In this ninth chapter of Interpreting Kant in Education, I respond to familiar criticisms in education theory of a dualism that is seen to be at the heart of Kant's philosophy. This, and related charges of a detached conception of mind, are addressed through a discussion of concepts—conceptual unity, conceptual distinctions, how these are learnt and developed, and the idea of a dynamic system of concepts. Sebastian Rödl's work on the general and particular is used to re-emphasise the unity of (...) the capacities in perception and experience, and to help show how thought and reality can be understood together. Alternative interpretations of Kant's terms, introduced through the chapters, are expanded on, to bring out more of the fine-tuned richness of Kant's view that is obscured in characterisations that make up the familiar ‘Kantian’ picture in education. The aim is to further delineate the Kant who is not a ‘Kantian’. (shrink)

This article discusses an interpretation of Kant's conception of transcendental subjectivity, which manages to avoid many of the concerns that have been raised by analytic interpreters over this doctrine. It is an interpretation put forward by selected C19 and early C20 neo-Kantian writers. The article starts out by offering a neo-Kantian interpretation of the object as something that is constituted by the categories and that serves as a standard of truth within a theory of judgment. The second part explicates transcendental (...) subjectivity as the system of categories, which is self-referential and constitutes objects, in order to then evaluate this conception by means of a comparison with Hegel's absolute subject. Rather than delineating the differences between neo-Kantian writers, the article systematically expounds a shared project, which consists in providing the ultimate foundation for judgments by means of an anti-psychologist and non-metaphysical interpretation of transcendental subjectivity. (shrink)

This dissertation’s contribution consists in providing a novel interpretation of the role time plays in Kant’s transcendental idealism. A significant part of Kant scholarship on the Critiques tends to assume that time, as understood in transcendental philosophy, is solely a formal property of intuition. This assumption has led several commentators to overlook a fundamental feature of transcendental idealism, namely, that in being the most basic form of intuition time is, also, a provider of content in and for experience. In looking (...) attentively at such feature this dissertation shows that time is the activity of the self that grounds the possibility of objectivity and explores the philosophical implications of such an interpretation. In the first Chapter I conduct a comprehensive survey of relevant literature and show that it is impossible to separate general metaphysics from transcendental logic in the context of Kant’s transcendental philosophy without making serious philosophical sacrifices. I then argue, in the second Chapter, that time is not merely a formal property of intuition but is, rather, the fundamental form of intuition and that, even if space is in no way reducible to, or derivable from it, time has nonetheless primacy over space on both logical and ontological grounds. From this I argue that by time, or self-affection, Kant understands the activity of subjectivity that brings about the possibility of relating to objects through the power of imagination. In the third Chapter, I show that such relation is not left wholly undetermined and that, instead, it occurs in accordance with the layout presented by Kant in the Table of Judgments, the Table of Pure Concepts of the Understanding, the Schemata and, importantly, in the System of Principles of the Understanding. I show that only an interpretation that acknowledges the systematicity found in the Analytic section of the Critique of Pure Reason can justify the distinction drawn by Kant between the mathematical and the dynamical and conclude, from that, that time does indeed provide a specific content in and for experience to be found in the Schematism doctrine. Finally, in the fourth Chapter I broaden the philosophical scope and inquire as to whether Kant has the theoretical means to articulate something like an uncategorized schema or time-determination. I conclude that, although in the Critical period Kant can do so only problematically, in the post-Critical period there are means to do so categorically: system, as such, is a time-determination for which the understanding lacks a pure concept. (shrink)

What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that (...) thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn’t just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can’t think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn’t fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it’s possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity. (shrink)