Kant: Justification

While Kant’s conception of science in relation to the natural sciences as well as to psychology and anthropology and even to logic has been the subject of much discussion, the question of the extent to which Kant regards ethics as a science has received only marginal attention. This is unfortunate since Kant leaves no doubt that the idea of moral philosophy as a science is central to an adequate understanding of morality and moral obligation, and is therefore one of the (...) key elements in his practical philosophy. The aim of this paper is to explore Kant’s idea of moral philosophy as a science. Why does Kant think that the scientific method is crucial for a successful theory of ethics? To answer this question, it will be necessary to clarify what Kant might have meant by the idea of a scientific moral philosophy. Accordingly, the plan for the paper is as follows: First, I will briefly discuss Kant’s concept of science in general. I will then refer to Kant’s description of the idea and aim of moral philosophy in the Preface to the Groundwork. As will be shown, what moral philosophy has in common with other sciences, according to Kant, is that it is understood as metaphysics and thereby deals in the first line with the question of the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori. Third, I will argue that Kant understands moral philosophy as a rational science in which objective moral rules are both the product and the object of practical rationality. Finally, it is shown that this position, which I call Kant’s methodological constitutivism, is powerful in at least two ways: First, it fulfils an ideal of science that is still valid today with its claim to objectivity. And second, it gives us an idea of what it might be like to defend an account of moral objectivity within a Kantian framework. (shrink)

Gauthier’s contractarianism begins with an idea of a rational deliberator but ‘finds no basis for postulating a moral need for the justification of one’s actions to others. The role of agreement is to address each person’s demand that the constraints of society be justified to him, not a concern that he justify himself to his fellows’ (Gauther 1997, 134–5). He contrasts his view with Scanlon’s contractualism, according to which agreement with others is the core of morality and each agent has (...) the burden of justifying his or her actions to others. Both of their views count as ‘constructivist’ because they reject moral realism and hold that normativity is a function of what we do, either individually or collectively. Kant’s Rechtslehre is neutral regarding moral realism and yet constructivist about moral norms. However, the relevant acts basic to Gauthier’s and Scanlon’s views concern voluntary agreements we make. Using agreement to establish basic norms faces some serious difficulties. Kant’s Rechtslehre avoids these problems by showing how basic social norms can be identified and justified independently of voluntary agreement. Moreover, it does so in a way that shows that an individual’s justification of his or her acts to others and the justification of the acts of others to any individual are inseparable aspects of one and the same justificatory reasons in which voluntary agreement plays no role. (shrink)

I discuss the difference and the connections between Kant’s notions of cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen). Unlike knowledge, cognition is a representational state which need not have the propositional structure of a judgments. Even cognitions that have such a structure need not coincide with knowledge, because they might rather have the doxastic status of opinion or faith, or they might be false (whereas knowledge is a certain recognition of truth). I argue that while Kant distinguishes between many different species of (...) cognition, he uses the term ‘knowledge’ univocally across his theoretical and practical philosophy. All knowledge is based upon some kind of cognition that provides the sufficient objective, certain ground for a knowing assent to a proposition. However, not all knowledge must be based upon the demanding type of cognition that is central to Kant’s overall argument in the first Critique, which requires a synthesis of concepts and sensible intuition. We have a lot of determinate knowledge, including knowledge that we possess transcendental freedom of will, that is based upon purely conceptual practical cognition. We can also have some indeterminate philosophical knowledge (e.g. knowledge that there are non-sensible, noumenal beings) that is based upon purely conceptual theoretical cognition. (shrink)

This chapter examines Kant’s deduction of noumenal freedom of will from the moral law in (chiefly) the _Critique of Practical Reason_. It argues against the common view that Kant allows only for rational faith (_Glauben_) that we have noumenal freedom of will: rather, we can know (_wissen_) with objective certainty that our will is transcendentally free. This is because we have normative-practical knowledge of the moral law as the foundational axiom of all practical cognition, and because we know that transcendental (...) freedom of will is a necessary real condition for the existence of the moral law. Hence, we can knowingly infer that our will is transcendentally free. The chapter considers how Kant can defend the individual steps of this argument against various objections, such as the claim that Kant’s appeal to moral knowledge fails because it ignores the problem of moral skepticism. It further examines whether Kant’s view that we can know the existence of free noumenal causes is compatible with his critical epistemology and his appeal to noumenal ignorance. Although Kant’s position can be defended against some standard epistemological worries, it must face the concern that practical reason oversteps its boundaries when it posits free moral agents as the specific noumenal causes of natural events. (shrink)

This chapter examines the first consideration supporting Kant’s stance that human freedom of will is incompatible with the causality of nature: if our will as practical reason were exclusively conditioned by natural causes, then our moral ideas and judgments would lack the lawful a priori (normative) necessity that is integral to our moral self-conception. The chapter reconstructs Kant’s arguments for this view and considers how these arguments relate to contemporary evolutionary debunking arguments. It also examines how Kant could respond to (...) various objections, such as the claim that those who assess the validity of a judgment in terms of its origin commit the so-called genetic fallacy. The chapter draws on Nietzsche’s philosophy to illustrate why genetic considerations are highly relevant for determining the validity of our moral judgments. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Kant’s conception of noumenal freedom or absolute spontaneity is not confined to the practical faculty of will but also applies to our theoretical intellect. Far from being thinking mechanisms, we exercise absolute freedom of thought and intellectual autonomy in cognitive actions such as, paradigmatically, empirical judgments about the natural world. The chapter shows that Kant’s account of epistemic freedom avoids doxastic voluntarism: transcendentally free cognitive actions do not stand under the immediate control of the will. Freedom (...) of thought is a distinctive species of transcendental freedom that differs from freedom of will in various ways: most importantly, our free understanding lacks what Kant calls “true causality” since it produces only representations of objects rather than objects corresponding to our representations. By resolving various textual puzzles and seeming conflicts between the two editions of the first _Critique_, the chapter demonstrates that Kant did not (contrary to what some commentators suggest) abandon his view that we possess absolute freedom of thought in the late 1780s. (shrink)

This chapter considers the lingering worry that remained after the preceding chapter: namely, the concern that practical reason oversteps its legitimate boundaries when it posits free moral agents as the specific noumenal causes of natural events. The chapter shows that Kant is aware of this worry: he addresses theoretical attempts to “naturalize” morality, i.e., to conceive our practical reason and will as a part of the natural order of things. Such attempts are fueled by the aim to preserve the “omnipotence (...) of theoretical reason.” Kant defends the non-natural character of morality and (thereby) our knowledge of noumenal free will by arguing that those who seek to cognize the natural order of things must presuppose their own non-natural (a priori) theoretical representations and their freedom of thought. Since freedom of thought as a species of transcendental freedom is analogous to freedom of will, naturalistic cognizers cannot coherently debunk or explain away our a priori moral self-consciousness as free agents. This appeal to freedom of thought functions not as an independent proof of free will but as a theoretical defense of the practical-moral proof examined in Chapter VIII. The chapter confirms the potency of this defense strategy by showing how it applies to Nietzschean attempts to debunk our moral self-awareness. The chapter further shows how Kant’s defense of absolute human freedom avoids the worry that such freedom is incompatible with divine foreknowledge of human actions. (shrink)

This chapter considers the question: why, in Kant’s view, do our intellectual freedom and our theoretical rationality require that we can think without being determined by natural causes? Kant does not make the blanket claim that causal determinism per se is incompatible with epistemic freedom and rational thinking. Rather, Kant argues that if the human mind were exclusively determined by empirical causes (or indeed by _any_ foreign causes, including also divine imposition), then our cognitive representations would lack a priori rational (...) necessity. This would fatally undermine all our cognitive efforts including those that aim to reach objectively valid empirical judgments, because these judgments depend for their cognitive validity on a priori representations such as causal necessity. The chapter examines how Kant’s views on epistemic freedom relate to Hume, to his transcendental idealism, and to contemporary views on causation and evolutionary theory. It further shows how Kant can defend his view against various objections such as the genetic fallacy charge already considered in Chapter IV. The chapter culminates with the argument that we possess certain knowledge that our theoretical intellect is transcendentally free. However, from this it does not follow that our will or practical reason is also transcendentally free. (shrink)

This chapter examines the complications arising from Kant’s view that human actions can be regarded as effects of two different types of causes, namely, of empirical causes that are naturally determined and of noumenal causes that are free from natural determination. For Kant, we can legitimately regard the empirical causes that determine our spatiotemporal actions as causally dependent on our free noumenal causality. The chapter shows how this idea fits into Kant’s transcendental idealism and what cognitive status it has in (...) light of the general interpretive framework developed in Chapter I. It further examines how Kant’s concession that our empirically determined actions are (in principle) predictable accords with his libertarian conception of human freedom. In this context, it emerges that and why Kant’s doctrine of freedom does not imply (contrary to what some commentators suggest) the fatalistic claim that our (empirical or noumenal) moral character is unalterably fixed. (shrink)

This chapter examines the second consideration supporting Kant’s stance that human freedom of will is incompatible with the causality of nature: if our faculty of choice (Willkür) were exclusively conditioned by natural causes, then our choices would lack the absolute metaphysical contingency that is integral to our moral self-conception as imperfectly rational agents who can go either way with regards to moral laws of reason. The chapter reconstructs Kant’s argument for this view. Kant’s claim that it is always possible for (...) human agents to violate moral norms does not (contrary to what some commentators suggest) require his hedonism about our empirical motives. Rather, this claim rests on a compelling contrast between desire-based and reason-based motivation that pervades all human choice. The chapter further shows that we freely violate moral laws of reason in three distinctive ways: through self-deception, rationalization, and (controversially) akrasia or weakness of will. In this context, it emerges that Kant does not unequivocally endorse the so-called “Incorporation Thesis” or the “Guise of the Good” view of human agency. (shrink)

This chapter provides an interpretive framework for interpreting Kant’s views on freedom. It introduces various desiderata that any adequate interpretation must meet. It argues that certain prominent approaches, such as the metaphysically deflationary “two-standpoint” reading, fail some of these desiderata. The chapter defends a metaphysical dual-aspect reading of Kant’s transcendental idealism on the grounds that such a reading is uniquely suited to capture his views on human freedom. It articulates a key feature of Kohl’s interpretation: Kant’s doctrine involves a metaphysical (...) belief in the existence of an atemporal, undetermined form of causality, but this belief does not lend itself to any further metaphysical theorizing. The belief that we are free from determination by foreign causes can be adopted only from a distinctive normative standpoint that brackets explanatory questions. The chapter concludes by introducing the main challenges that arise for a rational reconstruction of Kant’s libertarian doctrine. Such a reconstruction must show how Kant can motivate his theoretically inscrutable conception of freedom against naturalistic, compatibilist views on which free capacities can be explained as part of the deterministic natural order. Moreover, it must show how Kant might be able justify the belief that we really are free in his metaphysically ambitious transcendental sense. (shrink)

This chapter examines how we can conceive our non-sensible noumenal freedom even though our categorial concepts like causality, contingency, or necessity seem restricted to sensible, empirical phenomena. It argues that we can adequately represent our free will through the idea of the moral law as an autonomous normative standard which governs the noumenal causality of free will. The resulting concept of noumenal causality is a distinctively practical concept that cannot be used for any theoretical, explanatory purposes. The chapter further shows (...) that even though both the free divine will and the free human will are governed by the same moral law, human freedom of will as a faculty of choice (Willkür) differs from divine freedom since it involves metaphysical contingency or alternative possibilities. The human will is akin to the divine will only, but significantly, as law-giving pure practical reason, the faculty of practical judgment (rather than choice). The chapter concludes by suggesting two conceptually separate grounds for Kant’s incompatibilism and anti-naturalism about free will: the causality of nature threatens our freedom of Willkür by removing the absolute contingency of human choice, and it threatens our freedom of practical reason by undermining the lawful a priori necessity of moral judgment. (shrink)

In "Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency", I aim to give a comprehensive interpretation and a qualified defense of Kant’s doctrine of freedom as a systematic conception of rational agency. -/- Although my book follows Kant in focusing on the idea of free will as a condition of moral agency, it denies that moral freedom of will is the only relevant (transcendental) type of freedom. Human beings also exercise absolute freedom of thought (intellectual autonomy) in their theoretical cognition. Moreover, our (...) creation and appreciation of beauty requires our freedom of imagination. I consider these three varieties of free agency both in their own rights and in their systematic connections, by examining how they differ from and yet relate to each other. On this basis, my interpretation shows that and why for Kant transcendental freedom is the proper anchor ("cardinal point") of all meaningful, rational human activity: our moral efforts to become more virtuous and to make the world a better place; our theoretical efforts to understand, explain and predict the world; and our aesthetic engagement with the world of beauty, both artistic and natural. -/- Additionally, "Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency" illuminates Kant's intricate, multifaceted account by considering the various metaphysical, semantic, epistemological and normative dimensions of Kantian freedom and by revealing their systematic interconnections. One significant benefit of tracing these links is that by doing so we can arrive at a charitable view of how Kant seeks to justify the belief in moral freedom of will. -/- For many commentators, Kant's appeal to a moral ‘fact of reason’ as our basis for believing in supersensible free will is an abject philosophical failure or a lapse into dogmatic rationalism. By contrast, I show that Kant justifies our belief in free will through a rather powerful, two-pronged argumentative strategy. First, he constructs a practical-moral proof of free will via the fact of reason doctrine. Second, he provides a theoretical defense of this moral proof against challenges arising from a naturalistic worldview. The linchpin of this defense is his argument that naturalistic cognizers must presuppose their epistemic freedom of thought as a necessary condition of all objective theoretical (including naturalistic) cognition. Since epistemic freedom of thought and moral freedom of will are both species of transcendental freedom, naturalists cannot (coherently) debunk our practical self-conception as transcendentally free moral agents. The appeal to epistemic freedom of thought provides no positive grounds for believing in a free moral will; but it shields our moral self-awareness (which does provide such grounds) against its most prominent detractors. -/- This defense strategy (among other aspects of Kant’s view that I examine in my book) shows that a significant part of Kant’s legacy is his abiding potential to challenge and provide alternatives to a naturalistic philosophical worldview (held by the “defender of an omnipotent nature”) according to which the mechanistic order of nature engulfs all metaphysical reality and (thereby) our entire humanity. (shrink)

The final chapter examines whether Kant’s views on freedom of imagination in his aesthetics (in the _Critique of the Power of Judgment_) fit into his systematic doctrine of freedom. Kant’s account of the free imagination seems to disrupt his canonical account of freedom as a law-governed rational faculty, since he insists that imaginative freedom is a _freedom from_ rational laws or concepts. The chapter shows that we can nevertheless regard freedom of imagination as a distinctive species of Kant’s generic notion (...) of transcendental freedom. Like freedom of will and freedom of thought, imaginative freedom requires independence from determination by foreign natural causes. And, while our aesthetic activity must not be determined by intellectual laws and concepts, it is still loosely, indeterminately governed by such laws and concepts; hence it does not collapse into an arbitrary liberty of indifference. This interpretation is congenial to various core tenets of Kant’s aesthetics, especially to his view that _aesthetic ideas_ play a central role in our creation and reception of beauty. The account of imaginative freedom developed here further explains how Kant’s aesthetics connects with his transcendental idealism, specifically with his claim that aesthetic ideas are grounded in our super-sensible faculties. The chapter concludes by suggesting that, with some leeway, we can regard our freedom of aesthetic imagination as exhibiting a special form of autonomy, the “autonomy of taste.”. (shrink)

The introduction describes the main themes of the book and lays out its key ambition: to provide a systematic reconstruction and a qualified defense of Kant’s libertarian, anti-naturalistic doctrine of free agency. It explains how Kant’s account of freedom relates to contemporary views, and how the interpretation to be developed in the book compares to other major interpretations. It highlights some of the main challenges that arise for a sympathetic reconstruction of Kant’s view, such as the need to explain why (...) Kant prefers a theoretically inscrutable notion of freedom over alternative (compatibilist, naturalistic) notions, or the need to show how Kant can justify the belief that we are free in his metaphysically ambitious (transcendental) sense. The introductory chapter further provides a definition of key terms like “naturalism.” It concludes by giving a survey of the book’s overall structure. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, a group of philosophers associated with the University of Pittsburgh—Robert Brandom, James Conant, John Haugeland, and John McDowell—have developed a novel reading of Kant. Their interest turns on Kant’s problem of objective purport: how can my thoughts be about the world? This paper summarizes the shared reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction by these four philosophers and how it solves the problem of objective purport. But I also show these philosophers radically diverge in how they view (...) Kant’s relevance for contemporary philosophy. I highlight an important distinction between those that hold a quietist response to Kant, evident in Conant and McDowell, and those that hold a constructive response, evident in Brandom and Haugeland. The upshot is that the Pittsburgh Kantians have a distinctive approach to Kant, but also radically different responses to his problem of objective purport. (shrink)

For Kant, knowledge involves certainty. If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there (...) is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

Kant tells us that just as understanding unifies appearances under concepts, reason seeks to unify empirical concepts into a system. But why do empirical concepts require unification in a system? The text of the Critique of Pure Reason provides the basis for starkly divergent answers to this question. On the one hand, Kant seems to take the Transcendental Analytic to have demonstrated the ability of the understanding to employ both pure and empirical concepts without participation by reason. On the other (...) hand, in a number of places Kant says things that imply that reason’s assumption that empirical concepts can and ought to be unified in a hierarchical system implicates understanding in addition to the categories, perhaps even elevating systematicity to a condition of the possibility of experience on a par with the categories. I argue for the intermediary position that systematization is necessary for the coherence of our empirical concepts, which is for Kant the criterion of empirical truth. The goal of complete coherence among our concepts is part of reason’s task of criticizing itself, and thus for the project of setting metaphysics on the “secure course of a science.” (Bvii). (shrink)

C. I. Lewis’s conception of the given element in perceptual experience was one of the targets of Sellars’ famous charge that many such conceptions fall victim to the Myth of the Given. Yet exactly what makes a conception of the given mythical has remained unclear. Here I aim to clarify this issue by discussing Eric Watkins’ recent claim that a conception exactly like the one Lewis articulated in Mind and the World Order in fact avoids the Myth. Watkins motivates this (...) claim in part by raising objections for John McDowell’s account of the Myth and argues that a better account can be extracted from Kant. I defend McDowell’s position (and reject Watkins’ Kantian account) by arguing that these objections are based on a failure to appreciate an implication of the claim (which Watkins accepts) that rational thought operates in “the logical space of reasons.” Specifically, I focus on the implication that a thinker must be in a position to understand the rational significance of her perceptual experience. Along the way I explain in what ways Watkins’ conception of the given in experience mirrors the view of Lewis. (shrink)

Fürwahrhalten, or “holding-to-be-true”, is one of the most controversial concepts in Kant’s epistemology. Rarely mentioned in Kant’s edited works – where it is often used to describe moral faith – Fürwahrhalten has attracted the interest of Kant scholars only in recent years. The essay aims to shed light on some of the main issues that the notion of holding-to-be-true still rises, especially those concerning its origin and its theoretical function in the critical system. The book retraces the stages of Kant’s (...) reflection on this theme, starting from the precritical discussion with the main representatives of the German Enlightenment (Wolff, Knutzen, Baumgarten, Meier, and Crusius) to the definitive formulation of Fürwahrhalten after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason. The analysis of Kant’s logical corpus has shown that, far from being a marginal concept of critical epistemology, Fürwahrhalten is the core of a systematic theory of certainty, that Kant develops in accordance with his doctrine of modality. This theory represents the arrival point of a long and troubled reflection, that led Kant to deeply rethink most of the traditional themes of eighteenth-century logic. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Kant would have endorsed Clifford’s principle. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I review Kant’s argument for the practical postulates. In the second, I discuss a traditional objection to the style of argument Kant employs. In the third, I explain how Kant would respond to this objection and how this renders the practical postulates consistent with Clifford’s principle. In the fourth, I introduce positive grounds for thinking that Kant would have (...) endorsed this principle. (shrink)

Kant’s account of practical justification for belief has attracted much attention in the literature, especially in recent years. In this context, scholars have generally emphasized the originality of Kant’s thought about belief (Glaube), and Kant indeed offers a definition of belief that is very different from views that were prevalent in eighteenth-century Germany. In this article, however, I argue that it is very likely that Christian August Crusius exerted influence on Kant’s definition of belief and his account of practical justification. (...) In turn, acknowledging this influence has relevant consequences for how we understand the phenomenology of Kantian belief. (shrink)

In focusing on the systematic deduction of the categories from a principle, Schulting takes up anew the controversial project of the eminent German Kant scholar Klaus Reich, whose monograph “The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments” made the case that the logical functions of judgement can all be derived from the objective unity of apperception and can be shown to link up with one another systematically. -/- Common opinion among Kantians today has it that Kant did not mean to derive (...) the functions of judgement, and accordingly the categories, from the principle of apperception. Schulting challenges this standard view and aims to resuscitate the main motivation behind Reich’s project. He argues, in agreement with Reich’s main thesis about the derivability of the functions of judgement, that Kant indeed does mean to derive, in full a priori fashion, the categories from the principle of apperception. -/- Schulting also shows that, given the general assumptions of the Critical philosophy, Kant's derivation is successful and that absent an account of the derivation of the categories from apperception, the B-Deduction cannot really be understood. -/- New edition. First published 2012 as „Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the Categories" (Palgrave Macmillan). (shrink)

What is the Quid Juris in Kant's Deduction? Chapter 3 from my book on the Deduction (Kant's Deduction From Apperception) provides an answer to that question, and also contains an extensive discussion of the relevant literature on this topic (Henrich, Proops, Seeberg & Longuenesse).

In this paper, I discuss the debate on Kant and nonconceptual content. Inspired by Kant’s account of the intimate relation between intuition and concepts, McDowell (1996) has forcefully argued that the relation between sensible content and concepts is such that sensible content does not severally contribute to cognition but always only in conjunction with concepts. This view is known as conceptualism. Recently, Kantians Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais, among others, have brought against this view the charge that it neglects the (...) possibility of the existence of essentially nonconceptual content that is not conceptualised or subject to conceptualisation. Their critique of McDowell amounts to nonconceptualism. However, both views, conceptualist and nonconceptualist, share the assumption that intuition is synthesised content in Kant’s sense. My interest is not in the validity of the philosophical positions of conceptualism or nonconceptualism per se. I am particularly interested in the extent to which the views that McDowell and Hanna and Allais respectively advance are true to Kant, or can validly be seen as Kantian positions. I argue that although McDowell is right that intuition is only epistemically relevant in conjunction with concepts, Hanna and Allais are right with regard to the existence of essentially nonconceptual content (intuitions) independently of the functions of the understanding, but that they are wrong with regard to non-conceptualised intuition being synthesised content in Kant’s sense. Kantian conceptualists (Bowman 2011; Griffith 2012; Gomes 2014) have responded to the recent nonconceptualist offensive, with reference to A89ff./B122ff. (§13)—which, confusingly, the nonconceptualists also cite as evidence for their contrary reading—by arguing that the nonconceptualist view conflicts with the central goal of the Transcendental Deduction, namely, to argue that all intuitions are subject to the categories. I contend that the conceptualist reading of A89ff./B122ff. is unfounded, but also that the nonconceptualists are wrong to believe that intuitions as such refer strictly to objects independently of the functions of the understanding, and that they are mistaken about the relation between figurative synthesis and intellectual synthesis. I argue that Kant is a conceptualist, albeit not in the sense that standard conceptualists assume. Perceptual knowledge is always judgemental, though without this resulting in the standard conceptualist claim that, necessarily, all intuitions or all perceptions per se stand under the categories (strong conceptualism). I endorse the nonconceptualist view that, for Kant, perception per se, i.e. any mere or ‘blind’ intuition of objects (i.e. objects as indeterminate appearances) short of perceptual knowledge, does not necessarily stand under the categories. Perception is not yet perceptual knowledge. In this context, I point out the common failure in the literature on the Transcendental Deduction, both of the conceptualist and nonconceptualist stripe, to take account of the modal nature of Kant’s argument for the relation between intuition and concept insofar as cognition should arise from it. (shrink)

The paper addresses an exegetical puzzle that is raised by Kant's distinction between opining (Meinen), believing (Glauben), and knowing (Wissen). In presenting his moral arguments, Kant often points out that belief, as he conceives of it, has a unique feature: it requires non-epistemic justification. Yet Kant's official formulation of the tripartite distinction runs counter to this claim. It describes Belief in terms of a set of two features, each of which also pertains to either opinion or knowledge. My aim in (...) this paper is to propose a novel interpretation of Kant’s distinction which dissolves this exegetical puzzle. (shrink)

:Recently, Allais, Hanna and others have argued that Kant is a nonconceptualist about intuition and that intuitions refer objectively, independently of the functions of the understanding. Kantian conceptualists have responded, which the nonconceptualists also cite as textual evidence for their reading) that this view conflicts with the central goal of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction: to argue that all intuitions are subject to the categories. I argue that the conceptualist reading of KrV, A 89 ff./B 122 ff. is unfounded. Further, I argue (...) that the nonconceptualists are wrong to believe that intuitions as such refer objectively and that they are mistaken about the relation between figurative synthesis and intellectual synthesis. (shrink)

I argue for a novel, non-subjectivist interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Kant’s idealism is often interpreted as specifying how we must experience objects or how objects must appear to us. I argue to the contrary by appealing to Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. Kant’s Deduction is the proof that the categories are not merely subjectively necessary conditions we need for our cognition, but objectively valid conditions necessary for objects to be appearances. My interpretation centres on two claims. First, Kant’s method of self-knowledge (...) consists in his determining what makes our cognitive faculty finite in contrast to God’s infinite cognitive faculty. Second, Kant’s limitation of our knowledge to appearances consists in his developing an account according to which appearances and our finite cognitive faculty are conceived of in terms of each other and in contrast to noumena in the positive sense and God’s infinite cognitive faculty. (shrink)

For several decades, theorists interested in Kant’s discussion of welfare have puzzled over Kant’s position on the issue of the redistribution of goods in society. They have done this both in order to clarify his position and as a source of inspiration for current conceptual problems faced by contemporary political philosophers who attempt to reconcile the ideal of equal freedom with the asymmetric interference necessary for redistribution and social provision. In this paper, I start with Kant’s brief discussion of welfare (...) in Rechtslehre and I identify four claims that Kant clearly asserts as characteristic for his view. I then outline five main interpretative directions in the literature, I evaluate and rank them. The most accurate view of Kant’s justification of welfare, which I call the “genuinely Kantian” position is, however, unable to explain the nature of the duty of welfare that it asserts. By going back to Kant’s text, I suggest one solution. This solution, together with some further questions, can be seen as initiating a new interpretative direction in the literature. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls introduces the concept of “reflective equilibrium.” Although there are innumerable references to and discussions of this concept in the literature, there is, to the present author's knowledge, no discussion of the most important question: Why reflective equilibrium? In particular, the question arises: Is the method of reflective equilibrium applicable to the choice of this method itself? Rawls's drawing of parallels between Kant's moral theory and his own suggests that his concept of “reflective (...) equilibrium” is on a par with Kant's concept of “transcendental deduction.” Treating these two approaches to justification as paradigmatic, I consider their respective merits in meeting the reflexive challenge, i.e., in offering a justification for choice of mode of justification. My enquiry into this topic comprises three parts. In this first part, I raise the issue of the reflexivity of justification and question whether the reflexive challenge can be met within the framework of A Theory of Justice. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 4 Seiten: 489-498.

Nearly all of the work that has been done on Kant’s conception of public reason has focused on its socio-political significance. John Rawls, Onora O’Neill and others have explored its relevance to a well ordered democracy, to pluralism, to toleration, and so on. However, the relevance of public reason for Kant is not limited to the socio-political. Kant repeatedly appeals to the “touchstone of communication” in relation to the normative side of his epistemology. The purpose of this paper is to (...) articulate why Kant regards communication as vital to our theoretical endeavors. (shrink)

This paper discusses a structural analogy between Kant’s theory of regulative ideas, as he develops it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, and Crispin Wright’s theory of epistemic entitlements. First, I argue that certain exegetical difficulties with respect to the Appendix rest on serious systematic problems, which – given other assumptions of the Critique of Pure Reason – Kant is unable to solve. Second, I argue that because of the identified structural analogy between Kant’s and Wright’s views the project (...) Kant pursues in the Appendix can be rehabilitated by recourse to Wright’s theory. (shrink)

Dennis Schulting offers a thoroughgoing, analytic account of the first half of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories in the B-edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that is different from existing interpretations in at least one important aspect: its central claim is that each of the 12 categories is wholly derivable from the principle of apperception, which goes against the current view that the Deduction is not a proof in a strict philosophical sense and the standard reading that in (...) the Deduction Kant only gives an account of the global applicability of the categories to experience. This novel approach enables a reappraisal of Kant's controversial claim that transcendental self-consciousness is not only a necessary condition of objective experience but also sufficient for it. The book provides an extensive analysis of Kant's theory of transcendental apperception and also explains why the argument of the Transcendental Deduction is both a regressive and a progressive argument. (shrink)

This volume of new essays provides a comprehensive and structured examination of Kant's justification of norms, a crucial but neglected theme in Kantian practical philosophy.

This paper discusses Immanuel Kant’s views on the role of experiments in natural science, focusing on their relationship with hypotheses, laws of nature, and the heuristic principles of scientific enquiry. Kant’s views are contrasted with the philosophy of experiment that was first sketched by Francis Bacon and later developed by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. Kant holds that experiments are always designed and carried out in the light of hypotheses. Hypotheses are derived from experience on the basis of a set (...) of heuristic principles. The function of experiments is testing hypotheses in order to either reject them as false, or else to transform them into empirical laws of nature. To this end, we must integrate the hypotheses that are confirmed by experiments with the a priori principles which are the foundations of natural science. Compared with Bacon, Boyle, and Hooke, Kant has elaborate views on the one hand, on how our theoretical and pre-theoretical assumptions bear on experimental practice, and on the other hand, on how the results of experimental activity can be integrated with theories to advance our knowledge of nature. However, Kant overstates the dependence of experiments on theories. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the Sellarsian Myth of the Given does not apply to all forms of Non-Conceptualism; that Kant is in fact a non-conceptualist of the right-thinking kind and not a Conceptualist, as most Kant-interpreters think; and that an intelligible and defensible Kantian Non-Conceptualism can be developed which supports the thesis that true perceptual beliefs are non-inferentially justified and also normatively funded by direct, embodied, intentional interactions with the manifest world (a.k.a. the Grip of the Given).

This paper characterises concisely a key issue about rational justification which highlights an important achievement of Kant’s constructivist method for identifying and justifying basic norms: uniquely, it resolves the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion. Kant’s constructivist method is both sound and significant because it is based on core principles of rational justification as such. Explicating this basis of Kant’s constructivism affords an illuminating and defensible explication of four key aspects of the autonomy of rational judgment, including our positive moral freedom; (...) it shows how Kant’s constructivism is fundamentally social and it shows how Kant’s constructivism can readily accommodate historical factors which bear on the appropriateness and legitimacy of social and political institutions. All of these advantages are available without recourse to Kant’s transcendental idealism, and all of them respond to common complaints about or alleged objections to Kant’s practical philosophy. (shrink)

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the (...) validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction. (shrink)

This book is a foray into the thorny interpretive issue of what to make of Kant's so-called "Metaphysical Deduction" of the categories. As with many of the arguments in the first Critique, the claim of the Metaphysical Deduction is easier to make out than its argument. The claim is that by some or other reference to "general logic," one may obtain a "transcendental logic," i.e., a justification (or "deduction") of the categories (of the understanding) necessary to the (very) possibility of (...) experience. But how? By, Kant says, discerning, in general logic, a "clue" to transcendental logic. But what sort of clue? And then what clue exactly? We need a meta-clue to get a clue.Herein lies the very mixed reception the.. (shrink)

The present paper argues for the relevance of Immanuel Kant and the German Enlightenment to contemporary social epistemology. Rather than distancing themselves from the alleged ‘individualism’ of Enlightenment philosophers, social epistemologists would be well-advised to look at the substantive discussion of social-epistemological questions in the works of Kant and other Enlightenment figures. After a brief rebuttal of the received view of the Enlightenment as an intrinsically individualist enterprise, this paper charts the historical trajectory of philosophical discussions of testimony as a (...) source of knowledge, via such philosophers as C. Thomasius, C. A. Crusius, J. M. Chladenius, G. F. Meier, and finally Kant. Building on recent work on Kant's epistemology of testimony, the paper considers Kant's broader contributions to social epistemology. This includes an analysis of Kant's comments on the social basis of contingent epistemic standards, e.g. in the sciences, as well as on problems arising from the management of what Kant calls the growing ‘volume of knowledge’. Special attention is paid to the relation between Kant's views and contemporary problems arising both in the context of education and from our increased reliance on scientific experts. (shrink)