Questions tagged [kant]
Immanuel Kant was a German Enlightenment philosopher.
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Kant's intuition/concept distinction
I have a few interconnected questions related to Kant's terminology. I think I understand the basic idea of Kant's dichotomy between intuitions and concepts, but the details are very confusing. My ...
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Are categorical imperatives employed in non-Kantian ethical theories?
Are categorical imperatives employed in non-Kantian ethical theories?
For example, consider utilitarianism's principle "act so that the overall happiness is maximised". Is this not a ...
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Kant's categorical imperative and casual sex. Why does casual sex necessarily involve using someone as a mere means?
I am writing a paper on Kant's principle and test of universalizability. It seems that the test can allow for morally permissible casual sex (i.e., sex outside the Kantian marriage), e.g., consider ...
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Does Kant implicitly commit the paralogism of pure reason when saying that to have a representation it is necessary to accompany it with 'I think'?
In Caygill's Kant Dictionary entry of 'I Think' there is this part:
Kant further claims that 'I think' is the necessary vehicle/form/accompaniment of experience: to have a representation it is ...
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A "combining logic" moment in Kant
In "Ethical Theories and Moral Guidance", Pekka Väyrynen goes over proposals and arguments concerning the knowability of moral claims. Kant's relevant proposal (in the second Critique) is:
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Is "there are synthetic a priori truths" a synthetic a priori truth?
Disregarding any modern objections to the division of synthetic/analytic and a priori/a posteriori, how would one argue for or against this claim, using Kant's definitions and assumptions?
Also, is ...
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What does Kant refer to when writing about "dreaming (träumenden) idealism" and "visionary (schwärmenden) idealism"?
In Note III to §13 of the Prolegomena, Kant seems to be answering some critics that have compared his transcendental idealism to the philosophies of Descartes (at least the skeptical part of it) and ...
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In Kant, what would happen if singular objects that we perceive in space didn't necessarily have the spatial properties that we perceive them to have?
In Paul Guyer's Kant, section "Space and Time: the pure forms of sensible intuition", Guyer argues that "Kant’s argument for transcendental idealism is incomplete."
For that, he ...
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Kant's Prolegomena Note I - Geometry being an objective representation of nature
I'm trying to understand this part of Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Note I to "How is pure mathematics possible?":
It would be completely different if the senses had to ...
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On Kant's third antinomy (CPR)
The thesis of Kant's third antinomy is based on the fact that, if the antithesis was true (i.e. there is no causality through freedom and thus only causality by natural laws) then, for any given ...
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Kant's Prolegomena §13 - triangle example argument
In Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Kant argues that space (and time) are not qualities of objects, but a priori intuitions that allow the concepts of objects in our minds.
To argue in favor of ...
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Why is the argument from synthetic a priori cognition to the subjectivity of what is cognized independent of the "appearance" premise?
In Paul Guyer's Kant, section "A Life in Work", the author claims this:
this argument from synthetic a priori cognition to the subjectivity of what is cognized is independent of the general ...
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Examples of "a priori knowledge" in Kant
What are some good examples of a priori knowledge that must exist independent of experience and transcend it? How can we be certain that such is indeed a priori?
The example Kant mentions in the ...
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Assumption about the existence of "knowledge a priori" by Kant
I am just starting to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason translated by Max Mueller. In the introductory chapter, "General truths, which at the same time, bear the character of an inward ...
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What is a "Sache" in Kant's metaphysics?
In Prolegomena §9:
Freilich ist es auch alsdenn unbegreiflich, wie die Anschauung einer gegenwärtigen Sache mir diese sollte zu erkennen geben, wie sie an sich ist
Translated to:
Of course, even ...
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In Kant, are "pure intuition" and "intuition a priori" synonyms?
I'm reading the prolegomena, and in §7, Kant presents both
"pure intuition" (reine Anschauung), mentioned many times, and
"intuition a priori" (Anschauung a priori), mentioned ...
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Is the split between Continental and Analytical comparable to the split between Empiricism and Rationalism, if so can it be reconciled?
Just as Kant reconciled empiricism and rationalism, is there a project to unify analytical and continental ? Or is Analytical philosophy irreversibly ingrained in Scientism while continental ...
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Newton and Kant about 'Absolute Space'
Newton starts his book The Mathematical Principals of Natural Philosophy, 1687
II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.
Kant ...
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How is 'Pure Intuition' possible according to Kant?
One of the key passages is from Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). According to Kant pure intution is the means to obtain mathematical theorems as synthetic a priori propositions. This ...
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Do scalar fields satisfy Kant's indefinitely-divisible matter thesis?
So Kant concluded vs. the Second Antinomy that matter is indefinitely divisible, so he would have taken issue with the idea that the Planck scale is the absolute limit, here. At first, I was thinking ...
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Kant's Prolegomena §6 text interpretation "might reveal itself through these its effects"
I'm having a hard time trying to interpret this part of the text:
Does not this capacity, since it is not, and cannot be, based on experience, presuppose some a priori basis for cognition, which lies ...
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Is there a naturalized intuitionist mathematics? Is it Kantian?
I have in mind an interpretation of mathematics as intuitionalism, where intuitions are subjective (built from personal experience), but subjective experience is ultimately explained “objectively” a ...
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Why must things in themselves remain wholly unknown?
I'm on the Transcendental Aesthetic (and so am well aware that Kant's reasoning here may become clearer later on) -- what confuses me is how it seems to follow, from the discovery that time and space, ...
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What say Kantian ethics about capitalism?
As I did read, it does not look like Kantian ethics favors socialism (especially given it requires slavery by economic imperative), but I would like a more rigorous analysis.
Note that
Recall that ...
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Kantian Ethics on monetary punishment and oher punisments that are no exactly the same as the infraction?
The question how are criminal punishment justified in Kantian ethics, this complementary resource, and this entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, give a general insight in Kantian view of ...
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Is Mathematics a form of experience?
When someone experiences the mental clarity of 2 + 2 = 4, is this a form of experience similar to let's say, seeing red, or the sour taste of a pickle.
On the one hand it seems like it is a form of ...
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Where exactly Kant says ‘philosophy is to learn how to think …’?
this is a famous quote from Emanuel Kant: “philosophy is to learn how to think, and not to learn thoughts”.
Where exactly did Kant say that? And what is the correct form of it?
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Kant's modal logic
It is customary nowadays to have the introduction rule for the possibility operator "◊" be a two-edged negation of the necessity operator "□": ◊A = ~□~A. It is also possible (haha!)...
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Analytic vs Dialectic logic
What are analytic and dialectic logic in Kantian philosophy? What's the difference between them and why can't we use analytic logic as an organon?
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What exactly is Nietzsche’s criticism of the Thing-in-itself and is it supplanted by his Will to Power?
How did Nietzsche criticize the Thing-in-itself from Kantian philosophy?
There are two popular claims:
Nietzsche thought that we only know causation from experiences and and so cannot legitimately ...
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The role of fiction and analogy in Kant’s epistemology
It seems undeniable that we can create new fictions by analogy and combination, which are merely inspired by what we take the basic structure of reality.
For example, we do not (directly) experience a ...
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Does Kant advocate Eternalism (or something similar)?
Kant described time as only an intuition that allows us to comprehend the world.
That means things-in-themselves are timeless, and do not come into being unlike the appearances of them.
When humans ...
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What is the philosophical position that a metaphysical debate is caused by different mental models?
I'm looking for authors, papers, and hopefully, the name of the philosophical position that I describe here. I've seen a couple of papers so I know that they exist, but I can't recall the authors or ...
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Understanding some aspects of schematism in Kant's philosophy
I'm struggling to understand Kant's schematism. Kant says that imagination produces the synthesis of schemata and that schemata are how we can relate intuitions to concepts. He goes on to give the ...
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I need help understanding Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
I need help in understanding Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason § 18 and 19. What Kant does there suggests an alternative to the idea that a concept represents a different object. So the question is about ...
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Is it ethical to convince someone to get vaccinated?
I'm currently writing about the ethics of vaccinations, and I have two long-standing concerns about the matter. "Is refusing vaccination a morally justifiable position?" will be my question. ...
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Reference requested: follow-up to Kant's COPR
Still reading the First Critique, still confused about multiple facts, please be indulgent and helpful with the errors in my understanding... thanks.
Perhaps the most important goal of Immanuel Kant, ...
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The inquisition and Kantian morality
I read in Williams' book on truth that during the inquisition priests were eager to apply Kantian ethics under torture, and that this proved difficult because lies - and arguably secrets - were ...
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Complicity in Kantian ethics
Let's use the example of the trolly problem, as everyone seems to understand what is at stake there. If I have a radio to the train driver, am I "using people as means" if I:
tell him to ...
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What is the difference between "Quality" and "Essence"?
In philosophy, I often hear the terms "essence" and "quality" being thrown around as some sort of categories (the most abstract concept our minds can have), however, I have never ...
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Cassirer and the Categorical Imperative
I've been reading some of the shorter works of the neo-Kantian and proto-semiologist Ernst Cassirer. While I find him a valuable bridge across the "continental divide," I'm not sure yet that ...
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What does Judith Jarvis Thomson's looped trolley problem show about Kant?
What does Judith Jarvis Thomson's looped trolley problem show about Kant?
Thomson argues that the Kantian notion of ‘using merely as a means’
does not provide a satisfactory answer, however, and to ...
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What can be known and what can be believed when neither induction nor deduction is justified?
Kant is well known for taking seriously the lack of justification for induction voiced by Hume and finding what is left for us to be able to know and believe.
I wonder, with the knowledge that the ...
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Ontic/Ontological as parallel to a posteriori/a priori?
Heidegger makes the distinction between the ontic (concerning beings themselves) and the ontological (the being of beings, being as such).
Would it be wise to say that the ontic covers the contingent ...
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Does Kant merely assume that all other good things can be good *with* limitation in the absence of a good will?
To elaborate on my question:
To argue that a good will is the only thing that is good without limitation, Kant must argue that all other good things are not good without limitation. To do this, doesn'...
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Animal commodification
Is it morally or ethically justified to commodify animals (i.e., such as the tiger temple when it was a thing)? Should humans treat animals' ends (telos) with as much respect as we do ourselves? ...
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What is the meaning of "dialectic"and "analytic" in Kant's First Critique?
The meaning of the term dialectic, as in Transcendental Dialectic, in the Critique Of Pure Reason, is obscure. This, mixed with the already complex text, makes this term difficult to assess.
A list of ...
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Kant’s claim “there are only three kinds of proof for the existence of God”
There are only three kinds of proof for the existence of God possible from speculative reason.
All paths on which one may set forth with this aim either begin from determinate experience and the ...
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Are Ideas Noumenal?
I've been studying Kant's philosophy recently and I haven't been able to get something straight.
Quick question here: How does Kant's distinction between phenomena/noumena apply to ideas and thoughts? ...
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What is the difference between the “thing in itself” and noumena?
“Things in themselves” and noumena are similar in Kantian metaphysics (Critique of Pure Reason, mostly) and interchangeable much of the time. The phenomena/noumena divide is integral to Kantian ...
