In the Critique of Pure Reason, following his elucidation of the ‘postulates’ of possibility, actuality, and necessity, Kant makes a series of puzzling remarks. He seems to deny the somewhat ...metaphysically intuitive contention that the extension of possibility is greater than that of actuality, which, in turn, is greater than that of necessity (A230/B283). Further, he states that the actual adds nothing to the possible (B284). This leads to the view, fairly common in the literature, that Kant holds that all modal categories, in their empirical applications, are coextensive. I diverge from the common view. First, Kant is not committed to the coextensiveness thesis, understood as above. Instead, he espouses a weaker, epistemological version of the coextensiveness thesis, namely that what we can assert to be really possible is coextensive with what we cognize to be actual. Second, Kant's remarks are not intended to introduce a positive ontological thesis about the extensions of modal categories. Rather, he means to criticize a certain conception of modalities that was prevalent among his rationalist predecessors, i.e., the conception of modalities as various determinations that enter the intensions of concepts of things.
Written by a group of international scholars, the essays in this collection investigate how Kant helps us think about issues related to the interplay among the state and global governance, peace and ...human rights enforcement, migrant crisis management, European federalisation, global educational reforms and a cosmopolitan culture.
For Simone Weil the invocation of 'rights' to address extreme human suffering-what she calls 'affliction'-is 'ludicrously inadequate'. Rights, Weil argues, invite a response, whereas what the ...afflicted require is not dialogue but simply to be heard. For Weil, hearing the 'cry' of the afflicted is the basis of all justice. The task of such a hearing is given over to Weil's concept of attention, which demands an ethics of creative silence. This paper will argue that central to Weil's ethics of attention, and thus the way she thinks we should show compassion and act justly, is the Kantian aesthetic concept of disinterestedness. I will argue that whilst Weil is influenced by Kant in multiple ways, it is his aesthetics, rather than his normative moral theory, that is most at play in her own ethical theory of attention.
We shall address from a conceptual perspective the duality between
algebra
and
geometry
in the framework of the refoundation of algebraic geometry associated to Grothendieck’s theory of schemes. To ...do so, we shall revisit scheme theory from the standpoint provided by the problem of recovering a mathematical structure
A
from its representations
A
→
B
into other similar structures
B
. This vantage point will allow us to analyze the relationship between the
algebra-geometry duality
and (what we shall call) the
structure-semiotics duality
(of which the
syntax-semantics duality
for propositional and predicate logic are particular cases). Whereas in classical algebraic geometry a certain kind of rings can be recovered by considering their representations with respect to a unique codomain
B
, Grothendieck’s theory of schemes permits to reconstruct general (commutative) rings by considering representations with respect to a category of codomains. The strategy to reconstruct the object from its representations remains the same in both frameworks: the elements of the ring
A
can be realized—by means of what we shall generally call
Gelfand transform
—as quantities on a topological space that parameterizes the relevant representations of
A
. As we shall argue, important dualities in different areas of mathematics (e.g. Stone duality, Gelfand duality, Pontryagin duality, Galois-Grothendieck duality, etc.) can be understood as particular cases of this general pattern. In the wake of Majid’s analysis of the Pontryagin duality, we shall propose a Kantian-oriented interpretation of this pattern. We shall use this conceptual framework to argue that Grothendieck’s notion of
functor of points
can be understood as a “relativization of the
a priori
” (Friedman) that generalizes the relativization already conveyed by the notion of
domain extension
to more general variations of the corresponding (co)domains.
This article seeks to decentre the proprietary author in copyright law by attending to some peripheral matters of Immanuel Kant’s periodical essay, ‘On the Wrongfulness of Reprinting’ (1785), as ...indices of its medial-material conditions of possibility. We consider not only the epitextual background of the German Enlightenment in which the
Berlinische Monatsschrift
was produced, but also the peritextual specimens of catchwords, signature marks, and various front matter of Kant’s essay. This medial reading suggests the periodical to be deeply involved in the operations of a print machinery preceding the authorial figure, the existence of which perturbs copyright law’s attachment to original authorship.
The implementation of Video Assistant Referees (VARs) in 2018 has had a significant impact on the multi-billion-dollar soccer industry. As
most popular and watched sport globally, soccer's financial ...stakes are high, with clubs, leagues, broadcasters, sponsors, and fans heavily invested in the game. The ongoing debate surrounding the VAR system brings to light the intricate balance between preserving the authenticity of football (soccer) and harnessing technology to improve accuracy. It is crucial to strike the right equilibrium in order to uphold football's metaphorical power and sustain the timeless joy it has brought to fans throughout generations. In this context, Immanuel Kant's philosophy can offer valuable insights into the utilization of VARs in soccer. According to Kantian ethics, using VARs can be justified if it serves to enhance fairness and accuracy, aligning with the moral duties of referees. Nevertheless, it is important to consider the potential dehumanizing effects and the necessity of preserving the value of human judgment in the game. Therefore, this paper aims to explore in-depth the intricate dynamics that arise when technology is integrated into traditional practices, emphasizing the significance of critical reflection on the implications of such advancements.
While their perspectives are divergent and often at odds with one another, they are united in their suppression of the question of the meaning of Kafka's novel as a novel and in their shared approach ...to its ambiguous, stark depiction of law, which they exploit for the broader purpose—both theoretical and practical—of mounting a skeptical challenge to the idea of human freedom.1 In contrast, this article will argue that the notion of freedom is essential to solving the riddle of the Kafkan form and that The Trial in particular is an indispensable testament to the necessity of freedom—as a political task and as a condition for the intelligibility of agency and action (and even of the skeptical position itself).2 In a philosophical tradition stretching from Kant and Hegel to Marx, freedom is understood as the capacity of spiritual beings to act in light of laws of their own making. ...self-legislation," as Robert Pippin has argued, is a matter not of arbitrarily electing that this or that law be my law, but rather of finding myself gripped by and responsible for normative constraints that have been collectively instituted through our practices over time.3 Accordingly, to act in light of a norm is not to slavishly conform to prevailing ideas of the "normal," but to know what would count as success and what as failure in undertaking a project or performing a deed and to be at least minimally responsive to potential challenges to the meaning of one's actions and even to one's own self-assessment. According to this critical reconstruction of Hegel's notion of rational agency, freedom is progressively achieved over the course of history, not as a matter of metaphysical fact, but as a matter of whether we take it that some development ought to be counted as progressive. ...the notion of the "we" in this article is not meant to level differences or to mask very real forms of exclusion.
In the “Second Analogy,” Kant argues that, unless mental contents involve the concept of causation, they cannot represent an objective temporal sequence. According to Kant, deploying the concept of ...causation renders a certain temporal ordering of representations necessary, thus enabling objective representational purport. One exegetical question that remains controversial is this: how, and in what sense, does deploying the concept of cause render a certain ordering of representations necessary? I argue that this necessitation is a matter of epistemic normativity: with certain causal presuppositions in place, the individual is obliged to make a judgment with certain temporal contents, on pain of irrationality. To make this normatively obligatory judgment, the subject must place her perceptual representations in a certain order. This interpretation fits Kant's text, his argumentative aims, and his broader views about causal inference, better than rival interpretations can. This result has important consequences for the ongoing debate over the role of normativity in Kant's philosophy of mind.
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