34
votes
Is it ethical to convince someone to get vaccinated?
You approach the problem from the position that everyone knows and agrees on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. But people don't refuse it because they wish to declare that they are selfish and ...
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30
votes
Is it ethical to convince someone to get vaccinated?
When something has a label on it, it will influence how we think about it, even if the thing isn't what the label says. So I think it's important to define the terms in depth.
Suppose a pharmaceutical ...
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21
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Accepted
What did Kant say on the invention of new terms?
You are probably referring to the first two paragraphs of the first book of the Transcendental Dialectic (A312-13/B369). Here they are, in Guyer's translation:
"In the great wealth of our ...
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16
votes
Why did Kant, Hegel, and Adorno leave some words and phrases in the Greek alphabet?
Alasdair MacIntyre is a 20th/21st century philosopher writing in English.
Immanuel Kant was an 18th century philosopher writing in German. G.W.F Hegel was a 19th century philosopher writing in German....
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13
votes
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Is it better to read Kant in English or Italian?
It's not necessarily the language, but the edition you should keep an eye on.
As I wrote here, translations of Kant are problematic in and of themselves, partly because even German native speakers ...
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12
votes
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Why were Kant's categories used in the mathematical category theory?
The paper General Theory of Natural Equivalences by Eilenberg and Mac Lane (1945), where the terminology is first introduced, mentions neither Aristotle, nor Kant, nor even Carnap, who was still alive....
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12
votes
Hiring someone is unethical to Kantians because you're treating them as a means?
You're missing an important word. The second formulation of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork is:
Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the ...
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11
votes
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How did Kant define knowledge?
Key text here may be On opinion, knowledge and belief, CPR B 848-859.
There is conviction [Überzeugung]. It is the subjective part necessary for knowledge:
Taking something to be true is an ...
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11
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Where did Kant say that "happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination"?
It occurs in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, here it is in context (from 4:418-19, p.29 in the Gregor's Cambridge translation):
"He is not capable of any principle by which to ...
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11
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What did Kant say on the invention of new terms?
See KRV, Transcendental Dialectic. Bk.I : Of Ideas in General :
To coin new words is a pretension to legislation in language which is seldom successful [...].
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10
votes
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In what fundamental ways, if any, does Husserl break with Kant?
It should be said that Husserl was philosophically averse to Kant's "creative" transcendental subject, perhaps due to the dominance of absolute idealist interpretations of him at the time, and ...
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10
votes
What does Kant mean by "Existence is not a predicate"?
Mathematical logic, and the associated notion of the existential quantifier, were invented only after Kant's time. Kant used other, more traditional concepts.
The ontological proof (or at least the ...
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10
votes
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How can Hegel call philosophy a science?
I think (and I broadly agree here with Eckart Förster, whose book The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy will be quoted here for reference) that Hegel roughly follows Kant's understanding of science. ...
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10
votes
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Was Kant an Intuitionist about mathematical objects?
You're right to see some resonances between intuitionism and Kant. However, there's no uncontroversial sense in which you could blithely categorize Kant as an intuitionist. I'm not sure I've ever seen ...
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9
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Was Kant anticipating Gödel's incompleteness in his antinomies?
This reminds me of the older question Was Wittgenstein anticipating Gödel? There is more to it in the case of Kant than there was in the case of Wittgenstein though, at least in spirit. One could ...
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9
votes
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Did Kant come to believe that we have access to things-in-themselves after all?
TL;DR: No, he did not!
To be precise, things-in-themselves may be objects of thought, i.e. abstract concepts of the realm of logic, and therefore concepts of transcendental philosophy as logically ...
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9
votes
For Kant, are spider moms that eat their kids immoral?
For Kant, morality only applies to rational beings. At some points, he will use the word "humanity" as a synonym. Thus, if we look at the second group of formulations of the categorical imperative we ...
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9
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What are the counterexamples to Kant's argument that existence is not a predicate?
There are no counterexamples to Kant's "argument" because it is not an argument. It is a view of predication under which being/existence is not a "real" predicate discussed in ...
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9
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Is it ethical to convince someone to get vaccinated?
John Rawls discusses this subject, albeit briefly, in A Theory of Justice. The context is the issue of public goods, for example in light of the free-rider problem. The section is #42 (pg. 237 of the ...
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8
votes
What is Kant's effect on modern culture, beyond philosophy?
His main impact may be through the notion of human dignity.
I have recently talked to a professor that stated that this term is very vivid in Germany because of the strong kantian tradition, while ...
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8
votes
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Is German idealism ontological, epistemic, or something more abstract?
I think Kant would take exception to being called an ontological idealist or dualist. There is no dualism between appearances and things in themselves in the Cartesian sense of "dualism", the "...
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8
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What are the more complex/interesting examples of synthetic a priori statements?
The notion of a priori changed a lot since Kant, see Did Kant consider Newtonian mechanics a priori? Today they are seen as potentially fallible, even if not empirical.
The Austrian school, ...
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7
votes
Must Kant's a priori concepts of Space and Time be known to us before the 12 pure Categories of the Understanding?
The following is explicitly a synopsis of the CPR only to provide a background and give basic insight necessary for understanding the answer to the question. Some points are slightly modified or ...
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7
votes
In what fundamental ways, if any, does Husserl break with Kant?
Husserl, Edmund: The crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936) has some paragraphs dealing explicitly with the transcendental philosophy of Kant: See §25 about Kant's ...
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7
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What does Kant mean by "Existence is not a predicate"?
By predicate, I think he means a "property" of the entity, for example, the predicate of being tall. This is the meaning that I'm aware of and which is the meaning we use in mathematical logic.
...
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7
votes
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What did Kant mean by 'courtesy of the heart'?
To begin with, Kant himself did not speak about courtesy of the heart [Höflichkeit des Herzens] in any of his texts. I made a full-text search in German on the Academy Edition over all 23 volumes - ...
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7
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Why did Kant talk about metaphysics of ethics?
You ask:
[For Kant,] How can there be a metaphysics of ethics?
Let's start by pointing out that Kant does believe there can be Metaphysics of Morals enough so that this appears in the title two of ...
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7
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Did Kant classify the same proposition as both pure and impure a priori?
This is a nice catch, Kant is indeed inconsistent in his use of "pure". Below I am quoting from the Guyer's 1998 translation of the Critique.
In Section I Kant first distinguishes between empirical ...
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