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229"Relative" Spontaneity and Reason's Self-KnowledgeStudies in Transcendental Philosophy 3 (3). 2023.Kant holds that the whole “higher faculty of knowledge” (‘reason’ or ‘understanding’ in a broad sense), is a spontaneous faculty. But what could this mean? It seems that it could either be a perfectly innocent claim or a very dangerous one. The innocent thought is that reason is spontaneous because it is not wholly passive, not just a slave to what bombards the senses. If so, then the rejection of Hume’s radical empiricism would suffice for Kant’s claim. But the dangerous thought is that reason,…Read more
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11“Relative” Spontaneity and Reason’s Self-KnowledgeStudies in Transcendental Philosophy 3 (3). 2022.Kant holds that the whole “higher faculty of knowledge” (‘reason’ or ‘understanding’ in a broad sense), is a spontaneous faculty. But what could this mean? It seems that it could either be a perfectly innocent claim or a very dangerous one. The innocent thought is that reason is spontaneous because it is not wholly passive, not just a slave to what bombards the senses. If so, then the rejection of Hume’s radical empiricism would suffice for Kant’s claim. But the dangerous thought is that reason,…Read more
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6La autoconciencia y la cuestión de la prioridad: una crítica de la lectura de Kant de “la sensibilidad primero”Tópicos: Revista de Filosofía 63 (63): 11-49. 2022.This essay presents a critique of what Robert Hanna has recently called the “sensibility first” reading of Kant. I first spell out, in agreement with Hanna, why the contemporary debate among Kant scholars over conceptualism and non-conceptualism must be understood only from within the perspective of what I dub the “priority question”—that is, the question whether one or the other of our “two stems” of cognition may ground the objectivity and normativity of the other. I then spell out why the pri…Read more
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93Self-Consciousness and the Priority Question: A Critique of the 'Sensibility First' Reading of KantTópicos: Revista de Filosofía 63 11-49. 2022.This essay presents a critique of what Robert Hanna has recently called the ‘sensibility first’ reading of Kant. I first spell out, in agreement with Hanna, why the contemporary debate among Kant scholars over conceptualism and non-conceptualism must be understood only from within the perspective of what I dub the ‘priority question’—that is, the question whether one or the other of our “two stems” of cognition may ground the objectivity and normativity of the other. I then spell out why the pri…Read more
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111Kant and Rödl on the Identity of Self-Consciousness and ObjectivityStudi Kantiani 141-158. 2020.Sebastian Rödl’s 2018 book articulates and unfolds the thought that judgment’s self-consciousness is identical with its objectivity. This view is laid forth in a Hegelian spirit, against the spirit of Kant’s merely formal or transcendental idealism. I review Rödl’s central theses and then offer a criticism of his reading of Kant. I hold that we can agree with Rödl that self-consciousness is identical with objectivity (though only in a ‘formal’ sense). We can also agree with Rödl that this identi…Read more
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241Kant on Self-Consciousness as Self-LimitationContemporary Studies in Kantian Philosophy 5. 2020.I argue that, for Kant, there is a point at which the notions of self-consciousness and self-limitation become one. I proceed by spelling out a logical progression of forms of self-consciousness in Kant’s philosophy, where at each stage we locate the limits of the capacity in question and ask what it takes to know those limits. After briefly sketching a notion of self-consciousness available even to the animal, we look at whether there could be a notion of self-consciousness available to the cap…Read more
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9The Internality of Moral Faith in Kant’s ReligionKant Yearbook 10 (1): 1-17. 2018.Wood (1970) convincingly argues that Kant’s notion of moral faith is a response to a “dialectical perplexity” or antinomy. Specifically, moral faith is a response to the threat of moral despair. In line with this suggestion, I make the case that moral faith is the resolution of a crisis about how to go on with one’s life in the face of the threat of moral despair. If this is right, then we have a potential solution to two related anxieties: (1) why the matter of our moral faith or despair deserv…Read more
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151The Case for Absolute Spontaneity in Kant’s Critique of Pure ReasonCon-Textos Kantianos (6): 138-164. 2017.Kant describes the understanding as a faculty of spontaneity. What this means is that our capacity to judge what is true is responsible for its own exercises, which is to say that we issue our judgments for ourselves. To issue our judgments for ourselves is to be self-conscious – i.e., conscious of the grounds upon which we judge. To grasp the spontaneity of the understanding, then, we must grasp the self-consciousness of the understanding. I argue that what Kant requires for explaining spontane…Read more
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16In Defense of Intuitions: A New Rationalist ManifestoPalgrave MacMillan. 2013.A reply to contemporary skepticism about intuitions and a priori knowledge, and a defense of neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, focusing on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving the two core problems of justifying and explaining them
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Areas of Specialization
Immanuel Kant |
Areas of Interest
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Immanuel Kant |
German Idealism |
Existentialism |
Martin Heidegger |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |