Kantian Humility : Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves.

Intro -- Contents -- Note on Sources and Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. AN OLD PROBLEM -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Allison's Deflationary Proposal -- 3. Reasons for Suspicion -- 4. A Metaphysical Proposal, and an Acid Test Passed -- 2. THREE KANTIAN THESES -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Bennett on Two Distinctions and their Conflation -- 3. A Case For, and Against, the 'Bare Substratum' -- 4. Three Theses: Some Further Texts -- 5. The Distinction -- 6. Humility -- 7. Receptivity -- 3. SUBSTANCE AND PHENOMENAL SUBSTANCE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Pure Concept of Substance vs. the Schematized -- 3. The Concept of Phenomenal Substance in General -- 4. Matter as a Merely Comparative Subject -- 5. Note on the Inference to Substance -- 6. Concluding Remarks and New Business -- 4. LEIBNIZ AND KANT -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Kant's Version of Leibniz -- 3. A Distinction between Phenomena and Things in Themselves -- 4. A Reduction of Phenomena to Things in Themselves -- 5. Knowledge, via Phenomena, of Things in Themselves -- 6. Kant and Leibniz on Relations -- 5. KANT'S REJECTION OF REDUCIBILITY -- 1. An Early Distinction between Phenomena and Things in Themselves -- 2. The Principle of Succession, and Receptivity -- 3. The Principle of Coexistence, and Irreducibility -- 4. Analysis of the Argument for Irreducibility: Preliminaries -- 5. Irreducibility Argument I -- 6. Irreducibility Argument II -- 7. Concluding Remarks -- 6. FITTING THE PIECES TOGETHER -- 1. Assembly -- 2. An Imaginative Exercise -- 3. Kant, Leibniz, and a Mirror Broken -- 4. Later Signs of the Irreducibility Argument -- 7. A COMPARISON WITH LOCKE -- 1. A Phenomenalist Reading of the Comparison -- 2. Problems, and a Contradiction -- 3. A Different Lockean Distinction -- 4. A Contradiction Dissolved -- 5. A Closer Look -- 8. KANT'S 'PRIMARY' QUALITIES -- 1. Introduction.

2. Bennett's Instructive Mistake -- 3. Spatial Features and Space-Filling Features -- 4. A Caveat about Space -- 5. Kant's 'Primary' Qualities: Geometrical and Dynamical -- 6. Solidity vs. Impenetrability, and a Problem for a Contemporary Orthodoxy -- 7. Science: Primary vs. Tertiary Qualities -- 8. Objectivity: Primary vs. Tertiary Qualities -- 9. THE UNOBSERVABLE AND THE SUPERSENSIBLE -- 1. Experience and the Unobservable -- 2. The Kant-Eberhard Controversy: Unobservable vs. Supersensible -- 3. Observability and Community -- 4. Monadology, Well vs. Badly Understood -- 5. Final Comments -- 10. REALISM OR IDEALISM? -- 1. Summing Up -- 2. Idealism: First Impressions -- 3. Idealism: Things in Themselves -- 4. Idealism: Space -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W.

Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defence of Kant's doctrine of things in themselves. Kant distinguishes things in themselves from phenomena, and in so doing he makes a metaphysical distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of substances. Langton argues that his claim that we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but epistemic humility: we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. This interpretation vindicates Kant's scientific realism, and shows his primary/secondary quality distinction to be superior even to modern-day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself untellable.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.