-
46In Defense of Intuitions: A New Rationalist ManifestoPalgrave MacMillan. 2013.A reply to contemporary skepticism about intuitions and a priori knowledge, and a defense of neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, focusing on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving the two core problems of justifying and explaining them
-
34Kant's Transcendental Psychology (review)Review of Metaphysics 45 (1): 132-134. 1991.Of all the well-known doctrines in Kant's first Critique, the transcendental psychology is perhaps the most notorious. Frege's and Husserl's famous fin de siècle critiques of "logical psychologism," together with Strawson's withering scorn in The Bounds of Sense, have combined to make Kant's explicitly psychological approach to issues in epistemology, metaphysics, and the theory of meaning seem old-fashioned at best and simply embarrassing at worst. Patricia Kitcher's Kant's Transcendental Psych…Read more
-
427Kantian non-conceptualismPhilosophical Studies 137 (1). 2008.There are perceptual states whose representational content cannot even in principle be conceptual. If that claim is true, then at least some perceptual states have content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content. Furthermore the intrinsically “orientable” spatial character of essentially non-conceptual content entails not only that all perceptual states contain non-conceptual content in this essentially di…Read more
-
17The Realm of Rhetoric (review)Review of Metaphysics 37 (2): 412-414. 1983.The nebulous area between natural language and formal logic has always puzzled philosophers. The connections between informal logic, rhetoric, dialectic, and metaphor along with the other tropes, have not been made conceptually perspicuous. The theoretical tendency on the part of philosophers has generally been to label the whole field "logically ill-behaved" and to turn over its keeping to Sophists, composition-masters, and literary scholars. Recently, this trend of philosophical neglect has be…Read more
-
215Non-Conceptualism and the Problem of Perceptual Self-KnowledgeEuropean Journal of Philosophy 19 (2): 184-223. 2009.In this paper we (i) identify the notion of ‘essentially non-conceptual content’ by critically analyzing the recent and contemporary debate about non-conceptual content, (ii) work out the basics of broadly Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content in relation to a corresponding theory of conceptual content, and then (iii) demonstrate one effective application of the Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content by using this theory to provide a ‘minimalist’ solution to the prob…Read more
-
188Beyond the Myth of the Myth: A Kantian Theory of Non-Conceptual ContentInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (3). 2011.In this essay I argue that a broadly Kantian strategy for demonstrating and explaining the existence, semantic structure, and psychological function of essentially non-conceptual content can also provide an intelligible and defensible bottom-up theory of the foundations of rationality in minded animals. Otherwise put, if I am correct, then essentially non-conceptual content constitutes the semantic and psychological substructure, or matrix, out of which the categorically normative a priori super…Read more
-
113A Minimalist Approach to the Development of Episodic MemoryMind and Language 27 (1): 29-54. 2012.Episodic memory is usually regarded in a Conceptualist light, in the sense of its being dependent upon the grasp of concepts directly relevant to the act of episodic recollection itself, such as a concept of past times and of the self as an experiencer. Given this view, its development is typically timed as being in the early school-age years. We present a minimalist, Non-Conceptualist approach in opposition to this view, but one that also exists in clear contrast to the kind of minimalism espou…Read more
-
156How do we know necessary truths? Kant's answerEuropean Journal of Philosophy 6 (2). 1998.It is traditionally held that our knowledge of necessity is a priori; but the familiar theories of a priori knowledge – platonism and conventionalism – have now been discredited, and replaced by either modal skepticism or a posteriori essentialism. The main thesis of this paper is that Kant's theory of a priori knowledge, when detached from his transcendental idealism, offers a genuine alternative to these unpalatable options. According to Kant's doctrine, all epistemic necessity is grounded dir…Read more
-
73Rationality and LogicBradford. 2006.In Rationality and Logic, Robert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals and that rational animals are essentially logical animals. In order to do so, he defends the broadly Kantian thesis that all rational animals possess an innate cognitive "logic faculty." Hanna 's claims challenge the conventional philosophical wisdom that sees logic as a fully formal or "top…Read more
-
79Kant, Wittgenstein and the fate of analysisIn Micahel Beaney (ed.), The Analytic Turn, Routledge. pp. 142. 2007.
-
185Kant’s Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects, and The Gap in the B DeductionInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (3). 2011.This paper is about the nature of the relationship between (1) the doctrine of Non-Conceptualism about mental content, (2) Kant's Transcendental Idealism, and (3) the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or Categories, in the B (1787) edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e., the B Deduction. Correspondingly, the main thesis of the paper is this: (1) and (2) yield serious problems for (3), yet, in exploring these two serious problems for the B Deduction, we als…Read more
-
56The Trouble with Truth in Kant's Theory of MeaningHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 10 (1): 1-20. 1993.
-
85Review: Forster, Michael, Kant and Skepticism (review)Philosophical Quarterly 61 (244): 635-637. 2011.
-
91Review: Weatherston, Heidegger's Interpretation of Kant: Categories, Imagination, and Temporality (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (8). 2003.
-
59(A) Books: (3) Kant, Science, and Human Nature (Oxford: OUP, forthcoming). (2) Rationality and Logic (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming). (1) Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon/OUP, 2001 [pbk., 2004]). (B) Articles: (30) "Kant, Wittgenstein, and the Fate of Analysis," in M. Beaney (ed.), The Analytic Turn (London: Routledge, forthcoming.) (29) "Kant and the Analytic Tradition," in C. Boundas (ed.), A Companion to the Twentieth-Century Philosophies (Edinburgh: Univ…Read more
-
54Cognition Content and a Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and KnowledgeOxford University Press UK. 2015.Robert Hanna works out a unified contemporary Kantian theory of rational human cognition and knowledge. Along the way, he provides accounts of intentionality and its contents, sense perception and perceptual knowledge, the analytic-synthetic distinction, the nature of logic, and a priori truth and knowledge in mathematics, logic, and philosophy. This book is specifically intended to reach out to two very different audiences: contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and knowledge, and contempor…Read more
-
51Kant's Theory of Empirical Judgment and Modern SemanticsHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (3). 1990.
-
172Kant in the Twentieth CenturyIn Routledge Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy, . pp. 150-203. 2008.Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) quotably wrote in 1929 that “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”1 The same could be said, perhaps with even greater accuracy, of the twentieth-century Euro-American philosophical tradition and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).2 In this sense the twentieth century was the post-Kantian century. Twentieth-century philosophy in Europe and the USA was dominated by two distinctiv…Read more
-
133The Myth of the Given and the Grip of the GivenDiametros 27 25-46. 2011.In this paper I argue that the Sellarsian Myth of the Given does not apply to all forms of Non-Conceptualism; that Kant is in fact a non-conceptualist of the right-thinking kind and not a Conceptualist, as most Kant-interpreters think; and that an intelligible and defensible Kantian Non-Conceptualism can be developed which supports the thesis that true perceptual beliefs are non-inferentially justified and also normatively funded by direct, embodied, intentional interactions with the manifest wo…Read more
-
30How Ideas Became Meanings: Locke and the Foundations of Semantic TheoryReview of Metaphysics 44 (4). 1991.THERE IS A NOTORIOUS THESIS in the philosophy of language which runs as follows: meanings are wholly mind-dependent, in the sense that they exist only in particular human minds. We might call this "the thesis of semantic psychologism." Versions of this thesis have been attacked and rejected by some of the most important philosophers of language in the twentieth century: Frege, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and, most recently, Hilary Putnam.
-
5Direct reference, direct perception, and the cognitive theory of demonstrativesPacific Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2): 96-117. 1993.
Boulder, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |