AREA III: KANTIAN METAPHYSICS & EPISTEMOLOGY

The Cognitive Significance of Kant's Third Critique and the Metaphysics of Natural Science

Area III: Kantian Metaphysics & Epistemology

The Cognitive Significance of Kant’s Third Critique and the Metaphysics of Natural Science

A long-term research project is focused on the topic of my doctoral dissertation, which investigates the connection between Kant’s first and third critiques.

Kant’s medieval predecessors were metaphysical realists in this sense: they thought that a fully objective account of reality could be given without taking into consideration the nature of the knowing subject. Kant’s message was (as everyone knows) revolutionary: contrary to what the metaphysical realists’ claim, Kant held that we cannot give an account of reality without taking into consideration the nature of the knowing subject. The knowing (or epistemic) subject’s cognitive capacities make an ineliminable contribution to the way it represents reality.  

In my doctoral dissertation—‘The Cognitive Significance of Kant’s Third Critique’—the aim is to show that Kant’s transcendental project in the Critique of Pure Reason—which details what the human mind’s ineliminable contribution is—is programmatically extended into his third critique, the Critique of the Power of Judgment. On this “cognitive” interpretation, Kant’s third critique is not (as many have thought) a rogue critique. Rather Kant’s third critique can be seen to have a cognitive significance in how it elaborates further on reason’s contribution to our systematic cognitive representation of single all-inclusive empirical reality. On my reading, Kant’s Ideas of Pure Reason (IPRs)—GOD, WORLD-WHOLE, and SELF—serve as internal non-empirical representational models that jointly function as guides for the cognitive construction of a single unified, all-inclusive, hierarchically-structured Mega-Object—the physical universe—in which all phenomena are to stand in systematic mereological relations within a multilayered model of physical nature. Within this hierarchically structured system of coordinated physical environments, all phenomena may be viewed as governed by a corresponding hierarchic system of level-appropriate and scientifically discoverable physical laws.

In terms familiar to a contemporary philosopher of science, Kant’s third Critique aims to address a foundational metaphysical issue of concern to scientific compositionalists: VERTICALITY. Vertical compositional structure—in which lower-order microsystems iteratively constitute higher-order macrosystems—is ubiquitous in nature. So, the ‘how possible?’ question addressed by Kant’s third critique is this: How is a single multilayered physical universe possible? How, for instance, is it possible for lower-level micro-systems to iteratively compose higher-level macro-systems in such a way as to form not a plurality of ontologically distinct and causally disconnected physical worlds but rather a single all-inclusive and causally interconnected multi-leveled system of physical environments? Under my “cognitive” interpretation, Kant’s third Critique has important implications for the philosophy of science and the metaphysical presuppositions that support the practice of natural science.