Volume 5, Issue 1

This paper discusses a structural analogy between Kant’s theory of regulative ideas, as he develops it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, and Crispin Wright’s theory of epistemic entitlements. First, I argue that certain exegetical difficulties with respect to the Appendix rest on serious systematic problems, which - given other assumptions of the Critique of Pure Reason - Kant is unable to solve. Second, I argue that because of the identified structural analogy between Kant’s and Wright’s views the project Kant pursues in the Appendix can be rehabilitated by recourse to Wright’s theory.

This paper shows that Kant’s account of cognition can be used to defend epistemic responsibility against the double threat of either being committed to implausible versions of doxastic voluntarism, or failing to account for a sufficiently robust connection between the will and belief. Whilst we have no direct control over our beliefs, we have two forms of indirect doxastic control that are sufficient to ground epistemic responsibility. It is because we have direct control over our capacity to judge as well as the epistemic principles that govern belief-acquisition that we have indirect control over the beliefs we thereby acquire.

One of the most widely accepted contemporary constraints on theories of self-knowledge is that they must account for the very different ways in which cognitive subjects know their own minds and the ways in which they know other minds. Through the influence of Peter Strawson, Kant is often taken to be an original source for this view. I argue that Kant is quite explicit in holding the opposite position. In a little discussed passage in the Paralogisms chapter, he argues that cognitive subjects have no way of understanding the minds of others except by using their own minds as a model for others.

In their interpretations of the two introductions to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Juliet Floyd and Henry Allison argue that Kant’s account of the reflecting power of judgment can be read as his vindication of inductive inference and as an answer to Hume’s worries concerning induction. Paul Guyer, on the other hand, argues that Kant’s account in these passages falls short of providing an adequate answer to Hume’s arguments. In this paper, I want to show that the strongest account of Kant’s vindication of inductive inference appears when we combine a reading of Kant’s account of the reflecting power of judgment in the first introduction along the lines suggested by Floyd and Allison with Guyer’s interpretation of Kant’s account in the second introduction. As we will see, Kant’s vindication of inductive inference is stronger than Guyer suspects, although it does not amount to a straightforward refutation of Hume’s worries concerning the uniformity of nature.

Cognitive agency - the idea that our judgments and beliefs are manifestations of agency on our part - is a deeply entrenched aspect of our self-conception as persons. And yet it has proven hard to give a satisfying account of what such agency might consist in. In this paper I argue that getting clear about Kant’s notion of spontaneity might help us make progress in that debate. In particular, I argue that the very same assumption - namely, that agency must be understood on the model of production - has been holding us back in both areas.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason contains an original and powerful semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference which has important implications for epistemology and for philosophy of science (and which is entirely independent of Transcendental Idealism). Here I argue that Kant’s cognitive semantics directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of Experimental Philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force. I begin with Newton’s Rule 4 and its role in Newton’s justification of realism about gravitational force (§ 1). I then briefly summarize Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (§ 2), and show that it is embedded in, and strongly supports, Newton’s Rule 4, and that it rules out not only Cartesian physics (per Harper) but also Cartesian, infallibilist presumptions about empirical justification generally (§ 3). This result exposes a key fallacy in Bas van Fraassen’s main argument for his anti-realist Constructive Empiricism, and in many common objections to realism (§ 4). These problems reveal yet a further important regard in which Constructive Empiricism is not (so to speak) ‘empirically’ adequate, not even to Classical Newtonian Mechanics (§ 5). This inadequacy of Constructive Empiricism highlights a chronic empiricist misunderstanding of Newton’s mechanics (§ 6). Finally, Kant’s cognitive semantics improves upon the semantic interpretation of scientific theories, and rectifies the presumption that laws of physics literally ‘lie’ (§ 7). Thus Kant and Newton still have invaluable lessons for contemporary philosophy and history of science (§ 8).