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The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Peter Strawson (1919–2006) was one of the leading British philosophers of his generation and an influential figure in a golden age for British philosophy between 1950 and 1970. The Bounds of Sense is one of the most influential books ever written about Kant’s philosophy, and is one of the key philosophical works of the late twentieth century. Whilst probably best known for its criticism of Kant’s transcendental idealism, it is also famous for the highly original manner in which Strawson defended and developed some of Kant’s fundamental insights into the nature of subjectivity, experience and knowledge – at a time when few philosphers were engaging with Kant’s ideas. The book had a profound effect on the interpretation of Kant’s philosophy when it was first published in 1966 and continues to influence discussion of Kant, the soundness of transcendental arguments, and debates in epistemology and metaphysics generally. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Lucy Allais.
308 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
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About the author
Peter Frederick Strawson
25 books35 followersSir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) from 1968 to 1987. Before that he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford in 1947 and became a tutorial fellow the following year until 1968. On his retirement in 1987, he returned to the college and continued working there until shortly before his passing.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 5, 2018
It's quite interesting how Strawson disjoins Kant's project of analyzing the conditions of possibility of experience from the transcendental idealism, while rejecting the latter. He's quite critical of Kant especially when it comes to his idea of transcendental subjectivity of space and time but still, his readings can be quite sympathetic (possibly, as sympathetic as can be from within the Anglo-Saxon Tradition.) For example, while the modern developments of mathematics (Non-Euclidean Geometry) and physics (Relativity) were seemingly invalidating Kant's theory of geometry, Strawson presented quite an insightful defense. At the times when the positivists were hostile towards the German idealists such as Kant and dismissing their ideas as gibberish, Strawson showed how important Kant can be, even within the Analytical Tradition.
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August 5, 2020What stands out in this book is the way Strawson isolates and articulates Kant's central insight: that to have an intelligible experience of an objective world, there must be some way to trace out your personal "experiential route" through that world. And to do this, you must be able to differentiate the order of your experiences—your personal path through that world—from the paths taken by external, enduring spatial objects. So the possibility of self-consciousness, which we all undeniably have, is accounted for by our capacity to distinguish our subjective consciousness from an independently subsisting spatial and temporal framework occupied by causally related objects. And that ability can only be explained if our judgments of that world are aided by the use of certain concepts of continuity, succession, causality, co-existence and so on that are built-in to the mind. based
October 27, 2017
This is a book that I wish I had read a long time ago. Not because Strawson gets Kant right - there have been a number of critiques of this book and I'm fairly certain that his reading is less than charitable at certain key spots - nor because he is always convincing (he's not); but because he rigorously illustrates the implausibility of what might be called the 'standard picture' of Kant's First Critique while simultaneously showing the unavoidability and lasting significance of the Kantian project. Specifically, he shows the implausibility of transcendental idealism while showing that the central question of the transcendental project that of the conditions of the possibility of experience is a fundamental philosophical question.
August 7, 2012
Sir peter stayed with us when he was in Colorado.
The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a 1966 book by P.F. Strawson, a 20th-century Oxford philosopher. The book is a critical reading of Kant's text (referring to parts of it as proceeding "by a non sequitur of numbing grossness"[1]), with an emphasis on the analytical argument of the transcendental deduction, which Strawson takes to be one of the few lasting contributions Kant made to philosophy. The title is a play on a title Kant himself proposed for the Critique of Pure Reason, with "sense" referring both to the mind and the sense faculties, and hence the bounds can be either those of reason or sensation. The book, along with Jonathan Bennett's Kant's Analytic (Cambridge, 1966), reinvigorated Kant studies.
The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is a 1966 book by P.F. Strawson, a 20th-century Oxford philosopher. The book is a critical reading of Kant's text (referring to parts of it as proceeding "by a non sequitur of numbing grossness"[1]), with an emphasis on the analytical argument of the transcendental deduction, which Strawson takes to be one of the few lasting contributions Kant made to philosophy. The title is a play on a title Kant himself proposed for the Critique of Pure Reason, with "sense" referring both to the mind and the sense faculties, and hence the bounds can be either those of reason or sensation. The book, along with Jonathan Bennett's Kant's Analytic (Cambridge, 1966), reinvigorated Kant studies.
October 15, 2022
This is an incredible book on Kant. It is simultaneously incredibly charitable and harsh towards Kant. Strawson does his best to clarify Kant's intentions and arguments while also dismantling them where possible in excellent analytic fashion. This all made for a beautiful book of philosophy which evaluated the validity of Kant's main argumentative moves in very satisfying detail. It is exemplary in many ways in how to interface with great works of philosophy; critically but respectfully and with understanding and a charitable attitude.
What does Strawson accomplish? In the final section, he posits a very interesting phenomenal geometry in order to support Kant's account of geometry. In a sense, he preserves the notion of analyticity. There is something like an intuition that is not entirely exhausted by visual perception. Visual imagination, however, is quite a strange notion, and it is unclear whether image schemas and things of that kind really are there. Idealization in geometry exist, though, and so there must be something to it. This relates in interesting ways to language, too, and linguistic intuitions.
Strawson also shows that Kant's antinomies were not in need of his transcendental idealism in order to arrive at the results Kant so happily arrived at. Transcendental idealism was thoroughly undermined by Strawson in many ways, in fact. It was also convincingly argued that space is not internal in the sense Kant proposed. This is a major result worthy of further study for every reader of Kant.
Strawson's overview of the Kant's metaphysics is also very instructive and a great summary. His critical reaction to it, also, is incredibly informative. He formalizes and gives a structure to the Kantian arguments that aren't there in the original, and he enhances one's understanding of Kant while skillfully going beyond it.
All in all, it serves as an excellent follow-up on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, especially if you liked reading Kant. I really liked this book.
What does Strawson accomplish? In the final section, he posits a very interesting phenomenal geometry in order to support Kant's account of geometry. In a sense, he preserves the notion of analyticity. There is something like an intuition that is not entirely exhausted by visual perception. Visual imagination, however, is quite a strange notion, and it is unclear whether image schemas and things of that kind really are there. Idealization in geometry exist, though, and so there must be something to it. This relates in interesting ways to language, too, and linguistic intuitions.
Strawson also shows that Kant's antinomies were not in need of his transcendental idealism in order to arrive at the results Kant so happily arrived at. Transcendental idealism was thoroughly undermined by Strawson in many ways, in fact. It was also convincingly argued that space is not internal in the sense Kant proposed. This is a major result worthy of further study for every reader of Kant.
Strawson's overview of the Kant's metaphysics is also very instructive and a great summary. His critical reaction to it, also, is incredibly informative. He formalizes and gives a structure to the Kantian arguments that aren't there in the original, and he enhances one's understanding of Kant while skillfully going beyond it.
All in all, it serves as an excellent follow-up on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, especially if you liked reading Kant. I really liked this book.
March 14, 2022
Difficult difficult lemon difficult.
Notes
General Review
2 Faces of Critique
Rejected transcendent metaphysics: the (sometimes beneficial) propensity of reason to run away with itself and deal with pure ideas that have no empirical basis. But used this idealism as the methodological starting point for a positive-metaphysics that contrasted him with the empiricists like Hume, Berkeley: ie if all ideas need basis in experience (rejecting those that do not) then converse is also true - experience can reveal truth (a priori), this is called transcendental to contrast with transcendent (outside the plane of knowability).
Philosophy was becoming bloated/disreputable compared to math/physics, so metaphysics had a bad name. Kant wanted to draw a circle indicating the limits of philosophy, but inherent contradiction because in doing so he needed to be situated outside this circle in order to draw the bounds - the Copernican Revolution that he announces is the key to a reformed scientific metaphysics.
(i) Chicken-Egg problem. Copernican Revolution changes psychology (dissociate self from center of experience) that changes metaphysics. But this philosophy of disembodied self, universal self etc, always existed, so which came first, the astronomy or the metaphysic?
(i). If Platonic idea is true, then problem of empiricism is we only have access to those ideas that our physical bodies and environments are evolved to produce. But what about all possible minds and bodies and consciousnesses? Imagining these and abstracting out the commonalities we get to a higher platonic form, albeit limited by that part of reason that is constrained by imagination (like the math we haven’t yet discovered). To some degree, this is the purpose of yoga, to free the mind from its empirical bases in the physical state. This is where, despite being the most ambitious work of philosophy, Kant wasn’t ambitious enough, to argue for an expansion of ‘possible experience’
(i) Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind: Kant’s dualism of general concepts vs particular instances. In english: thoughts without content are empty. Intuition without concepts are blind. Why this is unsatisfactory: anschauungen, ie the awareness in experience of particular instances, so much richer than ‘intuition’. Inhalt - the internal material on which the ability to recognize general concepts can be exercised.
Receptive Sensibility vs Active Understanding: by RS we become aware of instances of concepts in space and time. By AU we become aware of categories. Transcendental Idealism: RS and AU impose forms on our experience. Nothing else can be experienced. And only that which is experienced can be known, so nothing else can be known. But what if we expand RS through Yoga? And AU through Samkhya?
Knowledge of outer sense (other bodies) whose form is space, and inner sense (our psychological state) whose form is time. But just as inner-directed experience cannot yield knowledge of us within ourselves, outer-directed experience cannot yield knowledge of other bodies within themselves. (4D Vision) - Ding an Sich. Welt als Vorstellung.
Metaphysics Of Experience
6 starting theses of Kant
Temporality - we ‘experience’ successive moments of time
Unity of Consciousness - instead of discrete moments, we are able to perceive all of these temporal moments as a unified awareness of experience
Objectivity - we are able to distinguish our subjective experience of an ‘object’ from its existence
Spatiality - these objects exist in space
Spatio-temporal Unity - there is a framework of empirical reality that unifies objects in space and our experience of them in time
Analogies - principles like permanence, causality can be seen in relationships among spatial objects
From point 2 - the transcendental unity of apperception, we get the transcendental deduction: ie the temporal organization that constitutes experience is ordered in a such a way so as to give us information about the organization of objective reality. Otherwise we would not be able to experience it, like a photo first makes a physical record of the light before the mind is able to perceive it as an image. The light comes before the image, and represents the image without being the image.
To become self-aware, we first discerned the difference between our temporal experience of objects, and their independent spatio-temporal existence in parallel, the distinction of these 2 became the Vedic bird that eats vs the bird that watches.
Metaphysical deduction of categories: understanding works on sensibility to provide intuition with concepts - but Kant thought about the general form of understanding (without content), the same way formal logic looks at general forms of valid propositions. His ‘12 pure concepts of the understanding’ are the categories.
(i) what this misses is the 3 qualities, ie the psycho-emotional ‘perspective’ on content that leads to 1 category or the other. This then pokes a hole, many of the same holes, in the unity of consciousness, ie we don’t have a continuous unity but a series of discrete temporal moments through which we have to draw a line to achieve unity. This absence of the single line means that there is scope for the 3 qualities to each result in very different lines. Then again, Kant’s 12 are arranged as 4 sets of 3. TBD
Schematism: How to get from these 12 pure concepts of understanding, to particular instances of the cooperation of understanding-sensibility, ie interpreting pure categories in terms of time.
C. Transcendental Metaphysics
The Dialectic has a proposition that is really 4 separate theses - 1) There are some ideas with the quality of words like ‘absolute’, ‘unconditioned’, when looking at things like prime-mover, absolute emptiness/infinity etc 2) These ideas are inevitable 3) Their inevitability is a reflection of how reason itself works, how it ‘thinks’ through to solutions and 4) Some such ideas have regulative utility, ie it is useful to think of a world with a soul or a god (absolute entities) in order to pursue particular knowledge.
(i) Darshanas like Samkhya and Yoga, and indeed Vaisesikha categories, not as descriptions of reality, but descriptions of the most complex phenomenology: cognition. This is picked up in a form again in the conclusion where the author talks about how Kant’s distinction between a priori synthetic and analytic truths is not satisfactory, but instead we don’t even need a distinction, we can simply say that there is a certain status we can afford to the form of cognition, whether that is called a priori synthetic becomes less important than the fact that it has a status, it exists, is unique, and not explainable in better terms.
2. Metaphysics Of Experience: the 4 dualities of Kant - appearance vs thing in itself; intuition vs concept; inner vs outer; empirical vs a priori.
Space and Time
3 Directions of philosophical concern: Being (the thing vs the general class of things), Knowledge (concepts vs particular experience that is pre-conceptual), and Statement (linguistics to describe/classify and specify cases). Kant raises Knowledge to dominant position.
Duality of intuition/concept is merely the epistemological aspect of the being-duality (particular vs general class), we intuit a particular instance, and conceptualize the general class.
Our experience of objects are ordered in space and time. Objects ‘affect’ us in order to create the experience of them. So may not be that objects themselves are ordered in space and time, but instead the ‘affectation’ is. This is what Kant means by Time being the form of inner sense.
States of consciousness are effects of things as they are, not the things (as they are) themselves. But among these, bodies in space are not even effects of things as they are. Among all the effects of these things as they are, are certain effects that our states of consciousness are constrained to regard as bodies in space.
(i) dark matter? We only are aware of those elements of reality that is capable of interacting with us. But why should this merely be about bodies in space?
C. Form and Matter: Relations and Sensation. Form is the system of relations we perceive in any object, matter is the sensation with which it affects us. So space and time can be thought of as those modes through which are able to see relations between otherwise isolated unknowable objects.
(i) connection with breath as the underlying mechanism for time being the form of inner sense? We hold our breath when we want time to stop. If time is only the record of any periodic motion, day, month, year, then pulse and breath is our Fermi unit.
III Permanence and Causality
Kant’s generalizing Genius: how to ascertain the necessary conditions of determining objective time-relations - ie distinguish 1) temporal relations between objects and 2) temporal relations between the perceptions of the objects. Necessary conditions of experience is same as necessary conditions for making distinction between these 2. Answers in the Refutation of Idealism and the 3 Analogies
Refutation of Idealism: turn idealism on its head and prove that empirical self-consciousness is only possible throught awareness of objects in space.
If we say we follow a subjective experiential route (one of many possible routes) through an objective reality, then we say there is a permanence to these objects, which Kant says is the spatial permanence. So in T1 and T2 we perceive object differently, but that object remains 1 object in space - permanence and conservation principle.
Objective time-relations can either be succession (handled in 2nd analogy) or co-existence (handled in 3rd analogy)
Veridical perception: perception is in line with objective reality. Non-veridical - illusions (perceptions of existent objects but not sharing features) or hallucinations (perceptions of non-existent objects)
Division 2: Transcendental Metaphysic - the Transcendental Analytic so far has established the positive (constructivist) approach of metaphysics. Now the Transcendental Dialectic seeks to establish the limits of such lines of thinking, since reason has a tendency to take this too far.
Main Illusion of Reason is the infinite extrapolation of reason to seek ultimate answers: what is beyond infinite space, what is before the beginning of time, what is below the smallest unit of matter. But this presupposes already the reality of a series of concepts that then we have to forcefit as either finite or infinite.
Soul - through conscious experience we take for granted the Cartesian existence of this non-material self/soul. Kant’s principle of significance challenges this, any concept (a soul) must through sensible intuition must have an empirical application. In this case, the concept is numerical identity across time, but sensible intuition cannot possibly instantiate such a concept.
Unity of experience not equal to experience of unity.
Time’s Beginning - if no beginning, then there must be infinite time between now and before, and infinite series of ticks, but since that is not possible (we are here, at some fixed reachable point), hence no beginning. Wrong because this is adding layer of computability/surveyability, when really the question is ‘is there time at which universe began’
Space’s End - similarly, Kant adds layer of surveyability in saying space is not infinite, ie it cannot be surveyed in temporally finite time.
Antinomy of infinite/finite series: Is space infinite? Keep checking for matter, at some point it stops, have we determined finiteness of universe? What if after large amount of space, matter returns? Hence can never determine if it is finite or not.
Notes
General Review
2 Faces of Critique
Rejected transcendent metaphysics: the (sometimes beneficial) propensity of reason to run away with itself and deal with pure ideas that have no empirical basis. But used this idealism as the methodological starting point for a positive-metaphysics that contrasted him with the empiricists like Hume, Berkeley: ie if all ideas need basis in experience (rejecting those that do not) then converse is also true - experience can reveal truth (a priori), this is called transcendental to contrast with transcendent (outside the plane of knowability).
Philosophy was becoming bloated/disreputable compared to math/physics, so metaphysics had a bad name. Kant wanted to draw a circle indicating the limits of philosophy, but inherent contradiction because in doing so he needed to be situated outside this circle in order to draw the bounds - the Copernican Revolution that he announces is the key to a reformed scientific metaphysics.
(i) Chicken-Egg problem. Copernican Revolution changes psychology (dissociate self from center of experience) that changes metaphysics. But this philosophy of disembodied self, universal self etc, always existed, so which came first, the astronomy or the metaphysic?
(i). If Platonic idea is true, then problem of empiricism is we only have access to those ideas that our physical bodies and environments are evolved to produce. But what about all possible minds and bodies and consciousnesses? Imagining these and abstracting out the commonalities we get to a higher platonic form, albeit limited by that part of reason that is constrained by imagination (like the math we haven’t yet discovered). To some degree, this is the purpose of yoga, to free the mind from its empirical bases in the physical state. This is where, despite being the most ambitious work of philosophy, Kant wasn’t ambitious enough, to argue for an expansion of ‘possible experience’
(i) Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind: Kant’s dualism of general concepts vs particular instances. In english: thoughts without content are empty. Intuition without concepts are blind. Why this is unsatisfactory: anschauungen, ie the awareness in experience of particular instances, so much richer than ‘intuition’. Inhalt - the internal material on which the ability to recognize general concepts can be exercised.
Receptive Sensibility vs Active Understanding: by RS we become aware of instances of concepts in space and time. By AU we become aware of categories. Transcendental Idealism: RS and AU impose forms on our experience. Nothing else can be experienced. And only that which is experienced can be known, so nothing else can be known. But what if we expand RS through Yoga? And AU through Samkhya?
Knowledge of outer sense (other bodies) whose form is space, and inner sense (our psychological state) whose form is time. But just as inner-directed experience cannot yield knowledge of us within ourselves, outer-directed experience cannot yield knowledge of other bodies within themselves. (4D Vision) - Ding an Sich. Welt als Vorstellung.
Metaphysics Of Experience
6 starting theses of Kant
Temporality - we ‘experience’ successive moments of time
Unity of Consciousness - instead of discrete moments, we are able to perceive all of these temporal moments as a unified awareness of experience
Objectivity - we are able to distinguish our subjective experience of an ‘object’ from its existence
Spatiality - these objects exist in space
Spatio-temporal Unity - there is a framework of empirical reality that unifies objects in space and our experience of them in time
Analogies - principles like permanence, causality can be seen in relationships among spatial objects
From point 2 - the transcendental unity of apperception, we get the transcendental deduction: ie the temporal organization that constitutes experience is ordered in a such a way so as to give us information about the organization of objective reality. Otherwise we would not be able to experience it, like a photo first makes a physical record of the light before the mind is able to perceive it as an image. The light comes before the image, and represents the image without being the image.
To become self-aware, we first discerned the difference between our temporal experience of objects, and their independent spatio-temporal existence in parallel, the distinction of these 2 became the Vedic bird that eats vs the bird that watches.
Metaphysical deduction of categories: understanding works on sensibility to provide intuition with concepts - but Kant thought about the general form of understanding (without content), the same way formal logic looks at general forms of valid propositions. His ‘12 pure concepts of the understanding’ are the categories.
(i) what this misses is the 3 qualities, ie the psycho-emotional ‘perspective’ on content that leads to 1 category or the other. This then pokes a hole, many of the same holes, in the unity of consciousness, ie we don’t have a continuous unity but a series of discrete temporal moments through which we have to draw a line to achieve unity. This absence of the single line means that there is scope for the 3 qualities to each result in very different lines. Then again, Kant’s 12 are arranged as 4 sets of 3. TBD
Schematism: How to get from these 12 pure concepts of understanding, to particular instances of the cooperation of understanding-sensibility, ie interpreting pure categories in terms of time.
C. Transcendental Metaphysics
The Dialectic has a proposition that is really 4 separate theses - 1) There are some ideas with the quality of words like ‘absolute’, ‘unconditioned’, when looking at things like prime-mover, absolute emptiness/infinity etc 2) These ideas are inevitable 3) Their inevitability is a reflection of how reason itself works, how it ‘thinks’ through to solutions and 4) Some such ideas have regulative utility, ie it is useful to think of a world with a soul or a god (absolute entities) in order to pursue particular knowledge.
(i) Darshanas like Samkhya and Yoga, and indeed Vaisesikha categories, not as descriptions of reality, but descriptions of the most complex phenomenology: cognition. This is picked up in a form again in the conclusion where the author talks about how Kant’s distinction between a priori synthetic and analytic truths is not satisfactory, but instead we don’t even need a distinction, we can simply say that there is a certain status we can afford to the form of cognition, whether that is called a priori synthetic becomes less important than the fact that it has a status, it exists, is unique, and not explainable in better terms.
2. Metaphysics Of Experience: the 4 dualities of Kant - appearance vs thing in itself; intuition vs concept; inner vs outer; empirical vs a priori.
Space and Time
3 Directions of philosophical concern: Being (the thing vs the general class of things), Knowledge (concepts vs particular experience that is pre-conceptual), and Statement (linguistics to describe/classify and specify cases). Kant raises Knowledge to dominant position.
Duality of intuition/concept is merely the epistemological aspect of the being-duality (particular vs general class), we intuit a particular instance, and conceptualize the general class.
Our experience of objects are ordered in space and time. Objects ‘affect’ us in order to create the experience of them. So may not be that objects themselves are ordered in space and time, but instead the ‘affectation’ is. This is what Kant means by Time being the form of inner sense.
States of consciousness are effects of things as they are, not the things (as they are) themselves. But among these, bodies in space are not even effects of things as they are. Among all the effects of these things as they are, are certain effects that our states of consciousness are constrained to regard as bodies in space.
(i) dark matter? We only are aware of those elements of reality that is capable of interacting with us. But why should this merely be about bodies in space?
C. Form and Matter: Relations and Sensation. Form is the system of relations we perceive in any object, matter is the sensation with which it affects us. So space and time can be thought of as those modes through which are able to see relations between otherwise isolated unknowable objects.
(i) connection with breath as the underlying mechanism for time being the form of inner sense? We hold our breath when we want time to stop. If time is only the record of any periodic motion, day, month, year, then pulse and breath is our Fermi unit.
III Permanence and Causality
Kant’s generalizing Genius: how to ascertain the necessary conditions of determining objective time-relations - ie distinguish 1) temporal relations between objects and 2) temporal relations between the perceptions of the objects. Necessary conditions of experience is same as necessary conditions for making distinction between these 2. Answers in the Refutation of Idealism and the 3 Analogies
Refutation of Idealism: turn idealism on its head and prove that empirical self-consciousness is only possible throught awareness of objects in space.
If we say we follow a subjective experiential route (one of many possible routes) through an objective reality, then we say there is a permanence to these objects, which Kant says is the spatial permanence. So in T1 and T2 we perceive object differently, but that object remains 1 object in space - permanence and conservation principle.
Objective time-relations can either be succession (handled in 2nd analogy) or co-existence (handled in 3rd analogy)
Veridical perception: perception is in line with objective reality. Non-veridical - illusions (perceptions of existent objects but not sharing features) or hallucinations (perceptions of non-existent objects)
Division 2: Transcendental Metaphysic - the Transcendental Analytic so far has established the positive (constructivist) approach of metaphysics. Now the Transcendental Dialectic seeks to establish the limits of such lines of thinking, since reason has a tendency to take this too far.
Main Illusion of Reason is the infinite extrapolation of reason to seek ultimate answers: what is beyond infinite space, what is before the beginning of time, what is below the smallest unit of matter. But this presupposes already the reality of a series of concepts that then we have to forcefit as either finite or infinite.
Soul - through conscious experience we take for granted the Cartesian existence of this non-material self/soul. Kant’s principle of significance challenges this, any concept (a soul) must through sensible intuition must have an empirical application. In this case, the concept is numerical identity across time, but sensible intuition cannot possibly instantiate such a concept.
Unity of experience not equal to experience of unity.
Time’s Beginning - if no beginning, then there must be infinite time between now and before, and infinite series of ticks, but since that is not possible (we are here, at some fixed reachable point), hence no beginning. Wrong because this is adding layer of computability/surveyability, when really the question is ‘is there time at which universe began’
Space’s End - similarly, Kant adds layer of surveyability in saying space is not infinite, ie it cannot be surveyed in temporally finite time.
Antinomy of infinite/finite series: Is space infinite? Keep checking for matter, at some point it stops, have we determined finiteness of universe? What if after large amount of space, matter returns? Hence can never determine if it is finite or not.
May 26, 2017
Clear, logical and at times hilariously harsh. Strawson's critique of The Critique succeeds in showing what can be extracted from Kant's incoherence -particularly on the structure of experience. At the same time as scrupulously destroying the majority of Kant's conclusions, Strawson does a good job at making clear the brilliant points Kant does make. Indeed, this book demonstrates Kant's worth far better than the more sympathetic Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and The Critique of Pure Reason.
Reccommend reading this together with Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics: With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason - the Hatfield translation with excerpts from the Critique. For balance, the aforementioned more sympathetic Routledge guidebook may be read, but it is poorly written.
Reccommend reading this together with Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics: With Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason - the Hatfield translation with excerpts from the Critique. For balance, the aforementioned more sympathetic Routledge guidebook may be read, but it is poorly written.
March 23, 2018
One of the books that helped me most to understand Kant's first CRITIQUE. Limpid and exhaustive reading of Kant, with a coherent orientation.
September 12, 2024
This dude is tweaking. Some of his criticisms of Kant are genuinely novel and really interesting even if you are rather familiar with Kant. On the other hand, he sometimes says stuff that makes you wonder if either you or him have read the same book, or if you might be too stupid to see his point. But then it comes full circle and you realize, no he has failed to grasp some very basic ideas from Kant. Then it will hit you again in another spot that he has grasped some a very particular idea of Kant, and rather well, but then that his criticism doesn’t stand if you refer back to Kant’s text. The cases where he has substantially grasped an idea and then raises a really good point are much rarer.
Holistically, it really does read as if you are in the mind of brilliant student who is reading the First Critique for the first time, without a broader context of the critical program as was fully developed or as it is presented in a much more charitable reading. But a lot of the questions Strawson raises belong exactly there, as a student trying to understand the critical program for the first time. Most of those questions are dispensable and resolvable by rereading Kant. The best questions—the questions that cannot be ameliorated—linger like a fart in a small room, and Strawson is wafting it towards you.
Holistically, it really does read as if you are in the mind of brilliant student who is reading the First Critique for the first time, without a broader context of the critical program as was fully developed or as it is presented in a much more charitable reading. But a lot of the questions Strawson raises belong exactly there, as a student trying to understand the critical program for the first time. Most of those questions are dispensable and resolvable by rereading Kant. The best questions—the questions that cannot be ameliorated—linger like a fart in a small room, and Strawson is wafting it towards you.
May 15, 2025
I thought I was the only one to notice, but Strawson also had it, that, for a huge system of human reason and experience—how come memory was not discussed by Kant? Is memory too empirical? That is, would range to be too skeptical, too Humean?
“Does not the notion of temporally extended series of experiences belonging to a single consciousness essentially involve memory, whatever else it involves? Does not the notion of the conceptual component in experience involve recognition and therefore memory? How can this faculty be so neglected?
...
“If experience is impossible without memory, memory also is impossible without experience. From whatever obscures levels they emerge they emerge together.”
“Does not the notion of temporally extended series of experiences belonging to a single consciousness essentially involve memory, whatever else it involves? Does not the notion of the conceptual component in experience involve recognition and therefore memory? How can this faculty be so neglected?
...
“If experience is impossible without memory, memory also is impossible without experience. From whatever obscures levels they emerge they emerge together.”
August 9, 2021
The bounds of the real, we may say, are indeed not co-extensive with the types of sensible experience we in fact enjoy. We must not suppose that the nature of reality is exhausted by the kinds of knowledge which we have of it. To suppose this would be a kind of restrictive dogmatism unjustified in its way as the inflated dogmatism which pretends to a knowledge transcending experience. The latter makes an unjustifiable a priori claim to expand knowledge beyond experience. The former would make an equally unjustifiable a priori claim to restrict reality within the bounds of the kind of experience we in fact have.
April 9, 2018
A critical reading of Kant's first Critique that rejects the transcendental idealism whilst attempting to salvage the analytic framework, particularly of the categories.
As a transcendental realist, Strawson's perspective has been the dominant one in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, as followed by Guyer and others.
For a counterbalance, it is worth reading Allison's response and defence of transcendental idealism.
As a transcendental realist, Strawson's perspective has been the dominant one in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, as followed by Guyer and others.
For a counterbalance, it is worth reading Allison's response and defence of transcendental idealism.
Want to read
June 26, 2017Heavy liquid, dispensing outright with an an epigraph or eighty. You will not reject Strawson if the riverbasket fate of life has brought you here unless Moltmann's crucified God is reaching 'round again and pulling you away. Or time to admit thy major (Lay or Real) may be unfit for ye. The chicken, the egg, rowing your boat and realizing that life is but a drwam, wait, so then everything is a dream? What kind of mind is this dream taking place in? Why can you not stop asking questions you know there are no answers to? When someone reminds you that it's absurd for a omnipotent creator to have severe interest in every single one of its human beings, remind them that the biggest puzzle in the world is nothing with one piece out of place. Tell them you identify as a piece of cardboard having gone down a path, curvature, as presented by Exacto Knife. When they ask what the fuck you're talking about, present then with Strawson, a handful of locusts and wild honey, and be out, "We making philosophy great again. Frick the opioid masses. Peaice."
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