Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Kant

  • First and Second Intentions: Buckner on Zabarella, Kant, Frege, and Wittgenstein

    The following two quotations are from the Facebook Medieval Logic forum.   Giacomo Zabarella (1533 – 1589). “Now first intentions are names immediately signifying realities by means of a concept in the soul, for instance, animal and human being, or those concepts of which these names are signs. But second intentions are other names imposed…

  • What is a Limit Concept? The Example of Prime Matter

    In an earlier entry I suggested that the concept God is a limit concept or Grenzbegriff.  I now need to back up a few steps and clarify the concept limit concept and give some non-divine examples.  If I cannot supply any non-divine examples, then I might justifiably be accused of ad-hoc-ery. Terminological note: The term…

  • Equality is a Norm, not a Fact. Does it Have a Ground or is it Groundless?

    As a matter of empirical fact, we are not equal, not physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, socially, politically, or economically.  By no empirical measure are people equal.  We are naturally unequal.  And yet we are supposedly equal as persons.  This equality of persons as persons we take as requiring equality of treatment.  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), for…

  • Defending Barry Miller Against Herman Philipse, Part I: Existence as a First-Level Property

    In his Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  review of Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God, Herman Philipse presents the following sketch of  Miller's cosmological  argument  a contingentia mundi for the existence of God: 1. Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals. 2. Concrete contingent individuals are distinct from…

  • The Scariest Passage in the Critique of Pure Reason

    With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus: Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human reason the veritable abyss . . . . We cannot put…

  • Love Untranslated

    Love untranslated into action remains an emotion and in many cases a mere self-indulgence. One enjoys the warm feeling of benevolence and risks succumbing to the illusion that it suffices.  Benevolent sentiments are no doubt better than malevolent ones, but an affectless helping of a neighbor who needs help, if that is possible, is better…

  • The Presumptuousness of Blogging

    Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties/Der Streit der Fakultäten, tr. Gregor (University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 177: To want to entertain others with the inner history of the play of my thoughts, which has subjective importance (for me) but no objective importance (valid for everyone), would be presumptuous, and I could justly be blamed…

  • Is Assertion External or Internal to Logic? A Note on Irad Kimhi

    The main point of Peter Geach's paper, "Assertion" (Logic Matters, Basil Blackwell, 1972, pp. 254-269) is what he calls the Frege point: A thought may have just the same content whether you assent to its truth or not; a proposition may occur in discourse now asserted, now unasserted, and yet be recognizably the same proposition.…

  • A Note on Beccaria and Kant on Capital Punishment

    Here: According to [Cesare] Beccaria, punishment has two fundamental objectives: to restrain the criminal from committing additional crimes and to deter other members of society from committing the same crime. The first purpose is served by imprisonment, so we are left with the issue of deterrence. Not so fast! Imprisonment obviously does not prevent criminals…

  • Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant’s Birthday

    Immanuel Kant was born on this day in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 40 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 40 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's standards rise…

  • On a Putative Counterexample to ‘Ought Implies Can‘

    I have long subscribed to Kant's famous meta-ethical principle according to which our moral obligations cannot outrun our abilities. 'Ought' implies 'can.' If I am under a moral obligation to do X, then I must be able to do X. We are concerned here with moral not legal oughts, and we understand 'ought' in accordance…

  • Kant on Suicide

    Is suicide ever morally permissible? Cutting against the Enlightenment grain, Kant delivers a resoundingly negative verdict. Suicide is always and everywhere morally wrong. This entry is part of an effort to understand his position. Unfortunately, Kant's treatment is exceedingly murky and one of his arguments is hard to square with what he says elsewhere. In his Lectures…

  • Of Coulter and Kant, Screwed Pooches, and Milked He Goats

    Ann Coulter: Everyone who screwed the pooch on this one better realize fast: All that matters is immigration. It's all that matters to the country, and it's all that matters for winning elections. She's right: read what she has to say.  What caught my eye, however, was the expression 'screw the pooch.'  I now send you to…

  • The Scariest Passage in the Critique of Pure Reason

    With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus: Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human reason the veritable abyss. . . . We cannot put…

  • A Note on Ayn Rand’s Misunderstanding of Kant

    Ayn Rand has some interesting things to say about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in her essay, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” (1960) in Philosophy: Who Needs It (Signet, 1982, ed. Peikoff, pp. 58-76). Here is one example:   He [Kant] did not deny the validity of reason – he…