Online research in philosophy

Abstract In ?Beyond the Myth of the Myth: A Kantian Theory of Non-Conceptual Content?, Robert Hanna argues for a very strong kind of non-conceptualism, and claims that this kind of non-conceptualism originally has been developed by Kant. But according to ?Kant?s Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects and the Gap in the B Deduction?, Kant?s non-conceptualism poses a serious problem for his argument for the objective validity of the categories, namely the problem that there is a gap in the B Deduction. This gap is that the B Deduction goes through only if conceptualism is true, but Kant is a non-conceptualist. In this paper, I will argue, contrary to what Hanna claims, that there is not a gap in the B Deduction.

This paper assesses the role of the Refutation of Idealism within the Critique of Pure Reason, as well as its relation to the treatment of idealism in the First Edition and to transcendental idealism more generally. It is argued that the Refutation is consistent with the Fourth Paralogism and that it can be considered as an extension of the Transcendental Deduction. While the Deduction, considered on its own, constitutes a 'regressive argument', the Refutation allows us to turn the Transcendental Analytic into a 'progressive argument' that proceeds by the synthetic method.

One of the most important pieces of philosophical argument is undoubtedly Kant’s ‘Deduction of the Categories’ in his Critique of Pure Reason. It offers arguably the best solution to a perennial topic in philosophy, namely the secure grounding of knowledge. At the same time, it is considered one of the most obscure texts in the whole of philosophy. There is no unanimity among scholars as regards the structure, meaning and validity of its argument. In the book, I offer a thoroughgoing, analytic account of the arguments of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories – in its more streamlined B-version - that is different from existing interpretations in at least one important aspect. Contrary to the received interpretation, I take Kant’s controversial claim that the categories are derivable from a unitary principle, namely the principle of apperception (cf. A67=B92; B142), absolutely seriously. The consensus among the majority of Kant scholars is that such a claim is presumptuous and that if it is Kant’s claim, it cannot be defended. However, I provide a systematic defense of this claim and explain (1) how each of the categories indeed develops out of the unity of apperception and (2) how all of the categories systematically hang together, which proves the equally controversial completeness claim with regard to the categories. I contend that only thus can the thrust of Kant’s reasoning in the Deduction be fully grasped as a philosophical proof. The central contention of the book is that without an account of the derivation claim a genuine understanding of the Deduction, which is at the centre of Kant’s theory of knowledge, is not possible.

In this way, I am going against the current view that the Deduction is not a proof in the strict philosophical sense of the word. In doing so, the book will go beyond the standard approach in the literature, which, first, shies away from deriving the categories from a single source and, secondly, is content to give an account of their global applicability ‘en bloc’ to experience. It will be shown in the book that Kant’s argument for the applicability of each of the categories to objects of experience is not only coherent with a logical, a priori, exposition of the constraints of discursive thought as such, of which the principle of apperception is the focal point, but also crucially dependent on it.

In the transcendental deduction, the central argument of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seeks to secure the objective validity of our basic categories of thought. He distinguishes objective and subjective sides of this argument. The latter side, the subjective deduction, is normally understood as an investigation of our cognitive faculties. It is identified with Kant’s account of a threefold synthesis involved in our cognition of objects of experience, and it is said to precede and ground Kant’s proof of the validity of the categories in the objective deduction. I challenge this standard reading of the subjective deduction, arguing, first, that there is little textual evidence for it, and, second, that it encourages a problematic conception of how the deduction works. In its place, I present a new reading of the subjective deduction. Rather than being a broad investigation of our cognitive faculties, it should be seen as addressing a specific worry that arises in the course of the objective deduction. The latter establishes the need for a necessary connection between our capacities for thinking and being given objects, but Kant acknowledges that his readers might struggle to comprehend how these seemingly independent capacities are coordinated. Even worse, they might well believe that in asserting this necessary connection, Kant’s position amounts to an implausible subjective idealism. The subjective deduction ismeant to allay these concerns by showing that they rest on a misunderstanding of the relation between these faculties. This new reading of the subjective deduction offers a better fit with Kant’s text. It also has broader implications, for it reveals the more philosophically plausible account of our relation to the world as thinkers that Kant is defending – an account that is largely obscured by the standard reading of the subjective deduction.

Abstract This paper is about the nature of the relationship between (1) the doctrine of Non-Conceptualism about mental content, (2) Kant?s Transcendental Idealism, and (3) the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Categories, in the B (1787) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e., the B Deduction. Correspondingly, the main thesis of the paper is this: (1) and (2) yield serious problems for (3), yet, in exploring these two serious problems for the B Deduction, we also discover some deeply important and perhaps surprising philosophical facts about Kant?s theory of cognition and his metaphysics.

I take up Kant's remarks about a "transcendental deduction" of the "concepts of space and time" (A87/B119-120). I argue for the need to make a clearer assessment of the philosophical resources of the Aesthetic in order to account for this transcendental deduction. Special attention needs to be given to the fact that the central task of the Aesthetic is simply the "exposition" of these concepts. The Metaphysical Exposition reflects upon facts about our usage to reveal our commitment to the idea that these concepts refer to pure intuitions. But the legitimacy of these concepts still hangs in the balance: these concepts may turn out to refer to nothing real at all. The subsequent Transcendental Exposition addresses this issue. The objective validity of the concepts of space and time, and hence their transcendental deduction, hinges on careful treatment of this last point.

This book is a foray into the thorny interpretive issue of what to make of Kant's so-called "Metaphysical Deduction" of the categories. As with many of the arguments in the first Critique, the claim of the Metaphysical Deduction is easier to make out than its argument. The claim is that by some or other reference to "general logic," one may obtain a "transcendental logic," i.e., a justification (or "deduction") of the categories (of the understanding) necessary to the (very) possibility of experience. But how? By, Kant says, discerning, in general logic, a "clue" to transcendental logic. But what sort of clue? And then what clue exactly? We need a meta-clue to get a clue.Herein lies the very mixed reception the ..

James Van Cleve has argued that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the categories shows, at most, that we must apply the categories to experience. And this falls short of Kant’s aim, which is to show that they must so apply. In this discussion I argue that once we have noted the differences between the first and second editions of the Deduction, this objection is less telling. But Van Cleve’s objection can help illuminate the structure of the B Deduction, and it suggests an interesting reason why the rewriting might have been thought necessary.

This paper considers how Descartes's and Hume's sceptical challenges were appropriated by Christian Wolff and Johann Nicolaus Tetens specifically in the context of projects related to Kant's in the transcendental deduction. Wolff introduces Descartes's dream hypothesis as an obstacle to his account of the truth of propositions, or logical truth, which he identifies with the 'possibility' of empirical concepts. Tetens explicitly takes Hume's account of our idea of causality to be a challenge to the `reality' of transcendent concepts in general, a challenge he addresses by locating the source of this concept in the understanding rather than in the imagination. After considering this background, I turn to Kant's deployment of apparently traditional sceptical concerns at the outset of the transcendental deduction and argue that he does not there intend to introduce a global sceptical challenge and, accordingly, that there are historical grounds for doubting that the transcendental deduction is intended as an anti-sceptical argument.

Kant wrote two versions of the Transcendental Deduction, the first, “A-”Deduction in 1781, and the second, “B-”Deduction in 1787. Since Henrich's “The Proof Structure of Kant's Transcendental Deduction”, most work on the Transcendental Deduction attempts to make sense of the B-Deduction's two-step argument structure. Though the A-Deduction has suffered comparative neglect, it has received some attention from interpreters who take its extended treatment of the “subjective” side of cognition to amount to a brand of proto-functionalism. Whatever the merits and demerits of these proto-functionalist approaches, they tend to deemphasize the two arguments that constitute the “objective” side of the A-Deduction, the “argument from above” and then the “argument from below”. Since Kant himself refers to this objective side of the A-Deduction as the “Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding”, it is surprising that the structure of these arguments has not received closer scrutiny. This is doubly true since Kant actually claims that his revisions for the 1787 version of the Deduction impacted only the “presentation” of it. Any lessons learned from the central arguments of the A-Deduction should help clarify the structure of its younger and more closely studied brother.