Kant’s Transcendental Arguments as Gedankenexperimente

Kalin, Martin

doi:10.1515/kant.1972.63.1-4.315

Cited by 7 publications

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“…Alongside the validation of the causal principle in the Second Analogy, other paradigmatic examples of a transcendental argument are Kant's "Deduction of the Categories" and the "Refutation of Idealism". As Kalin (1972) reminds us, since transcendental principles are necessary conditions of experience, their validation cannot rely upon inductive arguments. Likewise, no dogmatic argument could be effective for validating such principles, for conceptual analysis cannot produce synthetic a priori propositions.…”

Section: The First Critique As Gedankenexperimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The same question applies to this inquiry, in the course of which a set of intertwined notions have been discussed: argument, transcendental argument, reduction to absurdity, and thought experiment. Reconsidering and actualising Kalin's (1972) characterisation of Kant's transcendental arguments as Gedankenexperimente allowed us to reunite Kant and Wittgenstein around a philosophical (and scientific) method with a rich history and a broad scope of application. Taken together, i) Wittgenstein's use of "pseudo-transcendental" arguments, ii) the characterisability of transcendental arguments as thought experiments and iii) the fact that Kant's notion of experiment of pure reason is a forerunner of the modern notion of thought experiment, lead to a rationally and historically illuminating reading of the смысл, и это равносильно опыту «ловли себя на бессмыслице».…”

Section: заключениеmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Kant and Wittgenstein on Thought Experiments and the Matter of Transcendental Arguments

Fuentes González

2022

Kantian Sbornik

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It is necessary to reconsider P. M. S. Hacker’s assessment of Kant and Wittgenstein’s philosophical affinities and the question concerning Wittgenstein’s alleged use of “transcendental arguments”. First, Alfred Norman’s reading of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus as a thought experiment receives revision to develop a view of the Critique of Pure Reason as a large-scale thought experiment that shares important logical features with the Tractatus. Then the question is addressed whether the middle Wittgenstein and the pre-critical Kant employed any thought experiments that could be equally characterised as “transcendental arguments”. A rational reconstruction of both thinkers’ arguments is carried out in the light of the contemporary literature on thought experimenting. The novelty and relevance of this approach is the emphasis laid upon a largely neglected affinity between Kant and Wittgenstein, namely the systematic use of thought experiments in their epistemological pursuits. The conclusions are: i) Wittgenstein’s and Kant’s magna opera can be seen as philosophical thought experiments that attempt to try out the limits of language and the limits of possible experience respectively; ii) Both philosophers developed arguments that can be designated as transcendental if only from a methodological standpoint; and iii) some key arguments put forward by the middle Wittgenstein in the determination of the structure of visual space could be characterised better as thought experiments than transcendental arguments.

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Section: The First Critique As Gedankenexperimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: заключениеmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kant and Wittgenstein on Thought Experiments and the Matter of Transcendental Arguments

Fuentes González

2022

Kantian Sbornik

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“…This is the name Kant gives his method of testing transcendental principles, i.e., conditions for the possibility of human knowledge, such as "every event has a cause." In the literature it has been noted already that these experiments make up a special class of thought experiments (see Kalin 1972). As for the fourth reason, Kant's epistemology is promising with respect to ªnding a compromise between Brown's Platonism and Norton's eliminative empiricism (see Fehige 2012 and Forthcoming).…”

Section: Kant's Experiments Of Pure Reasonmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Origins of the Philosophy of Thought Experiments: The Forerun

Fehige

Stuart

2014

Perspectives on Science

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The history of thought experiments is now gaining a great deal of attention, and this is due to the renewed interest of philosophers on the subject. This paper inquires into the history of the philosophy of thought experiments. We name the period to be examined in this paper the "forerun." Its main stakeholders are Georg C. Lichtenberg, Novalis, and Immanuel Kant. We will present and discuss the work of each of them in order to characterize the period, and then reveal parallels and lessons that apply to more recently proposed accounts of thought experiments.Philosophical debate about the nature and function of thought experiments would be impoverished without good historical sources. And while valuable work is being done on the history of thought experiments, a comprehensive discussion of the history of philosophical investigation into thought experiments is still absent in the literature (but see Kühne 2005;Moue et al. 2006). In what follows we take the ªrst steps towards providing a more complete picture of the diverse attempts to shed light on thought experiments.The term "thought experiment" made its ªrst appearance about 200 years ago in 1811. The most proliªc period in the history of the philosophical investigation into thought experiments is the current one, which commenced about 175 years later, more or less in 1986. The lack of focus and direction in the ongoing debate over the nature and usefulness of thought experiments is our main motivation to revisit the history of philosophical investigation into thought experiments. We are conªdent that this enterprise can help to correct some of the shortcomings in current approaches to thought experiments, including a lack of appreciation of the literary features of thought experiments, the normativity of scientiªc instances in assessing the nature of thought experiments, and a ten-

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“…In particular, he analysed Martin G. Kalin's suggestion that mental experiments play the key role in corroborating transcendental principles (cf. Kalin, 1972). Fuentes also presented a number of Kant's philosophy-of-nature reflections -of the early and later periods -as examples of mental experiments, demonstrating the close link between mental experiments and the issues of analogy and imagination in Kant's critical philosophy.…”

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confidence: 95%

“…Серхио Фуэнтес Гонсалес (Калининград) осветил место мысленных экспериментов в философии Канта -в частности, был представлен анализ предположений М. Г. Калина (Kalin, 1972) о том, что мысленные эксперименты играют ключевую роль в подтверждении трансцендентальных принципов. Кроме того, Фуэнтес представил рассмотрение ряда натурфилософских рассуждений Канта (как раннего, так и позднего периодов) в качестве примеров мысленных экспериментов, показав при этом тесную связь темы мысленных экспериментов с вопросами аналогии и воображения в критической философии Канта.…”

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Kantian Rationality in the Philosophy of Science. Report of the First Conference of the Kantian Rationality Lab

Zilber

2021

Kantian Sbornik

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The international conference “Kantian Rationality in Philosophy of Science” was held on 9–11 October 2020 at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad. Fifteen participants from different countries discussed aspects of the Kantian understanding of science and the roles of reason in it: the unity, difference, and systematicity of the functions of reason in science, as they are revealed in Kant’s discussions of criteria of scientificity, the classification of sciences, or methods of theoretical and experimental research in specific sciences. The topics discussed fell into two broad categories: firstly, the relationship between metaphysics and science in the context of Kant’s time; secondly, the relevance of Kant’s ideas to modern sciences and the concepts of philosophy of science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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Kant’s Transcendental Arguments as Gedankenexperimente

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Kant and Wittgenstein on Thought Experiments and the Matter of Transcendental Arguments

Kant and Wittgenstein on Thought Experiments and the Matter of Transcendental Arguments

On the Origins of the Philosophy of Thought Experiments: The Forerun

Kantian Rationality in the Philosophy of Science. Report of the First Conference of the Kantian Rationality Lab

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