Robert Hanna

Kant’s Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects, and The Gap in the B Deduction

Abstract This paper is about the nature of the relationship between (1) the doctrine of Non-Conceptualism about mental content, (2) Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, and (3) the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Categories, in the B (1787) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e., the B Deduction. Correspondingly, the main thesis of the paper is this: (1) and (2) yield serious problems for (3), yet, in exploring these two serious problems for the B Deduction, we also discover some deeply important and perhaps surprising philosophical facts about Kant’s theory of cognition and his metaphysics.

Beyond the Myth of the Myth: A Kantian Theory of Non-Conceptual Content

Abstract In this essay I argue that a broadly Kantian strategy for demonstrating and explaining the existence, semantic structure, and psychological function of essentially non-conceptual content can also provide an intelligible and defensible bottom-up theory of the foundations of rationality in minded animals. Otherwise put, if I am correct, then essentially non-conceptual content constitutes the semantic and psychological substructure, or matrix, out of which the categorically normative a priori superstructure of epistemic rationality and practical rationality – Sellars’s “logical space of reasons” – grows.

Neurophenomenology and the Spontaneity of Consciousness

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable (Nagel 1980, p. 150). My reading of the situation is that our inability to come up with an intelligible conception of the relation between mind and body is a sign of the inadequacy of our present concepts, and that some development is needed (Nagel 1998, p. 338). Mind itself is a spatiotemporal pattern that molds the metastable dynamic patterns of the brain (Kelso 1995, p. 288).

Mathematics for Humans: Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic Revisited

According to Kant,3 mathematics is the pure formal science of quantity or magnitude. In turn, quantities or magnitudes are of two fundamentally different kinds: numerical and spatial. Arithmetic is the pure science of numbers, and geometry is the pure science of space. Whether arithmetic or geometry, however, mathematics for Kant is synthetic a priori, not analytic a priori – which is to say that it is a substantive or world-dependent science, not a purely logical science. But how can mathematics be at once a priori (i.e., experience-independent and necessary) and also substantive or world-dependent? As Brouwer correctly observes, for Kant mathematics is possible because it presupposes the innate human cognitive capacity for pure temporal and spatial representation, the innate human cognitive capacity for pure intuition (CPR A38–39/B55–56; P Ak. iv. 280–283). In turn, as the Transcendental Aesthetic shows, our pure intuitions of time and space are the non-empirical necessary subjective forms of inner and outer human sensibility. In this essay I revisit Kant’s much-criticized views on arithmetic. In so doing I make a case for the claim that his theory of arithmetic is not in fact subject to the most familiar and forceful objection against it, namely that his doctrine of the dependence of arithmetic on time is plainly false, or even worse, simply unintelligible; on the contrary, Kant’s doctrine about time and arithmetic is highly original, fully intelligible, and with qualifications due to the inherent limitations of his conceptions of arithmetic and logic, defensible to an important extent.

The Inner and the Outer: Kant's ‘Refutation’ Reconstructed

In Skeptical idealism says that possibly nothing exists outside my own conscious mental states. Purported refutations of skeptical idealism – whether Descartess, Lockes, Reids, Kants, Moores, Putnams, or Burges – are philosophically scandalous: they have convinced no one. I argue (1) that what is wrong with the failed refutations is that they have attempted to prove the wrong thing – i.e., that necessarily I have veridical perceptions of distal material objects in space, and (2) that a charitable reconstruction of Kants ‘Refutation of Idealism’ in fact provides a sound refutation of skeptical idealism.

How Do We Know Necessary Truths? Kant's Answer

It is traditionally held that our knowledge of necessity is a priori; but the familiar theories of a priori knowledge – platonism and conventionalism – have now been discredited, and replaced by either modal skepticism or a posteriori essentialism. The main thesis of this paper is that Kants theory of a priori knowledge, when detached from his transcendental idealism, offers a genuine alternative to these unpalatable options. According to Kants doctrine, all epistemic necessity (which he calls “conviction” (Ueberzeugung) is grounded directly or indirectly on our capacity for clear and distinct rational intuition (which he calls “insight” (Einsicht). Insight, in turn, depends upon functions of the imagination for creating “mental models” of necessary truths. This doctrine is well exemplified by Kants account of our knowledge of simple analytic truths.

Reason, Freedom and Kant: An Exchange

According to Kant, being purely rational or purely reasonable and being autonomously free are one and the same thing. But how can this be so? How can my innate capacity for pure reason ever motivate me to do anything, whether the right thing or the wrong thing? What I will suggest is that the fundamental connection between reason and freedom, both for Kant and in reality, is precisely our human biological life and spontaneity of the will , a conjunctive intrinsic structural property of our animal bodies, which essentially constitutes human personhood and rational agency. I say ‘suggest’ because, obviously, no proper argument for such a conclusion could ever be worked out in a short essay. I would nevertheless like to motivate my suggestion by way of a commentary on the second part of Adrian Moores extremely rich and interesting recent book, Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty (henceforth, NIR ).

What is the self

In this paper I briefly sketch a theory that answers the question “what is the self?,” where this question is understood in a scientific sense that includes both natural science and systematic fundamental metaphysics. As selves, we are essentially rational human minded animals or real persons in a fully natural and desperately non‐ideal world—animals with meaningful lives, for better or worse.

Why Gold is Necessarily a Yellow Metal

At least Kant thinks its a part of the concept that gold is to be a yellow metal. He thinks that we know this a priori , and that we could not discover it to be empirically false … Is Kant right about this? (Saul Kripke) Gold [is] … a yellow malleable ductile high density metallic element resistant to chemical reaction. (Oxford English Dictionary) Nature considered materially is the totality of all objects of experience. (Immanuel Kant, P , Ak. 4:295) Kants joke . Kant wanted to prove in a way that would dumbfound the common man that the common man was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Husserl’s Crisis and Our Crisis

Dermot Moran’s Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction (henceforth, Introduction for short) is a particularly important and timely book. This is ...