Kant on Demarcation and Discovery

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Logic Of Discovery ◽  
Transcendental Illusion

AbstractKant makes two claims in the Critique of Pure Reason that anticipate concerns of twentieth-century philosophy of science. The first, that the understanding and sensibility are constitutive of knowledge, while reason is responsible for transcendental illusion, amounts to his solution to Karl Popper’s “problem” of demarcating science from pseudoscience. The second, that besides these constitutive roles of the understanding and sensibility, reason is itself needed to discover new empirical knowledge, anticipates Hans Reichenbach’s distinction between the “contexts” of justification and discovery. Unlike Reichenbach, however, who thinks that there can be a “logic” only of justification, Kant provides what amounts to a logic of discovery. Though Kant’s broader concerns are not Popper’s or Reichenbach’s, using theirs as framing devices reveals two otherwise unnoticed things about the Critique of Pure Reason. First, besides its general epistemological and metaphysical aims, the Critique lays groundwork for the twentieth century’s specialized field of the philosophy of science. Second, Kant’s solution to the demarcation problem contradicts his logic of discovery, so in this instance the Critique is too ambitious.

The Aim of the Critique of Pure Reason

Dialogue ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-312
Author(s):  
D. P. Dryer
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Ernst Cassirer ◽  
Hermann Cohen

My topic is historical rather than philosophical. I want to consider what Kant aimed to achieve in the Critique of Pure Reason. In 1909 Prichard wrote, “Kant's problem is similar to Locke's. Locke states that his purpose is to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge.” Many have maintained that Kant's purpose was to mediate between rationalism and empiricism in epistemology. Hermann Cohen held that the aim of the Critique is to provide a theory of experience, an account of empirical knowledge. Ernst Cassirer and other neo-Kantians have held that its aim is to furnish a philosophy of science.

scholarly journals The Possibility Proof is Not What Remains from Kant's Beweisgrund

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-242
Author(s):  
Michael Oberst
Keyword(s):  
Pure Reason ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Common View ◽  
Transcendental Illusion

AbstractThe so-called ‘possibility proof’ in Kant's pre-Critical Beweisgrund has been widely discussed in the literature, and it is a common view that he never really abandoned it. As I shall argue, this reading is mistaken. I aim to show that the natural illusion in the Critique of Pure Reason, which is usually taken to be the possibility proof turned into a transcendental illusion, has both a different conclusion and a different argument than the possibility proof. Rather, what remains from Beweisgrund is what I will call the ‘proof a posteriori’, which the Critique turns into a transcendental illusion that is of regulative use for reason.

Metaphilosophical Pluralism and Paraconsistency

1998 ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
M.E. Orellana Benado ◽  
Andrés Bobenrieth ◽  
Carlos Verdugo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Research Program ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Other Hand

In a famous passage, Kant claimed that controversy and the lack of agreement in metaphysics — here understood as philosophy as a whole — was a ‘scandal.’ Attempting to motivate his critique of pure reason, a project aimed at both ending the scandal and setting philosophy on the ‘secure path of science,’ Kant endorsed the view that for as long as disagreement reigned sovereign in philosophy, there would be little to be learned from it as a science. The success of philosophy begins when controversy ends and culminates when the discipline itself as it has been known disappears. On the other hand, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, many have despaired of the very possibility of philosophy constituting the search for truth, that is to say, a cognitive human activity, and constituting thus a source of knowledge. This paper seeks to sketch a research program that is motivated by an intuition that opposes both of these views.

Metaphilosophical Pluralism and Paraconsistency

1998 ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
Andrés Bobenrieth ◽  
Orellana Benado Carlos Verdugo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Research Program ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Other Hand

In a famous passage, Kant claimed that controversy and the lack of agreement in metaphysics—here understood as philosophy as a whole—was a ‘scandal.’ Attempting to motivate his critique of pure reason, a project aimed at both ending the scandal and setting philosophy on the ‘secure path of science,’ Kant endorsed the view that for as long as disagreement reigned sovereign in philosophy, there would be little to be learned from it as a science. The success of philosophy begins when controversy ends and culminates when the discipline itself as it has been known disappears. On the other hand, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, many have despaired of the very possibility of philosophy constituting the search for truth, that is to say, a cognitive human activity, and constituting thus a source of knowledge. This paper seeks to sketch a research program that is motivated by an intuition that opposes both of these views.

The Satisfaction of Reason: The Mathematical/Dynamical Distinction in the Critique of Pure Reason

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent Adkins
Keyword(s):  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Common Response ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

In the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant explicitly states that his motivation for writing this work is to make room for faith or the practical employment of reason (Bxxv, xxx). How does Kant accomplish this? The topics of God and the immortality of the soul do not arise until the conclusion of the antinomies. How does Kant get from the desire to make room for faith to its fulfilment in the latter parts of the first Critique? A common response to this question is a discussion of the constitutive and regulative employment of the ideas of reason. It is this distinction that sustains Kant's attempt at reconciling empirical knowledge and moral discourse. The constitutive and regulative analysis, however, has its roots deep within the initial stages of the Critique of Pure Reason. It is, in fact, the mathematical/dynamical distinction, which Kant introduces early in the analytic, that makes possible the constitutive/regulative distinction. Not only has the mathematical/ dynamical distinction itself been disregarded, but the relation between the mathematical/dynamical and the constitutive/ regulative has been almost universally ignored by commentators. If a commentator does mention the mathematical/dynamical distinction, it is usually in a dismissive tone. Walsh, for example, calls the distinction ‘hard to interpret’ and ignores it for the rest of his commentary.

Realität als vermeintliche Grenze der Erkenntnis: Hegels Metaphysik im Anschluss an und in Abgrenzung zu Kant

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-417
Author(s):  
Ermylos Plevrakis
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Kantian View ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
True Knowledge ◽  
Scientific System ◽  
Aristotelian Metaphysics

While Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason aims to 'humiliate' reason by declining any possibility of knowledge of things 'in themselves', he does conceive such critique as 'the necessary preparation for a thoroughly scientific system of metaphysics'. In this paper I examine in what sense Hegel's Science of Logic goes beyond that Kantian view without neither relapsing back into dogmatic metaphysics nor turning into a mere pragmatism. I argue that reality in itself is ontologically deficient so that it is already reality itself (and not just the categories of understanding) that makes true knowledge of real things impossible. Nonetheless I contend that there is something in Hegel's Science of Logic that is truly absolute and turns Logic into 'a thoroughly scientific system of metaphysics', namely what Hegel calls the Concept or the Absolute Idea. Furthermore I point out the concrete importance of these metaphysical claims for human theoretical and practical knowledge. This finally provides a new reading of Hegel's Logic as a de-ontologised Aristotelian metaphysics that not just claims to regulate empirical knowledge in a Kantian manner, but to also conceptually constitute reality 'in itself'.

How is Metaphysics Possible as a Science?

Dialogue ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-595
Author(s):  
M. E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason

Though Kant himself would undoubtedly have thought it a scandal that differing interpretations of his Critique of Pure Reason would continue to be given well into the twentieth century, the fact may be that it is less a scandal than a testament to the richness, depth and enduring vitality of his thought. In any case several major books on the first Critique have appeared within the last few years. D. P. Dryer's Kant's Solution for Verification in Metaphysics is one of the most substantial.

scholarly journals Categories and Logical Forms in Kant’s Metaphysical Deduction

MANUSYA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Soraj Hongladarom
Keyword(s):  
Formal Logic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Radical Skepticism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Face

Compared with the other sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the Metaphysical Deduction is among the most obscure and it seems that the section has not received as much critical and interpretive attention as its cousin, the Transcendental Deduction. This is rather surprising because it is at the Metaphysical Deduction that Kant crucial in establishing his program of justifying empirical knowledge in the face of radical skepticism. It is argued in this paper that the connection between the two types of logic is as follows: the logical forms, which belong to formal logic, are the ratio cognoscendi of the Pure Concepts of Understanding, since they provide the key to knowing the latter. On the other hand, the categories are the ratio essendi of the Logical forms, for it is the former that are the condition of the possibility of the latter.

scholarly journals Transformations of Transcendental Philosophy: Wolff, Kant, and Hegel

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 50-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin de Boer
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
A Priori Knowledge ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Common View ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
The One ◽  
Priori Knowledge

Kant's philosophy is generally known as transcendental philosophy or transcendental idealism, terms often thought to describe the inquiry into the subjective conditions of empirical knowledge carried out in theCritique of Pure Reason. On this conception of transcendental philosophy Kant is seen to pursue a project very different from both Wolffian metaphysics and Hegelian speculative science. This view is confirmed by scholars who compare Kant's conception of transcendental philosophy to the Scholastics' conception of ‘transcendentals’ such as unity, truth, and perfection. On their account, there remains a puzzling gap between, on the one hand, the scholastic conception of the most general determinations of all beings and, on the other hand, Kant's investigation into the conditions of possibility of experience.In this article I want to challenge this common view of Kant's transcendental philosophy for two reasons. The first reason concerns the question of how theCritique of Pure Reasonitself should be read. I take the view that in the firstCritiqueKant's primary aim is to determine the conditions of synthetic a priori knowledge rather than to identify the a priori conditions of empirical knowledge. Since metaphysics was traditionally considered to be the discipline that possessed a priori knowledge of things, this view makes good sense of Kant's presentation of theCritique of Pure Reasonas a work intended to transform metaphysics into a science. In this article I hope to clarify the nature of this transformation by determining the elements which Kant's transcendental philosophy has in common with Wolff's ontology, as well as the respects in which Kant turns against Wolff. I thus hope to solve some of the riddles posed by Kant's use of the term ‘transcendental philosophy’ in theCritique of Pure Reason.

Kant's Cognitive Semantics, Newton's Rule Four of Philosophy and Scientific Realism

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Westphal
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Gravitational Force ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Original Version ◽  
Cognitive Semantics ◽  
Constructive Empiricism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason

Kant'sCritique of Pure Reasoncontains an original and powerful semantics of singular cognitive reference which has important implications for epistemology and for philosophy of science. Here I argue that Kant's semantics directly and strongly supports Newton's Rule 4 of (natural) Philosophy in ways which support Newton's realism about gravitational force. I begin with Newton's Rule 4 of Philosophy and its role in Newton's justification of realism about gravitational force (§II). Next I briefly summarize Kant's semantics of singular cognitive reference (§III). I then show that the key point of Kant's cognitive semantics is embedded in and strongly supports Newton's Rule 4, and that it rules out not only Cartesian physics (perHarper) but also Cartesian, infallibilist presumptions about empirical justification generally (§IV). Finally, I argue that Kant's semantics reveals a key defect in the original version of Bas van Fraassen's anti-realist ‘Constructive Empiricism’, and in many common objections to realism (§V). Fortunately, Kant's semantics of singular cognitive reference stands independently of his Transcendental Idealism; nothing I argue in this paper depends at all upon that doctrine.In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions. (Newton 1999: 796)

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