Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:44:05.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant on Nativism, Scepticism and Necessity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2013

John Callanan
John Callanan*
Affiliation:
King's College London
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kant criticizes the so-called ‘preformation’ hypothesis – a nativist account of the origin of the categories – at the end of the B-Deduction on the ground that it entails scepticism. I examine the historical context of Kant's criticism, and identify the targets as both Crusius and Leibniz. There are two claims argued for in this paper: first, that attending to the context of the opposition to certain forms of nativism affords a way of understanding Kant's commitment to the so-called ‘discursivity thesis’, by contrasting the possession conditions for the categories with those for innate ideas; secondly, it provides an insight with regard to Kant's understanding of the dialectic with scepticism. Kant's claim is that a certain explanatory lacuna that attaches to Humean empiricism can be seen to apply equally to any nativist theory. The lacuna concerns the explanation of the modal purport of a priori necessity, i.e. how it is that our consciousness can even distinguish contents that are represented as necessary features of objects.

Keywords

CrusiusLeibniznativismpreformationscepticism
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2013

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

Allison, H. (2004) Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (rev. and enl. edn). New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, R. Lanier (2001) ‘Synthesis, Cognitive Normativity, and the Meaning of Kant's Question, “How Are Synthetic Cognitions a Priori Possible?” ’. European Journal of Philosophy, 9, 275–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beiser, F. (2002) German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, J. (1966) Kant's Analytic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandom, R. (2009) Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buroker, J. V. (2002) Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Callanan, J. J. (2011) ‘Normativity and the Acquisition of the Categories’. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain (Special Issue on Kant and Hegel), 63/64, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassirer, E. (1981) Kant's Life and Thought. Trans. James Haden. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
De Pierris, G. (1987) ‘Kant and Innatism’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 68, 285–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engstrom, S. (1994) ‘The Transcendental Deduction and Skepticism’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 32, 359–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falkenstein, L. (1990) ‘Was Kant a Nativist?’. Journal of the History of Ideas, 51, 573–597.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falkenstein, L. (2004) Kant's Intuitionism. Toronto: Toronto University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, P. (ed.) (1997) The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, P. (1998) Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, P. (ed.) (2010a) The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, P. (2010b) ‘The Deduction of the Categories: The Metaphysical and Transcendental Deductions’. In Guyer (2010a), pp. 118–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanna, R. (2001) Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hatfield, G. (1997) ‘Empirical, Rational, and Transcendental Psychology: Psychology as Science and as Philosophy’. In Guyer (1997), pp. 200–27.Google Scholar
Henrich, D. (1989) ‘Kant's Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique’. In Forster (1989), pp. 29–46.Google Scholar
Henrich, D. (1994) The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant's Philosophy. Trans. Richard Velkey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hogan, Desmond (2010) ‘Kant's Copernican Turn and the Rationalist Tradition’. In Guyer (2010a), pp. 21–40.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1992a) Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770. Ed. and trans. D. Walford in collaboration with R. Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1992b) Lectures on Logic. Ed. and trans. J. M. Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (1999) Correspondence. Ed. and trans. A. Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, I. (2001) Lectures on Metaphysics. Ed. and trans. K. Ameriks and S. Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (2002) Theoretical Philosophy after 1781. Ed. H. Allison and P. Heath, trans. G. Hatfield, M. Friedman, H. Allison and P. Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kemp Smith, N. (1999) Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1990) Kant's Transcendental Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krausser, P. (1976) ‘Kant's Schematism of the Categories and the Problem of Pattern Recognition’. Synthese, 33, 175–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1981) New Essays on Human Understanding. Ed. and trans. P. Remnant and J. Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, B. (1998) Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Trans. C. Wolfe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pendlebury, M. (1995) ‘Making Sense of Kant's Schematism’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55, 777–797.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuels, R. (2007) ‘Is Innateness a Confused Notion?’. In P. Caruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich (eds), The Innate Mind: Foundations and the Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schönfeld, M. (2000) The Philosophy of the Young Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sloan, R. R. (2002) ‘Preforming the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 40, 229–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strawson, P. F. (1966) The Bounds of Sense. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Tonelli, G. (1974) ‘Leibniz on Innate Ideas and the Early Reactions to the Publication of the Nouveaux Essais (1765)’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 12, 437–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, R. (1978) Kant. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Waxman, W. (1991) Kant's Model of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Westphal, K. (2004) Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zöller, G. (1989) ‘From Innate to A Priori: Kant's Radical Transformation of a Cartesian-Leibnizian Legacy’. Monist, 72, 222–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar