Relativizing the A Priori By Way of Reflective Judgement

Abstract

An influential strand in philosophy of science claims that scientific paradigms can be understood as relativized a priori frameworks. Here, Kant’s constitutive a priori principles are no longer held to establish conditions of possibility for knowledge which are unchanging and universally true, but are restricted only to a given scientific domain. Yet it is unclear how exactly a relativized a priori can be construed as both stable and dynamical, establishing foundations for current scientific claims while simultaneously making intelligible the transition to a subsequent framework. In this article, I show that important resources for this problem have been overlooked in Kant’s theory of reflective judgement in the third Critique. I argue that Kant accorded the task of formulating new scientific laws to reflective judgement, which is charged with forming new ‘universals’ that guide the experience of nature. I show that this is the very task attributed to the relativized a priori: the constitution of a given conceptual framework, not of the conditions for object-reference as such. I conclude that Kant’s considered conception of science encompasses the operations of both reflective and determining judgement. Relativizations of the a priori should follow Kant’s lead.

Kant’s Ongoing Relevance for Philosophy of Science

“…Of course, the impasse between the necessitarian and neo-Humean accounts of lawfulness has opened other new positions, including anti-realism (van Fraassen 1980) and the disunity of science (Cartwright 1999;Dupré 2001). Yet as Sabina Vaccarino Bremner (2023) demonstrates in this special issue, Kant provides an alternative that enables scholars to hold necessitation together with a system of laws that is always under revision. An exciting position that is currently developing simultaneously in philosophy of science and Kant studies emphasizes the role of the human standpoint in scientific inquiry (see Massimi 2022;Spagnesi 2022).…”