Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Kant

  • Animal Awareness: Aristotle, Galileo, Kant

    This just over the trans0m from Edward Buckner. I have added my comments in blue. Aristotle: Even if all animals were eliminated and thereby all perceptions (since only animals perceive), “there will still be something perceptible—a body, for example, or something warm, or sweet, or bitter, or anything else perceptible.” BV: Evaluation of the above…

  • Berkeleyan and Kantian Idealism: How Do They Differ?

    The good bishop, as Kant called him, held that reality is exhausted by "spirits" and their ideas. Thus on Berkeley's scheme everything is either a spiritual substance or mind, whether finite or infinite (God), or else an idea 'in'  a  mind. Ideas are thus modes or  modifications of minds.  As such they do not exist…

  • Nota Notae Est Nota Rei Ipsius, Kant, and the Ontological Argument

    This is a re-post, redacted and re-thought, from 22 July 2011. I dust it off because something caught my eye the other morning in the Translator's Introduction to Kant's Logic. Robert S. Hartman and Wolfgang Schwarz tell us that for Kant the principle of all inference or mediate judgment is the rule Nota notae est…

  • What Does Kant Mean by ‘Appearance’?

    This from the Comments. The numerals are my intercalation. But the question remains, exactly what does Kant mean by ‘appearance’ (Erscheinung)? [1] Can I speak of this Appearance? [2] Is this Appearance the visible surface of my desk? [3] Is it numerically identical to what F sees when she looks at the desk? (Surely it…

  • The Standard Picture of Kant’s Idealism

    This entry draws on Henry E. Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, Yale University Press, 1983. "According to the standard picture, Kant's transcendental idealism is a metaphysical theory that affirms the unknowability of the 'real' (things in themselves) and relegates knowledge to the purely subjective realm of representations (appearances)." (p. 3)  P.F. Strawson…

  • Idealism: Subjective, Objective, Transcendental

    This from a recent comment thread: I think we should all agree on what counts as ‘subjective idealism’. I characterise it as the view that the objects we commonly take to be physical objects are in some way, or wholly, mind dependent. This a reasonable interpretation of Kant. Let's leave the interpretation of Kant for…

  • Hume and Kant on Sense Perception

    Another round with Ed Buckner who writes, Meanwhile I continue to struggle through Kant, and I point out what seems to be a fundamental and insuperable difficulty below. (I may be wrong). Start with Hume, and with what he means by ‘impressions’. As I write, I am looking at what I take to be the black surface of…

  • Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant’s Birthday

    Immanuel Kant was born on this date in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 44 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 44 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's…

  • Duty and Inclination

    It is one's duty to control one's inclinations despite the strong inclination to dismiss one's duty.

  • The Concept GOD as a Limit Concept

    The concept GOD is the concept of a being that cannot be constituted in consciousness in Husserl's sense of 'constitution,' a being that cannot be a transcendence-in-immanence, but must be absolutely transcendent, transcendent in itself, not merely for us.  It follows that there cannot be a phenomenology of God. At best, there can be a…

  • Among the Riddles of Existence

    Among the riddles of existence are the riddles that are artifacts of the attempts of thinkers to unravel the riddle of existence. This is one way into philosophy. It is the way of G. E. Moore. What riddled him was not the world so much as the strange things philosophers such as F. H. Bradley…

  • Who is Caius?

    Robert Paul Wolff here replies with wit and lefty snark to a charming request by one Pamela N., a personal assistant, who wants to know who Immanuel Kant is referring to when he writes, "Caius is a man; man is mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal."  Pamela confesses, I will admit, I have not read Kant's works.…

  • Kant on Capital Punishment

    Justice demands capital punishment in certain cases, and it doesn't matter what it costs, or whether there is any benefit to society, or even whether there is any society to benefit. Recall Kant's last man scenario from Metaphysics of Morals, Part II (emphasis added): [6] But whoever has committed murder, must die. There is, in this case, no juridical…

  • Kant’s Letter to Marcus Herz, 21 February 1772

    The brief missive to Herz sheds considerable light on Kant's Critical project.  Herewith, some notes for my edification if not yours. 1) How is metaphysica specialis possible as science, als Wissenschaft? Having been awakened by David Hume from his "dogmatic slumber," Kant was puzzling over this.  It occurred to him that the key to the…

  • Can Kant Refer to God?

    This is a re-working of an entry from 19 September 2016.  It relates to present concerns about limit concepts and whether and to what extent God can be subsumed under our concepts. ………………………. Ed Buckner raises the title question, and he wants my help with it.  How can I refuse?  I'll say a little now,…