Intellectualism, Relational Properties and the Divine Mind in Kant's Pre-Critical Philosophy

Insole, Christopher J.

doi:10.1017/s1369415411000203

Cited by 20 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…The latter are distinguished from so-called "mere 11 Langton (1998, 118-9) reads Kant as saying that the intrinsic essences of substances in no way limit the laws God could prescribe. Insole (2011) defends a contrasting reading, on which the intrinsic essences of the substances God chooses to create entail a unique set of laws. It is plausible that Kant holds a view somewhere between these two extremes (Allais 2006).…”

Section: Kant's Multilevel Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Priority of Natural Laws in Kant's Early Philosophy

Wells¹

2021

Res Phil.

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It is widely held that, in his pre-Critical works, Kant endorsed a necessitation account of laws of nature, where laws are grounded in essences or causal powers. Against this, I argue that the early Kant endorsed the priority of laws in explaining and unifying the natural world, as well as their irreducible role in in grounding natural necessity. Laws are a key constituent of Kant's explanatory naturalism, rather than undermining it. By laying out neglected distinctions Kant draws among types of natural law, grounding relations, and ontological levels, I show that his early works present a coherent and sophisticated laws-first account of the natural order.One of the most influential innovations of Kant's Critical system is his emphasis on nonempirical laws, such as the moral law and transcendental principles of the understanding. Rather than advance a detailed theory of empirical laws, Kant generally tends to begin with their prima facie reliability and look for the conditions that make this possible. And even regarding the conditions for the necessity and objectivity of empirical laws, there is no consensus among commentators.But Kantian philosophy does not begin with the first Critique. Given the lack of agreement on his mature theory, it is natural to hope that Kant's earlier philosophical worksprior to his transcendental turn, and published while Kant was directly engaged in first-order scientific research-can shed light on the status of empirical laws.On a widely shared interpretation, however, such hopes are mostly misguided. This reading contends that, while Kant may frequently speak of laws in his early work, his underlying metaphysics in this period focuses not on laws but on the natures and causal powers of created things. 1 Natural necessities, as well as the general truths expressed by laws, are supposed to be grounded in powers and natures. Laws then bear little or no metaphysical weight, however convenient it may be to posit them. This is often called a necessitation account of laws, but the point is that laws are necessitated; they do not necessitate. Now, I do think this reading is on to something. Even early on, Kant insists on the active causal powers of material substances (unlike Cartesians), and sets strict limits on God's direct role in grounding causal patterns in nature (unlike Newtonians and Wolffians). Yet Kant's rejection of some laws-first ways of explaining the natural order need not involve rejecting all of

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Section: Kant's Multilevel Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Priority of Natural Laws in Kant's Early Philosophy

Wells¹

2021

Res Phil.

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“…Insole (2013, 2015b, 2020). For articles, see the following: Insole (2011aInsole ( , 2011bInsole ( , 2015aInsole ( , 2016Insole ( , 2019aInsole ( , 2019b. 5 Influential 'metaphysical' readers of Kant include Karl Ameriks, Rae Langton, Desmond Hogan, and Andrew Chignell.…”

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A Kantian Response to the Problem of Evil: Living in the Moral World

Insole

2023

Religions

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James Sterba has presented a powerful and existentially sincere form of the problem of evil, arguing that it is logically impossible for God to exist, given that there are powerful moral requirements to prevent evil, where one can, and that these requirements would bind an all-powerful and good God, who would indeed be able to prevent such evil. The ‘Kantian’ argument that I set out, if accepted, would undermine the following stage of Sterba’s argument: Significant and especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions do obtain all around us, which, if God exists, would have to be through his permission. The Kantian argument will hold that we are able to believe that, in some sense, such horrendous evil consequences do not really obtain, although they appear to. The claim is not that the Kantian argument is ‘persuasive’, but that if some Kantian assumptions are granted, we do have a response to Sterba, which throws open a different way of looking at things. I conclude with some more informal reflections on what we might take away from the Kantian argument, even if we do not accept the deep assumptions, or the progression of the argument. I will not worry too much about demonstrating that this is a ‘correct reading’ of Kant, although I think it is.

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“…As Locke argues against Aristotelian substantial forms (Essay III.iii.17).21 Henceforth OPA.22 Leibniz Monadology §44 translated in(Leibniz 1989, 647), Wolff Deutsche Metaphysik §975; Baumgarten Metaphysica §868.23 See also(Insole 2011;Massimi 2014) for Kant's pre-critical essentialism.…”

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Kant's regulative essentialism and the unknowability of real essences

Hoffer

2022

European J of Philosophy

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In his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics Kant distinguishes between logical and real essences. While the former are related to concepts and are knowable, the latter are related to things and are unknowable. In this paper, I argue that the unknowability is explained by the modal characteristic of real essences as a necessitating ground of which a priori knowledge is impossible.I also show how this claim is related to the unknowable necessity of particular laws of nature.Since laws of nature are conceived as grounded in real essences, the unknowability of the latter is equivalent to Kant's other claim that there can be no knowledge of the necessity of particular laws of nature. Necessity can only be known a priori, and therefore, the necessity of particular laws is only assumed and conceived as grounded in something unknowable, a real essence. This conclusion will allow me to attribute to Kant a position I label as 'regulative essentialism', meaning that real essences have an indispensable role of in accordance with the rational interest to explain nature as a system of laws and natural kinds, combined with an epistemic humility about the correspondence of our empirical concepts to real essences.

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Intellectualism, Relational Properties and the Divine Mind in Kant's Pre-Critical Philosophy

Cited by 20 publications

References 25 publications

The Priority of Natural Laws in Kant's Early Philosophy

The Priority of Natural Laws in Kant's Early Philosophy

A Kantian Response to the Problem of Evil: Living in the Moral World

Kant's regulative essentialism and the unknowability of real essences

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