This volume is devoted entirely to exploring the role of animals in the thought of Immanuel Kant. Leading scholars address questions regarding the possibility of objective representation and intentionality in animals, the role of animals in Kant's scientific picture of nature, the status of our moral responsibilities to animals' welfare, and more.

Towards the conclusion of the First Section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant describes a process whereby a subject can undergo a kind of moral corruption. This process, which he calls a “natural dialectic”, can cause one to undermine one’s own or¬dinary grasp of the demands of morality. Kant also claims that this natural dialectic is the basis of the need for moral philosophy itself, since first-order moral reasoning is insufficient to protect against it. I show that (...) this passage is closely related to another in the First Section, one where Kant warns against the threat of “misology”, or the hatred of reason. I argue that both these passages must be read as engaging with specific claims from Rousseau’s writings. Uncovering the historical context and rhetorical function of Kant’s account of moral self-deception can re-orient the reader to his ambitions for the Groundwork itself. (shrink)

The role of analogy appears in surprisingly different areas of the first Critique. On the one hand, Kant considered the concept to have a specific enough meaning to entitle the principle concerned with causation an analogy; on the other hand we can find Kant referring to analogy in various parts of the Transcendental Dialectic in a seemingly different manner. Whereas in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant takes some time to provide a detailed (if not clear) account of the meaning of the (...) term ‘analogy’ and his reasons for his employment of it, in the Transcendental Dialectic on the other hand, Kant’s employment of the term seems far less technical. It would seem on the face of it, that Kant has two senses of ‘analogy’: one technical sense reserved for those constitutive principles of the understanding as laid out in the Analytic, and another casual and commonplace use of the term. This picture, although it contains elements of truth, is ultimately misleading. I argue for three claims in this paper. Firstly, I suggest that there can be found in the first Critique a unified conception of analogy. Secondly, I argue that Kant self-consciously differentiated his employment of analogy from the employment that can be found in many early modern philosophers, e.g. Locke. Thirdly, I will tentatively suggest that this interpretation of analogy can aid us in addressing certain contentious areas of transcendental idealism, most notably the account of causation. (shrink)

I argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism and Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics are both examples of what I call methodological conservativism. Methodological conservativism involves the claim that a subset of common first-order beliefs is immune to revision. I argue that there are striking differences between their respective commitments to this position, however. For Kant, his conservativism is based upon a commitment to the reliability of particular results of the sciences of his day. For Strawson, in contrast, his conservativism is based upon his (...) attempted liberation of arguments for the necessity of a certain conceptual scheme from any particular scientific commitments. In fact, for Strawson, no change in scientific commitments could displace the conceptual scheme employed to navigate the manifest world of ordinary perceptual experience. Each approach brings with it challenges with regard to how to accommodate potential scientific theory change. (shrink)

It is often maintained that one insight of Kant's Critical philosophy is its recognition of the need to distinguish accounts of knowledge acquisition from knowledge justification. In particular, it is claimed that Kant held that the detailing of a concept's acquisition conditions is insufficient to determine its legitimacy. I argue that this is not the case at least with regard to geometrical concepts. Considered in the light of his pre-Critical writings on the mathematical method, construction in the Critique can be (...) seen to be a form of concept acquisition, one that is related to the modal phenomenology of geometrical judgement. (shrink)

Strawson's philosophical attitude towards scepticism is frequently thought to have undergone a significant shift from the “strong” or “robust” employment of transcendental arguments in Individuals to a more “modest” understanding of the efficacy of such arguments in Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. I argue that this interpretation is based upon a misunderstanding of the function of transcendental arguments in Strawson's earlier works. Examining the continuity of Strawson's modest naturalistic approach to scepticism can offer some insight as to the continuing overestimation (...) of the anti-sceptical efficacy of transcendental arguments. (shrink)

It is quite common when explicating the nature of Kant's break with the preceding Early Modern tradition to cite his attitude towards the acquisition and deployment of concepts. It is claimed that Kant sought to distinguish two tasks that had become unfortunately intertwined and conflated — explaining how we come to acquire our concepts on the one hand and showing how we are justified in deploying them in judgement on the other. This conflation can be expressed in terms of a (...) conflation of the natural and the normative, of descriptive and prescriptive questions. The topic of the conditions ofconcept-possession, i.e. how we have come to possess the concepts that we do, is an entirely psychological inquiry, involving ‘natural’ descriptive inquiries. The topic ofconcept-deployment, the story about how we use our concepts in veridical judgements about the world, is an entirely philosophical question, since it involves the question of how weoughtto deploy those concepts in judgement. The fundamental distinction between the natural and the normative is drawn by Kant, it is claimed, in order to distinguish these two practices of acquisition and deployment.The manner in which this claim is expressed is through Kant's distinction between the question of fact (quaestio facti) and the question of right (quaestio juris). I want to claim that a proper understanding of this distinction doesn't support this notion of Kant's ‘normative turn’. In fact, the distinction is best understood within an interpretation whereby Kant is understood as continuing to endorse the Early Modern conviction that the provision of a concept's possession-conditionsissufficient to determine that concept's deployment-conditions, and that the task of the Transcendental Deduction is to determine thepossession-conditions for the Categories. (shrink)

It is well known that Kant uses the notion of the holy will in theGroundworkso as to contrast it with the finite wills of human beings. It is less clear, however, what function this contrast is supposed to perform. I argue that one role of the holy will is to illustrate transcendental idealism’s account of the relation between moral knowledge and moral practice. The position is one intended to negotiate between ostensibly competing traditions. Kant uses the holy will as a (...) way of endorsing the metaphysical picture of the scholastic tradition’s so-called ‘ethics of freedom’, whereby the ideal of moral perfection is conceived as the perfection of one’s power of freedom to the point where one is constitutively incapable of immoral action. This position is married however with the claim that the holy will’s inaccessibility to human cognition motivates a subject-oriented moral epistemology more usually associated with Enlightenment humanism. I conclude by claiming that the nuanced role for the holy will can be understood as part of Kant’s expansion of the value of religious faith [Glaube] to the domain of practical inquiry in general. (shrink)

It is well known that at the heart of Kant’s Critical philosophy is the claim that the mind possesses an essentially spontaneous power or capacity. It is also sometimes maintained that Kant’s appeals to this spontaneous power are intimately tied to his recognition of there being a fundamental and irreducible normative dimension to judgement. However, I attempt to complicate this picture by way of appeal to some less appreciated influences upon the development of Kant’s epistemology. A different conception of the (...) role of spontaneity in judgement has clear precedents, I claim, in the works of Cudworth and Rousseau. There the imagined role for the active power of the mind is not to identify criteria that might serve as norms for epistemically responsible judgement. Rather the spontaneous power of the mind is cited as the source of representational contents that secure the truth conditions of our everyday claims to empirical knowledge. (shrink)

Kant's particular philosophical position of transcendental idealism has been a less popular target for recovery than other broadly “Kantian” or “Critical” aspects of his thinking. This chapter outlines Kant's so‐called “Copernican Turn,” which is key to the methodological shift that makes transcendental idealism possible. It discusses the key terminologies of the Kantian project in the First Critique. The chapter then details how these concepts are put to positive use in validating certain traditional metaphysical concepts. It then explores the negative task (...) of Kant's project, which shows that certain other traditional metaphysical concepts are in his view incapable of either vindication or refutation. Finally, it examines how these negative restrictions of Kant's project are themselves geared towards a return to a positive register. Kant introduces or re‐introduces various pairs of notions to explain such achievements: a priori/a posteriori, concept/intuition, cognition/thought, receptive/spontaneous, synthetic/analytic, appearances/things in themselves. (shrink)

A short review of Contemporary Kantian Metaphysics.

A short review of Gascoigne's Scepticism.

Longer review of Waxman's recent book, Kant's Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

A well-known Kant scholar once said to me, "You know, I love to study Kant because I think he's right about everything!" While it may be unlikely that that or any other Kant scholar really believes that Kant was "right about everything," the statement reminds us that, roughly speaking, there are two kinds of philosopher: those who are fully invested in vindicating as much of Kant's thought as humanly possible, and those who are concerned that Kant's thought is in many (...) respects the culmination of a historical line of thought that is based on some deeply troubling premises. The authors of this volume seek to span this divide but ultimately fall heavily into the former camp. This, however, does not keep this volume... (shrink)

This book examines Aristotle's critical reaction to the mathematical cosmology of Plato's Academy, and traces the aporetic method by which he developed his own ...

Cleary discusses the origin, development, and use of the many senses of priority as a central thesis in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Cleary contends that one of the most revealing problems for the ambiguity of Aristotle’s relationship to Platonism is that of the ontological status of mathematical objects. In support of his claim, Cleary analyzes a curious passage from Aristotle’s _Topics, _where he appears to accept a schema of priorities that makes mathematical entities more substantial than sensible things. How does Aristotle try (...) to reconcile the ordering of things dictated by sciences like mathematics and dialectic with the ordering of sense experience upon which his own physics and metaphysics are based? To find the answer, Cleary reviews three different outlines of the many senses of priority given by Aristotle himself and found in _Categories _12-13, _Metaphysics _Delta 11, and _Metaphysics _Theta 8. Cleary suggests there is an implicit hierarchy for Aristotle that leads him to posit the Prime Mover at its apex as complete actuality and, therefore, as the focus for the concept of priority. Having reviewed Aristotle’s treatment of the many uses of priority, Cleary demonstrates how the concept is used in some typical arguments by Aristotle for his mature metaphysical positions. (shrink)

Interest in thought experiments (TEs) derives from the paradox: “How can findings that carry conviction result from a new experiment conducted entirely within the head?” Historical studies have established the importance of TEs in science but have proposed disparate hypotheses concerning the source of knowledge in TEs, ranging from empiricist to rationalist accounts. This article analyzes TEs in think‐aloud protocols of scientifically trained experts to examine more fine‐grained information about their use. Some TEs appear powerful enough to discredit an existing (...) theory—a disconfirmatory purpose. In addition, confirmatory and generative purposes were identified for other TEs. One can also use details in transcript data, including imagery reports and gestures, to provide evidence for a central role played by imagistic simulations in many TEs, and to suggest that these simulations can generate new knowledge using several sources, including the “extended application” of perceptual motor schemas, implicit prior knowledge, and spatial reasoning operations, in contrast to formal arguments. These sources suggest what it means for TEs to be grounded in embodied processes that can begin to explain the paradox above. This leads to a rationalistic view of TEs as using productive internal reasoning, but the view also acknowledges the historical role that experience with the world can play in forming certain schemas used in TEs. Understanding such processes could help provide a foundation for developing a larger model of scientific investigation processes grounded on imagistic simulation (Clement, 2008). (shrink)

... Dans le De principiis d'Origene, le chapitre 9 du tome II concerne le debut de la creation du monde, c'est-a-dire, selon la perspective de 1'auteur, ...

MODERN ARISTOTELIAN SCHOLARSHIP is heavily indebted to the German scholars of the nineteenth century who produced the Berlin Academy editions of Aristotle's corpus and of his Greek commentators. The foundations for this massive project were laid around the middle of the century by people like Schwegler, who edited and commented on Aristotle's Metaphysics. Yet, while acknowledging our debt to such exemplary scholarship, I want to cast doubt on one of his proposed emendations to Metaphysics 6.1, which influenced later editors like (...) W. D. Ross and Werner Jaeger. (shrink)

A CONCERN TO UNDERSTAND THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS of human freedom is as old as philosophy. Yet the question whether and in what sense human beings are free agents still provokes heated debate. Even a century ago, as William James began his discussion of the issue, he wondered, with some bemusement, whether there could possibly be any “juice” left in it! Happily, he concluded that there was still more to be said, but his eloquent defense of free will failed to (...) convince; it became just another chapter in the ongoing and seemingly endless dispute. In the years since, many additional essays and books have been written, covering every aspect and espousing every possible view of the matter. The deep disagreements continue. It is this very phenomenon, the remarkable persistence—and resistance—of the problem of freedom, upon which I wish to reflect. Why is it that after such a long history the same vigorous differences endure? Is it more than mere philosophical partisanship that keeps the discussants talking past one another? I believe that there is more to it. I suspect, much as Kant thought, that there is here a sort of antinomy in which valid but seemingly incompatible intuitions are expressed over and over again. Perhaps by considering this possibility we can, even now, squeeze out a bit more juice. (shrink)

Despite Platonism's unquestioned claim to being one of the most influential movements in the history of philosophy, for a long time the conventional wisdom was that Platonists of late antiquity, or Neoplatonists, were so focused on otherworldly metaphysics that they simply neglected any serious study of the sensible world, which after all is 'merely' an image of the intelligible world. Only recently has this conventional wisdom begun to be dispelled. In fact, it is precisely because these thinkers did see the (...) sensible world as an image of the intelligible world that they devoted so much time and energy to understanding its inner workings. Thus we find Neoplatonists writing on embryology, physiology, meteorology, and astronomy, among other subjects.Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature collects essays by leading international scholars in the field which shed new light on how the Neoplatonists sought to understand and explain nature and natural phenomena. It is thematically divided into two parts, with the first part--The General Metaphysics of Nature--directed at the explication of central Neoplatonic metaphysical doctrines and their relation to the natural world, and the second part--Platonic Approaches to Individual Sciences--showing how these same doctrines play out in individual natural sciences such as elemental physics, geography, and biology. Together these essays show that a serious examination of Neoplatonic natural philosophy has far-reaching consequences for our general understanding of the metaphysics of Platonism as well as for our evaluation of their place in the history of science. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY of nature is not currently considered standard fare in philosophy. Rather than the title of an area of inquiry, it has become the name of an isolated historical phenomenon—the Naturphilosophie of Schelling, Goethe, and Hegel, or a label for some school doctrine—the continuing tradition built upon the first books of Aristotle’s Physics or the newer one rooted in Whitehead’s Process and Reality. Philosophers do not typically see these systems of thought in terms of a common problematic, certainly not one (...) which is presently viable or important. (shrink)

This volume contains papers originally presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during 2005-6. Of the seven colloquia, two deal with topics in Neoplatonism, four are dedicated to Aristotle’s ethics and metaphysics, and one to Plato’s Republic.