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On Judgement: Psychological Genesis, Intentionality and Grammar Durham E-Theses ON JUDGEMENT: PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS, INTENTIONALITY AND GRAMMAR KIRKBY, DAVID,JAMES How to cite: KIRKBY, DAVID,JAMES (2013) ON JUDGEMENT: PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS, INTENTIONALITY AND GRAMMAR, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9451/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 ON JUDGEMENT: PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS, INTENTIONALITY AND GRAMMAR A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by David James Kirkby Department of Philosophy University of Durham 2013 2 Abstract This thesis explores conceptions of judgement which have been central to various philosophical and scientific traditions. Beginning with Hume, I situate his conception of judgement within his overarching constructivist program, his science of man. Defending Hume from criticism regarding the naturalistic credentials of this program, I argue that Hume’s science of man, along with the conception of judgement which is integral to it, is appropriately understood as a forerunner to contemporary cognitive science. Despite this, I contend that Hume’s conception of judgement prompts a problem regarding the intentionality of judgement – a problem which he does not adequately address. In the second part of my thesis I show how the intentionality problem which Hume grapples with is also crucial, constituting a point of departure, for Kant’s transcendental undertaking. Following Kant’s reasoning, I illustrate how an original concern with this intentionality issue leads Kant to a distinct conception of judgement, according to which concepts only exist in the context of a judgement. Having arrived at Kant’s conception of a judgement, the remainder of the thesis is devoted to the issue of judgement forms. Kant’s postulation of these forms is closely related to his conception of judgement, and I seek to establish both how these forms ought to be understood and how they might be derived. In relation to this latter issue, I suggest that there may a role for contemporary work in Generative Grammar. Specifically, I suggest that it may be viable to understand the forms of judgement as grammatical in nature, thereby securing an interdisciplinary connection between a philosophy of judgement and the empirical investigation of grammar. 3 Acknowledgements First thanks must go to Wolfram Hinzen. From the outset, his energy, enthusiasm and unalloyed passion for grammar have been infectious. He has been an exceptional supervisor in every respect and what’s more, a good friend. Elisabeth Schellekens was instrumental in the early stages of this process in helping me clarify what it was I wanted to say. Thanks also to the Arts and Humanities Research Council who generously funded this thesis. Doctoral life can be a lonesome business, but the company of the Language and Mind group in Durham saved me from this fate. Thanks to Tom, Jimmy, Andrew, Pallavi, Alex and Uli for tolerating my rather abrasive style, and for your feedback on my disparate collection of thoughts. Our meetings were a real highlight for me: it was fortunate indeed that we spoke the same language. The originality of John Mikhail’s work has been an inspiration for me, and I am indebted to him for his willingness to discuss it with me, as well as for the encouragement he has offered me with respect to my own. Thanks also to Nirmalangshu Mukherji for guiding my early, tentative steps towards a PhD proposal, to Nick Zangwill for taking the time to meet with me when I was struggling, and to Emma Borg and David Landy for both reading over essay drafts. I have benefitted from discussions with Beatrice Longuenesse, Paul Pietroski, John Collins, Anders Holmberg, Noel Burton-Roberts, Noam Chomsky and Amanda Taylor-Aiken. Finally, the support of my family has sustained me throughout this process. The understanding my wife has shown has gone far beyond what I could have hoped for, while her constant willingness to lend a sympathetic ear has been all the more extraordinary given that she seldom understood what I was talking about. 4 Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 3 List of Figures and Tables...................................................................................................... 7 Notes on Sources and Abbreviations ..................................................................................... 8 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 9 I. A Science of Man: The Genesis of Judgement .............................................................. 15 1. Hume’s Naturalistic Approach ................................................................................ 16 1.1 Aims and method ......................................................................................... 16 1.2 Fundamentals ............................................................................................... 21 1.3 Against judgement-as-predication ............................................................... 25 1.4 A worry about the theory of ideas................................................................ 29 1.5 Another worry about the theory of ideas ..................................................... 34 2. Applying Hume’s Naturalistic Approach ................................................................ 45 2.1 Causation...................................................................................................... 45 2.2 External bodies............................................................................................. 53 2.3 The thread from Hume’s science of man to the Critique of Pure Reason ... 61 3. Cognitive Science .................................................................................................... 65 3.1 Picking up humean strands .......................................................................... 65 3.2 Grammaticality judgements ......................................................................... 73 3.3 Moral judgements ........................................................................................ 75 II. Kant: The Intentionality of Judgement ......................................................................... 83 4. The Nature of Experience ........................................................................................ 85 4.1 From synthetic a priori judgements to the possibility of experience ........... 85 4.2 Relation to an object ................................................................................... 91 4.3 The discursivity thesis.................................................................................. 98 4.4 Global experience ..................................................................................... 108 5. Rules and Normativity ........................................................................................... 111 5 5.1 The normativity of the intentional ............................................................. 111 5.2 The priority principle ................................................................................. 125 5.3 Objecting to Conceptualism: concepts and schemata ................................ 132 5.4 At the crossroads: meta-concepts ............................................................... 147 6. The Forms of Judgement ....................................................................................... 152 6.1 The guiding thread of the Metaphysical Deduction ................................... 152 6.2 Reappraising the forms of judgement ........................................................ 156 6.3 Why Kant needs judgements of perception ............................................... 162 6.4 There are no judgements of perception ...................................................... 164 7. The Role of Grammar: Sketching a Research Program ......................................... 177 7.1 Identifying the forms of judgement ........................................................... 177 7.2 Linguistic variation .................................................................................... 182 7.3 Un-Cartesian linguistics ............................................................................. 187 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 200 References .............................................................................................................. 202 6 I confirm that no part of the material contained in this thesis has previously been submitted for any degree in this or any
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