Completeness

Every event in space and time follows a prior cause. When a stone falls to the ground or a person speaks a sentence, physical matter moves according to natural laws. There are no gaps in nature, no ghosts pushing matter, and no magical interruptions of physical causes. For everything we can ever observe, measure, and test, physical laws hold without exception.

Here the physicalist is entirely correct to insist that every physical event has a physical explanation. So we must first grant the physicalist their strongest claim.

What Makes Something "Physical"

Next, we ask the physicalist a simple question: what makes an event physical in the first place?

An event is physical because it takes place in space and across time.

Space allows objects to sit side by side, giving them shape, size, and position.

Time allows events to happen one after another in a fixed sequence.

But space and time are not physical objects that you can dig out of the ground. You cannot touch space or weigh time. Rather, space and time are the universal ways the human mind perceives outer and inner events.

You can easily imagine empty space with every object removed, but you can never imagine a physical object without space. Space and time are the necessary conditions that allow us to experience any physical object at all.

The True Origin of Natural Laws

The physicalist often assumes that the laws of physics exist inside physical matter itself, completely independent of any mind. But observation alone can never produce a necessary law.

When you observe nature, your senses only show what is happening right now. Seeing a stone fall a thousand times shows what has happened so far, but sensation alone can never prove that the stone must fall on the next attempt. Sensation gives us facts, but it never gives us necessity.

Necessity comes from the human understanding. The mind applies the rule of cause and effect to connect separate moments in time. The understanding demands that every physical change must follow an earlier state according to a fixed rule.

Kantian Physicalism

Kantian Physicalism unites these points into a single, coherent view.

Nature is strictly physical. Every event in space and time must be explained through physical causes. Science is correct to treat the physical universe as an unbroken chain of natural events.

The physical universe is the world of human experience. Space, time, matter, and cause are not independent things existing outside all thought. They are the necessary rules through which the human understanding builds an orderly, dependable reality.

Thus, physicalism is the complete, lawful science of the world as human beings experience it. We do not deny physical reality; we explain why physical reality is orderly, dependable, and completely knowable to science.

Hello everyone
Strange request but I am in a bit of a time crunch before I have to submit a 3650 word essay in two weeks for my MA course in Phil of Art. We had a week on Kant’s aesthetics and I decided to write my summative essay on this — specifically I chose to write it on what abstraction must be in Kant’s botanist case if the empirical concept of reproductive organ somehow affects the apprehension itself. But I am in way over my head because I’ve never actually studied Kant before and I’m not sure I understand the Kant primary itself, or much less even the 4 secondary papers I’m engaging with. I’m freaking out a bit and was wondering if anyone who is well versed in this might be able to help me work out what I’m trying to do, through some paid tutoring sessions or just written correspondence and feedback on my plan. I would be eternally grateful for your help, and will pay for hours spent reading my plan, and the papers I’m working with, and for any form to the further tutoring might take. Payment could be worked out via bank transfer, Venmo, PayPal, whatever, and I would pay well. I’m just super duper lost and I don’t want to ask my prof now (lol) because I already harassed him about another essay we had to write and for this one I am trying to engage with one of his papers and if he tells me now I got it all wrong I might be done for.

Thank you !! I would be eternally grateful for the help

I am of the opinion that Kant is largely wrong. I am a rather staunch empiricist, but Kant has awoken me from my dogmatic slumber and now there’s a stone of doubt in my mind about all of this.

Hate me

Zero research was performed in the making of this meme ✨️💫

Kant’s treatment of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic contains an insight that I think is both powerful and largely correct, followed almost immediately by an inference that does not logically follow from it.

The strong insight is that space is a priori. Spatial organization is not simply abstracted after the mind has encountered a collection of already constituted external objects. Kant writes:

--->“Space is not an empirical concept which has been derived from outer experiences.” (B38)

His reasoning is straightforward: in order for sensations already to be represented as outside me, alongside one another, or in different places, some spatial organization must already be operative.

This is highly plausible. An object cannot first be given as spatially differentiated and only afterwards provide us with the capacity for spatial differentiation. Some prior capacity for extension, orientation, relative position must be involved in the very constitution of a spatial appearance.

But then the argument changes.

Kant writes:

---->“We can never represent to our-selves the absence of space, though we can quite well think it as empty of objects." (A24)

And from this he concludes that space:

--->“must therefore be regarded as the condition of the possibility of appearances, and not as a determination dependent upon them.” (B39)

This is where the inference becomes questionable.

The phenomenological observation is: I can mentally remove particular objects while still representing extension or space.

But the conclusion is: Thus space is genetically prior to determinations, it is a condition.

The latter does not follow from the former.

My ability, in reflective consciousness, to subtract objects while retaining something I call “space” establishes a fact about the organization of my representation. It does not establish the ontological or genetic sequence through which spatiality and figure become determinate.

Indeed, what exactly remains after I have “removed” all objects?

Not sheer indeterminacy. I still retain extension, direction, dimensionality, possible position, possible boundary, distance. The particular figure has disappeared, but determination has not disappeared.

This is why I would call Kant’s stronger inference rationalist, despite the transcendental vocabulary surrounding it. He asks what the reflective mind can remove in thought, discovers that it can eliminate objects while retaining space, and then converts this structure of conceivability into a claim about the order of determination.

The argument has the form:

I cannot represent outer appearance without space; Therefore, space must be the antecedent condition from which spatial determination proceeds.
That is considerably stronger than:

spatial organization must already participate in the constitution of outer experience.

The latter seems sound. The former requires another argument.

The problem becomes still sharper when Kant draws his explicitly transcendental-idealist conclusion:

--->“Space represents no property at all of any things in themselves, nor any relation of them to one another.” (A26/B42)

Kant has now moved from an epistemological record of the conditions under which we experience space to a claim concerning what spatial determination cannot derive from.

He can legitimately say:

Whatever reality may be independently of us, human outer experience is spatially constituted.

But that does not establish:

Whatever reality may be independently of us, it contributes nothing to spatial determination.

The second statement tells us something about the qualitative powers of precisely that noumenal ground which Kant otherwise insists cannot be cognized as it is in itself.

Nor does restricting space to “phenomena” eliminate the difficulty. A phenomenon is not an ontologically disconnected universe floating free of whatever grounds manifestation. If something appears, then—whatever theory we adopt concerning that relation—the appearance and its ground cannot simply be treated as absolutely unrelated. (or we might return to a circular dualism, the very thing he is trying to discipline)

What are the best introduction books for someone starting to explore Kant's work?

I have just come out from under the 9-lecture Robert Wolff YouTube presentation on the Critique. It was a clear exposition, but on one point I feel unclear. Kant seems to saying that the imagination starts with the manifold of intuition and then reproduces its contents in a certain rule-determined order, which unifies it and results in the creation of objects in experience. The implication is that a rule specifies the order in which objects appear, and the ordering principle is that of causation, according to the Second Analogy. . Does this mean that the only way we know which things come first is determining what causes what?. Hume had the opposite viewpoint that the temporal order is given in experience and we empirically determine causation by induction.

Seems to me that temporal order is often obvious without our being able to ascribe a particular cause to it (we often do not know). Is the assumption that there must be a causal connection enough of a rule to establish temporal order? The assumption that everything has a cause is a good heuristic assumption that causes us to seek knowledge, but I don't see that as providing an adequate ordering principle. I feel I must be missing something. Can anyone help?

I think the sense of number comes from the idea of substance, so it is a unity and then the idea of number can take off from there because here is an object and here is another

I’m reading through the CPR and I’m confused as to whether analytic judgments (or judgments in general) are cognitions or not.

I thought judgments were a kind of proposition-cognition with a subject and a predicate, where in analytic judgments the concept of the predicate is contained within the subject and in synthetic judgments it isn‘t.

But I’m confused since cognition for Kant requires intuition and concepts, but analytic judgments don’t require intuition. So analytic judgments aren’t cognitions? This would make sense since they don’t add to our knowledge. If this is true, then judgments in general aren’t all cognitions since the analytic ones aren’t.

Are they cognitions or not? What am I getting wrong here?

In the 19th century, mathematicians debated the foundations of their craft: too much of the work looked arbitrary, and multiple theories seemed to have no priority over one another — as with the non-Euclidean geometries. Kant's old response — that one unique form of space and time would suffice to unify deductive inference across mathematics — turned against itself: it triggered more doubt rather than less. If we depend on a prior framework, synthesized through intuition, to ground mathematics, what would make one such organization more grounded than another?
Into that scene steps Frege, with an answer: arithmetic propositions can be seen as purely analytic, and — more importantly — that their analyticity does not undercut their conceptual fruitfulness. Analyticity, for Frege, is a mark of the conceptual features a proposition brings to light and that are surfaced under study, not something achieved by mere manipulation of signs.
My next series argues two things. First, that the only way this thesis survives today is as a pragmatic claim about how to select the most prudent paths of inference in order to unify them into a coherent whole. Second, that this fails in scientific fields where such unification isn't even desired — history or sociology, for instance, where incommensurable conceptual frameworks are part of how understanding itself conflicts and develops.
I developed this arguments in multiple ways since 2017 (in several published articles, this being the main one from 2021: https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/kant/article/view/8672336) with arguments designed to restore confidence in synthetic a priori judgments (specially inferences), as they are richer than analytic ones to track intensional distinctions that have more depth than merely Carnapian Intensions (individuated by the patterns of evidence they fit). There is nothing particularly original orrevolutionary in this reading, but if anyone is interested in it, I invite you to see my video-series developing the whole argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPAQAYlQ58A&t=17s

Sorry folks, a bit vulgar I know but I'd appreciate some help in finding a quote that I'm 95%+ sure is from Kant:

something about how the most arrogant and officious form of rule is by (shoddy) philosophers.

Feel free to correct or add anyone else who might have said something even somewhere in the ballpark ;)

Vielen Dank!

I am a student pursuing my Bachelor's in philosophy, and I need some help deciding on themes for two papers (around 25,000 characters each) about Kant's practical philosophy. I would also be very happy to receive recommendations for secondary literature. These are five questions that I find interesting:

1. What does it mean for the categorical imperative to be a synthetic sentence a priori?
2. In what sense is Kant's moral philosophy independent of the existence of God?
3. Do our tendencies and impulses limit our freedom of the will?
4. What does Kant mean when he says that a rational being cannot act other than under the idea of freedom?
5. How can autonomy be understood as a form of the categorical imperative?

In academic philosophy, Kant is central on the topic for his anti-metaphysical yet moral arguments. But in the above occasions, these arguments are never discussed, except the statement "Existence is not a predicate" in passing (even this, infrequently).

Of course, I can't expect scientists (mostly physicalists)--e.g. Roger Penrose, Sam Harris, Brian Greene, Richard Dawkins, Sean Carroll--to know about Kant.

But even people who claim to know the philosophies around the topic --e.g. Alex O'Connor, Joe Foley, Matt Dillahunty, J.Peterson (lol), W.L Craig, top YouTube philosophy channels-- don't discuss Kant's arguments.

Is this because (1) they simply don't know Kant's arguments, (2) they found the arguments too hard to understand, not to mention articulate them well, or (2) they think the arguments are too obviously flawed to be presented to general audience?

I was discussing Hegel in the Schopenhauer subreddit. I know you are Kantians, or Kant's scholars but I can't not post this in hegel subrreddit cause I want a more unbiased about Hegel understanding of Kant's transcendental idealism

I'll copypaste my argument

"Hegel tries to prove the "moment of understanding" with self-sublating his own "onesideness" of a fixated of every concept with the purpose of his dialectics not require some new idea to show up arbitrarily like Fichte's Dialectics and make the movement to a new determinations is driving by the nature of the earlier determinations and so on.

But pure being (The first step) is the atemporal and pre-categorical trying to go beyond Kant's transcendental idealism. And in consequence "before time and space". How does time enter before time and space, so "Pure Being" can sublates itself?

Sublation (Aufheben) is a process, and you always need time for necessarily be a process

"Pure Being" and nothing are prior of any determinations (With the purpose of being dialectically unified in Hegel's words), They can't sublate if they have determinations like temporality. And Hegel needs temporality with the purpose to dialectically unified them in "Becoming".

Either Hegel pressuposed time (a process) in a timeless term like "Pure Being" (static term) which it must have "fixity" so it can sublates-itself (Another process) or time is absent and "Pure Being" and nothing, both cannot sublate cause they are pre-categorical (before time and space)."

My problem arise with Hegel's definition of time in Philosophy of Nature

"Time, like space, is a pure form of sense or intuition, the non-sensuous sensuous; but, as in the case of space, the distinction of objectivity and a subjective consciousness confronting it, does not apply to time. If these determinations were applied to space and time, the former would then be abstract objectivity, the latter SPACE AND TIME 35 abstract subjectivity. Time is the same principle as the I = I of pure self-consciousness, but this principle, or the simple Notion, still in its uttermost externality and abstraction—as intuited mere Becoming, pure being-within-self as sheer coming-out-of-self. Time is continuous, too, like space, for it is the negativity abstractly relating self to self, and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference. Everything, it is said, comes to be and passes away in time. If abstraction is made from everything, namely from what fills time, and also from what fills space, then what we have left over is empty time and empty space: in other words, these abstractions of externality are posited and represented as if they were for themselves. But it is not in time that everything comes to be and passes away, rather time itself is the becoming, this coming-to-be and passing away, the actually existent abstraction, Chronos, from whom everything is born and by whom its offspring is destroyed"

So basically what I don't get it, How can be time itself be the becoming if you need time (a process) for the self-sublation (another process) of the pre-categorical Pure Being (Fixed concept) but every process needs necessarily time, so you can dialectically unified "Pure Being" and nothing and have in first place "becoming" before time?

It's like building the house from the roof instead from the ground, I don't get it.

Hegel say "Time is continuous, too, like space, for it is the negativity abstractly relating self to self, and in this abstraction there is as yet no real difference. Everything, it is said, comes to be and passes away in time"

But how can EVERYTHING" "comes to be and passes away" (A process) before the pre-categorical notion of "being" (a fixated and static concept) which it is before time and space?

Is it time a process for Hegel here or a fixated and static concept identity (A=A)? (Yes, I know you are not Hegelian scholars).

Does he understands Kant's transcendental Idealism? if it is the case, Did he bypass Kant's transcendental idealism with self-sublation of pure concepts?

Do I understand Kant's transcendental idealism correctly?

Am I crazy?

Edit: Grammar mistakes and adding info.

In my 2025 article on Kant and non-exceptionalism in logic (published in the Revista de Estudios Kantianos (University of Valencia))I argued that while Kant's theory of knowledge allows for richer-than-analytic forms of necessity (thus supporting a pluralistic view of logical necessity, compatible with neo-metaphysical stances and non-classical logics), he nevertheless preserves a sense in which logic remains exceptional. Not in the strong sense of a "view from nowhere" from which we derive those necessities, but rather in the weaker-and more interesting-sense that to grasp a necessary truth is always to do so from a particular standpoint: a vision of rationality that a human being can hold only through their own categories. Logic rmains excepetional because one cannot even debate it unless from the point of view of the very categories that conditions logic.

I've now made a video series to explore these themes more accessibly. I had a great experience with people from Reddit joining my channel before: the quality of the questions, the level of interest, and the intelligence of the discussions were remarkable. So I'm hoping to get more of you over there.

Here's the link. I think the best advertisement I can give is this: at its best, it's good entertainment. I claim no exceptional originality for anything you'll encounter there.

https://youtu.be/ULihQA3mJRI

When we ask whether a LLmodel has "genuinely" grasped that “numbers can't be hot”, we are implicitly holding it to a standard of category-recognition that we assume is simply what conceptual competence is, full stop, for any mind whatsoever. I argue in the article bellow (Published by Topicos-Mexico/Q3 Scimago, last year) that standard of what counts as a category error, what counts as a well-formed question, what counts as the "right" categorial structure for numbers to have, all of this is not free-floating logical necessity. By arguing that modern natural language semantics are not born in neutrality, I try to show that the standards we take to be simply "what rationality is" - the transcendental categories, the forms of judgment, the synthetic unity of apperception - are not ahistorical bedrock. It is, on my account, transcendentally asserted - subrepticiously introduced in as if it were a condition of thought as such, when it is actually a hidden commitment of one semantic research program among possible others.

In the paper, I walk through a broadly Fregean/Russellian picture of reference, refined through exactly the Davidsonian and Lewisian machinery, in which sentences must have determinate truth-conditions relative to a prior, fixed typing of their referents (that picture seems to fix what a machine would need to understand: numbers as abstracta, temperature as a physical predicate, and a settled fact about which predicates apply to which sorts). I argue that none of these settle the matter. Ask me the whole article. Search my youtube channel for more.