•  20
    Kant on Why Criminal Offenders Must Be Punished
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 60 (4): 637-663. 2022.
    Kant gives what appear to be consequentialist and retributivist reasons for his claim that the state must punish criminal offenders. I argue that Kant’s justification is retributivist and not consequentialist. In particular, I argue that Kant’s justification is found in his argument that we must attribute to an offender’s reason the judgment that she must be punished. I argue that other retributivist interpretations as well as interpretations that prioritize consequentialist reasons have little …Read more
  •  26
    Berkeley on Whether Human Sensible Ideas Are Identical to Certain Divine Ideas
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Berkeley seems to be committed to the view that human sensible ideas are identical to certain divine ideas. However, this interpretation is subject to three objections. I argue that Berkeley holds that human sensible ideas are qualitatively identical to certain divine ideas, and I argue that objections to this view can be satisfactorily answered.
  •  37
    Kant’s Ontological Phenomenalism
    Kant Studien 114 (2): 247-270. 2023.
    Immanuel Kant’s oft-repeated statement that physical objects are mere representations has given rise to various phenomenalist interpretations. Here I understand phenomenalism to be the view that physical objects are actual or possible perceptions. I argue for a novel phenomenalist interpretation: for Kant a physical object is nothing but the sum of actual and possible perceptions that agree with its empirical concept. I argue that this interpretation is supported by the textual evidence and that…Read more
  •  71
    Against the Hybrid Interpretation of Kant’s Theory of Punishment
    Jahrbuch Für Recht Und Ethik / Annual Review of Law and Ethics 28 (1): 115-133. 2020.
    Immanuel Kant appears to make both retributivist and consequentialist statements about criminal punishment in the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right. In recent decades, some scholars have argued that Kant’s theory of criminal punishment is a hybrid of consequentialism and retributivism. B. Sharon Byrd’s interpretation is the most influential version of this view. I argue that the textual evidence in favor of the consequentialist side of the hybrid interpretation is weak and the ev…Read more
  •  431
    Kant’s Theoretical Reasons for Belief in Things in Themselves
    Kant Studien 107 (4): 589-616. 2016.
    I argue that Kant’s commitment to the existence of things in themselves takes the form of a commitment short of knowledge that does not violate the limitations on knowledge which he lays down. I will argue that Kant’s commitment fits his description of what he calls “doctrinal belief”: acceptance of the existence of things in themselves which is subjectively sufficient but not objectively sufficient. I outline two ways in which we accept the existence of things in themselves which are subjective…Read more
  •  1097
    The Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's first Critique is notorious for two reasons. First, it appears to contradict itself in saying that the idea of the systematic unity of nature is and is not transcendental. Second, in the passages in which Kant appears to espouse the former alternative, he appears to be making a significant amendment to his account of the conditions of the possibility of experience in the Transcendental Analytic. I propose a solution to both of these difficul…Read more