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400Kantian 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
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200Non-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
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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
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170Beyond 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
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169Kant’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
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141How 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
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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
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130Kant and the foundations of analytic philosophyOxford University Press. 2001.Robert Hanna presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the connections between them. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna's original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new 'cognitive-semantic' interpretation of transcendental idealism, and a v…Read more
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126If God's Existence is Unprovable, Then is Everything Permitted? Kant, Radical Agnosticism, and MoralityDiametros 39 29-69. 2014.This essay is about how four deeply important Kantian ideas can significantly illuminate some essentially intertwined issues in philosophical theology, philosophical logic, the metaphysics of agency, and above all, morality. These deeply important Kantian ideas are: (1) Kant’s argument for the impossibility of the Ontological Argument, (2) Kant’s first “postulate of pure practical reason,” immortality, (3) Kant’s third postulate of pure practical reason, the existence of God, and finally (4) Kan…Read more
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119Mathematics for humans: Kant's philosophy of arithmetic revisitedEuropean Journal of Philosophy 10 (3). 2002.In this essay I revisit Kant's much-criticized views on arithmetic. In so doing I make a case for the claim that his theory of arithmetic is not in fact subject to the most familiar and forceful objection against it, namely that his doctrine of the dependence of arithmetic on time is plainly false, or even worse, simply unintelligible; on the contrary, Kant's doctrine about time and arithmetic is highly original, fully intelligible, and with qualifications due to the inherent limitations of his …Read more
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108A Kantian critique of scientific essentialismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (3): 497-528. 1998.According to Kant in the Prolegomena, the natural kind proposition (GYM) "Gold is a yellow metal" is analytically true, necessary, and a priori. Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam have argued that on the contrary propositions such as (GYM) are neither analytic, nor necessary, nor a priori. The Kripke-Putnam view is based on the doctrine of "scientific essentialism" (SE). It is a direct consequence of SE that propositions such as (GE) "Gold is the element with atomic number number 79" are metaphysical…Read more
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105Logical Cognition: Husserl’s Prolegomena and the Truth in PsychologismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (2): 251-275. 1993.
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103A 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
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103Rationality 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
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93Review: Förster, Eckart, The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy (review)Kantian Review 18 (2): 301-315. 2013.
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89Kant, truth and human natureBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (2). 2000.This Article does not have an abstract
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87Review: Weatherston, Heidegger's Interpretation of Kant: Categories, Imagination, and Temporality (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (8). 2003.
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87The inner and the outer: Kant's 'refutation' reconstructedRatio 13 (2). 2000.In Skeptical idealism says that possibly nothing exists outside my own conscious mental states. Purported refutations of skeptical idealism – whether Descartes's, Locke's, Reid's, Kant's, Moore's, Putnam's, or Burge's – are philosophically scandalous: they have convinced no one. I argue (1) that what is wrong with the failed refutations is that they have attempted to prove the wrong thing – i.e., that necessarily I have veridical perceptions of distal material objects in space, and (2) that a ch…Read more
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85Embodied minds in actionOxford University Press. 2009.In Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action. This unified treatment rests on two basic claims. The first is that conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied. This entails that our minds are necessarily spread throughout our living, organismic bodies and belong to their complete neurobiological constitutio…Read more
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79Kant, Wittgenstein and the fate of analysisIn Micahel Beaney (ed.), The Analytic Turn, Routledge. pp. 142. 2007.
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73Kant, science, and human natureOxford University Press. 2006.Robert Hanna argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the "exact sciences"--relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. In doing so he makes a valuable contribution to one of the most active and fruitful areas in contemporary scholarship on Kant.
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71Review: Forster, Michael, Kant and Skepticism (review)Philosophical Quarterly 61 (244): 635-637. 2011.
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66Truth in Virtue of Meaning: A Defence of the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction, by G. Russell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, xv + 232 pp (review)Kantian Review 14 (2): 158-165. 2010.
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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
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57From an Ontological Point of View: Hegel's Critique of the Common LogicReview of Metaphysics 40 (2). 1986.Hegel's logic is often understood as a competitor to ordinary formal logic; this leads to such false accusations as that hegel "denies the principle of non-Contradiction." on the contrary, Hegel's speculative logic is wholly conservative with respect to ordinary logic. What hegel denies is ordinary logic's suitability to be a paradigm for philosophy. Hegel's logic, Itself, Can be seen as arising from a critical ontological reflection on ordinary logic
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