Real Possibility and the Critical Turn

Author(s):  
Nicholas F. Stang
Author(s):  
Uygar Abacı

This chapter examines the development of Kant’s conception of modality in the period between The Only Possible Argument (1763) and the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). From the mid-1760s on, Kant interprets his discovery that existence involves a relation to the cognitive faculty as more broadly applying to modality in general, and adopts the epistemological interpretation of the actualist principle. This shift plays an essential role in Kant’s realization of the need for a ‘critical turn’ in philosophy, which Kant first formulates in his 1772 letter to Herz in terms of the question of how to cognize that our pure concepts do indeed represent really possible objects. What problematizes this question is the actualist principle, epistemologically interpreted as stating that the cognition of actuality is a prerequisite of cognition of real possibility. Kant’s emerging revolution in modality is thus constitutive of his critical turn rather than a consequence of it.


Author(s):  
Avishag Edri ◽  
Henriette Dahan-Kalev

In Israel, like the rest of Western society, women are still largely responsible for childcare and housework. In homeschooling families, this division is even more prominent. This article explores homeschooling mothers’ perspective on role division. Using the auto-ethnographic-phenomenological approach to qualitative research of individual perceptions and experiences, I recruited a purpose-focused sample of 27 homeschooling mothers. Using interviews and personal logs (or diaries), I obtained data that underwent thematic analysis. The study findings indicate that mothers like being with their kids and that most of them would not want to change places with their partner, but the question arises as to whether there is a real possibility of choosing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gäb

When we were on the subway back from his lecture, I said to Robin: “I’m not sure there actually are any religious fictionalists.” We keep talking about them in papers and lectures, acting as if fictionalism in religion is a real possibility, but to be honest, I haven’t been able to spot one in the wild so far. The only potential candidate who comes to mind is Don Cupitt, who wrote things like: “I still pray and love God, even though I fully acknowledge that no God actually exists.”[1] Perhaps this is as fictionalist as it gets. But then again, Cupitt never explicitly declared himself a fictionalist (at least to my knowledge). Moreover, on other occasions he sounds more like an expressivist than a fictionalist, e.g. when he says: “The Christian doctrine of God just is Christian spirituality in coded form.”[2] So, if there are any actual fictionalists out there, please step forward.[1] Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion (Basic Books, 1997), 85.[2] Don Cupitt, Taking leave of God (SCM Press, 1980), 14.


1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (9-11) ◽  
pp. 2149-2152 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Grappelli ◽  
L. Campanella ◽  
E. Cardarelli ◽  
F. Mazzei ◽  
M. Cordatore ◽  
...  

Experiments on the real possibility of employing microorganisms to capture inorganic polluting substances, mainly heavy metals from urban and industrial wastes, are running using bacteria biomass. Many strains of Arthrobacter spp., gram-negative bacteria, diffused in the soil also inacondition of environmental stresses, have been proved to be particulary effective in heavy metal capture (Cd, Cr, Pb, Cu, Zn). The active and passive processes in accumulation of metals by bacteria were studied. Our experiments have been done on fluid biomass and on a membrane both for practical use and for an easy recovery.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Eliot Olivier

Political controversies in New South Wales and Canada recently have focused public attention on the constitutional practice of proroguing parliament. They have also shone a light on two lingering areas of uncertainty that surround its operation under the Commonwealth Constitution. This article seeks to clarify these two muddy areas of the law concerning prorogation. The first is the effect of prorogation on the Senate and its committees. Since Federation, the Senate has purported to authorise its committees to continue to function notwithstanding a prorogation of the Parliament. However, it is argued that this practice is unsupported by the provisions of the Constitution and the Senate has no such power. Second, the article examines the operation of the conventions that constrain the Governor-General's power to prorogue. Prorogation generally is exercised on the advice of the Prime Minister. However, this article contends that where a Prime Minister seeks to prorogue Parliament to avoid a vote of no confidence, the Governor-General will have a discretion to reject the advice. It may also be open to the Governor-General to reject an advice to prorogue where the purpose is to avoid scrutiny of a fundamental constitutional illegality. In Australia, the uncertainties that surround prorogation, coupled with the now precarious political landscape in Canberra, create the very real possibility of a prorogation crisis at the Commonwealth level. This article provides a response to these uncertainties. In doing so it offers a solution to how a prorogation crisis can be resolved, whilst maintaining the fine balance of power in our constitutional system.


Author(s):  
Jessica Leech

In the Postulates of Empirical Thinking, a section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents an account of the content and role of our concept of real possibility in terms of formal conditions of experience. However, much later in the Critique he introduces the idea of a material condition of possibility. What is this material condition of possibility, and how does it fit with the conception of possibility in terms of formal conditions? This essay argues that the key to answering these questions—as well as to understanding Kant’s criticism of rational theology, in which the discussion of the material condition of possibility appears—is Kant’s account of how we can individuate objects.


Author(s):  
Marjorie Levinson

Chapter 2 studies the relationship between historicism and Romanticism. It locates the two between Enlightenment materialism, on one side, and Marxian historical and dialectical materialism, on the other. In so doing, it isolates a paradox of materialism—namely, its production of the very concepts that undo it. These include the ideas of knowing as dissociated conceptual activity, and consciousness as absolute negativity. Romanticism and historicism, it is argued, represent solutions to a common problem—a claim defended through a reading of Wordsworth’s sonnet “The world is too much with us.” In considering how we position ourselves in relation to past literature, the chapter evaluates the choices between contemplation and empathy, knowledge and power, blame and defense. As such, it represents the first move in a self-critical turn on the new historicist method that had shaped the author’s—and part of the field’s—work in the previous decade.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Ingram

Abstract Theodor Adorno’s philistine functions as the other of art, or as the ideal embodiment of everything that the bourgeois aesthetic subject is not. He insists on the truth-content of the derogation, while recognising its unjust social foundation, and seeking to reflect that tension in a self-critical turn. His model of advanced art is negatively delimited by the philistinism of art with a cause and the philistinism of art for enjoyment, which represent the poles of the aesthetic and the social. The philistine is also the counterpart to the connoisseur, with the interplay between them pointing to his preferred approach to aesthetics, in which an affinity for art and alienness to it are combined without compromise. However, Adorno fails to realise fully the critical potential of the philistine as the immanent negation of art and aesthetics.


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