Montserrat Rodríguez

This paper presents an original proposal regarding what, in the secondary literature, has been called The Necessitation Account. This theory, on the one hand, defends the necessity of the particular laws of nature based on a metaphysical consideration that holds that the laws are derived from the natures of things; on the other hand, it maintains that the necessity of the particular laws is not knowable by human beings. In this paper, I argue that the latter claim is unsatisfactory and propose to amend the epistemic thesis, pointing out that through the transcendental principle of reason we can understand the metaphysical groundings of nature, and I propose a solution to a skeptical problem that has not been addressed by the defenders of this theory regarding systematic unity and classifications of nature.

In this paper, I will explore a concept of person in Kant based on two features: the unity of consciousness and the consciousness of the numerical identity of one’s body in time. The reason for choosing these features is that I take as my starting point the notion of personhood from rational psychology that appears in the major premise of the third paralogism (A361). I will focus on the second feature in order to show that since Kant it is possible to think of the body not merely as an object, but as a subject, i.e., that bodily awareness is self-awareness. I will explain this on the basis of what I will denominate the thesis of corporeality. To develop this thesis, I will draw on passages from Kant’s work and contemporary considerations of bodily awareness, specifically the immunity to error through misidentification.