Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T23:08:58.600Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dynamics of Reason and the Kantian Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Abstract

I show why Michael Friedman's idea that we should view new constitutive frameworks introduced in paradigm change as members of a convergent series introduces an uncomfortable tension in his views. It cannot be justified on realist grounds, as this would compromise his Kantian perspective, but his own appeal to a Kantian regulative ideal of reason cannot do the job either. I then explain a way to make better sense of the rationality of paradigm change on what I take to be Friedman's own terms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author wishes to acknowledge comments from Alan Richardson, Wolfgang Lefèvre, Jeroen Van Bouwel, Ed Slowik, and David Stump that helped him better see the main point he was trying to make.

References

Allison, Henry E. (2004), Kant's Transcendental Idealism. 2nd revised and enlarged ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.10.2307/j.ctt1cc2kjcCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Michael (1996), “Exorcising the Philosophical Tradition: Comments on John McDowell's Mind and World”, Exorcising the Philosophical Tradition: Comments on John McDowell's Mind and World 105:427467.Google Scholar
Friedman, Michael (2001), Dynamics of Reason. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel ([1781] 1974), Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt: Surhkamp Verlag.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, Béatrice (1998), Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691214122CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Psillos, Stathis (1999), Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Slowik, Edward (2006), “Spacetime and Structure: Structural Realism, Neo-Kantianism Idealism, or Relativized a Priorism?”, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002976/.Google Scholar