scholarly journals Kant’s Original Space and Time as Mere Grounds for Possibilities

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Thomas Raysmith
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Original Space ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Representations Of Space ◽  
Temporal Representations

Abstract In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant appears to make incompatible claims regarding the unitary natures of what he takes to be our a priori representations of space and time. I argue that these representations are unitary independently of all synthesis and explain how this avoids problems encountered by other positions regarding the Transcendental Deduction and its relation to the Transcendental Aesthetic in that work. Central is the claim that these representations (1) contain, when characterized as intuitions and considered as prior to any affections of sensibility, only an infinitude of merely possible finite spatial and temporal representations, and (2) are representations that are merely transcendental grounds for the possibilities for receiving or generating finite representations in sensibility that are determined (immediately, in the case of reception) by means of syntheses that accord with the categories.

Leibniz and the Transcendental Deduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-141
Author(s):  
Alison Laywine
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Human Understanding

This chapter explores the significance of Kant’s engagement with Leibniz for the Transcendental Deduction section of the Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that the goal of the Transcendental Deduction is largely cosmological—to show that the pure concepts of the understanding relate a priori to objects if it succeeds in showing that human understanding uses these concepts to construct a world out of the appearances that are sensibly given to us in space and time. The notion of “world” that Kant employs in his cosmology has an ancestor, however, in certain views to be found in Leibniz’s philosophy—particularly in his well-known correspondence with Clarke.

scholarly journals Darwinism as the Missing Link in Kant’s Critical Philosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-80
Author(s):  
Igor K. Kalinin
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Entire System ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Logical Functions

I proceed from the hypothesis that the difficulties in Kant’s presentation of his plan and, accordingly, the implicit reason for the critical attitude to this plan on the part of many contemporary philosophers stem from the fact that he had no theoretical link at his disposal which would offer a more solid scientific grounding for his entire system. I believe that Darwinism is such a link which bolsters the central but ungrounded thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason on the existence of a priori synthetic judgments. The synthesis of Darwinism and critical philosophy dictates, however, a substantial restructuring of the latter since some of its key elements prove to be weak in the light of modern studies and need to be revised or even reversed. The first reversal explored in this article determines the origin of the categories which are now revealed not “from the top down” where Kant sought them, i. e. not in logical functions in accordance with metaphysical deduction and not in self-consciousness as transcendental deduction claims, but “from the bottom up” if one considers things in the evolutionary dimension, i. e. in the instincts. The second reversal shifts the freedom of will which Kant placed in the same ontological basket with things in themselves at “the top,” to another level of the pyramid of ontologies, by changing dualism to pluralism because dualism is too narrow to accommodate all the autonomous components of critical philosophy. Thus spirit and freedom find a new place separate from the sphere of physical nature; the category of adaptation explains how different ontologies can coexist; while the problem of two interpretations of transcendental idealism (two-world vs. two-aspect interpretation) finds a solution through their reconciliation.

scholarly journals Kant on the Transcendental Deduction of Space and Time: an Essay on the Philosophical Resources of the Transcendental Aesthetic

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Melissa McBay Merritt
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Modes Of Representation

Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason has focused intensively on the transcendental deduction of the categories – the pivotal chapter of the book that governs our understanding of much that precedes it and just about all that follows it. One simple way to understand the systematic function of the Transcendental Deduction is to appreciate that it provides an account of how the ‘two stems of human knowledge’ (A15/B29) – sensibility and understanding – must relate to one another in the production of knowledge. On Kant's view, these capacities are distinguished by their radically different modes of representation: intuition and concept. Although sensibility and understanding are fundamentally distinct – they ‘cannot exchange their functions’ – they must nevertheless cooperate in the production of knowledge: ‘Only through their unification can cognition arise’ (A51/B75–6). The task of the Deduction is to show how the categories – concepts that stem from the ‘nature of the understanding’ alone – apply necessarily to objects that can only be given in experience, and represented as given through sensible intuition.

The Legacy of Salomon Maimon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Argumentative Structure ◽  
The Relationship

Salomon Maimon decisively influenced the development of post-Kantian German Idealism, but there is little consensus on how to interpret most aspects of his thought, including the nature and philosophical significance of his skepticism and the reasons why he challenged Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this chapter, Nisenbaum argues that the two ideas that define Fichte’s doctrine of science, or Wissenschaftslehre—the necessity of a common derivation of all a priori knowledge from one principle, and the idea that philosophy should be based on freedom—can be traced back to Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy. It is also argued that, by emphasizing the regulative role of the ideas of pure reason in Kant’s account of empirical cognition, Maimon enables a rereading of the argumentative structure of the first Critique that reveals the relationship between sensibility, understanding, and reason. This rereading of the first Critique shows that Kant has the resources to address Maimon’s key challenges, but it also puts pressure on Kant’s discursive account of human cognition.

Chapter VII: The Barrier of Space and Time

1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (S1) ◽  
pp. 100-106
Author(s):  
Richard Albert Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Present Experience

Space and Time as infinite and all-embracing wholes are a priori intuitions which are the condition of and antecedent to all our knowledge of particular objects in space and time.—KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781.What, then, is the barrier between the animals and man, that excludes the animals from man’s mental world? It is the barrier primarily of Space and Time. This, I think, can be made clear.First, consider Time. It is clear, to begin with, that the dog holds in his memory, at least in some dim way, the time-span, or the time experiences, within the physical duration of his own life. The dog will go to-day where he found food yesterday. Darwin’s dog recognized him after an absence of five years and two days. Odysseus’s dog, Argus, according to Homer, recognized his master, even through his beggar’s disguise, after an absence of twenty years. There is no doubt that the dog has memory of this kind, which shows that he has some grasp of time within his own life-span. Whether it is conscious memory with an explicit measurement of a stretch of time between a point in past time and the present moment, as is the case with man’s memory, is extremely doubtful. It seems to be rather a recognition of the master’s identity, or sameness, through a succession of experiences, each of which is for the dog a present experience without any explicit differentiation of time into past and present.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Henning
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction

This brief chapter summarizes central findings regarding the role of parenthetical sentences in practical discourse. But it also provides historical context. It suggests that a precursor of parentheticalism may be found in Kant, especially in Kant’s views about the “I think,” especially as they are expressed in the B-Version of the “Transcendental Deduction” and the B-Version of the chapter on Paralogisms in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Das Recht in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-149
Author(s):  
Reinhard Brandt
Keyword(s):  
David Hume ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Introductory Note ◽  
Pure Intuition

AbstractRecent publications (Henrich, Seeberg) claim that Kant has been profoundly influenced by contemporary publications on juridical deductions. I try to show, that this cannot be right. The introductory note of the “Transcendental Deduction” (Critique of Pure Reason A 84) poses two questions: “quid facti?” and “quid juris?”. The first is answered by the demonstration of the possibility of relations between pure concepts and pure intuition und sensations, the second by the implicit refutation of David Hume. Kant and his interpreters sustain the possibility of using juridical concepts, that are neither related to real juridical facts nor are only metaphers, but have a special philosophical signification. But what should that be?

Ursprünge transzendentaler Ästhetik. Zum Wandel von Kants Raum- und Zeitargumentation von derInauguraldissertation zurKritik

Kant-Studien ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-385
Author(s):  
Christian Martin
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Representations Of Space ◽  
Widespread View

AbstractAccording to a widespread view, the essentials of Kant’s critical conception of space and time as set forth in the Transcendental Aesthetic can already be found in his 1770 Inaugural Dissertation. Contrary to this assumption, the present article shows that Kant’s later arguments for the a priori intuitive character of our original representations of space and time differ crucially from those contained in the Dissertation. This article highlights profound differences between Kant’s transcendental and his pre-critical conception of pure sensibility by systematically comparing the topic, method and argumentation of the First Critique with that of the Inaugural Dissertation. It thus contributes to a better understanding of the Transcendental Aesthetics itself, which allows one to distinguish its peculiar transcendental mode of argumentation from considerations made by the pre-critical Kant, with which it can easily be conflated.

Three Kantian Routes to the Synthetic A Priori

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Importance

Abstract Kant influentially distinguished analytic from synthetic a priori propositions, and he took certain propositions in the latter category to be of immense philosophical importance. His distinction between the analytic and the synthetic has been accepted by many and attacked by others; but despite its importance, a number of discussions of it since at least W. V. Quine’s have paid insufficient attention to some of the passages in which Kant draws the distinction. This paper seeks to clarify what appear to be three distinct conceptions of the analytic (and implicitly of the synthetic) that are presented in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and in some other Kantian texts. The conceptions are important in themselves, and their differences are significant even if they are extensionally equivalent. The paper is also aimed at showing how the proposed understanding of these conceptions—and especially the one that has received insufficient attention from philosophers—may bear on how we should conceive the synthetic a priori, in and beyond Kant’s own writings.

scholarly journals Epistemologia Kanta jako rozwiązanie sporu empiryzmu z racjonalizmem

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Michał Wendland
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
Pure Intuition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Ideas

The article concerns some of the most important elements of I. Kant’s epistemology and its connections with earlier epistemological ideas, namely rationalism and empiricism. The history of dispute between rationalism (Descartes, Leibniz) and empiricism (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) is hereby shortly presented while Kant’s own philosophical achievements are suggested to be both alternative and synthesis of these. The main core of this paper is summary of basis of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; some most important categories are described: apriorism, synthetic and analytical judgements, knowledge a priori and a posteriori, main ideas of transcendental esthetics (two forms of pure intuition: time and space), main ideas of transcendental logic (forms of judgement and twelve categories). Also the meaning of Kant’s „copernican revolution” is presented as a turning point for classical German philosophy as well as for whole modern epistemology.

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