog. The conference in September will mark the end of the 'historical' phase of the project. I am looking forward to the 'thematic' phase that is planned for next year.

Kant conference

2006-07-15T02:11:00.000+01:00

Last week, I attended the 3rd UK Kant Society Graduate conference in Hertfordshire, where I presented my paper on the Refutation of Idealism. It was a very enjoyable and interesting conference.

On Thursday, Marcia Baron gave a lecture on ‘Overdetermined Actions, Imperfect Duties and Moral Worth’. She returned to some of the claims that she had made regarding overdetermination in her book Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology. She examined whether it would be possible to have overdetermination in the case of imperfect duties, arguing that this was not possible since we cannot act out of duty in cases of imperfect duty. To act out of duty is to perform an action because reason commands it, but in the case of imperfect duties reason does not command us to perform any particular action and hence no particular action can be performed out of duty. We can only take up a general maxim to act out of duty and then act in particular cases in accordance with this maxim. The discussion was concerned with the relation between Allen Wood's and Marcia Baron's accounts of acting out of duty.

On Friday, we heard an interesting talk by Karl Ameriks about ‘Reality and Religion in the Development of Kant’s Ethics’, with comments provided by Graham Bird. Ameriks discussed the relation between Kant's pre-Critical and Critical account of ethics, focusing in particular on the Lectures on Ethics. He critically assessed Manfred Kühn's recent account of the relation between pre-Critical and Critical ethics, discussing the notions of 'respect', 'moral interest', and 'faculty of desire' (Begehrungsvermögen). The main question was whether there was a move from a more empirical and less rationalistic conception of ethics in the pre-Critical period, to a less empirical and more rationalistic conception in the Critical period. Ameriks argued for certain asymmetries between practical and theoretical philosophy in the Critical period. Transcendental idealism allowed Kant to keep his strongly rationalistic conception of ethics by making room for freedom. Accordingly, there are no analogous restrictions on practical philosophy as those imposed on theoretical philosophy by the critical approach. The discussion focused to a great extent on this issue and in particular on the problem to what extent reason can be seen to be 'properly practical' independently of sensibility, as Ameriks claims.

The graduate papers were of high quality. Unfortunately, there was not much on Kant's theoretical philosophy, but there were two very interesting papers on Kant's ethics by David Dick on 'The Stoic Archer and Kant's Target' and by Jappa Pallikkathayil on 'Consent and the Formula of Humanity'.

Was Lewis a Kantian?

2006-07-03T10:49:00.000+01:00

I recently received my copy of Lewisian Themes. This is a very nice collection that includes an interesting article by Rae Langton entitled "Elusive Knowledge of Things in Themselves". In her article, Langton compares Lewis's argument for epistemic humility, i.e. the thesis that we do not have knowledge of things in themselves, that we do not know the intrinsic properties of objects, with Kant's argument for humility, as interpreted by Langton.

Lewis's argument is motivated by Ramseyan reasons, namely that if "T [the complete and final theory of the world] is multiply realizable, then some fundamental properties are hidden from us" (p. 132). More carefully, we cannot use observation to identify which realisation of T is actual. This is because no matter how T is realised, any evidence available to us could only provide us with support for the Ramsey sentence of T. Our knowledge of the fundamental properties is only knowledge of them as role-occupants and Lewis says that "to the extent that we know of the properties of things only as role-occupants, we have not yet identified those properties. No amount of knowledge about what roles are occupied will tell us which properties occupy which roles." Lewis believes that there are indeed multiple realisations of T on the basis of his permutation argument and replacement argument. According to the permutation argument, we can permute fundamental properties and the laws governing them that feature in T while leaving the rest fixed, thereby bringing about a scenario that differs at the fundamental level but is cognitively indistinguishable to us since all the original roles are occupied. This needs to be qualified in that the permutation argument relies on combinatorialism and quidditism (cf. p. 132 footnote). (For a criticism of quidditism cf. J. Schaffer's paper "Quiddistic Knowledge" also in Lewisian Themes.) The replacement argument invokes the idea of replacing the fundamental properties with 'idlers' or 'aliens', i.e. fundamental properties that play no active role and do thus not feature in T. Again, the fundamental level is different but in such a way that it does not affect the roles being occupied.

Though leading to a similar conclusion as Langton's Kant, the arguments are quite different since the "Kantian answer to the epistemological question depends not on the multiple realizability of realizers, but on a kind of receptivity of knowledge, and a kind of irreducibility of causal power" (p. 134). Langton then discusses to what extent a contextualist epistemology (as outlined in Lewis's paper "Elusive knowledge" (1996)) can help us overcome our ignorance of things in themselves. While such a strategy may be reasonably successful in dealing with Ramseyan humility insofar as we might be properly discounting alternatives, this does not apply to Kantian humility since it is not based on there being alternative realisations of the role properties. The Kantian argument "did not exploit the idea of possibilities that fail to be ruled out be our evidence" (p. 136) and can thus not be dealt with by means of a contextualist strategy according to which we can properly ignore certain possibilities when we are in the right contexts.

(A detailed discussion and criticism of some of the technicalities of Lewis's argument can be found in "Humean Humility?" by S. Leuenberger.)

ZVAB

2006-06-28T09:52:00.000+01:00

The "Zentrales Verzeichnis Antiquarischer Bücher" is a great resource for finding second hand books and old texts in German.

3rd UKKS Graduate Conference

2006-06-24T07:40:00.000+01:00

The 3rd UK Kant Society Graduate Conference will take place in Hertfordshire on Thursday 6th and Friday 7th July. Keynote speakers are Karl Ameriks (Notre Dame), who will be talking about ‘Reality and Religion in the Development of Kant’s Ethics’, and Marcia Baron (Indiana University), whose paper is entitled ‘Overdetermined Actions, Imperfect Duties and Moral Worth’.

There will also be seven presentations by graduate students. On Thursday morning, I will be presenting a paper on the Refutation of Idealism.

Here is an abstract of my paper:

In this paper I should like to argue that the Refutation of Idealism and the Fourth Paralogism of the A-Edition are consistent and that their consistence can be explained by reference to the distinction between Objekte and Gegenstände. This account also helps to explain why Kant placed the Refutation of Idealism after the Second Postulate. I will then discuss a possible objection to this interpretation viz. that my reading of the notion of Gegenstände would make the Refutation inconsistent with transcendental idealism. I will answer this objection by examining the possibility of reconciling the existence of permanent spatial objects with transcendental idealism, arguing that the Refutation is consistent with transcendental idealism and indeed presupposes its validity.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am planning to post about this conference, but the blogging will probably be delayed.

Van Cleve on the synthetic a priori

2006-06-20T20:14:00.000+01:00

After some extensive discussions about a prioricity and analyticity with Andreas, I decided to re-read van Cleve's excellent discussion of necessity, analyticity and the a priori in Chapter 2 of Problems from Kant. One nice argument that van Cleve mentions in favour of there being synthetic a priori truths is the consideration whether the claim that all a priori truths are analytic, which the opponent of synthetic a priori truths holds, is itself analytic. He says: "What is the status of the opposing thesis that all a priori truths are analytic? It is not an empirical thesis, so if true at all, it had better be analytic. But is it? Defenders of the thesis have seldom risen to the challenge of demonstrating its own analyticity." (Problems from Kant, p. 27)

Paton Colloquium

2006-06-17T10:29:00.000+01:00

This year's H. J. Paton Colloquium in Kantian Ethics is organised by Jens Timmermann. The topic is Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. It will take place in St. Andrews on Wednesday 5 July.

The speakers are:

Pauline Kleingeld (Leiden)
"Kant's Second Thoughts on Race"

Stephen Engstrom (Pittsburgh)
"Practical Reason and Practical Knowledge"

Replies by Andrews Reath (UC Riverside) and Jens Timmermann (St Andrews)

I will try to blog about the conference, though it will probably take quite a while until I will find the time to write the posts. This is because I am leaving St Andrews after the Paton Colloquium to go to the UK Kant Society graduate conference that will begin in Hertfordshire the following day. The Kant Society conference, in turn, will immediately be followed by a prolonged visit to the US. So blogging will be sparse and the conference reports will probably be delayed.

NDPR: "Kant and the Empiricists"

2006-06-13T10:05:00.000+01:00

A review of Wayne Waxman's "Kant and the Empiricists: Understanding Understanding" is available online at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Kant on modality

2006-06-11T11:23:00.000+01:00

Recently, I have been thinking a bit about Kant's position on modality. Since this topic is not much discussed and since I do not have very clear views on it, I would be grateful for reading suggestions relating to this issue (both primary and secondary sources). My current interest in modality is, on the one hand, due to the fact that over the course of the last three days I have been attending an impressive conference on the epistemology and metaphysics of modality that took place in St Andrews. On the other hand, Andrew Roche and I are still discussing Kant's account of freedom over at Kant blog and the discussion has recently turned to the modal conflict, i.e. the conflict between the contingency of spontaneous actions and the necessity of our actions that are determined by laws of nature. In particular, the issue is to what extent Kant's distinctive appeal to nested modalities requires a two-world interpretation of transcendental idealism.

Time-determination

2006-06-07T14:41:00.000+01:00

In the Refutation of Idealism, Kant puts forward the claim that every time-determination requires a permanent, without providing any explanation or justification. Such an explanation can, however, be found in the First Analogy where it is argued that permanence is a necessary presupposition of the possibility of experience. Kant's argument starts with the claim that time cannot be perceived. He then argues that owing to this "there must be found in the objects of perception, that is, in the appearances, the substratum which represents time in general" (B225). But why do we need a representation of time in the field of appearances? While it is the case that only in time can we represent relations of time, it need not be the case that the instantiated time-relations in any way represent or exhibit their temporality. Accordingly, no representation of time in perception need be given. The whole problem that we cannot perceive time would be solved if there were a representation of time in perception as we could then perceive, not time itself, but its representation. Instead, we have to use a representation of time that is produced by the imagination. That time cannot be perceived is irrelevant to occurrences being related in time as it only matters with regard to the mechanism by which we have to determine these time-relations. Hence the fact that time cannot be perceived has only epistemological implications and the metaphysical status of time-relations is not affected by it. Because we do not perceive time, we cannot identify occurrences by their objective temporal places, by reference to perceived time. Instead, we have to identify them by reference to other occurrences. While reference to other occurrences is required, insofar as one must determine what coexists, precedes or succeeds, there does not seem to be any need for a permanent.

Can anyone think of a way of saving Kant's claim?

The depository of the unexplainable

2006-06-03T12:33:00.000+01:00

I often wonder to what extent the noumenal world can be used as a depository of the unexplainable, thereby enabling us to indirectly explain that which cannot be explained. When we cannot make sense of something, when there is something that we cannot account for, such as freedom, we can simply save it by placing it in the noumenal world. Here we must make a distinction between different types of unexplainable things. On the one hand, there are those that are inherently unexplainable, i.e. those that lie beyond our cognitive and experiential capacities. On the other hand, there are those that we are unable to explain because even though there is in principle an explanation that we can find, we have not yet managed to find it. Only the former type belongs to the noumenal world. As Kant says in the final section of Groundwork III, we must be able to make intelligible to us the unintelligibility of the thing in question - only in this way are we justified in locating it in the noumenal world.

Old translations

2006-05-28T21:34:00.000+01:00

A large number of Kant's publications are available for download at the Online Library of Liberty. They are available in HTML, PDF and E-Book format. All of them are rather old English translations, mostly from the late 19th and early 20th Century.

Freedom and two-aspects interpretations

2006-05-25T16:34:00.000+01:00

At Kant blog, Andrew Roche is discussing how we can make sense of Kant's arguments regarding freedom within the framework of a two-aspects interpretation. His argument is based on distinguishing between the theoretical and practical perspectives that agents can take and arguing that freedom is only salient when we take up the latter perspective. Andrew and I are having an interesting discussion in the comments section.

More on noumena and phenomena

2006-05-24T18:45:00.000+01:00

The noumena/phenomena debate is spreading through the blogosphere. Duck at DuckRabbit, has an interesting post discussing the relation between the Cartesian conception of objectivity and Kant's transcendental idealism. At Siris, there is a post suggesting that we have so little knowledge of noumena that we cannot decide between two-worlds and two-aspects interpretations. The idea is that the whole debate is misguided since the commentators do not really take seriously the limitations of our knowledge that transcendental idealism identifies. I have written a few short comments in reply to the latter post.

Kant song

2006-05-21T15:50:00.000+01:00

An amusing song about Kant is available online.

The objective validity of 'judgements'

2006-05-16T21:32:00.000+01:00

According to Kant, something is only a judgement if it is objectively valid. Otherwise, though it might have the grammatical form of a judgement, it does not classify as a 'judgement'. In the Prolegomena, he makes a distinction between 'judgements of experience' and 'judgements of perceptions'. Only the former properly classify as 'judgements' and it is this sense of the term that he mostly uses in the Critique of Pure Reason. This is the reason why Kant criticises logicians who define a judgement as a representation of a relation between two concepts. (cf. B140-141) Allison, following Prauss, interprets the need of judgements being 'objectively valid' as meaning that they must have a truth-value, not that they must be true. This interpretation seems unacceptable as Kant at several places equates objective validity with truth. For example, at A125 Kant explicitly equates objective validity with truth. Furthermore, in the Prolegomena (Prolegomena, 4:298) Kant states that "the objective validity of the judgement of experience signifies nothing else than its necessary universal validity" and states that this signifies that the "judgement agrees with an object", which is equivalent to the definition of truth given at A57/B82. In addition, Kant's classification does not commit him to the absurd conclusion that "every judgement is true, simply in virtue of being a judgement". (Allison: 2004, p. 88) Allison appears to invert the direction of reasoning - it is not that because it is a judgement that it is true, but that only because it is true that it classifies as a judgement. This implies that there are no false judgements in the sense that nothing that is false will classify as a 'judgement', but this does not bring with it the absurd conclusion that there can be no error.

A similar method of classification can be seen to be at work with respect to the notions of 'experience' and 'imperative'. The way Kant uses the term 'experience' differs from contemporary usage insofar as experience, understood in its modern usage, must be objectively valid in order to classify as 'experience' in Kant's sense. This can be seen when looking at the Transcendental Deduction since it is a strong notion of experience that constitutes the starting point of the Deduction. (cf. Ameriks: 1978) Similarly, every imperative can be expressed as an ought-statement but this does not imply that every ought-statement is an imperative. While all ought-statements are grammatical imperatives, they are not necessarily 'imperatives' in Kant's sense as these are universally valid principles that are necessitating for the will (this includes both hypothetical and categorical imperatives - the former are hypothetically necessitating, whereas the latter are categorically necessitating). Thus, there can be formulations that have the grammatical form of imperatives, such as imperatives of etiquette, without necessitating the will and, accordingly, such statements do not classify as 'imperatives'. We can thus see that Foot's criticisms are misplaced when she says that "[i]t follows that if a hypothetical use of 'should' gave a hypothetical imperative, and a non-hypothetical use of 'should' a categorical imperative, then 'should' statements based on rules of etiquette, or rules of a club would be categorical imperatives." (Foot: 1972, p. 309) No matter what form the should-statement has and no matter how it is used, it only expresses a categorical imperative if it is an objective principle that necessitates the will.

Search engine

2006-05-11T10:06:00.000+01:00

A useful search engine of Volumes 1-23 of the Akademie Ausgabe is available online.

Kant poll

2006-05-08T11:12:00.000+01:00

I recently stumbled across a poll over at Kant Blog. The question is: Do you believe in the 'two-worlds' or 'two-aspects' interpretation of transcendental idealism? I think that this is a nice idea and would like to encourage those who have an opinion on this matter to submit their views.

I personally favour an ontological reading of transcendental idealism. I do not think that an epistemic or methodological interpretation is sufficiently strong to do the work that Kant wanted it to do. This holds in particular with respect to freedom. Transcendental freedom plays a highly substantial role in the Third Antinomy, as well as in Kant's ethical theory. Both the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason rely heavily on transcendental freedom and I do not think that a merely epistemic reading of transcendental idealism is able to fulfil this role.

I am slightly dissatisfied with the 'two-worlds' v. 'one-world' distinction. I think that there are quite a few ontological readings of transcendental idealism that are still in some sense 'one-world' theories. In particular, I have in mind van Cleve's theory that treats phenomena as virtual objects. Van Cleve notes that the virtual-object theory "does not give us a dualism of two sorts of existent. ... My interpretation is nonetheless dualistic in the following sense: the distinction between appearances and things in themselves is a distinction between two separate universes of discourse - not between two ways of discoursing about the same class of objects." (Problems from Kant, p. 150) Similarly, Langton's interpretation of transcendental idealism as involving a distinction between intrinsic and relational properties is an ontological reading that does not quite fit the 'two-worlds'-label. Moreover, 'two-worlds' talk has some rather unpalatable connotations. It seems to suggest that these worlds have the same status, but I believe that it is perfectly possible to combine an ontological reading with the claim that the noumenal realm is ontologically prior to the phenomenal realm. Accordingly, it is probably better to distinguish between 'ontological' and 'epistemic/methodological' theories, rather than between 'two-worlds' and 'one-world' interpretations.

Kantian ethics videos

2006-05-05T15:11:00.000+01:00

Video recordings of the Kantian Ethics Conference that took place at the University of San Diego in 2003 are available online.

The keynote lectures were delivered by Henry Allison, Stephen Darwall, Thomas Hill Jr., Robert Pippin and Allen Wood. This a highly impressive set of speakers and I can assure you that the talks are well worth listening to.

The Two Assertive Frameworks

2006-05-02T21:47:00.000+01:00

In Appendix K of Problems from Kant, van Cleve discusses the problem that anti-realists have in making sense of claims about the physical world that are supposed to be true in the absence of perceivers, given that they argue that the physical world is somehow mind-dependent. He asks: "How can you eat your cake empirically and still have it transcendentally?" (p. 249) The focus of the discussion is Foster's distinction between `two assertive frameworks'. According to Foster, one should distinguish between assertions made within the framework of physical theory and assertions made about this framework. Given this distinction, it supposedly follows that we can make sense of claims about physical reality in the absence of perceivers if these claims are seen to be made within physical theory. At the same time, we can accept the claim that physical reality is mind-dependent since it is a claim about the framework of physical theory. Van Cleve argues that there is no formal incompatibility between the two assertive frameworks, but that "inconsistency arises as soon as one adds that minds are necessary for the obtaining of the experiential constraints. A proposition that excludes the existence of minds cannot be made true by a state of affairs that essentially includes them." (p. 252) That is, the truth-makers of claims made within physical theory are experiential constraints. These experiential constraints only obtain as long as minds exist. Accordingly, we get inconsistency when the claim made within physical theory excludes the possibility of experiential constraints. The claim made within physical theory is such that it undermines the possibility of that very claim being true. In footnote 67, van Cleve refers to impure forms of phenomenalism that could possibly account for experiential constraints without the existence of minds. "Foster mentions the possibility of a phenomenalism that grounds physical reality in a 'causal field' defined by the constraints it would impose on minds if they existed (Case for Idealism, p. 240). Such a field would be similar perhaps, to Mill's 'permanent possibilities of sensation.' But Foster does not avail himself of this option, and it is not in any case a pure phenomenalism." (p. 315)

While I agree with van Cleve that pure phenomenalism faces this difficulty, I think that Kant's phenomenalism is not a form of pure phenomenalism, but a noumenally grounded phenomenalism. It is the noumenal sphere that grounds physical reality. According to transcendental idealism, the obtaining of experiential constraints is not dependent upon the existence of minds, but upon the existence of the noumenal ground. We can have claims made within physical theory that are made true by noumenal truth-makers which ensure that the experiential constraints obtain even though no minds exist.

What I am not so sure about yet is what implications this has for the two assertive frameworks. Does this mean that we can salvage the two assertive frameworks? In fact, is there any need need for these two frameworks? When appealing to noumenal truth-makers, do we still need the two frameworks? Or does the need for the frameworks result from a special problem that only faces pure forms of phenomenalism, which would imply that the two frameworks are irrelevant for impure forms of phenomenalism, such as transcendental idealism?

Oxford Scholarship Online

2006-05-01T11:03:00.000+01:00

Oxford Scholarship Online is an online library that contains full-text versions of books published by OUP, including specially commissioned chapter abstracts. It contains the following books on Kant:

Interpreting Kant's Critiques by Karl Ameriks

Kant's Theory of Mind by Karl Ameriks

Kant's Theory of Knowledge by Georges Dicker

Kantian Humility by Rae Langton

Kant on Heidegger

2006-04-29T21:41:00.000+01:00

Jens Timmermann recently told me about a few rather interesting and amusing sections in the "Anthropologie" and the relevant Reflexionen by Kant. (The Reflexionen are Kant's hand-written notes.)

In the "Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht", Kant mentions in a footnote that Heidegger claimed to have the most hideous face in the whole of London (AA:7, p. 300). In R1067 (AA:15, p. 473) he makes a list of repulsive things, including: "Disgusting faces of old women. Heidegger. The foul and excremental aspects of the animal body in general. Disgusting illnesses." In R1498 (AA:15, p. 774) he mentions Heidegger together with loathsomeness.

(I think this conclusively proves that Kant was not only a genius but also a clairvoyant.)

Robert Brandom coming to St Andrews

2006-04-28T16:18:00.000+01:00

Robert Brandom (University of Pittsburgh) will be coming to the next meeting of the Scots Philosophical Club on Saturday 6 May. The title of his talk is: "Kantian Lessons about Mind, Meaning, and Rationality".

A copy of his paper can be found here.

An audio recording of his presentation at the University of Sydney is available here.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Robert Brandom had to cancel his talk.

New blog on Kant

2006-04-28T15:53:00.000+01:00

This blog will be concerned with Kant's philosophy - both metaphysics and ethics. For your information, the author of this blog is a committed transcendental idealist who favours a strong metaphysical interpretation.