Questions tagged [kant]
Immanuel Kant was a German Enlightenment philosopher.
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How does Kant answer the objection against mind-dependent reality - which is that I can imagine a time when there were no minds?
Kant wrote:
... if I remove the thinking subject, the whole material world must at once vanish because it is nothing but a phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of ourselves as a subject, and a ...
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How does Kant assert existence of the noumena, if indeed he does?
According to Kant the thing-in-itself or noumena is strictly hidden from us and phenomena are conditioned by the categories of the mind such as time, space, causality amongst others. These categories ...
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How is a priori synthetic knowledge possible?
One of Kant's example of a priori synthetic knowledge is the knowledge of geometry, that is of space itself. It is a priori as it cannot be otherwise - it is independent of experience because it is a ...
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What does it mean to have a sense of geometry innate to us - if that is in fact the case?
Most people, if asked whether they know any geometry, will answer no; but most, if not all, can recognise a straight line, a right angle, or a circle; of course they will not be able to define them as ...
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How to express Kant's notion of existence on first-order logic according to Ayer?
In Language, Truth, and Logic, Ayer writes:
[As] Kant pointed out, existence is not an attribute. For, when we ascribe an attribute to a thing, we covertly assert that it exists.
However, I can't ...
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Is Kant a Christian Philosopher, not merely a Philosopher who happens to be Christian?
Kant categorical imperative simply seems to me a rational founding for a Christian ethic. As this is the centre-piece of his moral philosophy, it seems to me he is at least morally a Christian ...
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Why shouldn't you lie to the future murderer of your children?
I've heard two versions of this anecdote about Kant's ethics:
You are at home and a man with an axe rings the bell. He asks where your children are so that he can kill them. It is, according to ...
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what was Plato's view on noumenon?
The relation between objects in the world is established by pure concepts existing a-priori:
1) These concepts belong to a world of absolute concepts away from the mind - Plato
2) These concepts ...
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Is Scruton correct in characterising the Transcendental World of Kants?
Scruton in his Sexual Desire, a philosophical investigation says
we must distinguish the world of human experience from the world of scientific observation. In the first we exist as agents, taking ...
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Transcendental Idealism and past time
According to Kant, time is part of the phenomenal realm. What would Kant say about past events such as the big bang when no minds existed? Would he say we can't know such things?
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What was the impact of the discovery of non-euclidean geometry on Kantian thought?
This is mainly a historical question. In Gary Hatfields introduction to Kants Prologomena, he says:
After the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry, Kant’s claims for the synthetic a priori status of ...
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Was Kants formulation of mathematics as synthetic a priori a forerunner to the Russellian campaign to reduce mathematics to logic?
Kant showed that mathematics was synthetic a priori. For example the laws of arithmetic or of euclidean geometry, and noted that this had escaped the notice of previous thinkers, they had assumed them ...
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Is Kant the first Western philosopher to distinguish between representation and reality?
My limited understanding of Kant is that he distinguishes between noumena 'things in themselves' from mental representations of them as intuition. Is he the first Western philosopher to make this ...
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Collecting any formalisations of morality
I'm collecting formalizations of "morality" of any philosophical school.
(My special wishes is anything for Kant, which I don't understand and for whom I didn't find anything seriously formal, at ...
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Is 'Transcendental' originally a philosophical concept or a theological one?
I had understood 'transcendental' to be religiously inspired terminology and in fact exclusively so, so it came as a surprise to me that it had a philosophical side to it - as a term it was introduced ...
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What is meant by transcendental idealism?
What exactly is meant by transcendential idealism? Is it simply the idea that we can't possibly observe things-in-themselves directly (like idealism), so (unlike idealism) we know they exist, but not ...
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What are Kant's adiaphora?
Studying Kant's Perpetual Peace I happened to notice the concept of adiaphora. Further investigations brought up almost nothing: There are several references to adiaphora in Kant's work that clearly ...
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Is my understanding of the Transcendental Deduction correct?
I don't want to misinterpret this important philosophy of Kant, so I need to ask here whether my interpretations are in accordance with what is generally accepted.
Transcendental deduction implies ...
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What is Kant’s strategy to overcome Humean skepticism without having recourse to the metaphysical excesses of rationalism?
I understand that by metaphysical excesses, he meant supernatural entities, such as God, or the soul, to explain things in the phenomenal world.
Also, to my understanding, Hume's skepticism boils ...
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What would Kant say, if I asked him about the ontological status of the integers?
I understand that Kant remarked that Space & Time are forms that the intuition take. Would he also say that of the integers? Are they judgements? That is they lie within his Category of Quantity.
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How can categories be derived deductively?
In a book on Aristotle's metaphysics I read a passage on the differences between his and Kant's categories. It says that the concept of categories, in both Aristotle's and Kant's case, wasn't ...
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Did Kant believe the enlightened and moral republican public could make up for legislative and executive institutions? [closed]
Kant's theoretical work Perpetual Peace could be seen as limited insofar as he didn't really provide any detailed thoughts on the legislative and executive institutions that would make international ...
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Spinoza's a priori proof for the existence of God
I am currently studying some aspects of Spinoza's philosophy, mainly in contrast to Kant. It seems to me that Spinoza is just the kind of "dogmatic metaphysician" Kant criticises. I know that Kant ...
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Is this an Immanuel Kant quote? [closed]
You can imagine the perfect chair in your mind but you cannot build the perfect chair.
Or something very similar. I believe that is Kant but I cannot find any reference to the quote anywhere. Any ...
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What are Kant's Permissive Laws?
My new term brings new questions, this time concerning Kant's "Perpetual Peace" (you can read most of it here).
The preliminary articles can be differentiated: All of them are prohibitive rules, but ...
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Is there a connection between Kants thought & the observer-dependent interpretation of quantum mechanics?
Kants copernican revolution placed the observer squarely back into universe. The universe wasn't just an objective reality out there, but also entangled up in our own ways of knowing and perceiving at ...
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Why does Popper think there are no a priori synthetic statements?
Lately I´ve been reading Poppers "Logic of Scientific Discovery" and I am especially interested in his critics of induction as a scientific method. When he trys to show that a principle of induction ...
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Is this a real quote from Kant?
Is this a real quote from Kant?
“Someone’s intelligence can be measured by the quantity of uncertainties that he can bear”
If so, what is the origin? In what context does he say it?
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Does a moral act have to be necessarily beautiful?
Kant argues in his Third Critique (sec. 59) that moral uprightness and decency brings us pleasure as in a reflective, judgment of taste:
Now I say that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally ...
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How could maxims become universal laws? (What does Kant's Categorical Imperative mean?)
This states 'act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law'.
How can I will a maxim to become a universal law, surely that kind of ...
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Would Kant choose to sacrifice one life to save another?
If what I know about Kant is correct- watching the Harvard Justice series on Kant and some summaries of his work- then Kant believes in an absolute morality where everything is either right or wrong ...
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What was Kant's accomplishment? [closed]
I have to admit, that I don't know this:
I know that before Kant there were two groups of people that saw the world differently and Kant somehow synthesized the two positions and afterwords Hegel had ...
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What's the meaning of the idea of necessity?
I'm reading critique of pure reason, from Immanuel Kant:
Now, in the first place, if we have a proposition which contains the
idea of necessity in its very conception, it is a¹ if, moreover, it ...
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What gives the Categorical Imperative moral weight?
After reading The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, I'm still unsure why human beings have a duty to obey the Categorical Imperative. I understand Kant's argument why a rational will ...
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How are "conservation" and "happiness" the same thing for Kant?
Why does Kant equate "conservation" with "happiness" near the start of "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals"?
These seem like very different things (especially looking through an ...
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Are the first and second forms of the categorical imperative actually equivalent?
I will put aside any question of possible imprecision of the formulations, I will assume that the Kant's intentions can be understood intuitively reasonably precisely.
Kant gives two forms of the ...
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What's the relationship between infinity and a dimension? [closed]
When I was reading Kant's Critique, I got the sense that he'd sort of found a formula for calling something a dimension. Space seems to arise out of an infinity of extension. Time seems to arise ...
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Moral Duty and Happiness: Are Both Achievable?
I have studied a little Philosophy and done a lot of thinking about moral duty, individualism and communities. I have come to the belief that it is one person's duty to assist the community event at ...
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How does Kant's moral philosophy define "goodness" and evaluate the moral worth?
Philosophy.SE, this is my first time being here, hence please pardon my inexperience of phrasing the question.
I was discussing the moral philosophy of Kant vs the moral philosophy of the Christian ...
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Is there a parallel between Hegelian "essence" and Kantian "concept"?
I think I've found a paralelism between these two notions, at least to some extent. For Kant defines (in Logic, I, I, §1, also translated) concept as "an universal representation"
Every ...
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What is Kant's argument about the relationship between logic and reason?
At Wikipedia, I read:
Logic arose (see below) from a concern with correctness of argumentation. Modern logicians usually wish to ensure that logic studies just those arguments that arise from ...
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How does Darwin's Theory of Evolution complicate a reading of Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals?
Darwins Theory of Evolution states that the evolution of life underlies processes like selection, reproduction and variation. I think, essentially he says, that the occurences of any ability or ...
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Should a philosopher's bigotry affect the interpretation of their work?
Aristotle is generally considered a genius of towering stature and the depth and breadth of his work are testament to this; however, by most accounts, and despite being progressive in many ways, he ...
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Are the arguments of the Critique of Pure Reason still considered?
Realizing its importance in intellectual history, I am considering an intense study of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. However, I wonder what the current status of the text is?
To clarify: has it ...
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Pagination of "Critique of pure reason"?
I see that fragments from Kant's "Critique of pure reason" are usually referenced according to the pagination of the first or second edition (Axxx or Bxxx respectively). And my translation does not ...
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How can we understand the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding?
This has been a particularly difficult section for me. Please forgive me if things sound opaque, but Kant is a particularly difficult writer and my reading is hurt by the fact that it isn't occurring ...
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Which of Kant's writings would be a good introduction to his work?
I've been planning to read some of Kant's work for a while, but have no idea where to start. Which of his writings would be a good initial introduction to his philosophical views?
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What views of government were based on Kantian ethics?
Historically, what kinds of government and politics have been influenced by the maxims of Kant's "categorical imperative"?
Take for example, the maxim that one should only act in such a way that the ...
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What were Kant's thoughts on ethics and "Transcendental Deduction"?
What is Kant's thoughts on ethics? And what do his "Transcendental Deduction" ideas have to do with his ideas on ethics?
Please keep in mind that I'm a a newb to philosophy, so the simper and more ...
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How to characterize Kant's usage of the term "noumena"?
Wikipedia gives an explanation of Kant's usage of the term noumena, part of which reads as follows:
By Kant's account, when we employ a concept to describe or categorize noumena (the objects of ...
