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Forthcoming
Kant’s
Principle of Sense (The British
Journal for the History of Philosophy)
Kant held that
for a concept to have “sense and significance” [Sinn und Bedeutung], it must be
possible to experience an instantiation of this concept. Call
this Kant’s
“principle of sense.” In this paper, I first argue, in Part I, that
Kant’s principle helps us to understand the point of the Transcendental
Deduction in Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason: its purpose is to establish that
instantiations of Kant’s categories do appear to us and thus that the
categories pass the principle of sense. Part II of my paper is
dedicated to explaining the meaning of the principle. It is most
naturally construed as a semantic principle. I argue, on the contrary,
that it is best understood as an epistemological principle, since sense
and significance is best understood as an epistemological property. In
Part III, I consider rationales for why Kant holds the principle of
sense and conclude with a proposal of my own, a proposal that takes
seriously that none of Kant's rationalist opponents would be inclined
to accept it.
In Progress
Kant’s
Theory of Perception
What
is Kant’s theory of perception? In particular, what is for Kant the nature of
the “mind-world relation” unique to the perception of objects? Should we read
Kant as holding that we directly experience our sensible representations and
thereby, indirectly, experience objective reality? This would be a sense-datum
analysis of Kant’s theory of perception. Or should we read Kant as holding that
we directly experience objective reality itself, with our sensible
representations bringing us into contact with that reality but not themselves
being objects of experience? This would be an intentionalist analysis of Kant.
In Part I of my paper, I consider how sense-datum and intentionalist readings
of Kant fare. I argue that neither captures important aspects of his thought. In Part II, I defend a synthesis of
sense-datum and intentionalist readings, paying special attention to Kant’s
notion of inner sense. In Part III, I modify this analysis to account for his
transcendental idealism, although I also articulate the difficulties that
Kant’s idealism creates for (what I argue is) his underlying theory of
perception.
Transcendental
Idealism: A New Approach
Kant’s transcendental
idealism implies that we can cognize things as they appear but not as they are
“in themselves.” The distinction between
things as they appear and things as they are in themselves is perhaps the
greatest sticking point in interpretation of transcendental idealism. In Part I of this paper, I consider three broad
readings of transcendental idealism and argue that the difficulties that they
run into yield three distinct criteria that a reading of transcendental
idealism ought to satisfy. In Part II, I
begin to articulate a new analysis, one that incorporates elements from the
previous three. The chief innovation
that I introduce is a way of explaining how Kant thinks that we might “put
into” the content of our experiences spatio-temporality without committing Kant
to a kind of phenomenalism or committing him to the view that our experiences
are massively illusory. In Part III, I
address an objection: that this reading commits
the transcendental idealist to the impossibility of illusion and
hallucination. I conclude in Part IV
with brief remarks on how my reading accounts for the “problem of affection”
and Kant’s view of freedom.
Kant
and Autonomy of the Imagination
It is
often said that for Kant all synthesis is “guided” by concepts. I argue
otherwise. In particular, we cannot understand the Transcendental
Deduction of Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason unless we recognize his appeal to a pre-conceptual
synthesis of the imagination.
Dissertation
The Groundwork of Kant's Metaphysics of Experience
An Essay on the Transcendental Deduction's Contribution to the Analytic of Principles in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (2007)
Abstract
Contents
Note on Abbreviations, Style, and Diagrams
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: Who Cares About the Transcendental Deduction?
2. The Principles of Pure Understanding: Mere Transcendental Psychology?
2.1. The Axioms and the Anticipations (and Synthesis of the Imagination)
2.2. The First Analogy
2.3. The Second Analogy
2.4. The Third Analogy
3. Transcendental Idealism: A Partial Answer
3.1. Ontological Readings
3.2. Two-Aspect Readings
3.3. A Third Way
3.4. Transcendental Idealism and the Principles
4. Kant’s Principle of Sense: Another Problem
4.1. The Principle of Sense and the Categories
4.2. The Meaning of the Principle of Sense
4.3. Why Hold the Principle of Sense?
5. The Transcendental Deduction: One Answer to Two Problems
5.1. The First Half of the B-Deduction
5.2. Interlude: The Proof Structure of the B-Deduction
5.3. Completing the B-Deduction
5.4. Conclusion
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In
my dissertation I elucidate the relationship, often neglected, between
the Transcendental Deduction and the Principles of Pure Understanding
in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I argue that the Transcendental Deduction provides important groundwork on which the arguments of the Principles rest.
I defend the claim that the Deduction provides this
groundwork in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I begin to articulate the nature
of the grounding relationship. If one considers the arguments of the
Principles in isolation from the earlier sections of the Critique, they
seem far from establishing their conclusions. They establish at best
how the world must appear to us, not how it is. The Transcendental
Deduction, I argue, is part of the answer to how Kant draws the
stronger conclusion.
The other part is a proper understanding of transcendental
idealism. In Chapter 3, I consider two major schools of interpretation
of transcendental idealism and defend a hybrid. The upshot of this
analysis is that in order for Kant to appeal to transcendental idealism
to establish that the objective world—the world of appearances—is as
the theses of the Principles say, he must establish that the properties
picked out by these principles appear to us in experience and are not
properties that we merely attribute to the world. The Transcendental
Deduction is supposed to show that these properties—“categorial”
properties—do so appear.
I argue in Chapter 4 that the Transcendental
Deduction contributes in a second way. Kant holds what I call his
“principle of sense.” If categorial properties cannot appear to us,
then according to the principle of sense, the theses of the Principles
will lack “sense and significance.” By showing, in the Deduction, that
categorial properties appear to us, Kant shows that the categories pass
the principle of sense.
I conclude my dissertation in Chapter 5. In this chapter,
I elucidate the argument of the Transcendental Deduction to show that
the goals that I attribute to it really are its goals. Additionally, I
argue that my analysis answers the problem of the so-called “proof
structure” of the B-Deduction and that Kant’s synthesis of the
imagination is not properly said to operate under the “guidance” of
concepts.
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