Kant on Complete Determination and Infinite Judgement

In the Transcendental Ideal Kant discusses the principle of complete determination: for every object and every predicate A, the object is either determinately A or not-A. He claims this principle is synthetic, but it appears to follow from the principle of excluded middle, which is analytic. He also makes a puzzling claim in support of its syntheticity: that it represents individual objects as deriving their possibility from the whole of possibility. This raises a puzzle about why Kant regarded it as synthetic, and what his explanatory claim means. I argue that the principle of complete determination does not follow from the principle of excluded middle because the externally negated or ‘negative’ judgement ‘Not (S is P)’ does not entail the internally negated or ‘infinite’ judgement ‘S is not-P.’ Kant's puzzling explanatory claim means that empirical objects are determined by the content of the totality of experience. This entails that empirical objects are completely determinate if and only if the totality of experience has a completely determinate content. I argue that it is not a priori whether experience has such a completely determinate content and thus not analytic that objects obey the principle of complete determination.     

Kant on Social Justice: Poverty,Dependence, and Depersonification

The main purpose of this article is to bring into relief the difficulties faced by generous interpretations of the Kantian problem of poverty and to propose an alternative interpretation which (a) agrees with some generous interpretations that Kant's juridical treatment of poverty is to be understood by analogy with his juridical treatment of slavery, but which (b) departs from generous interpretations in general by arguing that this analogy is not to be understood in terms of “dependence” as such, but in terms of “depersonification.” More specifically, it argues that what makes slavery and poverty unjust for Kant is not that they entail a human being finding herself (completely) dependent on the choice of another human being, but that they entail a human being being deprived of her juridical personality. The Kantian problem of poverty is ultimately a problem of juridical depersonification, and this problem of juridical depersonification does not arise in all (complete) dependence relations.     

Normative Force and Normative Freedom: Hume and Kant, But Not Hume versus Kant

Our notion of normativity appears to combine, in a way difficult to understand but seemingly familiar from experience, elements of force and freedom. On the one hand, a normative claim is thought to have a kind of compelling authority; on the other hand, if our respecting it is to be an appropriate species of respect, it must not be coerced, automatic, or trivially guaranteed by definition. Both Hume and Kant, I argue, looked to aesthetic experience as a convincing example exhibiting this marriage of force and freedom, as well as showing how our judgment can come to be properly attuned to the features that constitute value. This image of attunement carries over into their respective accounts of moral judgment. The seemingly radical difference between their moral theories may be traceable not to a different conception of normativity, but to a difference in their empirical psychological theories – a difference we can readily spot in their accounts of aesthetics.     

Leibniz on Infinite Numbers,Infinite Wholes,and Composite Substances

Leibniz claims that nature is actually infinite but rejects infinite number. Are his mathematical commitments out of step with his metaphysical ones? It is widely accepted that Leibniz has a viable response to this problem: there can be infinitely many created substances, but no infinite number of them. But there is a second problem that has not been satisfactorily resolved. It has been suggested that Leibniz's argument against the world soul relies on his rejection of infinite number, and, as such, Leibniz cannot assert that any body has a soul without also accepting infinite number, since any body has infinitely many parts. Previous attempts to address this concern have misunderstood the character of Leibniz's rejection of infinite number. I argue that Leibniz draws an important distinction between ‘wholes’ – collections of parts that can be thought of as a single thing – and ‘fictional wholes’ – collections of parts that cannot be thought of as a single thing, which allows us to make sense of his rejection of infinite number in a way that does not conflict either with his view that the world is actually infinite or that the bodies of substances have infinitely many parts.     

Adorno on Kant,Freedom and Determinism

Abstract: In this paper I argue that Adorno's metacritique of freedom in Negative Dialectics and related texts remains fruitful today. I begin with some background on Adorno's conception of ‘metacritique’ and on Kant's conception of freedom, as I understand it. Next, I discuss Adorno's analysis of the experiential content of Kantian freedom, according to which Kant has reified the particular social experience of the early modern bourgeoisie in his conception of unconditioned freedom. Adorno argues against this conception of freedom and suggests that freedom is always conditioned by our embodiment and by our social and historical situation. Finally, I turn to Adorno's criticism of Kant's discussion of freedom and determinism in the Critique of Pure Reason and argue that while his philosophical argument against Kant fails, his metacritical argument remains suggestive. Scepticism about freedom arises when the standpoint of theoretical reason encroaches upon the standpoint of practical reason and assimilates persons to things.     

Marital Satisfaction,Negative Interaction,and Religiosity: A Comparison of Three Age Groups

This study compared marital satisfaction among three age groups and examined how negative interaction patterns and religiosity relate to marital satisfaction at each age using a sample of Protestants (N = 45,387) diverse in denominations, location, geography, and size. We performed a 1-way ANOVA to compare marital satisfaction among three age groups (younger than 40, 40–59, and 60 and older) and found a U-shape curve with marital satisfaction highest among the youngest group, lowest among middle-age couples, and high among older couples. ANCOVA analysis found negative interaction, age, religiosity, age*negative interaction, and age*religiosity to be predictors of marital satisfaction.     

何以要平等：康德、罗尔斯与阿马蒂亚·森

人际差异要求平等正义理论在探求"什么要平等"(平等的内容)之前,回答"为什么要平等"(平等的根据),后者对确认现代世界不公正的经济不平等及其解决具有重要意义。由阿马蒂亚·森明确提出却未能坚持到底的平等内容与根据之区分,在罗尔斯处的可能线索是作为平等根据的"人的特征",并可进一步明晰为康德意义上人之为人的本质特征,即"作为目的自身的人性"。作为社会正义价值的平等,就是要尊重人性,摒弃一切偶然因素而把每一个人都当作目的自身来平等对待,不但有关首要善品与资源等客观方面的平等分配正义如此,而且对于个人将客观条件转化为自身福利的能力等主观差异方面亦是必要的。     

Love,That Indispensable Supplement: Irigaray and Kant on Love and Respect

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant's view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.     

Between the Supernatural and the Natural: Ockham on Evident Judgements

Topoi - Ockham defines intuition as the kind of cognition on the basis of which it is not only possible to evidently judge that a thing exists when it exists, but also that a thing does not exist...     

Kant on Intentionality,Magnitude, and the Unity of Perception

This paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning Kant's model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude [Gröβe]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant's views on these issues. I then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant's theory of perception as elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant's position by considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way to make sense of Kant's argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell's response to Bradley's regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer, in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant's account has significant strengths, a number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps.     

Kant and Wittgenstein: Common Sense,Therapy, and the Critical Philosophy

Kant’s reputation for making absolutist claims about universal and necessary conditions for the possibility of experience are put here in the broader context of his goals for the Critical philosophy. It is shown that within that context, Kant’s claims can be seen as considerably more innocuous than they are traditionally regarded, underscoring his deep respect for “common sense” and sharing surprisingly similar goals with Wittgenstein in terms of what philosophy can, and at least as importantly cannot, provide.

Kant and Hegel on freedom: Two new interpretations

Can Kant's theory of freedom be defended in contemporary ‘incompatibilist’ terms, as Henry Allison believes, or is it vulnerable to Hegelian criticisms of the ‘compatibilist’ sort that Allen Wood presents? I argue that the answer to both of these questions is negative, and that there is a third option, namely that Kant's real theory of freedom is not as well off as Allison contends, nor as weak as Wood claims. Allison tries to save Kant's theory of freedom from both what he takes to be traditional and improper interpretations ‐ notably including Hegel's and Wood's ‐ of what that theory means, as well as from traditional and improper objections to its defensibility. I argue in part with Wood (and Hegel) against Allison on the issue of the meaning of Kant's theory, and in part with Allison against Wood (and Hegel) on the issue of the defensibility of Kant's theory.