Modal Motivations for Noumenal Ignorance: Knowledge, Cognition, and Coherence
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Andrew Chignell
Abstract:
My goal in this paper is to show that Kant’s prohibition on certain kinds of knowledge of things-in-themselves is motivated less by his anti-soporific encounter with Hume than by his new view of the distinction between “real” and “logical” modality, a view that developed out of his reflection on the rationalist tradition in which he was trained. In brief: at some point in the 1770’s, Kant came to hold that a necessary condition on knowing a proposition is that one be able to prove that all the items it refers to are either really possible or really impossible. Most propositions about things-in-themselves, in turns out, cannot meet this condition. I conclude by suggesting that the best interpretation of this modal condition is as a kind of coherentist constraint.
© De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Preface
- What is, for Kant, a Law of Nature?
- Prescribing laws to nature. Part I. Newton, the pre-Critical Kant, and three problems about the lawfulness of nature
- ‘The understanding prescribes laws to nature’: Spontaneity, Legislation, and Kant’s Transcendental Hylomorphism
- Laws of Nature and Causal Necessity
- Transcendental Presuppositions and Ideas of Reason
- Modal Motivations for Noumenal Ignorance: Knowledge, Cognition, and Coherence
- Kant-Bibliographie 2012
- Mitteilung der Herausgeber
- Übersetzung von Kants Werken ins Koreanische
- Kant as a Poetic Philosopher
- Appel à communications
- Dank
- Jahresinhalt Kant-Studien Jg. 105, 2014
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Preface
- What is, for Kant, a Law of Nature?
- Prescribing laws to nature. Part I. Newton, the pre-Critical Kant, and three problems about the lawfulness of nature
- ‘The understanding prescribes laws to nature’: Spontaneity, Legislation, and Kant’s Transcendental Hylomorphism
- Laws of Nature and Causal Necessity
- Transcendental Presuppositions and Ideas of Reason
- Modal Motivations for Noumenal Ignorance: Knowledge, Cognition, and Coherence
- Kant-Bibliographie 2012
- Mitteilung der Herausgeber
- Übersetzung von Kants Werken ins Koreanische
- Kant as a Poetic Philosopher
- Appel à communications
- Dank
- Jahresinhalt Kant-Studien Jg. 105, 2014
