Kant and Kantian Themes in Recent Analytic Philosophy

This article notes six advances in recent analytic Kant research: (1) Strawson's interpretation, which, together with work by Bennett, Sellars, and others, brought renewed attention to Kant through its account of space, time, objects, and the Transcendental Deduction and its sharp criticisms of Kant on causality and idealism; (2) the subsequent investigations of Kantian topics ranging from cognitive science and philosophy of science to mathematics; (3) the detailed work, by a number of scholars, on the Transcendental Deduction; (4) the clearer understanding of transcendental idealism sparked by reactions to Allison's epistemic account; (5) the resulting need—prompted also by new studies of the thing in itself—to face up to the old question of the philosophical defensibility of such idealism; and (6) the active engagement with Kant's ethics and political philosophy that derives from Rawls's and others' work.     

Between ontological hubris and epistemic humility: Collingwood,Kant and the role of transcendental arguments

ABSTRACT

This paper explores and defends a form of transcendental argument that is neither bold in its attempt to answer the sceptic, as ambitious transcendental strategies, nor epistemically humble, as modest transcendental strategies. While ambitious transcendental strategies seek (but fail) to meet the sceptical challenge, and modest transcendental strategies accept the validity of the challenge but retreat to a position of epistemic humility, this form of transcendental argument denies the assumption that undergirds the challenge, namely that truth and falsity may be legitimately predicated of the conditions of knowledge. As a result, although this form of transcendental argument is not truth-directed, it is not vulnerable to a charge that is often levelled against modest transcendental arguments, namely that they amount to the adoption of a strategy of sophisticated capitulation. This form of transcendental argument, which is implicit in Collingwood’s conception of philosophy as the search for absolute presuppositions, takes transcendental arguments in a pragmatic direction that does not leave the framework of transcendental idealism intact. It nonetheless remains true to Kant’s conception of philosophy as a second-order activity and to his goal of defending our entitlement to hold on both to the standpoint of theoretical and that of practical reason.     

On the Issues of Transcendental Argument

The transcendental approach initiated by Immanuel Kant and Peter Strawson has been the most representative contemporary exponent of this line of thinking. Barry Stroud understands this form of transcendental argument as relying on an empirical “verification principle” and hence he rejects it as unnecessary. Nevertheless, Stroud’s view is only warranted to a certain extent. In some non-empirical objective spheres, including concepts and propositions as regards general metaphysics, moral metaphysics and philosophy of religion, the transcendental approach is still necessary. In terms of quality, transcendental approach belongs to “conceptual argumentation,” which differs from experience and logic with the fundamental characteristic of setting up a theoretical antecedent before further inquiry at the level of doctrine, i.e., concepts.     

特征觉察器与康德的先验形式

康德主张对象必须符合主体的认识条件,即与特定的形式相符合,这与认知心理学上的特征觉察器相一致。特征觉察器是对特定的刺激物作出特定反应的高级神经元组织。康德的先验形式的问题可以用特征觉察器和特征捆绑等神经组织和神经过程来解释。特征觉察器可为审美先验形式提供生理心理基础,也可以使康德美学的主客之争得到相对缓解。     

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 and the Problem of Recognition: Freedom,Transcendental Idealism,and the Third-Person

Kant wants to show that freedom is possible in the face of natural necessity. Transcendental idealism is his solution, which locates freedom outside of nature. I accept that this makes freedom possible, but object that it precludes the recognition of other rational agents. In making this case, I trace some of the history of Kant’s thoughts on freedom. In several of his earlier works, he argues that we are aware of our own activity. He later abandons this approach, as he worries that any awareness of our activity involves access to the noumenal, and thereby conflicts with the epistemic limits of transcendental idealism. In its place, from the second Critique onwards, Kant argues that we are conscious of the moral law, which tells me that I ought to do something, thus revealing that I can. This is the only proof of freedom consistent with transcendental idealism, but I argue that such an exclusively first-personal approach precludes the (third-personal) recognition of other rational agents. I conclude that transcendental idealism thus fails to provide an adequate account of freedom. In its place, I sketch an alternative picture of how freedom is possible, one that locates freedom within, rather than outside of nature.     

Peirce’s ‘Prescision’ as a Transcendental Method

Abstract

In this Paper I interpret Charles S. Peirce’s method of prescision as a transcendental method. In order to do so, I argue that Peirce’s pragmatism can be interpreted in a transcendental light only if we use a non‐justificatory understanding of transcendental philosophy. I show how Peirce’s prescision is similar to some abstracting procedure that Immanuel Kant used in his Critique of Pure Reason. Prescision abstracts from experience and thought in general those elements without which such experience and thought would be unaccountable. Similarly, in the Aesthetics, Kant isolated the a priori forms of intuition by showing how they could be abstracted from experience in general, while experience in general cannot be thought without them. However, if Peirce’s and Kant’s methods are similar in this respect, they reached very different conclusions.     

Toward a new transcendental aesthetic: Merleau-Ponty’s appraisal of Kant’s philosophical method

ABSTRACT

In light of the central role scientific research plays in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the question has arisen whether his phenomenology involves some sort of commitment to naturalism or whether it is better understood along transcendental lines. In order to make headway on this issue, I focus specifically on Merleau-Ponty’s method and its relationship to Kant’s transcendental method. On the one hand, I argue that Merleau-Ponty rejects Kant’s method, the ‘method-without-which’, which seeks the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience. On the other hand, I show that this does not amount to a methodological rejection of the transcendental altogether. To the contrary, I claim that Merleau-Ponty offers a new account of the transcendental and a priori that he takes to be the proper subject matter of his phenomenological method, the method of ‘radical reflection’. And I submit that this method has important affinities with aesthetic themes in Kant’s philosophy.     

Kant: constitutivism as capacities-first philosophy

Over the last two decades, Kant’s name has become closely associated with the “constitutivist” program within metaethics.¹1 The association of Kant and constitutivism is due above all to the work of Korsgaard – see for example Korsgaard (1996 Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2008 Korsgaard, Christine. 2008. The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2009 Korsgaard, Christine. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). A close second in significance in this regard is Velleman (2000 Velleman, David. 2000. The Possibility of Practical Reason. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar], 2009 Velleman, David. 2009. How We Get Along. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). For some of the other (Kantian and anti-Kantian) variants on the constitutivist idea, see Foot (2003 Foot, Philippa. 2003. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), O'Neill (1989 O’Neill, Onora. 1989. Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]), Thomson (2008 Thomson, J. J. 2008. Normativity. New York: Open Court. [Google Scholar]), Thompson (2008 Thompson, Michael. 2008. Life and Action: Elementary Structures of Practice and Practical Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Smith (2012 Smith, Michael. 2012. “Agents and Patients, or: What We Learn About Reasons for Action by Reflecting on Our Choices in Process-of-Thought Cases.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 112 (3): 309–331. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9264.2012.00337.x[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2013 Smith, Michael. 2013. “A Constitutivist Theory of Reasons: Its Promise and Parts.” LEAP: Law, Ethics, and Philosophy 1: 9–30. [Google Scholar]), James (2012 James, Aaron. 2012. “Constructing Protagorean Objectivity.” In Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, edited by J. Lenman, and Y. Shemmer, 60–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Walden (2012 Walden, Kenny. 2012. “Laws of Nature, Laws of Freedom, and the Social Construction of Normativity.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 7: 37–79. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199653492.003.0002[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Katsafanas (2013 Katsafanas, Paul. 2013. Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Setiya (2013 Setiya, Kieran. 2013. Knowing Right from Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]), and Lavin (forthcoming Lavin, Doug. forthcoming. “Pluralism about Agency”. [Google Scholar]). But is Kant best read as pursuing a constitutivist approach to meta-normative questions? And if so, in what sense?²2 I’ve discussed this question previously (with a contemporary focus) in Schafer (2015a Schafer, Karl. 2015a. “Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics 1.” Philosophy Compass 10: 690–701. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12253[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2015b Schafer, Karl. 2015b. “Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics 2.” Philosophy Compass 10: 702–713. doi: 10.1111/phc3.12252[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2018a Schafer, Karl. 2018a. “Constitutivism About Reasons: Autonomy and Understanding.” In The Many Moral Rationalisms, edited by K. Jones, and F. Schroeter, 70–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]). See also the discussion of Sensen (2013 Sensen, Oliver. 2013. “Kant’s Constructisivm.” In Constructivism in Ethics, edited by Carla Bagnoli, 63–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), which arrives at a somewhat similar conclusion, albeit in a different systematic context. In this essay, I argue that we can best answer these questions by considering them in the context of how Kant understands the proper methodology for philosophy in general. The result of this investigation will be that, while Kant can indeed be read as a sort of constitutivist, his constitutivism is ultimately one instance of a more general approach to philosophy, which treats as fundamental our basic, self-conscious rational capacities. Thus, to truly understand why and how Kant is a constitutivist, we need to consider this question within the context of his more fundamental commitment to “capacities-first philosophy”.     

C. I. Lewis,Kant, and the reflective method of philosophy

ABSTRACT

If it seems unquestionable that C. I. Lewis is a Kantian in important respects, it is more difficult to determine what, if anything, is original about his Kantianism. For it might be argued that Lewis’ Kantianism simply reflects an approach to the a priori which was very common in the first half of the twentieth century, namely, the effort to make the a priori relative. In this paper, I will argue that Lewis’ Kantianism does present original features. The latter can be detected by focusing on Lewis’ account of the method of philosophy in the first chapter of Mind and the World Order. In that context, Lewis argues that the method of philosophy should be reflective and critical. It will be my contention that this understanding of philosophy involves a therapeutic perspective, which bears important resemblances to Kant’s account of transcendental reflection in the Amphiboly of the Critique of Pure Reason. I will illustrate how this therapeutic application of reflection works in Lewis’ metaphysics. In this context, reflection can correct errors of reasoning that occur when we are operating within a particular conceptual scheme and use the criteria of reality that are appropriate in another.     

Method in Kant and Hegel

ABSTRACT

For Kant as for Hegel method is not a structure or procedure imported into philosophy from without, as, e.g. a mathematical demonstration in modern physics or in the proof-structure of philosophies such as Spinoza’s or Wolff’s. For both Hegel and Kant method is the arrangement that reason gives its contents and cognitions; for both, that is, method and object do not fall asunder, unlike in all disciplines other than philosophy. For Kant method is the design and plan of the whole, the scientific form that guides the organization of cognitions (KrV A 707/B 736, Ak 24, 780). Likewise, Hegel writes that method is the consciousness of the form of its inner movement (WL 1, 49, SL 53, W 3 47, PhS 28). Unfortunately, Hegel never considers Kant an example or a precursor or a positive role model. It is important to ask why Hegel never takes seriously Kant’s Doctrine of Method. Why, if he shares so many central points with the Architectonic of the first Critique, does he never acknowledge Kant as a possible ally? Why does he misunderstand Kant on analysis and synthesis as he does? These are some of the questions I plan to discuss in this paper.     

Kant on materialism

ABSTRACT

In this paper I argue that Kant’s complex argument against materialism involves not only his generic commitment to the existence of non-spatio-temporal and thus non-material things in themselves (which follows directly from Transcendental Idealism), but also considerations pertaining to reason and the subject of our thoughts. Specifically, I argue that because Kant conceives of reason in such a way that it demands a commitment to the existence of the unconditioned so that we can account for whatever conditioned objects we encounter in experience, our thoughts, which are also conditioned, require something unconditioned that, because it is unconditioned, cannot be material. In this way, Kant’s attitude towards materialism is based not only on abstract features of his metaphysics and epistemology, but also on specific features that were under serious discussion in the early modern period.     

Kant on Truth-Aptness

Many scholars claimed that, according to Immanuel Kant, some judgements lack a truth-value: analytic judgements, judgements about items of which humans cannot have experience, judgements of perception, and non-assertoric judgements. However, no one has undertaken an extensive examination of the textual evidence for those claims.

Based on an analysis of Kant's texts, I argue that: ? according to Kant, only judgements of perception are not truth-apt. All other judgements are truth-apt, including analytic judgements and judgements about items of which humans cannot have experience.

? Kant sometimes states that truth-apt judgements are actual bearers of truth or falsity only when they are taken to state what is actually the case. Kant calls these judgements assertoric. Other texts ascribe truth and falsity to judgements, regardless of whether they are assertoric.

Kant's views on truth-aptness raise challenges for correspondentist and coherentist interpretations of Kant's theory of truth; they rule out the identification of Kant's crucial notion of objective validity with truth-aptness; and they imply that Kant was not a verificationist about truth or meaning.     

On the Division Between Reason and Unreason in Kant

This article examines Kant’s discussion of the division between reason and unreason in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. On the one hand, Kant says that there is a normative, clear, and definite division between reason and unreason. On the other hand, Kant offers three arguments showing that we cannot draw such a division. First, we cannot explain the normative grounds for the division. Second, both reason and unreason are present in everyone to varying degrees in different ways. Third, Kant invalidates the division as such by characterizing what should be more incomprehensible than an extreme case of unreason as also being a rational way of life.

Kant on the Inapplicability of the Categories to Things in Themselves

This paper addresses the question of what we can legitimately say about things in themselves in Kant's critical doctrine. Many Kant scholars believe that Kant allows that things in themselves can be characterized through the unschematized or ‘pure’ concepts of our understanding such as ‘substance’ or ‘causality’. However, I show that on Kant's view things in themselves do not conform to the unschematized categories (given their standard discursive meaning): the pure categories, like space and time, are merely subjective forms of finite, discursive cognition. I then examine what this interpretation might entail for central aspects of Kant's system such as his doctrine of noumenal freedom.     

Sensations as Representations in Kant

This paper defends an interpretation of the representational function of sensation in Kant's theory of empirical cognition. Against those who argue that sensations are ‘subjective representations’ and hence can only represent the sensory state of the subject, I argue that Kant appeals to different notions of subjectivity, and that the subjectivity of sensations is consistent with sensations representing external, spatial objects. Against those who claim that sensations cannot be representational at all, because sensations are not cognitively sophisticated enough to possess intentionality, I argue that Kant does not use the term ‘Vorstellung’ to refer to intentional mental states exclusively. Sensations do not possess their own intentionality, but they nevertheless perform a representational function in virtue of their role as the matter of empirical intuition. In empirical intuition, the sensory qualities given in sensation are combined with the representation of space to constitute the intuited appearance. The representational function of sensation consists in sensation being the medium out of which intuited appearances are constituted: the qualities of sensations stand in for what the understanding will judge (conceptualize) as material substance.     

Self-Affection and Pure Intuition in Kant

Are the pure intuitions of space and time, for Kant, dependent upon the understanding's activity? This paper defends the recently popular Self-Affection Thesis (SAT): namely, that the pure intuitions require an activity of self-affection—an influence of the understanding on the inner sense. Two systematic objections to this thesis have been raised: The Independence objection claims that SAT undermines the independence of sensibility; the Compatibility objection claims that certain features of space and time are incompatible with being the products of the understanding's activity. I show that the resources to rebut these objections can be found in Kant's account of causal influence.     

The Art of Becoming Human: Morality in Kant and Confucius

Kant and Confucius maintain that the art of becoming human is synonymous with the unending process of becoming moral. According to Kant, I must imagine a world in which the universality of my maxims were possible, while realizing that if such a world existed, then morality would disappear. Morality is an impossible possibility because it always meets resistance in our encounter with nature. According to Confucius, human beings become moral by integrating themselves into the already meaningful natural order that is tian 天. Like Kant, he upholds the dignity of human beings. For Kant this dignity rests on the autonomy of each human being’s reason, while for Confucius it is dependent upon our interconnection with each other, demanding ongoing self-extension. Despite these differences, the two thinkers would concur that our efforts at humanization are unceasing and that we may never fully live up to our human potential.