Kant's Argument for the Principle of Intensive Magnitudes
Kantian Review 18 (3):387-412 (2013)
Abstract
In the first Critique, Kant attempts to prove what we can call the "Principle of Intensive Magnitudes," according to which every possible object of experience will possess a determinate "degree" of reality. Curiously, Kant argues for this principle by inferring from a psychological premise about internal sensations (they have intensive magnitudes) to a metaphysical thesis about external objects (they also have intensive magnitudes). Most commentators dismiss the argument as a failure. In this article I give a reconstruction of Kant's argument that attempts to rehabilitate the argument back into his broader transcendental theory of experience. I argue that we can make sense of the argument's central inference by appeal to Kant's theory of empirical intuition and by an analysis of the way in which Kant thinks sensory matter constitutes our most basic representations of objects.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1017/s1369415413000162
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Citations of this work
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References found in this work
Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes.Wilfrid Sellars - 1968 - New York: Humanities P..
Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason.Béatrice Longuenesse - 1998 - Princeton University Press.
Kant, non-conceptual content and the representation of space.Lucy Allais - 2009 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (3):pp. 383-413.