doiSerbia

Kant's consideration of space and the puzzle of incongruence

Stojnić Una (Beograd)

In this paper we are dealing with Kant's view on the phenomenon of incongruous counterparts, in particular with the argument from his article 'On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space', where the phenomenon of incongruous counterparts is used as an argument for the existence of the absolute and objective space, and with the argument from Kant's Inaugural Dissertation in which he uses the phenomenon of incongruous counterparts again, but this time for a different purpose - as an argument in favor of the idea of space as a pure intuition. Our aim is to show that Kant's argument from 'On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space', although it shows the inadequacy of Leibniz's definition of congruence, does not in fact represent the reductio ad absurdum of the relationist view, for his argument in favor of the existence of the absolute space represents merely the inference to the best explanation. We also propound an alternative account of the phenomenon of incongruous counterparts, which is in line with the relationist theory. Furthermore, we call in question Kant's argument from the Inaugural Dissertation, according to which incongruence could not be explained discursively, and we put forward a conceptual determination of incongruence in terms of the notions of similarity, equality and congruence, taken as the possibility of objects to be included within the same spatial boundaries.

Keywords: congruence, incongruence, incongruous counterparts, absolutism, relationism