Eric Watkins

Sellars and McDowell, among others, attribute a prominent role to the Myth of the Given. In this paper, I suggest that they have in mind two different versions of the Myth of the Given and I argue that Kant is not the target of one version and, though explicitly under attack from the other, has resources sufficient to mount a satisfactory response. What is essential to this response is a proper understanding of (empirical) concepts as involving unifying functions that can take sensations as input and deliver normative representations as outputs. By understanding concepts in this way, one need not, as the second version of the Myth of the Given maintains, take sensations to be both natural and normative. Instead, they can be understood as the natural effects of external objects on us, but natural effects that can nonetheless play a role in a normative process because the concepts that are responsible for the normativity of the results can require that such natural effects be present as inputs into the process.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Argumentative Structure of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations Of Natural ScienceEric Watkinsone of kant’s most fundamental aims is to justify Newtonian science. However, providing a detailed explanation of even the main structure of his argument (not to mention the specific arguments that fill out this structure) is not a trivial enterprise. While it is clear that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781), his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), and his unpublished (and incomplete) Opus postumum should in some way constitute the core of this justification, it is less clear how each of these works does so in detail. In this paper I shall first argue that the standard view of the relationship between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (hereafter simply Metaphysical Foundations) is mistaken. I shall then present my own interpretation of how the Metaphysical Foundations contributes to the justification of Newtonian science. Finally, I shall conclude by considering an important interpretation of the argument of the Metaphysical Foundations developed by Michael Friedman. However, it is first necessary to present briefly Kant’s conception of science (in particular what conditions a body of knowledge must satisfy for Kant in order to be considered science proper) as well as Kant’s own understanding of the relevant differences between his projects in the first Critique, the Metaphysical Foundations, and the Opus postumum.Kant’s conception of science is rather strict if measured by contemporary standards. For in the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations Kant establishes three substantive conditions that a body of knowledge must satisfy in order to be considered science proper.1 (1) It must not consist in empirical principles, [End Page 567] but rather must be obtained solely from pure, a priori principles;2 (2) It must be apodictically certain;3 (3)4 It must be a systematically ordered whole (which means that its various propositions must be related as, for example, antecedents and consequents).5 After stating these conditions, Kant then argues that all natural science proper requires a pure part upon which its apodictic certainty is based. In other words, satisfaction of the first condition immediately implies satisfaction of the second condition as well.6 Accordingly, these three conditions (and the first one in particular) imply that natural science proper requires (or rather presupposes) a justification by something distinct from it that Kant calls a metaphysics of nature.7 But what exactly does a metaphysics of nature encompass? Kant distinguishes two different parts of the metaphysics of nature: a transcendental part and a special part. A metaphysics of nature [End Page 568] is transcendental insofar as it concerns “the laws that make the concept of nature in general possible, even without relation to any determinate object of experience, and [insofar as it is] thus indeterminate with respect to the nature of this or that thing in the sensible world,” whereas a metaphysics of nature is special to the extent that “it is concerned with a special nature of this or that kind of thing of which an empirical concept is given, but so that except for what lies in this concept no other empirical principle is used for knowledge thereof.”8 In short, a transcendental metaphysics, revealing how experience in general is possible, is not supposed to presuppose an empirical concept, whereas a special metaphysics does make such an assumption insofar as it is concerned with the special natures of things.How do the three works cited above relate to Kant’s distinction between a transcendental and a special metaphysics of nature? In the preface to the Metaphysical Foundations Kant clearly indicates that he intends the Metaphysical Foundations to constitute the special metaphysics of nature. Although he does not explicitly refer to the first Critique in the preface, it is also relatively clear that he sees it (or at least the ‘System of Pure Reason’ that Kant foresees as following upon it and as incorporating its fundamental results)9 as constituting [End Page 569] the transcendental part of a metaphysics of nature.10 The Principles of Pure Understanding (‘Grundsätze des reinen Verstandes’) in the Transcendental Analytic argue for what could naturally be described as “laws...

ABSTRACTIn this paper I argue that Kant’s complex argument against materialism involves not only his generic commitment to the existence of non-spatio-temporal and thus non-material things in themselves, but also considerations pertaining to reason and the subject of our thoughts. Specifically, I argue that because Kant conceives of reason in such a way that it demands a commitment to the existence of the unconditioned so that we can account for whatever conditioned objects we encounter in experience, our thoughts, which are also conditioned, require something unconditioned that, because it is unconditioned, cannot be material. In this way, Kant’s attitude towards materialism is based not only on abstract features of his metaphysics and epistemology, but also on specific features that were under serious discussion in the early modern period.

: This paper argues that Kant's model of causality cannot consist in one temporally determinate event causing another, as Hume had thought, since such a model is inconsistent with mutual interaction, to which Kant is committed in the Third Analogy. Rather causality occurs when one substance actively exercises its causal powers according to the unchanging grounds that constitute its nature so as to determine a change of state of another substance. Because this model invokes unchanging grounds, one can understand how Kant could have thought that causal laws could be justified. Further, because this model, along with the broader ontology it presupposes, is radically different from Hume's, Kant's Second Analogy cannot be understood as a refutation of Hume's position on Hume's own terms; instead, Kant must be proposing an alternative view that competes against Hume's thoroughgoing empiricist account.

This paper considers Kant’s conception of force and causality in his early pre-Critical writings, arguing that this conception is best understood by way of contrast with his immediate predecessors, such as Christian Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten, Georg Friedrich Meier, Martin Knutzen, and Christian August Crusius, and in terms of the scientific context of natural philosophy at the time. Accordingly, in the True estimation Kant conceives of force in terms of activity rather than in terms of specific effects, such as motion. Kant’s explicit arguments in the Nova dilucidatio for physical influx are directed primarily against the conception of grounds and existence held by Wolff, Baumgarten, and Meier, and only secondarily against Leibniz. Finally, Kant’s reconciliation of the infinite divisibility of space and the unity of monads in the Physical monadology is designed to respond to objections that could be raised naturally by Wolff and Baumgarten.Author Keywords: Kant; Pre-Critical; Force, Causality; Wolff; Leibniz.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kants Philosophic des Subjekts. Systematische und entuncklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Selbstbewusstsein und Selbslerkennlnis by Heiner F. KlemmeEric WatkinsHeiner F. Klemme. Kants Philosophic des Subjekts. Systematische und entuncklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Selbstbewusstsein und Selbslerkennlnis. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996. Pp. ix + 430. Cloth, DM 148.In this impressive work Klemme provides a detailed historical account of the development of Kant’s views on self-consciousness from the early 1770s to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. In the first part of his book Klemme considers Kant’s views [End Page 471] in the 1770s as presented in his Inaugural Dissertation, newly available transcripts from his anthropology lectures, the so-called Duisburg Nachlass, and transcripts from his metaphysics lectures. Klemme first (Chapter 1) indicates briefly the place of psychology and anthropology in metaphysics in eighteenth-century Germany and identifies two general types of processes through which it was thought that self-knowledge might be attained. He then (Chapter 2) turns to a discussion of Kant’s project in the early 1770s—basing his philosophy on a spontaneous, free, and self-conscious I—and how it is developed against the background of (i) Kant’s “great light” of 1769, (ii) the awakening out of his “dogmatic slumber,” and (iii) the discovery of antinomial conflict. Klemme’s original thesis is that Moses Mendelssohn’s Phädon (1767) and especially Marcus Herz’s Betrachtungen aus der spekulativen Weltweisheit (1771), as well as Kant’s personal correspondence with these figures, are crucial to understanding how Kant comes to see the deficiencies of his view as presented in the Inaugural Dissertation. Klemme discusses Kant’s “remedy” (in Chapter 3): a new theory of the self, documented in the anthropology transcripts, according to which one has direct intuition of oneself as a simple, spontaneous, immaterial substance. Later in the 1770s (especially as documented in the Duisburg Nachlass) Kant finds himself unable to derive the categories from the self in either rational or empirical psychology and is thus forced to revise his theory in his first Critique.In the second part of his book Klemme discusses Kant’s account of self-consciousness in his Critical period. Accordingly, he presents interpretations of the Transcendental Deduction and the Paralogisms in both editions of the first Critique as well as some of the central theses of Transcendental Idealism. Fundamental to Kant’s theory of self-consciousness in the Critical period is a distinction between self-knowledge and self-awareness. The former is knowledge of the empirical self, whereas the latter is knowledge of the self considered “not as appearance nor as thing in itself” (B423) but rather pre-categorically as an indeterminate existence. With respect to self-knowledge, Klemme argues that Kant adheres to three distinct models from 1781 to 1787. In the first edition of the first Critique Kant endorses the analogy model, according to which the regulative use of reason allows one to connect all of the self’s mental states in inner sense “as if it were a simple substance” (A 672/B 700). By the time of the second edition he adopts the mediation model, according to which “the categories can be applied to inner sense because we can represent time to ourselves only through recourse to outer sense as a line” (240). In the transcripts from his anthropology lectures (as well as in his published Anthropology) Kant seems to adopt a third model of self-knowledge, according to which the categories cannot be applied to inner representations at all; such knowledge amounts to nothing more than a mere history of our representations.Klemme concludes his discussion by considering Kant’s account of self-awareness. Kant is often thought (e.g., by Dieter Henrich) to hold a reflection model, according to which the self literally reflects on itself in self-awareness, giving rise to problems of circularity. Klemme argues against such an interpretation (as well as Manfred Frank’s “intellectual intuition” interpretation) in favor of a view, according to which the self can be determined practically “as a mere intelligence according to the moral law” (395). Such a view is consistent with Kant’s theoretical assertions about...

This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This innovative conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume.

Regardless of one’s particular philosophical interests and convictions, it is evident that the notion of autonomy is an important one. However, agreement about the nature of autonomy and about what it requires has proven elusive in contemporary discussions. In Kant and the Fate of Autonomy Karl Ameriks addresses this impasse by going back to the historical roots of this notion in Kant and arguing that many contemporary conceptions of autonomy are based on misunderstandings of Kant’s position, misunderstandings that first arose in his immediate successors, Reinhold, Fichte, and Hegel. However, Ameriks does not aim merely to set the historical record straight; he wants to suggest that Kant’s actual position on autonomy is much more attractive philosophically than either what he refers to as “pure Kantian” conceptions or positions that are similar in basic respects to those of Rorty, Taylor, Larmore, and other post-Kantians. That Ameriks is able to combine remarkable sensitivity toward an extremely broad range of obscure texts with striking clarity and philosophical sophistication in evaluating the positions and arguments laid bare by his exegetical analyses makes his book an extraordinarily rich contribution to our contemporary philosophical landscape.

Though Kant is best known for his strictly philosophical works in the 1780s, many of his early publications in particular were devoted to what we would call 'natural science'. Kant's Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens made a significant advance in cosmology, and he was also instrumental in establishing the newly emerging discipline of physical geography, lecturing on it for almost his entire career. In this volume Eric Watkins brings together new English translations of Kant's first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, the entirety of Physical Geography, a series of shorter essays, along with many of Kant's most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms.