Banafsheh Beizaei

Kant famously argues that transcendental idealism allows us to solve the problem of free will. The basic outlines of the solution are as follows: while freedom and determinism are incompatible, we can consistently predicate them of one and the same being if we take the former to be a quality of the human being as it is in itself and the latter a quality of the human being as it appears. In this paper, I look at three different readings of transcendental idealism—the two-object reading, the two-property reading, and the epistemological reading—and argue that none of them—at least in their standard forms—are able to make sense of this solution. I then draw on my alternative, semantic reading of transcendental idealism to propose a new way of understanding Kant's solution.

Throughout the Transcendental Aesthetic as well as elsewhere in the first Critique, Kant characterizes things in themselves in terms of abstraction: to consider things as they are in themselves is to consider them in abstraction from the conditions of our sensibility. Despite Kant’s frequent appeal to the notion of abstraction, the view that our talk of ‘things in themselves’ should be understood in terms of abstraction (‘the abstraction analysis’) has not gained much traction among non-epistemological readers of transcendental idealism. In this paper, I give a systematic account of the notion of abstraction at work in Kant’s characterizations of things in themselves, arguing that while abstraction is a logical procedure, some of Kant’s background assumptions in the Transcendental Aesthetic warrant attributing some metaphysical import to the abstraction analysis. I also defend the abstraction analysis against the longstanding objection that it trivializes the non-spatiotemporality of things in themselves.

Strong phenomenalist readings of Leibniz take him to have thought the reality of bodies consists in the mutual harmony of the monads’ representations of them. I argue that Leibniz ought not to be read as a strong phenomenalist: the text does not force such a reading upon us, and there are systematic reasons to avoid such a reading. Since the systematic reasons in question are well-documented in the literature, I focus on the task of showing that textual evidence for the strong phenomenalist reading is sparse. I work toward this task in two ways. First, I argue that the Harmony Principle (the principle that there is a close relationship between the reality of bodies and the mutual harmony of the monads’ perceptions of them), traditionally taken as evidence of Leibniz’s commitment to strong phenomenalism, is more naturally read as an epistemic principle. Second, I argue that Leibniz’s repeated identification of bodies with phenomena is equally amenable to a weaker reading of him as a moderate phenomenalist, who thought bodies owe their unity to perception. The failure to distinguish between moderate and strong phenomenalism in the literature has led proponents of the strong phenomenalist reading to take any passages where such identity claims occur as evidence for their reading. But such claims, unlike the strong phenomenalist thesis, are reconcilable with Leibniz’s aggregate conception of body, which, (1) characterizes bodies as phenomena owing their unity to perception, but (2) takes the reality of bodies to be “borrowed” from their underlying monads.

Kant famously argues that transcendental idealism allows us to solve the problem of free will. The basic outlines of the solution are as follows: while freedom and determinism are incompatible, we can consistently predicate them of one and the same being if we take the former to be a quality of the human being as it is in itself and the latter a quality of the human being as it appears. In this paper, I look at three different readings of transcendental idealism—the two-object reading, the two-property reading, and the epistemological reading—and argue that none of them—at least in their standard forms—are able to make sense of this solution. I then draw on my alternative, semantic reading of transcendental idealism to propose a new way of understanding Kant's solution.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant draws a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, characterizing the latter as uncognizable. While arguing that all we can cognize are appearances, Kant nevertheless maintains that there are thing in themselves. This has struck many as questionable: how can we be in a position to affirm, of things stipulated to be uncognizable, that they exist? In this paper, I take up the challenge of establishing the existence of things in themselves. I begin by making the case that, given Kant’s epistemological strictures, the existence of things in themselves must follow analytically from the existence of appearances. After examining the pitfalls of a recent attempt at establishing the existence of things in themselves, I go on to argue that the feature of appearances in virtue of which their existence analytically entails the existence of themselves is the subjectivity of their form. It is implicit in the notion of something with a subjective form that its matter is provided via affection from without. Moreover, the things providing the matter of appearances can’t be located in space and time, because appearances themselves depend on our sensibility for their formal features.

It is commonly thought that the distinction between subjectively valid judgements of perception and objectively valid judgements of experience in the Prolegomena is not consistent with the account of judgement Kant offers in the B Deduction, according to which a judgement is ‘nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception’. Contrary to this view, I argue that the Prolegomena distinction maps closely onto that drawn between the mathematical and dynamical principles in the System of Principles: Kant’s account of the Prolegomena distinction strongly suggests that it is the Analogies of Experience that make it possible for judgements of perception to give rise to judgements of experience. This means that judgements of perception are objectively valid with regard to the quantity and quality of objects, and subjectively valid with regard to the relation they posit between objects. If that is the case, then the notion of a judgement of perception is consistent with the B Deduction account of judgement.