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618 The Antinomy of Pure Reason, Sections 3–8In Georg Mohr & Marcus Willaschek (eds.), Immanuel Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, De Gruyter. pp. 355-370. 2024.
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175Difficulty Still Awaits: Kant, Spinoza, and the Threat of Theological DeterminismKant Studien 103 (2): 163-187. 2012.: In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cann…Read more
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73The Development of Physical Influx In Early Eighteenth-Century GermanyReview of Metaphysics 49 (2): 295-339. 1995.Before the story can be told, however, some stage-setting is necessary. First, it is important to be clear about the most basic doctrines of Pre-established Harmony, Occasionalism, and Physical Influx. Physical Influx asserts intersubstantial causation amongst finite substances. For instance, when I appear to kick a ball, I really am the cause of the ball's motion. Pre-established Harmony denies intersubstantial causation, but affirms intrasubstantial causation. According to Pre-established Harm…Read more
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718. The Antinomy of Pure Reason, Sections 3–8In Georg Mohr & Marcus Willaschek (eds.), Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Peeters Press. pp. 447-464. 1999.
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164Kant on cognition and knowledgeSynthese 197 (8): 3195-3213. 2020.Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we first (I) investigate Ka…Read more
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27The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society by Johan van der Zande; Richard Popkin (review)Isis 90 810-811. 1999.
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96Kant on the Hiddenness of GodKantian Review 14 (1): 81-122. 2009.Kant's sustained reflections on God have received considerable scholarly attention over the years and rightly so. His provocative criticisms of the three traditional theoretical proofs of the existence of God, and his own positive proof for belief in God's existence on moral grounds, have fully deserved the clarification and analysis that has occurred in these discussions. What I want to focus on, however, is the extent to which Kant's position contains resources sufficient to answer a line of q…Read more
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317Kant’s Account of CognitionJournal of the History of Philosophy 55 (1): 83-112. 2017.kant’s critique of pure reason undertakes a systematic investigation of the possibility of synthetic cognition a priori so as to determine whether this kind of cognition is possible in the case of traditional metaphysics.1 While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments as well as to that between the a priori and the a posteriori, less attention has been devoted to understanding exactly what cognition is for Kant. In particular, it is o…Read more
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72Kant's justification of the laws of mechanicsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (4): 539-560. 1998.
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23Kant's Theory of Biology (Introduction)In Eric Watkins & Ina Goy (eds.), Kant's Theory of Biology, De Gruyter. pp. 1-22. 2014.
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Is metaphysics possible? The argumentative structure of the ProlegomenaIn Peter Thielke (ed.), Kant's Prolegomena: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
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13Die Breite und Tiefe von Kants,Kritischer Wende‘Kant’s Cosmology: Die entscheidende Rolle der Kosmologie (review)Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 70 (4): 718-723. 2022.
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23Comments on Karin de Boer’s Kant’s Reform of MetaphysicsKantian Review 27 (1): 133-138. 2022.In my comments on Karin de Boer’s Kant’s Reform of Metaphysics, I pose five questions. First, I ask how the fundamental principle of practical philosophy that Kant identifies and claims is fundamentally different from Wolff’s is consistent with the claim that Kant is reforming Wolff’s metaphysics. Second, I ask whether De Boer thinks that Kant, as a reformer of Wolff, continues to accept the Principle of Sufficient Reason (or some variant thereof). Third, I ask whether De Boer accepts Wolff’s co…Read more
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Autonomy and the Legislation of Laws in the Prolegomena (1783)In Stefano Bacin (ed.), The Emergence of Autonomy in Kant's Moral Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 122-140. 2018.This paper attempts to shed light on Kant’s notion of autonomy in his moral philosophy by considering the extent to which he presents a similar doctrine in his theoretical philosophy, where he strikingly claims (e.g., in the Prolegomena) that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. It argues that even though there are important points of difference between the cases of theoretical legislation of the laws of nature and autonomy in moral philosophy, their extensive parallels make a strong, ev…Read more
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19Wolfgang Ertl, The Guarantee of Perpetual Peace Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, Pp. iv + 72, ISBN 9781108529785 (pbk) £15.00 (review)Kantian Review 26 (2): 340-345. 2021.
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35Replies to the Comments of Angela Breitenbach, Konstantin Pollok and Janum SethiKantian Review 26 (2): 315-334. 2021.
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On the Necessity and Nature of Simples: Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, and the Pre-Critical KantOxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 3 261-367. 2006.
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117What real progress has metaphysics made since the time of Kant? Kant and the metaphysics of groundingSynthese 198 (Suppl 13): 3213-3229. 2019.This paper argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, Kant and contemporary analytic metaphysicians are interested in the same kind of metaphysical dependence relation that finds application in a range of contexts and that is today commonly referred to as grounding. It also argues that comparing and contrasting Kant’s and contemporary metaphysicians’ accounts of this relation proves useful for both Kant scholarship and for contemporary metaphysics. The analyses provided by contemporary me…Read more
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29Kant on LawsCambridge University Press. 2019.This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, Watkins show…Read more
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1Kant on Persons and Agency (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2017.Today we consider ourselves to be free and equal persons, capable of acting rationally and autonomously in both practical and theoretical contexts. The essays in this volume show how this conception was first articulated in a fully systematic fashion by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Twelve leading scholars shed new light on Kant's philosophy, with each devoting particular attention to at least one of three aspects of this conception: autonomy, freedom, and personhood. Some focus on cl…Read more
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24The "Critical Turn": Kant and Herz from 1770 to 1772In Ralph Schumacher, Rolf-Peter Horstmann & Volker Gerhardt (eds.), Kant Und Die Berliner Aufklärung: Akten des Ix. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. Bd. I: Hauptvorträge. Bd. Ii: Sektionen I-V. Bd. Iii: Sektionen Vi-X: Bd. Iv: Sektionen Xi-Xiv. Bd. V: Sektionen Xv-Xviii, De Gruyter. pp. 69-77. 2001.
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5Readings in Modern Philosophy, Volume 2: Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Associated Texts (edited book)Hackett Publishing Company. 2000.This anthology offers the key works of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in their entirety or in substantial selections, along with a rich selection of associated texts by other leading thinkers of the period.
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74Kants Übergangskonzeption im ‘Opus Postumum’, by Dina Emundts (review)European Journal of Philosophy 16 (2): 332-336. 2008.No Abstract
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13Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus (review)The Owl of Minerva 24 (2): 215-226. 1993.It would certainly be an exaggeration to say that there has been a plethora of work on Neo-Kantianism in recent years. There has, however, been a modest increase, due not only to Köhnke's work but also to Hans-Ludwig Ollig's Der Neukantianismus and Materialien zur Neukantianismus-Diskussion, Thomas Willey's Back To Kant, and Werner Flach's and Helmut Holzey's Erkenntnistheorie und Logik in Neukantianismus. On several counts there is reason to suspect, or at least to hope, that this tendency will…Read more
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60Givenness and Cognition: Reply to Grüne and ChignellJournal of the History of Philosophy 55 (1): 143-152. 2017.stefanie grüne takes issue with our claim that for an object to be given, this object must exist. On her view, givenness, according to Kant, does not require the existence of the object, but only its real possibility. She develops her critique in three steps. First, she argues that the reason why Kant requires objects to be given in intuition is that otherwise our concepts would not have ‘objective reality’ and would thus not constitute cognitions. But since the objective reality of a concept co…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Kant: Causation |