| Popis: |
The goal of this chapter is to sketch an account of Kant’s signature metaphysical doctrine (transcendental idealism) that (a) apparently has no supporters in the contemporary literature, and (b) draws its primary motivation (as interpretation) from considerations regarding our practical situation and needs as agents. The consideration focused on here is that people not only have mental and moral features but also appear to us—in our daily experience—to have such features. The same presumably goes for vice: Your character shines through in your actions, and I can then make a defeasible inference from those appearances to the moral reality. An interpretation of transcendental idealism that gives primacy to the practical will thus seek to analyze the concepts of experience, acquaintance, and appearance/phenomenon in a capacious enough way that they apply to mental and moral features too. “One-World Phenomenalism” does this by saying that there is just one set of real things, for Kant—namely, substances with their intrinsic and relational features. Some of the key features of these substances (like their moral features) are also features that they appear to us to have. They are “straddling” features. However, many of the features that they appear to us to have (spatio-temporal-causal features) are not features that they really have. If successful, such an interpretation would have a clear practical advantage over those that leave us merely conjecturing from experiences of bodies, gestures, and various secondary qualities to moral features that do not appear, or even to the non-appearing features of a distinct set of things. |
