Perception and Reflection
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Analytic Transcendental Arguments
Analytic Transcendental Arguments Jonathan Bennett From: P. Bieri et al. (eds), Transcendental Arguments and Science (Reidel: Dordrecht, 1979), pp. 45–64. 1. Locke on the objective world nothing could follow about what exists other than myself. Can we strengthen the conclusion by strengthening the Someone who thinks that his own inner states are the basis premises? Could a more contentful belief about an outer for all his other knowledge and beliefs may wonder how world be defended as explaining certain further facts about anything can be securely built on this foundation. He need my inner states, e.g. about the order or regularity which not actually doubt that his own edifice is securely founded, they exhibit? Locke does argue like that, but unfortunately though he may pretend to have doubts about this in order he pollutes all his premises—which should be purely about to consider how they could be resolved if they did occur. inner states—with an admixture of statements about the This person is a ‘Cartesian sceptic’. which implies that he outer world; for instance, he uses the premise that men is not sceptical at all. He is untouched by such crude English with no eyes have no visual states. But that seems to be moves as Locke’s protest that ‘nobody can in earnest be so an accidental defect in Locke’s treatment. He could have sceptical’, or Moore’s holding up his hand as proof that there cleansed his premises, as Hume nearly did, so that they is a physical object. Such intellectual bullying is irrelevant spoke only of the order, coherence etc. -
1 the Disjunctive Conception of Experience As Material for A
The disjunctive conception of experience as material for a transcendental argument John McDowell University of Pittsburgh 1. In Individuals1 and The Bounds of Sense,2 P. F. Strawson envisaged transcendental arguments as responses to certain sorts of scepticism. An argument of the sort Strawson proposed was to establish a general claim about the world, a claim supposedly brought into doubt by sceptical reflections. Such an argument was to work by showing that unless things were as they were said to be in the claim that the argument purported to establish, it would not be possible for our thought or experience to have certain characteristics, not regarded as questionable even by someone who urges sceptical doubts. So the argument’s conclusion was to be displayed as the answer to a “How possible?” question. That has a Kantian ring, and the feature of such arguments that the formulation fits is the warrant for calling them “transcendental”. Barry Stroud responded to Strawson on the following lines.3 Perhaps we can see our way to supposing that if our thought or experience is to have certain characteristics it does have (for instance that experience purports to be of a world of objects independent of us), we must conceive the world in certain ways (for instance as containing objects that continue to exist even while we are not perceiving them). But it is quite another matter to suggest that by reflecting about how it is possible that our thought and experience are as they are, we could establish conclusions not just about how we must conceive the world but about how the world must be. -
New Directions for Transcendental Claims. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 93 (2)
Giladi, Paul (2016) New Directions for Transcendental Claims. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 93 (2). pp. 212-231. ISSN 0165-9227 Downloaded from: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/621126/ Version: Accepted Version Publisher: Brill DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-09302006 Please cite the published version https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk 1 New Directions for Transcendental Claims Keywords: transcendental claims; transcendental arguments; epistemology; post-Kantian philosophy This paper aims to provide an account of the relationship between transcendental claims and the project of using transcendental argumentation that differs from the mainstream literature.1 By a ‘transcendental claim’, I mean a proposition which states that y is a necessary condition for the possibility of x.2 In much of the literature, such claims are said to have as their primary value the overcoming of various sceptical positions. I argue that whilst transcendental arguments may be narrowly characterised as anti-sceptical, transcendental claims do not have to be used in only this way, and in fact can be useful in several areas of philosophy outside the issue of scepticism, and so can be used by transcendental arguments more broadly conceived. I offer four examples of transcendental claims that are not used in narrow, anti-sceptical transcendental arguments. I argue that these broader arguments use transcendental claims but not in an anti-sceptical way. From this, I conclude that one can separate the project of making transcendental claims and the project of using transcendental arguments to defeat scepticism. Given the well-known difficulties transcendental arguments in this narrow sense seem to have had in defeating scepticism,3 distinguishing narrow transcendental arguments clearly from transcendental claims as such in this manner can provide a way for the latter to still serve an important role in philosophy, by showing how such claims can be used more broadly, regardless of any doubts one may have about the anti- sceptical value of such claims. -
A Weakly Pragmatic Defense of Authoritatively Normative Reasons
NIHILISM AND ARGUMENTATION: A WEAKLY PRAGMATIC DEFENSE OF AUTHORITATIVELY NORMATIVE REASONS Scott Simmons A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2020 Committee: Michael Weber, Advisor Verner Bingman Graduate Faculty Representative Christian Coons Molly Gardner Sara Worley ii ABSTRACT Michael Weber, Advisor Global normative error theorists argue that there are no authoritative normative reasons of any kind. Thus, according to the error theory, the normative demands of law, prudence, morality, etc. are of no greater normative significance than the most absurd standards we can conceive of. Because the error theory is a radically revisionary view, theorists who accept it only do so because they maintain the view is supported by the best available arguments. In this dissertation, I argue that error theory entails that it is impossible that there are successful arguments for anything, thus defenses of error theory are in tension with the view, itself. My argument begins with the observation that it is natural to think a successful argument is one that gives us an authoritative normative reason to believe its conclusion. Error theory entails that there are no authoritative reasons to believe anything. What are arguments for error theory even supposed to accomplish? Error theorists may respond that their arguments are solely intended to get at the truth. I argue that this reply fails. One problem is that it cannot make sense of why in practice even error theorists still want evidence for the premises of sound arguments. Error theorists may try to capture the importance of evidence by appeal to our social norms or goals. -
Immanuel Kant's Theory of Knowledge: Exploring the Relation Between
Immanuel Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: Exploring the Relation between Sensibility and Understanding Wendell Allan Marinay Kant’s critique of reason does not provide an ultimate justification of knowledge, is not the last word in philosophy but is an initial thesis aimed at successfully solving the challenge posed by two warring schools of thought during Kant’s time: empiricism and rationalism.1 Following the ancient-Greek’s nothing-in-the-mind-without-passing-through-the- senses (Aristotle), Immanuel Kant’s inquiry of knowledge starts with the things “seen” or “experienced.”2 Such inquiry entails the materials and a process by which there can (probably) be known. It probes into or upon the constitution of human reason – an epistemic investigation from within yet necessarily involving from without. This is so because “in the mind we have the pure forms of sensible intuition and the pure concepts of an object in general. Extraneous to the mind we have the unknown and unknowable source of the matter for these forms, the source of that out of which our contentful experience is made.”3 Kant mentions two faculties of the mind that are involved in the knowing process, namely, sensibility and understanding. “He distinguishes between the receptive faculty of sensibility, through which we have intuitions, and the active faculty of understanding, which is the source of concepts.”4 Through the former, the objects are “given” while 1 Otfried Höffe. Immanuel Kant trans. Marshall Farrier (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), 55. 2 We should not be misled that by starting with things seen or experienced, knowledge would mean like a result of or is consequent to such experience. -
After Kant, Sellars, and Meillassoux: Back to Empirical Realism?’ (2018)
‘After Kant, Sellars, and Meillassoux: Back to Empirical Realism?’ (2018) James R. O’Shea, University College Dublin (This is the author’s post-peer reviewed version accepted for publication. For citations, please refer to the published version in: The Legacy of Kant in Sellars and Meillassoux: Analytic and Continental Kantianism, edited by Fabio Gironi, Routledge, pp. 21–40. ISBN-13: 978-1315203041. DOI: 10.4324/9781315203041) ABSTRACT: I examine how Meillassoux’s conception of correlationism in After Finitude, as I understand it, relates firstly to Kant’s transcendental idealist philosophy, and secondly to the analytic Kantianism of Wilfrid Sellars. I argue that central to the views of both Kant and Sellars is what might be called, with an ambivalent nod to Meillassoux, an objective correlationism. What emerges in the end as the recommended upshot of these analyses is a naturalistic Kantianism that takes the form of an empirical realism in roughly Kant’s sense, but one that is happily wed with Sellars’ scientific realism, once the latter is disentangled from two implausible commitments that made such a reconciliation seem impossible to Sellars himself. * * * 1. At the outset of his 2008 talk on “Time Without Becoming,” Quentin Meillassoux describes his key concept of correlationism, a concept which he had expounded in his influential 2006 book, Après la finitude, published in English in 2008 as After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency, in the following way. “I call ‘correlationism’ the contemporary opponent of any realism,” and he indicates that he particularly has in mind certain views shared by “transcendental philosophy, the varieties of phenomenology, and post-modernism”: namely, as he puts it, the idea “that there are no objects, no events, no laws, no beings which are not always already correlated with a point of view, with a subjective access” (Meillassoux 2014: 9). -
Transcendental Idealism, Transcendental Realism, and the Possibility of Objective Reference
University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2008 Transcendental Idealism, Transcendental Realism, and the Possibility of Objective Reference Eric Dane Walker The University of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Walker, Eric Dane, "Transcendental Idealism, Transcendental Realism, and the Possibility of Objective Reference" (2008). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1137. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1137 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM, TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF OBJECTIVE REFERENCE By Eric Dane Walker B.S. Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 2003 B.A. Philosophy, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 2003 Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Philosophy The University of Montana Missoula, MT Spring 2008 Approved by: Dr. David A Strobel, Dean Graduate School Dr. Stephen Grimm, Chair Philosophy Dr. Albert Borgmann Philosophy Dr. Gordon G. Brittan, Jr. Philosophy, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT Walker, Eric, M.A., May 2008 Philosophy Transcendental Idealism, Transcendental Realism, and the Possibility of Objective Reference Chair: Dr. Stephen Grimm The goal of my thesis is to understand why Kant thinks that transcendental idealism can secure empirical realism, the idea that there really exists an objective world that we can come to know through experience. -
Transcendental Arguments, Conceivability, and Global Vs
Transcendental Arguments, Conceivability, and Global vs. Local Skepticism Moti Mizrahi Florida Institute of Technology Abstract: In this paper, I argue that, if transcendental arguments are to proceed from premises that are acceptable to the skeptic, the Transcendental Premise, according to which “X is a metaphysically necessary condition for the possibility of Y,” must be grounded in considerations of conceivability and possibility. More explicitly, the Transcendental Premise is based on what Szabó Gendler and Hawthorne (2002, p. 2) call the “conceivability-possibility (or inconceivability-impossibility) move.” This “inconceivability-impossibility” move, however, is a problematic argumentative move when advancing transcendental arguments for the following reasons. First, from “S cannot conceive of P” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is inconceivable. Second, from “P is inconceivable” it doesn’t necessarily follow that P is metaphysically impossible. Third, rather than block skeptical doubts, the conceivability- possibility (or inconceivability-impossibility) move introduces skeptical doubts. For these reasons, transcendental arguments fail to deliver on their promise to overcome skeptical doubts. Keywords: conceivability; inconceivability; metaphysical necessity; metaphysical possibility; skepticism; transcendental argument 1. Introduction Stern (2013) identifies the following key features of transcendental arguments: (A) Transcendental arguments are anti-skeptical, which is why they must begin from a starting point that the skeptic can be expected to accept. In other words, “the point of transcendental arguments in general is an anti-skeptical point” (Strawson 2008, p. 8).1 (B) Transcendental arguments involve a transcendental claim, i.e., that X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y, where the necessity and possibility in question are taken to be metaphysical, not logical or nomological. -
Analytic Kantianism
Philosophical Topics VOLUME 34, NUMBERS 1 & 2 SPRING AND FALL 2006 ANALYTIC KANTIANISM Contents Kantian Lessons about Mind, Meaning, and Rationality 1 Robert Brandom Meaning and Aesthetic Judgment in Kant 21 Eli Friedlander Carnap and Quine: Twentieth-Century Echoes of Kant and Hume 35 Michael Friedman Kant and the Problem of Experience 59 Hannah Ginsborg Kant on Beauty and the Normative Force of Feeling 107 Arata Hamawaki Spontaneity and Receptivity in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge 145 Andrea Kern Logicist Responses to Kant: (Early) Frege and (Early) Russell 163 Michael Kremer Kant’s Spontaneity Thesis 189 Thomas Land Prolegomena to a Proper Treatment of Mathematics in the Critique of Pure Reason 221 Thomas Lockhart Self-Consciousness and Consciousness of One’s Own Body: Variations on a Kantian Theme 283 Béatrice Longuenesse Sensory Consciousness in Kant and Sellars 311 John McDowell The Bounds of Sense 327 A. W. Moore Logical Form as a Relation to the Object 345 Sebastian Rödl Kant on the Nature of Logical Laws 371 Clinton Tolley PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS VOL. 34, NOS. 1 & 2, SPRING AND FALL 2006 Kantian Lessons about Mind, Meaning, and Rationality Robert Brandom University of Pittsburgh Kant revolutionized our thinking about what it is to have a mind. Some of what seem to me to be among the most important lessons he taught us are often not yet sufficiently appreciated, however. I think this is partly because they are often not themes that Kant himself explicitly emphasized. To appreciate these ideas, one must look primarily at what he does, rather than at what he says about what he is doing. -
Kant's Transcendental Deduction
Kant’s Transcendental Deduction Professors James Conant & Robert Pippin Spring 2010 *** Syllabus *** Description of the Seminar This seminar will be devoted to a close reading and discussion of Kant’s First Critique, focusing on the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding. We will also explore carefully explore a handful of proposals for how to interpret the First Critique and especially the Transcendental Deduction, including especially those put forward by Allison, Strawson, and Strawson. We will end the course with a close look at Wilfrid Sellars’s and John McDowell’s respective interpretations of Kant, with special attention to how each of their own philosophies of perception inherit, modify, and explore Kant’s criticisms of traditional empiricism, and how each of them it rework a number of Kantian themes – most notably Kant’s conception of intuition and his account of the relation between intuitions and concepts. The aim of the course is both to use certain central texts of recent Kant commentary and contemporary analytic Kantian philosophy to illuminate some the central aspirations of Kant’s theoretical philosophy and to use certain central Kantian texts in which those aspirations were first pursued to illuminate some recent developments in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. Instructors James Conant Robert Pippin Office: Stuart 208 Office: Foster 307 Office Phone: 773 702 6146 Office Phone: 773 702 5453 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected] 1 Texts All of the following textbooks have been ordered through the Seminary Co-op and are all required texts for the course: 1. -
The Transcendental and the Transcendent
1 The Transcendental and the Transcendent SAMI PIHLSTRÖM Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Finland E-mail: [email protected] 1. Introduction: the Kantian background It is, as is well known, a feature of utmost importance to Immanuel Kant’s transcendental philosophy that the concepts of the transcendental and of the transcendent are strictly kept separate. 1 The latter refers to something that lies beyond human experience and knowledge (such as things in themselves, or the unknowable objects of the “ideas of pure reason” critically analyzed in Kant’s Transcendental Dialectic, i.e., the soul, freedom, and God), whereas the former denotes the limits and/or conditions of experience and knowledge, particularly the necessary conditions for the possibility of cognitive experience that Kant examines in his Transcendental Aesthetic (i.e., space and time as Anschauungsformen ) and Transcendental Analytic (i.e., the pure concepts of understanding, or the categories). 2 One of Kant’s most emphatic formulations of the distinction is the following: Wir wollen die Grundsätze, deren Anwendung sich ganz und gar in den Schranken möglicher Erfahrung hält, immanente , diejenigen aber, welche diese Grenzen überfliegen sollen, transzendente Grundsätze nennen. Ich verstehe unter diesen nicht den transzendentalen Gebrauch oder Missbrauch der Kategorien, welcher ein blosser Fehler der nicht gehörig durch Kritik gezügelten Urteilskraft ist, die auf die Grenze des Bodens, worauf allein dem reine Verstande sein Spiel erlaubt ist, nicht genug achthat; sondern wirkliche Grundsätze, die uns zumuten, alle jene 2 Grenzpfähle niederzureissen und sich einen ganz neuen Boden, der überall keine Demarkation erkennt, anzumassen. Daher sind transzendental und transzendent nicht einerlei. -
Analytic Kantianism: Sellars and Mcdowell on Sensory Consciousness
CON-TEXTOS KANTIANOS. International Journal of Philosophy N.o 6, Diciembre 2017, pp. 18-41 ISSN: 2386-7655 Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1092766 Analytic Kantianism: Sellars and McDowell on Sensory Consciousness Kantismo analítico: Sellars y McDowell sobre la conciencia sensorial JOHANNES HAAG• Universität Potsdam, Germany Abstract Wilfrid Sellars and John McDowell can both be read as proponents of Analytic Kantianism. However, their accounts differ in important detail. In particular, McDowell has criticized Sellars’s account of sensory consciousness in a number of papers (most notably in LFI and SC), both as a reading of Kant and on its systematic merits. The present paper offers a detailed analysis of this criticism and a defense of Sellars’s position against the background of a methodology of transcendental philosophy. Keywords Kant, Sellars, McDowell, Transcendental Philosophy, perception, intuition, judgment 1. Analytic Kantianism & Transcendental Philosophy ‘Analytic Kantianism’ is not a well-defined term. It is mostly used very loosely to group philosophers who engage with Kant’s writings in a systematic, philosophical spirit and who themselves have a background in Analytical Philosophy, broadly conceived. If we look back in the history of discussions of Kant in Analytic Philosophy, Peter Strawson and Wilfrid Sellars probably first come to mind. Any list of important contemporary authors would have to include Robert Brandom, Michael Friedman, Hannah Ginsborg, Beatrice Longuenesse, Barry Stroud – and certainly John McDowell. • Professor at the University of Potsdam. E-mail for contact: [email protected] [Recibido: 10 de octubre de 2017 Aceptado: 20 de octubre de 2017] Analytic Kantianism But can Analytic Kantianism be described in an at least somewhat less loose and superficial way? I think it is possible both with respect to its subjects and the specific form in which they are addressed – at least for the field of theoretical philosophy I will concentrate on in what follows.