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The Bounds of
Transcendental
Logic
Dennis Schulting
The Bounds of Transcendental Logic
Dennis Schulting
The Bounds
of Transcendental
Logic
Dennis Schulting
Bavaria, Germany
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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For Cristiana
Acknowledgements
vii
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Notes 7
References 8
ix
x Contents
Index199
Key to Abbreviations of Kant’s Works
Throughout this book the abbreviations listed below are used for refer-
ence to Kant’s works. The abbreviations are followed by the volume and
page numbers (and sometimes line numbers) of the respective volume in
the Akademie edition (AA) of Kant’s work (Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften.
Berlin: De Gruyter, 1900–) in which the cited work appears. However,
for the Critique of Pure Reason the standard way of citation by means of
reference to the pagination of the A- and B-edition is adhered to.
All English language quotations from Kant’s works in this book are
from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, ed. P. Guyer
and A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992–), except
for the Prolegomena, which is sometimes used in the Ellington/Carus edi-
tion (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977). Where I used a different translation
from the Cambridge, I have indicated so. Where a translation was not
available, I provided my own.
The majority of the essays in this volume pivot around themes that are
central to the thrust of my interpretation of Kant’s Deduction including
account for the constitution of the world of objects itself. In other words,
the categories do not reach the real world of objects, and Kant is said to
have failed to provide a convincing argument for the claim that they do.
In Chap. 9, I consider a particular formulation of this criticism, namely
the criticism that the fact that the categories must be applied to our expe-
rience of objects does not imply that the categories are instantiated in the
objects of our experience. In other words, it is argued that the objective
reality of the categories is not eo ipso proven in determining their neces-
sary applicability in our experience or judgements. I believe this charge of
an invalid inference or a ‘slide’ on Kant’s part rests on a misunderstanding
of the argument in the Transcendental Deduction and a failure to under-
stand the implication of transcendental idealism in that argument, that
is, a failure to understand the conceptual intimacy between thought and
the thought of an object in terms of objective reference (Chap. 6). This
misunderstanding is also reflected in the way that the notion of objective
validity is consistently misinterpreted as having to do with the truth value
of a judgement, rather than with the truth of our cognitive claims, again
suggesting that the categories, which determine objective validity, do not
concern the objects, but merely our representation, experience, or judge-
ment of them. I reconsider this aspect in Chap. 10.
More in particular, in Chap. 9, I discuss two ostensibly related issues
concerning the argument of the B-Deduction, one of which touches on
the problem of the famous so-called ‘two-steps-in-one-proof ’ reconstruc-
tion of Kant’s reasoning and the aforementioned argumentative slide
from the necessary application of the categories to our experience to the
necessary instantiation of them in the objects of our experience. In his
reply to my critique of his interpretation of categorial necessity, Anil
Gomes (2018) has rejoined that there may be more agreement between
our positions than I made it out to be, and importantly, in his view there
is still an argumentative gap in the argument that needs to be bridged,
which is where the ‘second step’ comes in. This discussion goes to the
heart of the problem of how one should evaluate the argumentative pro-
cedure in the Deduction. In response to Gomes, I elucidate further my
position on the two-step proof, and specifically what, in my view, it
1 Introduction 7
means for Kant to say that categories are necessarily instantiated in all of
our determinative judgements solely in virtue of the act of transcendental
apperception. In this context, I also address a related issue that Gomes
brings up, namely, whether there can be cases of categorial illusion, cases
for which it seems that the categories are instantiated in our judgements
but where in fact categories turn out not to be instantiated. I argue that
the idea of categorial illusion is based on a conflation of the necessary
categorial application in Kant’s (transcendental) sense and cases of empir-
ical illusion. It is therefore not something we should worry about. The
exemplification of the categories in a determinative judgement about an
object necessarily entails the exemplification of the categories in the
object of judgement.
In Chap. 10, I rehearse my thesis, argued in Schulting (2017), that
Kant’s notion of objective validity should not be confused with the truth
value of a judgement or, as I argue against suggestions made by Robert
Watt (2017) in a critique of my position, with Kant’s notion of
Allgemeingültigkeit. I provide additional textual evidence for reading
objective validity in the way I have proposed, namely as having chiefly to
do with reference to objects of experience or as Kant himself calls it,
objective reality. This once again shows that Kant’s transcendental logic is
not concerned with merely the logical rules for valid thinking but rather
with the conditions for the possibility of true reference to objects. It con-
cerns a metaphysical logic about objective thought and experience.
Notes
1. See Dyck (2014), Howell (2018), Land (2018), Stephenson (2014), and
Watt (2017); see my reaction to Dyck and Stephenson in Schulting
(2014, 2017, Chap. 2).
2. Quarfood (2014) is more positive than my other critics; see also
Blomme (2018).
8 D. Schulting
References
Allais, L. (2015). Manifest Reality. Kant’s Idealism and His Realism. Oxford
University Press.
Blomme, H. (2018). Over de radicaliteit van Kants theoretische filosofie. Enkele
aanmerkingen bij Dennis Schultings Kant’s Radical Subjectivism. Tijdschrift
voor Filosofie, 80(2), 341–353.
Conant, J. (2016). Why Kant Is Not a Kantian. Philosophical Topics,
44(1), 75–125.
Dyck, C. (2014). The Function of Derivation and the Derivation of Functions:
A Review of Schulting’s Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Studi kantiani
XXVII, 69–75.
Gomes, A. (2018). Minding the Gap: Subjectivism and the Deduction. Kantian
Review, 23(1), 99–109.
Howell, R. (2018). Deduction Difficulties. Kantian Review, 23(1), 111–121.
Land, T. (2018). Review of D. Schulting, Kant’s Deduction and Apperception.
Explaining the Categories. Kantian Review, 23(1), 145–151.
Prichard, H. A. (1909). Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. Clarendon Press.
Quarfood, M. (2014). A Note on Schulting’s Derivation of Contingency. Studi
kantiani, XXVII, 87–93.
Reich, K. (1986). Die Vollständigkeit der kantischen Urteilstafel (3rd ed.). Meiner.
Reich, K. (1992). The Completeness of Kant’s Table of Judgments, trans. J. Kneller
& M. Losonsky. Stanford University Press.
Rutten, E. (2020). Contra Kant. Herwonnen ruimte voor transcendentie.
Kok Kampen.
Schulting, D. (2012). Kant’s Deduction and Apperception. Explaining the
Categories. Palgrave Macmillan.
Schulting, D. (2014). Kant’s Deduction From Apperception. A Reply to My
Critics. Studi kantiani, XXVII, 95–118.
Schulting, D. (2017). Kant’s Radical Subjectivism. Perspectives on the Transcendental
Deduction. Palgrave Macmillan.
Schulting, D. (2018). Kant’s Deduction From Apperception. An Essay on the
Transcendental Deduction of the Categories (rev. ed.). De Gruyter.
Stephenson, A. (2014). A Deduction from Apperception? Studi kantiani,
XXVII, 77–85.
Strawson, P. F. (1968). The Bounds of Sense, 2nd printing. Methuen.
Watt, R. (2017). Robert Watt on Dennis Schulting’s Kant’s Radical Subjectivism.
Critique (November issue). https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/
robert-watt-on-dennis-schultings-kants-radical-subjectivism/
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As we have said, in order to arrive even hypothetically at this
result, it is necessary to assume besides a mere capacity for
change, other positive and active principles, some of which we may
notice. Thus, we must have as the direct productions of nature on
this hypothesis, certain monads or rough draughts, the primary
rudiments of plants and animals. We must have, in these, a constant
tendency to progressive improvement, to the attainment of higher
powers and faculties than they possess; which tendency is again
perpetually modified and controlled by the force of external
circumstances. And in order to account for the simultaneous
existence of animals in every stage of this imaginary progress, we
must suppose that nature is compelled to be constantly producing
those elementary beings, from which all animals are successively
developed. 567
I need not stay to point out how extremely arbitrary every part of
this scheme is; and how complex its machinery would be, even if it
did account for the facts. It may be sufficient to observe, as others
have done, 84 that the capacity of change, and of being influenced by
external circumstances, such as we really find it in nature, and
therefore such as in science we must represent it, is a tendency, not
to improve, but to deteriorate. When species are modified by
external causes, they usually degenerate, and do not advance. And
there is no instance of a species acquiring an entirely new sense,
faculty, or organ, in addition to, or in the place of, what it had before.
84 Lyell, B. iii. c. iv.
It may be urged, that all truths must be consistent with all other
truths, and that therefore the results of true geology or astronomy
cannot be irreconcileable with the statements of true theology. And
this universal consistency of truth with itself must be assented to; but
it by no means follows that we must be able to obtain a full insight
into the nature and manner of such a consistency. Such an insight
would only be possible if we could obtain a clear view of that central
body of truth, the source of the principles which appear in the
separate lines of speculation. To expect that we should see clearly
how the providential government of the world is consistent with the
unvarying laws 572 by which its motions and developements are
regulated, is to expect to understand thoroughly the laws of motion,
of developement, and of providence; it is to expect that we may
ascend from geology and astronomy to the creative and legislative
centre, from which proceeded earth and stars; and then descend
again into the moral and spiritual world, because its source and
centre are the same as those of the material creation. It is to say that
reason, whether finite or infinite, must be consistent with itself; and
that, therefore, the finite must be able to comprehend the infinite, to
travel from any one province of the moral and material universe to
any other, to trace their bearing, and to connect their boundaries.
One of the advantages of the study of the history and nature of
science in which we are now engaged is, that it warns us of the
hopeless and presumptuous character of such attempts to
understand the government of the world by the aid of science,
without throwing any discredit upon the reality of our knowledge;—
that while it shows how solid and certain each science is, so long as
it refers its own facts to its own ideas, it confines each science within
its own limits, and condemns it as empty and helpless, when it
pronounces upon those subjects which are extraneous to it. The
error of persons who should seek a geological narrative in
theological records, would be rather in the search itself than in their
interpretation of what they might find; and in like manner the error of
those who would conclude against a supernatural beginning, or a
providential direction of the world, upon geological or physiological
reasonings, would be, that they had expected those sciences alone
to place the origin or the government of the world in its proper light.
From what has been said, it follows that geology and astronomy
are, of themselves, incapable of giving us any distinct and
satisfactory account of the origin of the universe, or of its parts. We
need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of this incapacity;
as, for example, that of which we have been speaking, the
impossibility of accounting by any natural means for the production
of all the successive tribes of plants and animals which have peopled
the world in the 573 various stages of its progress, as geology
teaches us. That they were, like our own animal and vegetable
contemporaries, profoundly adapted to the condition in which they
were placed, we have ample reason to believe; but when we inquire
whence they came into this our world, geology is silent. The mystery
of creation is not within the range of her legitimate territory; she says
nothing, but she points upwards.
. . . . . . . Perfect forms
Limbed and full-grown: out of the ground up rose
As from his lair, the wild beast where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den; . . .
The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts; then springs as broke from bounds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; &c. &c.
Paradise Lost, B. vii.
[2nd Ed.] [Mr. Lyell has explained his theory 90 by supposing man
to people a great desert, introducing into it living plants and animals:
and he has traced, in a very interesting manner, the results of such a
hypothesis on the distribution of vegetable and animal species. But
he supposes the agents who do this, before they import species into
particular localities, to study attentively the climate and other
physical conditions of each spot, and to use various precautions. It is
on account of the notion of design thus introduced that I have,
above, described this opinion as rather a tenet of Natural Theology
than of Physical Philosophy.
90 B. iii. c. viii. p. 166.
Geological theories have been abundant and various; but yet our
history of them must be brief. For our object is, as must be borne in
mind, to exhibit these, only so far as they are steps discoverably
tending to the true theory of the earth: and in most of them we do not
trace this character. Or rather, the portions of the labors of geologists
which do merit this praise, belong to the two preceding divisions of
the subject, and have been treated of there.