scholarly journals Kritische Metaphysik oder Analytische Hermeneutik?

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-131
Author(s):  
Anton Friedrich Koch
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
General Logic ◽  
Time And Being ◽  
Hermeneutic Science ◽  
Invasive Intervention

Abstract Kant in his critical metaphysics, as one might call his transcendental philosophy, proceeds from the syncategorematic, subject-sided forms of thinking, which are revealed by general logic qua doctrine of the inferences of reason (i. e. syllogistics), and assigns to them one-to-one categorematic, object-sided forms of thinking: the categories qua pure, non-empirical predicates of things. Kant then shows in his transcendental deduction that the categories are objectively, – i. e. without our invasive intervention – valid of all things in space-time. In the present essay, philosophy is understood not so much as critical metaphysics in a narrow sense of “metaphysics”, but rather as the a priori hermeneutic science; and the transcendental deduction of the categories is replaced by arguments for (1) a readability thesis and (2) a theory of the a priori presuppositions of referencing things in space and time. The readability thesis states that things can be read (1) as world-sided primal tokens (ur-tokens) of proper names of themselves and also (2) as world-sided primal tokens (ur-tokens) of elementary propositions about them. The theory of the a priori presuppositions clarifies the conditions of the possibility of subjects orienting themselves in space and time and being able to refer, first, to themselves qua embodied thinkers and then as well to arbitrary individual items.

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.

Kant’s ‘Transcendental Deduction’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Structural Description ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
The World ◽  
Empirical Realism

This chapter presents a straightforward structural description of Immanuel Kant’s conception of what the transcendental deduction is supposed to do, and how it is supposed to do it. The ‘deduction’ Kant thinks is needed for understanding the human mind would establish and explain our ‘right’ or ‘entitlement’ to something we seem to possess and employ in ‘the highly complicated web of human knowledge’. This is: experience, concepts, and principles. The chapter explains the point and strategy of the ‘deduction’ as Kant understands it, as well as the demanding conditions of its success, without entering into complexities of interpretation or critical assessment of the degree of success actually achieved. It also analyses Kant’s arguments regarding a priori concepts as well as a posteriori knowledge of the world around us, along with his claim that our position in the world must be understood as ‘empirical realism’.

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.

scholarly journals The Tantalus’ Torments of Transcendentalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Sergey Chernov
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Complete System ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
German Edition ◽  
Opus Postumum ◽  
Corporeal Nature

Kant’s manuscripts of 1796–1803, which the Academic German edition of his works combined in 21–22 volumes of under the invented by H. Vaihinger name ‘Opus postumum’, still attract the attention of researchers. Was there really a significant theoretical “gap” in the system of Kant's “critical”, transcendental philosophy, which built by 1790, needed to be filled, namely, to undertake a conceptual "transition" from the already constructed a priori metaphysics of corporeal nature (metaphysical principles of natural science) to experimental mathematical physics, to the entire scientific empirical investigation of nature? In the last years of his life Kant tried to solve a problem that was really decisive for the fate of transcendentalism, which he had already realized in ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ and concretized in ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’, however he found himself in a hopeless situation, which doomed him to the “Tantalus’ torments”. The problem that he was constantly thinking about necessarily arises in the system of transcendental philosophy, but has no solution in it. ‘Opus postumum’ is an important piece of evidence on the insurmountable difficulties faced by the attempt to “save” philosophy as a perfect and complete system of absolutely reliable, "apodictic" science, based on the idea of universal and necessary conditions for the experience possibility.

The Duisburg Nachlaß

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-78
Author(s):  
Alison Laywine
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Object A ◽  
Classical Geometry ◽  
Central Claim

This chapter explores the so-called ‘Duisburg Nachlaß’, a set of sketches in Kant’s hand from the mid-1770s that may be understood as the ancestor of the Transcendental Deduction in the Critique. The chapter has two parts. The first explores a central claim in the Duisburg Nachlaß that we know an object a priori only according to its relations by means of an ‘exposition of appearances’. The question is what does this mean? The strategy is to confront the claim with some of Kant’s metaphysical commitments from the 1750s about relations and his engagement with the regimentation of proofs in classical geometry (with a special focus on the ‘ekthesis’). The second part of the chapter uses what is learned from the first part to argue that the exposition of appearances in the Duisburg Nachlaß is meant to yield a cosmology of experience. The author uses the findings of this chapter later in the book to illuminate peculiarities and insights of the Transcendental Deduction.

Reichenbach, Hans (1891–1953)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley C. Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
And Mathematics

Philosophy of science flourished in the twentieth century, partly as a result of extraordinary progress in the sciences themselves, but mainly because of the efforts of philosophers who were scientifically knowledgeable and who remained abreast of new scientific achievements. Hans Reichenbach was a pioneer in this philosophical development; he studied physics and mathematics in several of the great German scientific centres and later spent a number of years as a colleague of Einstein in Berlin. Early in his career he followed Kant, but later reacted against his philosophy, arguing that it was inconsistent with twentieth-century physics. Reichenbach was not only a philosopher of science, but also a scientific philosopher. He insisted that philosophy should adhere to the same standards of precision and rigour as the natural sciences. He unconditionally rejected speculative metaphysics and theology because their claims could not be substantiated either a priori, on the basis of logic and mathematics, or a posteriori, on the basis of sense-experience. In this respect he agreed with the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, but because of other profound disagreements he was never actually a positivist. He was, instead, the leading member of the group of logical empiricists centred in Berlin. Although his writings span many subjects Reichenbach is best known for his work in two main areas: induction and probability, and the philosophy of space and time. In the former he developed a theory of probability and induction that contained his answer to Hume’s problem of the justification of induction. Because of his view that all our knowledge of the world is probabilistic, this work had fundamental epistemological significance. In philosophy of physics he offered epoch-making contributions to the foundations of the theory of relativity, undermining space and time as Kantian synthetic a priori categories.

Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and the Unity of Space and Time

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Andrew F. Roche
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Representations Of Space

AbstractOn one reading of Kant’s account of our original representations of space and time, they are, in part, products of the understanding or imagination. On another, they are brute, sensible givens, entirely independent of the understanding. In this article, while I agree with the latter interpretation, I argue for a version of it that does more justice to the insights of the former than others currently available. I claim that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction turns on the representations of space and time as determinate, enduring particulars, whose unity is both given and a product of synthesis.

Kant's Psychologism, Part I

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 41-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Waxman
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Philosophical Psychology ◽  
Genetic Approach ◽  
Interpretive Approach ◽  
The Face

In this paper, I shall argue that the most moderate and balanced way to view Kant's transcendental philosophy is as a species of psychological investigation analogous to Hume's, but refounded on a doctrine of pure (a priori) sensibility, such as Hume never allowed himself (and may never even have thought of). This might seem to fly in the face of what many interpreters of Kant deem conventional wisdom: that the burden of proof is on one who claims that psychology is essential to transcendental philosophy. On this view, there is to be found in Kant ‘a more austere strictly transcendental philosophy’, which needs to be carefully distinguished from the psychological doctrines in which it is enmeshed; and they would insist on being convinced of the contrary before abandoning a position that, in their eyes, is the most moderate and balanced an interpreter of Kant can adopt. My purpose in this two-part essay is to urge them to think again. For while there can be no question of Kant's opposition to empiricism, it is equally certain that his praise for Hume was never freer or more unreserved than in respect of the latter's psycho-genetic approach to cognition. So, rather than supposing that Kant ipso facto rejected solutions to philosophical problems grounded on psychology when he rejected Hume's empiricism, it seems to me that the more moderate and balanced interpretive approach is to begin by supposing that Kant's transcendental philosophy is a species of philosophical psychology in the same mould as Hume's, differing from it only by virtue of involving a priori syntheses of a manifold of a priori intuition.

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.

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