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Faculty of Philosophy

 


Andrew Chignell (Cornell University)

Kant, Modality, and our Ignorance of Things-in-Themselves

The goal in this paper is to show that Kant's prohibition on certain kinds of knowledge of things-in-themselves is motivated less by his anti-soporific encounter with Hume than by his new view of the distinction between "real" and "logical" modality, a view that developed out of his reflection on the rationalist tradition in which he was trained. In brief: at some point in the 1770's, Kant came to hold that a necessary condition on knowing a proposition is that one be able to prove that all the items it refers to are either really possible or really impossible. Most propositions about things-in-themselves, in turns out, cannot meet this condition. I conclude by suggesting that the best interpretation of this modal condition is as a kind of coherentist constraint.

Date: 
Monday, 19 January, 2015 - 16:00 to 17:30
Contact name: 
Angela Breitenbach
Contact email: 
Event location: 
Faculty of Philosophy Board Room