•  175
    Kant's Metaphysical Deduction of the Categories: Towards a Systematic Reconstruction
    In Andrew Stephenson & Anil Gomes (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Kant, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  146
    The other chapters in this volume discuss the important, but neglected, topic of systematicity in metaphysics. In this chapter I begin by taking a step back and asking: why is systematicity important in metaphysics? Assuming that metaphysics should be systematic, why is this the case? I canvas some answers that emerge naturally within contemporary philosophy and argue that none of them adequately explains why metaphysics should be systematic. I then turn to Kant’s account of systematicity for hi…Read more
  •  101
    I begin by considering a question that has driven much scholarship on transcendental idealism: are appearances numerically identical to the things in themselves that appear, or numerically distinct? I point out that much of the debate on this question has assumed that this is equivalent to the question of whether they are the same objects, but go on to provide textual, historical, and philosophical evidence that “object” (Gegenstand) and “thing” (Ding) have different meanings for Kant. A thing i…Read more
  •  88
    IX—How Is Metaphysics Possible?
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (3): 231-252. 2023.
    In the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason Kant raises a famous question: how is metaphysics possible as a science? Kant posed this question for his predecessors in early modern philosophy. I raise this question anew for the resurgence of metaphysics within analytic philosophy. I begin by dividing the question of the possibility of metaphysics into separate questions about its semantic and epistemic possibility, and translate them into contemporary terms as: (1) Why do terms in metaphysi…Read more
  •  39
    The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds represents a new wave of interest in 'the metaphysical Kant'. In recent decades Kant scholars have increasingly become skeptical of interpreting Kant as a philosopher who wished to truly "leave metaphysics behind". The contributors to this volume share acommon commitment to the idea that Kant's philosophy cannot be properly understood without careful attention to its metaphysical presuppositions and, in particular, to how those metaphysical presuppositions ar…Read more
  •  1
    Kant on real possibility
    In Otávio Bueno & Scott A. Shalkowski (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Modality, Routledge. 2018.
  •  1
    Systematic Metaphysics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
  •  1608
    Kant's Schematism of the categories: An interpretation and defence
    European Journal of Philosophy 31 (1): 30-64. 2022.
    The aim of the Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason is to solve the problem posed by the “inhomogeneity” of intuitions and categories: the sensible properties of objects represented in intuition are of a different kind than the properties represented by categories. Kant's solution is to introduce what he calls “transcendental schemata,” which mediate the subsumption of objects under categories. I reconstruct Kant's solution in terms of two substantive premises, which I call Subsumpt…Read more
  •  65
  •  367
    Self-Consciousness and Objectivity, by Sebastian Rödl
    Mind 131 (524): 1339-1347. 2021.
    In his recent book, Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism, Sebastian Rödl aims to transform our understanding, not only of th.
  •  1177
    Kant and the concept of an object
    European Journal of Philosophy 29 (2): 299-322. 2020.
    European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  232
    Hermann Cohen’s 1871 classic, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, had a formative influence, not only on the Marburg school’s reading of Kant, but on their entire conception of philosophy. This influence was further magnified by the substantially revised and expanded second edition of 1885 and the yet further expanded third edition of 1918. Neo-Kantianism was the dominant philosophical movement in Germany in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which means that a work, ostensibly, of Kant schol…Read more
  •  603
    Kant, Bolzano, and the Formality of Logic
    In Sandra Lapointe & Clinton Tolley (eds.), The New Anti-Kant, . 2014.
    In §12 of his 1837 magnum opus, the Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano remarks that “In the new logic textbooks one reads almost constantly that ‘in logic one must consider not the material of thought but the mere form of thought, for which reason logic deserves the title of a purely formal science’” (WL §12, 46).1 The sentence Bolzano quotes is his own summary of others’ philosophical views; he goes on to cite Jakob, Hoffbauer, Metz, and Krug as examples of thinkers who held that logic abstracts from …Read more
  •  1343
    In this essay I offer a partial rehabilitation of Cohen’s Kant interpretation. In particular, I will focus on the center of Cohen’s interpretation in KTE, reflected in the title itself: his interpretation of Kant’s concept of experience. “Kant hat einen neuen Begriff der Erfahrung entdeckt,”7 Cohen writes at the opening of the first edition of KTE (henceforth, KTE1), and while the exact nature of that new concept of experience is hard to pin down in the 1871 edition, he states it succinctly in t…Read more
  •  764
    Transcendental Idealism Without Tears
    In K. Pearce & T. Goldschmidt (eds.), Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 82-103. 2017.
    This essay is an attempt to explain Kantian transcendental idealism to contemporary metaphysicians and make clear its relevance to contemporary debates in what is now called ‘meta-metaphysics.’ It is not primarily an exegetical essay, but an attempt to translate some Kantian ideas into a contemporary idiom.
  •  406
    In the section “Validity and Existence in Logik, Book III,” I explain Lotze’s famous distinction between existence and validity in Book III of Logik. In the following section, “Lotze’s Platonism,” I put this famous distinction in the context of Lotze’s attempt to distinguish his own position from hypostatic Platonism and consider one way of drawing the distinction: the hypostatic Platonist accepts that there are propositions, whereas Lotze rejects this. In the section “Two Perspectives on …Read more
  •  1326
    A Guide to Ground in Kant's Lectures on Metaphysics
    In Courtney D. Fugate (ed.), Kant's Lectures on Metaphysics: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. 2019.
    While scholars have extensively discussed Kant’s treatment of the Principle of Sufficient Ground in the Antinomies chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason, and, more recently, his relation to German rationalist debates about it, relatively little has been said about the exact notion of ground that figures in the PSG. My aim in this chapter is to explain Kant’s discussion of ground in the lectures and to relate it, where appropriate, to his published discussions of ground.
  •  2311
    I raise a problem about the possibility of metaphysics originally raised by Kant: what explains the fact that the terms in our metaphysical theories (e.g. “property”) refer to entities and structures (e.g. properties) in the world? I distinguish a meta-metaphysical view that can easily answer such questions (“deflationism”) from a meta-metaphysical view for which this explanatory task is more difficult (which I call the “substantive” view of metaphysics). I then canvass responses that the substa…Read more
  •  115
    Alexander Nehemas: On the Philosophical Life
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 8 (1): 24-38. 2000.
  •  60
    Kant's Modal Metaphysics: A reply to my critics
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 1159-1167. 2018.
  •  50
    Replies to Critics
    Kantian Review 23 (3): 473-487. 2018.
  •  96
    Appearances and Things in Themselves: Actuality and Identity
    Kantian Review 21 (2): 283-292. 2016.
    Lucy Allais’s anti-phenomenalist interpretation of transcendental idealism is incomplete in two ways. First of all, like some phenomenalists, she is committed to denying the coherence of claims of numerical identity of appearances and things in themselves. Secondly, she fails to explain adequately what grounds the actuality of appearances. This opens the door to a phenomenalist understanding of appearances. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-repl…Read more
  •  34
    Kant’s Modal Metaphysics
    Oxford University Press UK. 2016.
    What is possible and why? What is the difference between the merely possible and the actual? In Kants Modal Metaphysics Nicholas Stang examines Kants lifelong engagement with these questions and their role in his philosophical development. This is the first book to trace Kants theory of possibility all theway from the so-called pre-Critical writings of the 1750s and 1760s to the Critical system of philosophy inaugurated by the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. Stang argues that the key to underst…Read more