Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T23:01:56.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant on Existential Import

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2014

Alberto Vanzo
Alberto Vanzo*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article reconstructs Kant's view on the existential import of categorical sentences. Kant is widely taken to have held that affirmative sentences (the A and I sentences of the traditional square of opposition) have existential import, whereas negative sentences (E and O) lack existential import. The article challenges this standard interpretation. It is argued that Kant ascribes existential import only to some affirmative synthetic sentences. However, the reasons for this do not fall within the remit of Kant's formal logic. Unlike traditional logic and modern standard quantification theory, Kant's formal logic is free from existential commitments.

Keywords

logicexistential importcategorical sentencesjudgements
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 207 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angelelli, Ignacio (2006) ‘The Interpretations of “nihili nullae sunt proprietates”: A Text from Rubio’. In: Guido Imaguire and Christina Schneider (eds), Untersuchungen zur Ontologie. Munich: Philosophia Verlag), pp. 41–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, E. J. (1974) Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1757) Metaphysica, 4th edn, repr. in Kant's gesammelte Schriften, vol. 15, pp. 5–54; vol. 17, pp. 5–226.Google Scholar
Bencivenga, Ermanno (1990) ‘Free from What?’ Erkenntnis, 33, 9–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bottani, AndreaCarrara, MassimilianoGiaretta, Pierdaniele (eds) (2002) Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Metaphysics. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brittan, Gordon G. (1974) ‘Non entis nulla sunt attributa’. Kant-Studien, 65 (Sonderheft), part II.1, 93–100.Google Scholar
Brittan, Gordon G. (2006) ‘Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics’. In Graham Bird (ed.), A Companion to Kant (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 222–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chignell, Andrew (2007) ‘Kant's Concepts of Justification’. Noûs, 41, 33–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cozzo, Cesare (1998) ‘Epistemic Truth and Excluded Middle’. Theoria, 64, 243–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crusius, Christian August (1745) Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten. Leipzig: Gleditsch, (repr. 1964).Google Scholar
Flage, Daniel E.Bonnen, Clarence A. (1999) Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gram, Moltke S. (1980) ‘The Crisis of Syntheticity: The Kant-Eberhard Controversy’. Kant-Studien, 71, 155–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, Robert (2011) ‘Kant's Theory of Judgment’. In Zalta 1997, Summer 2011 Edition, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/kant-judgment>..' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hanna,+Robert+(2011)+‘Kant's+Theory+of+Judgment’.+In+Zalta+1997,+Summer+2011+Edition,+.>Google Scholar
Heckmann, Heinz-Dieter (1981) Was ist Wahrheit? Eine systematisch-kritische Untersuchung philosophischer Wahrheitsmodelle. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Lambert, Johann Heinrich (1764/1990) Neues Organon. ed. Günter Schenk. Berlin: Akademie. References are to the page numbers of the original edn.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, Béatrice (1998) Kant and the Capacity to Judge: Sensibility and Discursivity in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Charles T. Wolfe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mariani, Mauro (2002) ‘Orenstein on Existence and Identity’. In Bottani, Carrara and Giaretta 2002, pp. 151–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orenstein, Alex (1978) Existence and the Particular Quantifier. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Orenstein, Alex (1999) ‘Reconciling Kant and Frege’. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 40, 391–413.Google Scholar
Orenstein, Alex (2000) ‘The Logical Form of Categorical Sentences’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 78, 517–533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orenstein, Alex (2002) ‘Existence, Identity and an Aristotelian Tradition’. In Bottani, Carrara and Giaretta 2002, pp. 127–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, T. (2008) ‘The Traditional Square of Opposition’. In Zalta 1997–, Fall 2008 Edition, <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/square/>..>Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. (1960–1966), Collected Papers, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.Google Scholar
Rosefeldt, Tobias (2008) ‘Kants Begriff der Existenz’. In Valerio Rohden et al. (eds), Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants: Akten des X. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (Berlin: de Gruyter), vol. 2, pp. 657–668.Google Scholar
Rosefeldt, Tobias (2011) ‘Frege, Pünjer, and Kant on Existence’. In Benjamin Schnieder and Schulz Moritz (eds), Themes from Early Analytic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Wolfgang Künne (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 329–351.Google Scholar
Thompson, Manley (1953) ‘On Aristotle's Square of Opposition’. Philosophical Review, 62, 251–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolley, Clinton. (2007) Kant's Conception of Logic. Dissertation, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Wiggins, David (1994) ‘The Kant-Frege-Russell View of Existence’. In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93–116.Google Scholar
Wolff, Christian. (1736) Philosophia prima sive ontologia. Frankfurt a.M.: Renger (repr. 2001).Google Scholar
Wolff, Michael (1995) Die Vollständigkeit der kantischen Urteilstafel: Mit einem Essay über Freges Begriffschrift. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1978) Kant's Rational Theology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Zalta, Edward N., ed. (1997– ) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, <http://plato.stanford.edu>..>Google Scholar