Syntheticity and Recent Metaphysical Readings of Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason

Kant-Studien ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-132
Author(s):  
Simon R. Gurofsky
Keyword(s):  
Critical Period ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

AbstractMetaphysical readings of Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the Critical period are ascendant. But their possibility assumes the possibility of existence- and real-possibility-judgments about things in themselves. I argue that Kant denies the latter possibility, so metaphysical readings have dubious prospects. First, I show that Kant takes existence- and real-possibility-judgments, as necessarily synthetic, to require a relation to sensible intuition. Second, I show that the most promising metaphysical readings can ultimately neither satisfy nor explain away that requirement for existence- and real-possibility-judgments about things in themselves. I conclude with pessimistic reflections on the prospects for the metaphysical interpretive project.

Kant’s Material Condition of Real Possibility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Leech
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
Rational Theology ◽  
Material Condition

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.

Some Persistent Presumptions of Hegelian Anti-Subjectivism

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Karl Ameriks
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Critical System ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

This chapter responds primarily to a recent criticism of Kant by Stephen Houlgate. Like many other recent Hegelian accounts, Houlgate’s severe critique of Kant’s theoretical philosophy contends that, in contrast to Hegel, Kant’s Critical system, especially because of its doctrine of transcendental idealism, presupposes a subjectivist and therefore inadequate position. On the basis of a moderate interpretation of Kant’s idealism and his general Critical procedure, the chapter defends Kant from the charge of subjectivism, and also gives an account of how subjectivist interpretations in general can arise from a series of understandable misunderstandings of difficult passages in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

scholarly journals THE LOGIC AND TOPOLOGY OF KANT’S TEMPORAL CONTINUUM

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-206
Author(s):  
RICCARDO PINOSIO ◽  
MICHIEL VAN LAMBALGEN
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
And Topology ◽  
Transcendental Theory ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

AbstractIn this paper we provide a mathematical model of Kant’s temporal continuum that yields formal correlates for Kant’s informal treatment of this concept in theCritique of Pure Reasonand in other works of his critical period. We show that the formal model satisfies Kant’s synthetic a priori principles for time (whose consistence is not obvious) and that it even illuminates what “faculties and functions” must be in place, as “conditions for the possibility of experience”, for time to satisfy such principles. We then present a mathematically precise account of Kant’s transcendental theory of time—the most precise account to date.Moreover, we show that the Kantian continuum which we obtain has some affinities with the Brouwerian continuum but that it also has “infinitesimal intervals” consisting of nilpotent infinitesimals; these allow us to capture Kant’s theory of rest and motion in theMetaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.While our focus is on Kant’s theory of time the material in this paper is more generally relevant for the problem of developing a rigorous theory of the phenomenological continuum, in the tradition of Whitehead, Russell, and Weyl among others.

scholarly journals Of empty thoughts and blind intuitions Kant's answer to McDowell

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günter Zöller
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
The Real ◽  
Myth Of The Given ◽  
Passive Data ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Given ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

This paper examines the relation between intuition and concept in Kant in light of John McDowell's neo-Kantian position that intuitions are concept-laden.2 The focus is on Kant's twofold pronouncement that thoughts without content are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind. I show that intuitions as singular representations are not instances of passive data intake but the result of synthetic unification of the given manifold of the senses by the power of the imagination under the guidance of the understanding. Against McDowell I argue that the amenability of intuitions to conceptual determination is not due some pre-existing, absolute conceptuality of the real but to the "work of the subject."3 On a more programmatic level, this paper seeks to demonstrate the limitations of a selective appropriation of Kant and the philosophical potential of a more comprehensive and thorough consideration of his work. Section 1 addresses the unique balance in Kant's philosophy between the work on particular problems and the orientation toward a systematic whole. Section 2 outlines McDowell's take on the Kantian distinction between intuition and concept in the context of the Kant readings by Sellars and Strawson. Section 3 exposes McDowell's relapse into the Myth of the Given. Section 4 proposes a reading of Kant's theoretical philosophy as an epistemology of metaphysical cognition. Section 5 details Kant's original account of sensible intuition in the Inaugural-Dissertation of 1770. Section 6 presents the transition from the manifold of the senses to the synthesis in the imagination and the unification through the categories in the Critique of pure reason (1781 and 1787). Section 7 addresses Kant's formalism in epistemology and metaphysics.

Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andree Hahmann
Keyword(s):  
Critical Period ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Critical Argument ◽  
Apparent Change ◽  
The One ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

AbstractKant’s postulate of the immortality of the soul has received strikingly little attention among Kant scholars, and only very few have regarded it positively. This is not surprising given the numerous problems associated with his argument. However, it is not the only argument for immortality that Kant offers in his critical philosophy. There is also a second argument that differs from the one furnished in the Second Critique and can be found both in the Critique of Pure Reason and later texts from the 1790s. Kant also addresses here many of the problems that interpreters have found with his postulate of immortality in both earlier and later texts. This paper considers the main difficulties associated with the postulate and proposes a coherent interpretation of Kant’s argument. I show that despite the apparent change in his approach to immortality Kant did not in fact substantially alter his position during his critical period.

From “Possible Worlds” to “Possible Experience”. Real Possibility in Leibniz and Kant

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Osvaldo Ottaviani
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Real Possibility ◽  
The Real ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Metaphysics Of Modality

AbstractThis paper moves from a disagreement with those interpreters who explain Kant’s doctrine of real possibility in terms of possible worlds. It seems to me that a possible world framework is too much indebted to the Leibnizian metaphysics of modality and, therefore, cannot serve to make sense of Kant’s theses. Leibniz’s theory of possibility, indeed, has been deeply criticized in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (CPR). Interestingly enough, however, Kant’s principal argument for rejecting that the field of what is possible is greater than the field of what is real was already anticipated by Leibniz. However, Leibniz employed it to demonstrate that there cannot be more than one actual world only (the others being purely possible ones). Moving from this fact, I argue that there is a certain tension between what Leibniz says about the actual world and his commitment to a plurality of possible worlds conceived as ideas in God’s mind. The first part of my paper is devoted to show that such a tension can be traced back to Leibniz’s claims about the relation between the possible and the real. In the second part, then, I maintain that Kant’s theory of real possibility grows from a dissatisfaction with (and a rejection of) Leibniz’s attempted solution to the problem of characterizing a kind of possibility narrower than the merely logical one and, nonetheless, not identical with existence. Finally, I present a short account of Kant’s theory of real possibility, based on the notion of transcendental conditions as conditions of possibility of experience, showing how it works in the case of the forms of intuition.

Identity, Appearances, and Things in Themselves

Dialogue ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ermanno Bencivenga
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Possible World Semantics ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

In his lucid and perceptive essay, “Recent Work on Kant's Theoretical Philosophy”, Karl Ameriks signals Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves as one of the (two) “central issues” of the Critique of Pure Reason. The reason why the issue is central (and complicated) is that Kant appears to say contradictory things on the matter. At times he says (or implies) that appearances are the same as things in themselves, and at other times he says (or implies) that they are different. Some interpreters have tried to make sense of these contradictions by claiming that “although for Kant there are not two objects involved, there are still two transcendental and intelligible aspects or points of view that are called for by his doctrine of things in themselves and appearances”. However, it is not immediately clear what kind of an animal an aspect or a point of view is, what kind of operation it is to “look at” an object from such different points of view, and what kind of results this operation is supposed to give. In the present paper, I make a fresh proposal. I propose to interpret Kant's conflicting claims on the relation between things in themselves and appearances in terms of the contemporary framework of possible-world semantics.

Kant’s Account of Intuition

1991 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorne Falkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
Singular Representation ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

Kant supposed that we possess two distinct cognitive capacities, which he referred to as ‘intuition’ (Anschauung) and ‘understanding’ or ‘intellect’ (Verstand). This ‘two-faculty account of cognition’ lies at the foundation of his theoretical philosophy, and almost everything he has to say in the Critique of Pure Reason presupposes it. But it is also problematic. At the outset of the Critique Kant simply assumes the validity of the distinction, without in any way attempting to justify it. And one looks in vain through the Kantian corpus for any explanation that might legitimate it. To make matters worse, Kant does not always draw the distinction in the same way. Most notoriously, he presents two quite different accounts of intuition, defining it in some places as ‘singular representation’ (A713=B741; Logic §6), in others as ‘immediate cognition’ (A19=B33).

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