Kenneth R. Westphal

The full title and editorial information about this book must be taken at face value. This volume contains a brief Forward, a 20 page Introduction by Düsing, a 15 page summary by Troxler of Schelling’s 10 hours of introductory lectures on his philosophy of identity, a 19 page summary by Troxler of Schelling’s remarks clarifying his Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, a 14 page summary by Troxler of Hegel’s opening lectures on logic and metaphysics then broke off), 20 pages of notes by Düsing citing texts to which Schelling and Hegel refer or alude in these lectures, and 95 pages of interpretive exegesis by Düsing. Indices and a bibliography are also included. This is a handsome, scholarly edition of these materials.

Kant provided two parallel, sound proofs of mental content externalism; both prove this thesis: We human beings could not think of ourselves as persisting through apparent changes in what we experience - nor could we think of the apparent spatio-temporal world of objects, events and people - unless in fact we are conscious of some aspects of the actual spatio-temporal world and have at least some rudimentary knowledge of it. Such proofs turn, not on general facts about the world, but on appreciating various fundamental regards in which our finite human cognizance depends upon the world we inhabit. The?transcendental? character of these analyses concerns identifying and appreciating various fundamental features of our finite form of human mindedness, and basic constraints upon, and prospects of, cognitive justification within the non-formal domain of human empirical knowledge. Such analyses and proofs have been developed in various ways, using distinctive strategies, not only by Kant, but also by Hegel, C.I. Lewis, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Frederick Will. Here I examine and defend the methodological reflections required to understand, assess and appreciate such transcendental proofs, and why so few analytic epistemologists have found them persuasive or illuminating. nema

This collection of original essays aims to reinvigorate the debate surrounding philosophical realism in relation to philosophy of science, pragmatism, epistemology, and theory of perception. Questions concerning realism are as current and as ancient as philosophy itself; this volume explores relations between different positions designated as ‘realism’ by examining specific cases in point, drawn from a broad range of systematic problems and historical views, from ancient Greek philosophy through the present. The first section examines the context of the project; contributions systematically engage the historical background of philosophical realism, re-examining key works of Aristotle, Descartes, Quine, and others. The following two sections epitomize the central tension within current debates: scientific realism and pragmatism. These contributions address contemporary questions of scientific realism and the reality of the objects of science, and consider whether, how or the extent to which realism and pragmatism are compatible. With an editorial introduction by Kenneth R. Westphal, these fourteen original essays provide wide-ranging, salient insights into the status of realism today.

It has become a veritable industry to defend Descartes against the charge of circularity and, to a lesser extent, to argue that he successfully responds to the skepticism of Sextus Empiricus. Since one of Sextus’ main skeptical ploys is to press the charge of circularity against any view, and because Descartes does reply to Sextus, it is worthwhile to criticize these efforts in the same paper. I argue that Descartes did not successfully respond to Sextus’ skeptical arguments. I argue that he is guilty of not one but of five distinct circularities in his defense of empirical knowledge, thst clearing him of such charges can only be had by rendering him naively dogmatic, and that he fails to respond to a Pyrrhonisn contraposition argument. One circle concerns divine logical voluntarism. Another concerns the semantic component of innate ideas. A third arises from his natural inability to disbelieve whatever he clearly and distinctly perceives. A fourth circularity arises in Descartes’ proof that he cannot have generated his idea of God. A final circularity concerns Descartes’ attempt to verify the reliability of his thinking nature by employing that very same thinking nature. To substantiate these claims I review the principles of Sextus’ arguments briefly and I reexamine Descartes’ texts and doctrines in detail. I also take occasion to reflect on why Descartes’ foundationalist program must have failed.

This paper explicates and argues for the thesis that individual rational judgment, of the kind required for rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains – i.e. in empirical knowledge or in morals (both ethics and justice) – is in fundamental part socially and historically based, although these social and historical aspects of rational justification are consistent with realism about the objects of empirical knowledge and with strict objectivity about basic moral principles. The central thesis is that, to judge fully rationally that one judges – in ways which provide rational justification of one’s judgment about any substantive matter – requires recognising one’s inherent fallibility and consequently also recognising our mutual interdependence for assessing our own and each others’ judgments and their justification. This explication provides a pragmatic account of rational justification in substantive domains which puts paid to the traditional distinction, still influential today, between ‘rational’ and ‘historical’ knowledge. (Note: This paper is a counterpart to Westphal 2011b; each paper contains substantial material not included in the other.)

This is one of the first volumes to appear in the projected fourteen-volume series, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, under the general editorship of Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. It is also the first translation ever into English of Kant's notorious late reflections on metaphysics and epistemology, dubbed "Opus postumum" by Kant's later editor, Erich Adickes. This is an excellent volume, in format, in content, and in physical presentation. Förster has provided a very clear, concise, and judicious introduction, which describes the history of Kant's manuscript, its composition, its place in Kant's philosophy, and the development of Kant's views and argument contained in it. The body of the text is a generous and representative selection of substantial excerpts from Kant's opus postumum, which fills volumes 21 and 22 of Kant's Gesammelte Schriften, totalling about twelve hundred pages of text. Förster has provided headings for seven sections of this material: "Early leaves and Oktaventwurf," "Toward the Elementary System of the Moving Forces of Matter," "The Ether Proofs," "How is Physics Possible? How is the Transition to Physics Possible?" "The Selbstsetzungslehre," "Practical Self-Positing and the Idea of God," and "What is Transcendental Philosophy?" The body of the text is preceded by a brief but useful bibliography and is followed by factual notes on the excerpted passages, a detailed glossary, a concordance to Ak vols. 21 and 22, and very good indexes of names and subjects. The editorial apparatus makes this volume especially useful, and the translators have certainly achieved their aim of making their translation read at least like Kant wherever it cannot quite read like English.

For many reasons mainstream Hegel scholarship has disregarded Hegel's interests in epistemology, hence also his response to scepticism. From the points of view of defenders and critics alike, it seems that 'Hegel' and 'epistemology' have nothing to do with one another. Despite this widespread conviction, Hegel was a very sophisticated epistemologist whose views merit contemporary interest. This article highlights several key features and innovations of Hegel's epistemology-including his anti-Cartesianism, fallibilism, realism (sic) and externalism both about mental content and about justification-by considering his systematic responses to Pyrrhonian, Humean, Cartesian and Kantian scepticism

The idea that noumena or things in themselves causally affect our sensibility, and thus provide us with sensations, has been rejected on two basic grounds: It is unintelligible because distinguishes between appearance and reality in such a way that things cannot in principle appear as they really are, and it requires applying the concept of causality trans-phenomenally, contra Kant’s Schematism. I argue that noumenal causality is intelligible and is required out of fidelity to Kant’s texts and doctrines. Kant’s theory of meaning and his transcendental reflection on sensibility show how Kant legitimately can speak about, and determine that, our passive sensibility must be causally affected by noumena. Kant’s analysis of agency shows that Kant’s practical philosophy requires noumenal causality, both from a first- and from a third-person perspective. These points ground my criticisms of Buchdahl and Allison’s view of affection, and Strawson and Sandberg’s view of meaning.

Four themes are central to the tension in Nietzsche's writings between skepticism and 'cognitivism,' the view that there are knowable empirical truths. These are his claims on behalf of truth and knowledge, his skepticism, his view of language, and his 'perspectivism.' I argue that none of his commentators has fully resolved this tension, and that a proper resolution of this tension must render his cognitive claims as claims to know truths about the world--without dismissing his radical claims about language or perspectivism. Important to resolving this tension are Nietzsche's distinctions between four senses of 'thing-in-itself' and between six senses of the 'creation' of truth. ;I develop a cognitivist interpretation of Nietzsche's late period writings. Five points are central to my reconstruction. Nietzsche distinguishes two kinds of interpretation. One of these results from rejecting foundationalist theories of knowledge. The interpretive character of empirical knowledge is nonetheless compatible with the determinancy of the objects of knowledge. The second kind of interpretation concerns the normative interpretation of human existence. This sort of interpretation, he holds, is only possible on the basis of the kind of empirical knowledge gleaned through the first kind of interpretive activity. Nietzsche's views on "philology" directly respond to his view that ordinary language is too crude to grasp psychological, ethnographic, and historical subtleties. Only members of Nietzsche's intellectual elite have either the interest or the capacity to know empirical truths; the remainder of humanity is strapped with futile belief. Such belief may be called true by crude pragmatists, but not by Nietzsche himself. Perspectivism does not entail the rejection of cognitivism; knowledge of truths about something does not require knowledge of the whole truth about anything. Perspectivism is self-referentially consistent; Nietzsche can know that all knowledge is perspectival without having to transcend his own perspective to do so. Therefore, Nietzsche's own epistemological views do allow him to make the kinds of cognitive claims required by his genealogical critique of the European cultural tradition. Also, epistemological realism can be far more subtle than is often thought

“Natural Law, Artifice and the Social Ontology of Basic Moral Norms.” It is widely presumed or asserted that if basic moral norms are artificial, then they must be conventional and so must be arbitrary; and conversely, that strictly objective, universally valid basic moral norms require some form of moral realism, whether metaphysical or theological. Kant’s Critical moral philosophy demonstrates that this presumption is mistaken: Even if basic moral norms are artificial, they can be universally necessary for our form of finite, semi-rational embodied agency here on Earth. That is, Kant’s Critical moral philosophy provides a cogent form of moral constructivism which avoids problems of moral relativism or skepticism by appeal to what Kant calls ‘practical anthropology’, an inventory of our basic physiological and cognitive capacities and vulnerabilities. Kant thus avoids the forms of moral conventionalism and relativism found in contemporary forms of moral constructivism which appeal to one or another form of subjective responses or states of awareness. Kant’s Critical moral philosophy thus succeeds in identifying and justifying basic moral norms without appeal to considerations of ‘values’, not even to the purported incommensurable value of human dignity. Therefore, the social ontology of broad and basic features of our moral lives can be acknowledged without rescinding the objectivity or universal validity of basic moral norms.

This paper argues that moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, depends upon a constricted and untenable view of rational judgment as simple syllogistic ratiocination. This I demonstrate by re-examining Nussbaum’s (1986/2002) case for particularism based on Sophocles’ Antigone. The central role of principles in moral judgment and in educational theory is supported by explicating ‘mature judgment’, which highlights key features of Thomas Green’s account of norm acquisition and of Kant’s account of the autonomy of rational judgment.

Onora O’Neill has contributed enormously to moral philosophy (broadly speaking, including both ethics and political philosophy) by identifying Kant’s unique and powerful form of normative constructivism. Frederick Neuhouser has contributed similarly by showing that all of Hegel’s standards of moral rationality aim to insure the complete development of three distinct, complementary forms of personal, moral and social freedom. However, Neuhouser’s study does not examine Hegel’s justificatory methods and principles. The present article aims to reinforce and extend Neuhouser’s findings by explicating Hegel’s basic principles for justifying practical norms. Surprisingly, Hegel’s basic principles of normative justification are rooted in Kant’s constructivism, as explicated by O’Neill. Hegel’s adaptation and development of Kant’s constructivism results in a powerful form of constructivism about moral principles which merits contemporary interest because it is more powerful and more objectivist than familiar contemporary forms of constructivism. (Slightly revised English translation by the author of „Objektive Gültigkeit zwischen Gegebenem und Gemachtem. Hegels kantischer Konstruktivismus in der praktischen Philosophie“)

The tension between Kant’s egalitarian conception of persons as ends in themselves and his rejection of the right of revolution has been widely discussed. The crucial issue is more fundamental: Is Kant’s defense of absolute obedience consistent with his own principle of legitimate law, that legitimate law is compatible with the Categorical Imperative? Resolving this apparent inconsistency resolves the subsidiary inconsistencies that have been debated in the literature. I argue that Kant’s legal principles contain two distinct grounds of obligation to obey political authority. One lies in his metaphysical principles of law, according to which there is only a duty to obey legitimate law or fully legitimate authorities. Another lies in his moral-pragmatic principles. He believes that membership in the state helps improve one’s character by counter-balancing one’s immoral inclinations. This is his ultimate ground for obedience to de facto, imperfectly legitimate states. On this ground, the duty to obey an actual state is conditional. Kant’s strong statements about the duty to obey actual states is explained by the ease with which he thinks the relevant condition is met by extant states. The apparent ambiguities in his discussion of obedience point to some important philosophical and historical shortcomings of his analysis of the division of govemmental powers and of judicial competence which hamper his analysis of the duty to obey the state.

According to Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, a proper science is organized according to rational principles and has a pure a priori rational part, its metaphysical foundation. In the second edition Preface to the first Critique, Kant claims that his account of time explains the a priori possibility of Newton’s laws of motion. I argue that Kant’s proof of the law of inertia fails, and that this casts doubt on Kant’s enterprise of providing a priori foundations for Newton’s physics.

The young Hegel was entranced by the notion of intellectual intuition, and this notion continues to entrance many of Hegel’ commentators. I argue that Kant provided three distinct conceptions of an intuitive intellect, that none of these involve aconceptual intuitionism, and that they differ markedly from Fichte’s and Schelling’s conceptions of intellectual intuition. I further argue that by 1804 Hegel recognized that appealing to an aconceptual model, or to Schelling’s model, or to his own early model of intellectual intuition generates inevitable and insoluble problems of question-begging. By incorporating several important points from Kant’s Transcendental Ideal into his reinterpretation of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction and Refutation of Idealism, Hegel’s mature discursive and conceptual account of ‘absolute knowing’ performs some of the functions Kant assigned to the intuitive intellect, though without invoking any such intuitive intellect. I discuss several of these functions.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason contains an original and powerful semantics of singular, specifically cognitive reference which has important implications for epistemology and for philosophy of science (and which is entirely independent of Transcendental Idealism). Here I argue that Kant’s cognitive semantics directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of Experimental Philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force. I begin with Newton’s Rule 4 and its role in Newton’s justification of realism about gravitational force (§ 1). I then briefly summarize Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (§ 2), and show that it is embedded in, and strongly supports, Newton’s Rule 4, and that it rules out not only Cartesian physics (per Harper) but also Cartesian, infallibilist presumptions about empirical justification generally (§ 3). This result exposes a key fallacy in Bas van Fraassen’s main argument for his anti-realist Constructive Empiricism, and in many common objections to realism (§ 4). These problems reveal yet a further important regard in which Constructive Empiricism is not (so to speak) ‘empirically’ adequate, not even to Classical Newtonian Mechanics (§ 5). This inadequacy of Constructive Empiricism highlights a chronic empiricist misunderstanding of Newton’s mechanics (§ 6). Finally, Kant’s cognitive semantics improves upon the semantic interpretation of scientific theories, and rectifies the presumption that laws of physics literally ‘lie’ (§ 7). Thus Kant and Newton still have invaluable lessons for contemporary philosophy and history of science (§ 8).

The debate about the relation between the (phenomenal) psychological realm and our (noumenal) rational freedom is moot because Kant in fact argues that psychological determinism is undemonstrable, even in the phenomenal realm. Kant contends that causality is strictly related to substance. Also, the three Analogies form a mutually integrated set of principles. Kant’s Paralogisms show we have no knowledge of a substantial self. If we have no evidence of a substantial self, then we cannot apply any of the Principles of the Analogies to the self. Consequently, we cannot justify any determinate causal judgments in psychology. Hence determinism is in principle unjustifiable within even empirical psychology.

Kant famously declares that “although all our cognition commences with experience, … it does not on that account all arise from experience”. This marks Kant’s disagreement with empiricism, and his contention that human knowledge and experience require both sensation and the use of certain a priori concepts, the Categories. However, this is only the surface of Kant’s much deeper, though neglected view about the nature of reason and judgment. Kant holds that even our a priori concepts are acquired, not from sensation, but “originally,” because our mind has a fundamental capacity to judge that, upon sensory stimulation, generates the Categories through its basic logical functions of judgment. This “epigenesis” of reason and our fundamental capacity to judge that drives it is the topic of Longuenesse’s fascinating book, and the source of her title.

Hegel’s idealism and his epistemology have been seriously misunderstood due to various deep-set preconceptions of Hegel’s expositors. Thesepreconceptions include: Idealism is inherently subjective; Hegel’s epistemology invokes intellectual intuition; Hegel was not much concerned with natural science; Natural science has no basic role to play in Hegel’s Logic. In criticizing these notions, I highlight four key features of Hegel’s account of intelligence: (1) Human cognition is active, and forges genuine cognitive links to objects that exist and have intrinsic characteristics, regardless of what we may think, believe, or say about them; (2) The Denkbestimmungen that structure and thus characterize worldly objects and events can only be grasped by intelligence (not merely by consciousness); (3) Intelligence obtains genuine objectivity by correctly identifying characteristics of a known object; (4) Central to our intelligent comprehension of Denkbestimmungen is natural scientific investigation. These findings show that Hegel’s Logic is much more closely tied with Naturphilosophie and with natural science than is commonly supposed. I conclude with eight hermeneutical pointers for understanding Hegel’s writings.