Week II: Transcendental Aesthetic |
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| General Secondary Reading (optional): Allison pp. 97-132 ; Heidegger pp. 30-5, Strawson pp. 47-70. | |
| Question 1) What is Kant's argument (or arguments)
for the claim that space and/or time must be a priori? Is this argument
(or are these arguments) sound?
Secondary literature: Broad, 27-31, 36-51; Strawson 1966: 47-51, 57-62, Strawson 1959: 59-87; Walker, 28-41; Allison, 97-108, 112-118, Smith, 103-5, 123-4; Bennett, 33-44; Kitcher 44-49, Parson in CCK (Guyer 1992): 62-9, 72-4 |
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| Question 2) What are "intuitions"? How do
they differ from "concepts," "perceptions," "sensations"
and "matter"? Secondary literature: Read at least 4 of the following: Broad, 17-23; Smith, 79-88; Bennett, 53-6; Allison, 78-82; Heidegger (optional: 1997: 1-38); 1967: 135-7, 140-44, 196-201; Kant, Prolegomena (§§ 18-22. You can find various editions of this in the library or on EpistemeLinks, and it's in Ellington on reserve.); Pippin, 26-39; Aquila 1983: 33-57; Kitcher 30-1; Thompson, "Singular Terms and Intuitions in Kant" (Review of Metaphysics 2: 314-43 (1972), get it from the stacks!); Hintikka, "On Kant's Notion of Anschauung"(in Penelhum); Parsons, "Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic" (copy on reserve) |
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Question 3) Why must space and time be intuitions, rather than concepts? Is Kant consistent on this point? Secondary literature: Smith, 99-100, 105-8; Wilkerson, "Things, Stuffs, and Kant's Aesthetic" (in JSTOR, Philosophical Review 82: 169-87 (1973); Allison, 108-118; Strawson 1966: 47-51, 62-71; Pippin, 54-87; Parsons in CCK (Guyer 1992): 62-7, 69f.; Heidegger 1997-B: 31-3 |
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Question 4) Does Kant have an answer to the objections raise by Mendelssohn and Lambert regarding his "neglected alternative"? Could things in themselves just happen to be spatial or temporal? Secondary literature: Allison 111-114, 118-32; van Cleve 34-6, 52-61; Smith 112-114; Parsons in CCK (Guyer 1992): 80-91; Kant's Correspondence: letters to and from Mendelssohn and Lambert. |
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Question 5) Are Kant's arguments -- that space and time are a priori intuitions and/or that they do not apply to things in themselves -- psychological arguments? That is, are they based upon (contingent) psychological facts about human beings? If so, is this a problem for the status of those arguments? Secondary literature: Allison 104-6, Bennett 16-19, van Cleve 37-43, Kitcher 23-9, 45-55; Parsons in CCK (Guyer 1992): 68-9 |
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Question 6) Does Kant have a relational or an absolute theory of time? What does "form of intuition" mean? How do Kant's views here respond to the earlier doctrines of Leibniz and Newton? Secondary literature: Melnick, 7-30; Newton, Principia, selections in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. Alexander, (pp. 152-7, 172-4); The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, 11-16, 20-21, 25-39; Wolff, 1-22; Allison, 77-108, 116-128; Pippin, 59-63; Paton, 107-45, (134-43), 164-84 |
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Question 7) (a) What role does mathematics play in Kant's analyses of space and time? (b) What implications do non-Euclidian geometries have for Kant's analyses? Secondary literature: (a) van Cleve 34-43; Allison 116-8; Parsons 74-80; Guyer 357ff.; Kitcher 49-55; (b) Ayer, "The A Priori" in Ayer, 71-87; Smith, 117-20, 126-34; Körner, 33-42; Körner, "On the Kantian Foundation of Science and Mathematics" (in Penelhum, through p.105); Swinburne, 129-47; Paton, 144-63; Bennett, 15-19, 27-32; Strawson 1966: 277-92; Horstmann, "Space as Intuition and Geometry" (in Ratio 18:17-30, copy on reserve); Walker, 60-73 |