•  2
    Etter uvisshet - Quentin Meillassoux som ny-kartesianer
    Agora Journal for metafysisk spekulasjon 31 (3-4): 101-113. 2014.
  •  707
    Every man has his price: Kant's argument for universal radical evil
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (4): 414-436. 2022.
    ABSTRACT Kant famously claims that we have all freely chosen evil. This paper offers a novel account of the much-debated justification for this claim. I reconstruct Kant’s argument from his affirmation that we all have a price – we can all succumb to temptation. I argue that this follows a priori from a theoretical principle of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that all empirical powers have a finite, changeable degree, an intensive magnitude. Because of this, our reason can always be overpowe…Read more
  •  1177
    Kant and the Pre-Conceptual Use of the Understanding
    Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (1): 93-119. 2021.
    Does Kant hold that we can have intuitions independently of concepts? A striking passage from § 13 of the Critique of Pure Reason appears to say so explicitly. However, it also conjures up a scenario where the categories are inapplicable to objects of intuition, a scenario presumably shown impossible by the following Transcendental Deduction. The seemingly non-conceptualist claim concerning intuition have therefore been read, by conceptualist interpreters of Kant, as similarly counterpossible. I…Read more
  •  869
    Consciousness as Inner Sensation: Crusius and Kant
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5. 2018.
    What is it that makes a mental state conscious? Recent commentators have proposed that for Kant, consciousness results from differentiation: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is distinguished, by means of our conceptual capacities, from other states and/or things. I argue instead that Kant’s conception of state consciousness is sensory: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is accompanied by an inner sensation. Interpreting state consciousness as inner sensation reveals an underappre…Read more
  •  87
    A gradual reformation: empirical character and causal powers in Kant
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (5): 662-683. 2018.
    According to Kant each person has an empirical character, which is ultimately grounded in one’s free choice. The popular Causal Laws interpretation of empirical character holds that it consists of the causal laws governing our psychology. I argue that this reading has difficulties explaining moral change, the ‘gradual reformation’ of our empirical character: Causal laws cannot change and hence cannot be gradually reformed. I propose an alternative Causal Powers interpretation of empirical charac…Read more
  •  902
    Kant’s Causal Power Argument Against Empirical Affection
    Kantian Review 22 (1): 27-51. 2017.
    A well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal, or both. I argue that according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects hav…Read more
  •  127
    Self-Affection and Pure Intuition in Kant
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (4): 627-643. 2017.
    Are the pure intuitions of space and time, for Kant, dependent upon the understanding's activity? This paper defends the recently popular Self-Affection Thesis : namely, that the pure intuitions require an activity of self-affection—an influence of the understanding on the inner sense. Two systematic objections to this thesis have been raised: The Independence objection claims that SAT undermines the independence of sensibility; the Compatibility objection claims that certain features of space a…Read more