Kant's Expressive Theory of Music

Several prominent philosophers of art have worried about whether Kant has a coherent theory of music on account of two perceived tensions in his view. First, there appears to be a conflict between his formalist and expressive commitments. Second (and even worse), Kant defends seemingly contradictory claims about music being beautiful and merely agreeable, that is, not beautiful. Against these critics, I show that Kant has a consistent view of music that reconciles these tensions. I argue that, for Kant, music can be experienced as either agreeable or beautiful depending on the attitude we take toward it. Although it is tempting to think he argues that we experience music as agreeable when we attend to its expressive qualities and as beautiful when we attend to its formal properties, I demonstrate that he actually claims that we are able to judge music as beautiful only if we are sensitive to the expression of emotion through musical form. With this revised understanding of Kant's theory of music in place, I conclude by sketching a Kantian solution to a central problem in the philosophy of music: given that music is not sentient, how can it express emotion?     

The Subjective Basis of Kant's Judgment of Taste

Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful.     

INSTABILITY AND DISSONANCE: PROVOCATIONS FROM SANDRA HARDING

Abstract. Sandra Harding's work is useful, not only as a critique of the scientific method and its epistemological constructs, but also in providing new energy and insights to the discussions about epistemology between theology and science. Feminist theory has been critical of the worldviews inherited from the Enlightenment. No longer is there one unambiguous way of knowing ourselves and the world around us, a single vision of reality. Feminist philosophers of science like Sandra Harding and Donna Haraway have redefined the scientific method and its analytic categories. They have contributed significantly to this discussion by moving the Enlightenment epistemological issues into the arena of politics and ethics. Feminist theory continues to remind us that what is important is not only how or what we know but what we do with that knowledge and how we use it.     

The Square of Opposition: From Russell's Logic to Kant's Cosmology

In this paper, I will show to what extent we can use our modern understanding of the Square of Opposition in order to make sense of Kant's double standard solution to the cosmological antinomies. Notoriously, for Kant, both theses and antitheses of the mathematical antinomies are false, while both theses and antitheses of the dynamical antinomies are true. Kantian philosophers and interpreters (including Schopenhauer, for example) have criticized Kant's solution as artificial and prejudicial. In the paper, I do not dispute such claims, but I show that our modern understanding of the Square of Opposition enables us to more naturally deliver the result Kant was aiming at. Accordingly, the paper does not pretend to be exegetically accurate. It is an attempt to revise the antinomies with the help of standard classical logic. And although such a revision entails some re-interpretation, in the end, it will actually help to unveil some of Kant's thoughts.     

Materialism in the mainstream of early German philosophy

ABSTRACT

Discussions of the reception of materialist thought in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century tend to focus, naturally enough, upon the homegrown freethinkers who advanced the cause of Lucretius, Hobbes, and Spinoza in clandestine publications and frequently courted the ire of the state for doing so. If the philosophers belonging to the mainstream of German intellectual life in that period are accorded a place in the story, it is only insofar as they actively set themselves against the materialist threat and, in the course of working to undermine it, actually only succeeded in inadvertently drawing more popular attention to it. By contrast, in this paper I will show that it was not just insofar as the thinkers of the early eighteenth century played the role of the diligent critic and unwittingly propagated the views of their opponents that materialism can be said to have penetrated into the very mainstream of the German Enlightenment. Rather, as I will argue, there was a striking degree of uptake of distinctively materialist claims even among its most vociferous mainstream critics, and that this is the case for thinkers in both the Wolffian and the Thomasian traditions.     

DECONSTRUCTING THE SECULAR MAGISTERIUM: VOICES PAST AND PRESENT FOR CONVERSATIONS OF THE FUTURE

In this paper I offer a possible approach to accomplishing Benedict's goal proposed in his Regensburg address. 1 I take his goal to be twofold. First, we must expand our concept of reason beyond the privileged position of scientific empiricism and philosophical reasoning, both of which form what I have called the Secular Magisterium, put in place as the dominant intellectual force by the Enlightenment. Second, the motivation for expanding our concept of reason is for the purpose of greater dialogue across cultures, across religions and across academic disciplines. Since I take Benedict's goal to be twofold, my paper will address these issues in two parts, the second building from the first. In the first section, I will revisit the counter‐Enlightenment thinking of some well known, yet significantly marginalized voices, with the goal of hearing them again and reviving their critique to inform our own. By the end of this section, I will offer what I take to be a counter‐Enlightenment approach to knowing our world by means of an expanded concept of reason. In the second section, I will address what I take to be some of the more intellectual challenges to the possibilities for conversation across cultures, religions, and disciplines. It is my goal to show how an embodied version of the counter‐Enlightenment approach I offer in the first section can allow for genuine conversation that not only provides opportunities to better know our conversation partners, but also offers the possibility of honest persuasion in which the other sees reality differently and considers this way better.     

Kant's Noumenon and Sunyata

This paper compares Kant's positions on space, time, the relational character of noumena, and the relational character of the self, with the somewhat similar accounts of those things in two philosophers of the Kyoto school: Keiji Nishitani and Nishida Kitaro. I will argue that the philosophers of the Kyoto school had a more coherent and better integrated account of those ideas, that was open to Kant. I think that the comparison both clarifies Kant's position on these topics, and elucidates the topics.     

The Location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism

Many philosophers have been puzzled by Kant's decision to insert the Refutation of Idealism into the second edition of the first Critique at the end of his elucidation of the Second Postulate. This article proposes a solution to the puzzle. It defends an explanation for the location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism that is plausibly expressed by Kant's claim at the end of his elucidation of the Second Postulate that the Refutation of Idealism is ‘here in its right place’ because ‘[a] powerful objection against these rules for proving existence indirectly is made by idealism’ (B274). According to this explanation, the Refutation of Idealism is Kant's response to the objection that the Second Postulate must be false since otherwise idealism is true. This article also considers and rejects a number of alternative explanations for the location of Kant's Refutation of Idealism.     

Is there a Bayesian justification of hypothetico-deductive inference?

Many philosophers have claimed that Bayesianism can provide a simple justification for hypothetico-deductive (H-D) inference, long regarded as a cornerstone of the scientific method. Following up a remark of van Fraassen (1985), we analyze a problem for the putative Bayesian justification of H-D inference in the case where what we learn from observation is logically stronger than what our theory implies. Firstly, we demonstrate that in such cases the simple Bayesian justification does not necessarily apply. Secondly, we identify a set of sufficient conditions for the mismatch in logical strength to be justifiably ignored as a “harmless idealization”. Thirdly, we argue, based upon scientific examples, that the pattern of H-D inference of which there is a ready Bayesian justification is only rarely the pattern that one actually finds at work in science. Whatever the other virtues of Bayesianism, the idea that it yields a simple justification of a pervasive pattern of scientific inference appears to have been oversold.     

Quantum Theory and the Boundary between Science and Spirit: Some Remarks from a Friend of Kabbalah

Physicists and philosophers argue whether quantum theory has spiritual implications. The vast majority of opinions are at two extremes: Some contend that quantum theory has absolutely no spiritual implications whatsoever, whereas others assert that it forms the very basis of a modern spirituality and can be directly applied to the human condition. It is this article's contention that neither extreme is correct. Quantum theory does have spiritual implications—a fact that its founders intuited and its enemies, Einstein preeminent among them, considered prima facie evidence of its as yet undiscovered flaws. Quantum theory has proven itself against all challenges more successfully than any other scientific theory, but its spiritual implications are extremely subtle. It provides a boundary to the materialistic, deterministic worldview and shows that there must be more to reality than that, but is inherently incapable of providing evidence as to the nature of what lies beyond that boundary.     

Russell's 1925 logic

In a recent series of articles, J. P. Moreland has attempted to revive the idea that bare particulars are indispensable for individuating concrete particulars. The success of the project turns on Moreland's proposal that while bare particulars are indeed 'partially clad'--that is, exemplify at least some properties--they are nevertheless 'bare' in that they lack internal constituents. I argue that 'partially clad' bare particulars (PCBPs) are impervious not only to traditional objections, but also those recently urged in this journal by D. W. Mertz. The real problem with Moreland's view, I contend, is that together with his containment model of predication, it leads to the unwanted conclusion that PCBPs actually contain themselves as constituents, thereby ensnaring them in a vicious (individuative) circularity.     

Hobbes and the Imitation of God

This note discusses the implications of an incorrect quotation that appeared in Ted H. Miller's article, 'Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God', from Inquiry42.2 (1999). Although surely inadvertent, this error is significant because the author uses it to support the thesis that Hobbes envisions philosophers imitating God by creating order out of chaos. The correct quotation from Leviathandoes not support such a thesis, and the paragraph in Leviathanfrom which it is taken actually runs counter to it. The correct quotation, taken in its context, and a passage from De Corporecited by Professor Miller reveal that Hobbes encourages philosophers to imitate God by following the order of creation in contemplation. In other words, philosophers imitate God by imitating the creation.     

Kant's Pragmatism

This article offers a definition of the term ‘pragmatic’, as it is used in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The definition offered does not make any reference to the affinities between Kant's pragmatism and the philosophies of the American or other pragmatists but draws its definiens entirely from the Kantian conceptual framework. It states that the term ‘pragmatic’ denotes imperatives, laws and beliefs of a specific type: an imperative is pragmatic if and only if it is concerned with the choice of means to individual or universal happiness; a law is pragmatic if and only if our willingness to presuppose it results from our obedience to a pragmatic imperative; and a belief is pragmatic if and only if it relates to the objective validity of pragmatic laws. This article also discusses two rival definitions of the term ‘pragmatic’ (as used by Kant) that have been brought forward by Sidney Axinn and Nicholas Rescher.     

Notes on Kant's derivation of the various formulae of the categorical imperative

Abstract

This article is concerned with examining Kant's derivation of the various formulae of his Categorical Imperative. It is in agreement with Paton in maintaining that Kant actually mentions five formulae. But it is not in agreement with him, and some others, in maintaining that they are ultimately reducible to three. Nor is it in agreement with those who maintain that they are ultimately reducible to just one. According to the present article, they are ultimately reducible to two: that about a moral law being a universal law; and that about a moral law involving treating human beings as ends in themselves.     

FROM PESSIMISM TO HOPE: A NATURAL PROGRESSION

Mutual critique by scientists and religious believers mostly entails the pruning of untenable religious beliefs by scientists and warnings against scientific minimalism on the part of believers. John F. Haught has been prominent in formulating religious apologetics in response to the challenges posed by evolutionary theory. Haught's work also resonates with a parallel criticism of the conventional scientific metaphysics undergirding neo‐Darwinian theory. Contemporary systems ecology seems to indicate that nothing short of a complete reversal of the Enlightenment assumptions about nature is capable of repositioning science to deal adequately with the origin and dynamics of living systems. A process‐based alternative metaphysics substantially mitigates several ostensible conflicts between science and religion.     

Between the Bounds of Experience and Divine Intuition: Kant's Epistemic Limits and Hegel's Ambitions

Hegel seeks to overturn Kant's conclusion that our knowledge is restricted, or that we cannot have knowledge of things as they are in themselves. Understanding this Hegelian ambition requires distinguishing two Kantian characterizations of our epistemic limits: First, we can have knowledge only within the “bounds of experience”. Second, we cannot have knowledge of objects that would be accessible only to a divine intellectual intuition, even though the faculty of reason requires us to conceive of such objects. Hegel aims to drive a wedge between these two characterizations, showing that we can have knowledge beyond Kant's bounds of experience, yet without need of divine intuition. And attention to such knowledge is supposed to show that we have no legitimate need to even conceive of divine intuition and its objects—and no need to conclude that our own knowledge is restricted by comparison, or that we cannot know things as they are in themselves. I focus here on the initial case Hegel uses to introduce this extended argument strategy: we can have more knowledge of natural kinds and laws than would be allowed by Kant's bounds of experience.     

On Understanding Worship in School Part Two: On worship and educating

This article continues a discussion begun in Part One. Together they re-examine the central thesis of Professor John Hull's (1975) book, School Worship, An Obituary, that the practice of worship in school is inappropriate. He attempted to establish his thesis through the analysis of the concept of education and of the concept of worship, and thus to show their essential incompatibility. Part One reviewed what an incompatibility might mean in the school context. After all, many diverse activities are pursued during the school day that, practically speaking, could not be done simultaneously in the same room. His thesis must be taken in the stronger form that, theoretically, the sense of education and the sense of worship are such that the two activities together are conceptually incoherent. The earlier article also reviewed his analysis of the concept of education. It questioned his definition and showed that it hinged on some of the dubious assumptions of an evidentialist philosophy. A better view of understanding and pedagogy might actually require the practise of worship in school. If it is the intention of our society to communicate the substance of religious life to the young, training them in worship may be the best, if not the only, way to do this. The features of education that Hull has identified have been selected for their rhetorical force. They appear to challenge what are assumed to be essential features of worship. Whether they do so in fact will depend on one's understanding of worship, but in what follows, his key assumptions about worship are put to the test and found wanting. Part Two, therefore, investigates Hull's understanding of worship. It finds that he believes a prior unconditional commitment to the belief 'God exists' is of the essence of worship. For him, it is this commitment that puts it at odds with education which he believes must scrutinise everything. The arguments against Hull here are designed to show that he is mistaken in his understanding of worship. Practices do not develop on the formation of belief systems first. Furthermore, religiously speaking, worship actually embraces a radical questioning. Finally, his assumption that there is a logical incompatibility in having an unconditional commitment and in embracing the practice of radical questioning is tested against the figure of Socrates. In the life of Socrates one can see how piety and educational practice belong together in such a way that one is the expression of the other. It is concluded that the nature of education and worship are at stake. These may have changed in such a way that they can no longer be pursued together. But there was a time when education flowered into worship, and worship found its substance in education. Hull's case concerning their intrinsic conceptual incoherence through philosophical analysis does not succeed. He has only shown us how our world has changed, and that, not necessarily for the better.     

Kant on the Number of Worlds

It has long been disputed whether Kant's transcendental idealism requires two worlds – one of appearances and one of things in themselves – or only one. The one-world view must be wrong if it claims that individual spatio-temporal things can be identified with particular things in themselves, and if it fails to take seriously the doctrine of double affection; versions that insist on one world, without making claims about the identity of individual things, cannot say in what way the world as we know it and the world of things in themselves can be ‘the same’. The two-world view must be wrong if it denies Kant's empirical realism, or offers a phenomenalist interpretation of it. On moral grounds Kant ‘identifies’ each human person with a particular thing in itself, but the relationship here cannot be strict identity; instead its closeness may warrant regarding the two distinct entities as part of a composite whole. Perhaps up to the first edition of the Critique, Kant thought that empirical knowledge required a particular kind of close correspondence between appearances and things in themselves, one that would make it appropriate to speak of composite wholes here also. By the time of the second edition, he saw that there could be no good grounds for thinking that. In this respect something a bit like the one-world theory might make more sense for the first edition than for the second; but in both cases there is room to speak of two worlds as well. Talk of the number of worlds is metaphorical, and both metaphors have their dangers.     

Infinite Epistemic Regresses and Internalism

This article seeks to state, first, what traditionally has been assumed must be the case in order for an infinite epistemic regress to arise. It identifies three assumptions. Next it discusses Jeanne Peijnenburg's and David Atkinson's setting up of their argument for the claim that some infinite epistemic regresses can actually be completed and hence that, in addition to foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism, there is yet another solution (if only a partial one) to the traditional epistemic regress problem. The article argues that Peijnenburg and Atkinson fail to address the traditional regress problem, as they don't adopt all of the three assumptions that underlie the traditional regress problem. It also points to a problem in the notion of making probable that Peijnenburg and Atkinson use in their account of justification.     

Rouse-ing out the Legitimation Project: Scientific Practice and the Problem of Demarcation

This essay critically examines Joseph Rouse's arguments against what he dubs the 'legitimation project', which are the attempts to delimit and justify the scientific enterprise by means of global, 'a priori' principles. Stipulating that a more adequate picture of science can be obtained by viewing it as a continuously transforming pattern of situated activities, Rouse believes that only by refocusing attention upon the actual practice of science can philosophers begin to detach themselves from the irresolvable epistemological problems that have remained the primary byproduct of the traditional philosophical approach. On closer inspection, however, Rouse's project appears susceptible to the criticism that it is either too relativistic to do the work he envisioned for it, or that it participates in the very same legitimation venture that it was intended to replace (in addition to its own brand of metaphysical/epistemological problems). This unexpected outcome, moreover, suggests that such legitimation projects may be an integral component of the very practice of science, contrary to Rouse's estimate.