TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AS A FRAMEWORK FOR AGENT-CAUSAL LIBERTARIANISM ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ________________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ________________________________________________________________________ by Daniel Paul Dal Monte December 2020 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Lara Ostaric, Advisory Chair, Philosophy Dr. Espen Hammer, Philosophy Dr. Eugene Chislenko, Philosophy Dr. Eric Watkins, External Member, San Diego, University of California-San Diego Dr. James Hebbeler, External Member, Philadelphia, St. Joseph’s University © Copyright 2020 Daniel Paul Dal Monte All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I occupy two realms of philosophy that have not been commonly associated. On the one hand, I enter into debates about the proper interpretation of Kant, specifically having to do with the very fractured debate on the nature and applications of transcendental idealism. I adjudicate on the matters of the relationship between appearances and things in themselves, i.e. whether it is epistemological or ontological, the way in which TI resolves the antinomial conflict of reason as it thinks the unconditioned in its exploration of cosmological questions, and the way Kant applies TI to articulate the intelligible and empirical characters in his metaphysics of agency. In addition to this historical research, I also turn to contemporary formulations of libertarian freedom. Libertarianism in free will debates is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism (i.e. incompatibilism), and free will exists. Libertarianism is a competitor to compatibilist views that claim that free will is compatible with determinism, i.e. the view that there is a unique outcome given a past and laws of nature characterizing the past. Within libertarianism, there are important differences in terms of the metaphysics of free will. Most contemporary libertarians opt for a reductionist metaphysics, in which causation consists in relationships between events and does not involve underlying grounds or substances. Both event-causal and non-causal libertarianism accordingly ground their views of freedom on the interplay of psychological events conceived of as states of affairs at instants in time. Event-causal accounts locate free will in indeterministic causal series, involve conflicting sets of motivations that resolve iii themselves probabilistically into a certain kind of action. Non-causal accounts do not attach free will to causality at all, instead associating it with a spontaneously occurring event. ECL and NCL struggle with establishing how the agent actually settles her action. If the action is merely the indeterministic byproduct of a set of psychological processes or process, then what ultimately occurs is not up to the agent but a product of chance. ECL and NCL nevertheless object that even an action settled by chance is done consciously and according to reasons. But these criteria are aligned with compatibilist criteria for free will. Compatibilists deny to the agent the unconditioned power to choose, which is independent of any prior determination but also not subject to chance. They point out, though, that the action is externally unconstrained, or that, if the reasons had been different, the agent would have acted differently. Since contemporary libertarianism deprives the agent of control, and creates a kind of pseudo-agent that acts ultimately according to chance, I explore other metaphysical frameworks for free will. Agent-causal libertarianism involves the agent directly causing her action as a substance. It is not some state of affairs that causes the action—a desire or belief characterizing the agent’s psychology at a certain time—but the agent herself. Agent- causation promises to resolve the problem of control associated with event-causation. The agent-caused action is neither produced deterministically from a prior event, nor is it an indeterministic fallout from probabilistic causation. Instead, it is caused by an agent- substance able to act independently of events. Timothy O’Connor is a well-known and articulate defender of agent-causation, but he also subscribes to the naturalistic framework popular in contemporary iv metaphysics. Even though he accepts the reality of emergent properties, the agent-cause, which has a special capacity for self-determination, is supposed to be causally united to a microphysical level where there is only passive event-causation. In this dissertation, I seek to frame agent-causation in terms of transcendental idealism. Rather than establishing the level of event-causation as metaphysically fundamental, I explore an idealistic metaphysics in which the empirical world in the spatiotemporal framework of human experience is not an absolute measure of reality. The human person is a hybrid creature, spanning two domains. On the one hand, the person exists in the empirical order in space and time. It is characterized by events subject to a causal law, by which they are accounted for in terms of prior events. On the other hand, there is a deeper level to the person, not encompassed within the limited structures of human experience. On this deep intelligible level, the human person is able to serve as the unconditioned ground of its empirical character. v DEDICATION For Those Who Seek to Know and Live by the Truth vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation could not have come together were it not for the assistance of several people. Dr. Lara Ostaric has been an excellent advisor. She gave each chapter a very careful examination and provided insightful commentary, even as initial drafts were rough and I was having difficulty formulating my ideas. I also would like to acknowledge Dr. Ostaric for pointing out the importance of metaphysics in Kant, in both her seminars and published work, as many contemporary commentators seek to annihilate a metaphysical distinction between the world of appearances and things in themselves, and any suggestion that the ideas of reason could have an objective metaphysical realization. Though I have never met Dr. Karl Ameriks, I would also like to acknowledge his work, since he was Lara’s dissertation advisor and also advised two other members of my committee, Dr. Eric Watkins and Dr. James Hebbeler. I have read several of Dr. Ameriks’s books and found him a crucial support in combating the short argument to idealism that has been part of Kant commentary since Reinhold. The short argument reaches things in themselves through the mere epistemic fact of representation, which entails the unrepresentable. The short argument does not have to ascribe a metaphysical limitedness to the spatiotemporal framework of human experience. I would also like to thank Dr. Espen Hammer. Professor Hammer allowed me to attend his seminar on Kant in the spring semester of 2020. I benefited greatly from this seminar, especially the discussion of the Transcendental Deduction. These discussions became the inspiration of my critique of the Neo-Humean empiricism of contemporary libertarianism in Chapter 4 of this dissertation, in which I appeal to a regressive strategy vii to argue that empirical knowledge cannot be grounded in sensations alone but requires an a priori metaphysical structure. I also need to mention Dr. Eric Watkins, who provided me invaluable study opportunities with the University of California-San Diego faculty. Through Professor Watkins’s interest in my development, I was able to attend a seminar in Mainz, Germany, and also one in San Diego with Dr. Lucy Allais. I have also benefited greatly from Professor Watkins’s 2005 work, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality. viii A NOTE ON SOURCES KANT Apart from the Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], all references to Kant’s writings are to the appropriate volume (in upper case roman numerals) and page number of Kants gesammelte Schriften (AA), edited by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (formerly the Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), 29 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1900-). References to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft are to the standard A and B pagination of the first and the second editions (1781 and 1787 respectively). Citations to Reflexionen are made by reference to the reflection number, followed by the relevant volume and page number in AA. Below is the list of abbreviations of Kant’s works together with the information on the English translations I have consulted. Diss De Mundi Sensibilis Atque Intelligibis Forma Et Principiis (KGS 2). On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World (The Inaugural Dissertation), trans. David Walford and Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. GMS Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. 1st ed., 1785; 2nd ed., 1786. [“Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,” in Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.] KdpV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. 1788. [“Critique of Practical Reason,” in Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy, ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996.] KdrV Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 1st ed. [A], 1781; 2nd ed. [B], 1787. [Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. Allen W. Wood and Paul Guyer. Cambridge University Press, ix Cambridge, 1998.] KdU Kritik der Urteilskraft.