Publications
- “Kant’s Subjective Deduction” (British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 18(3), 2010: 433-460)
In this paper I criticize the traditional reading of the Subjective Deduction as Kant’s problematic foray into speculative psychological investigations. I then defend an alternative reading, taking the Subjective Deduction to be Kant’s attempt to refute the view that our sensible and intellectual capacities can produce knowledge independently of each other.
- “A Peculiar Intuition: Kant’s Conceptualist Account of Perception” (forthcoming, Inquiry)
Here I examine the unusual developmental strategy Kant employs in gradually revealing the essential role of concepts in his account of intuition. The paper was recently accepted for publication in the journal Inquiry.
Work in Progress
- “Confronting Skepticism with Kant: Rational Experience in the Transcendental Deduction”
This paper examines Kant’s understanding of how one should respond to Humean skepticism, as a way of clarifying the argumentative strategy of the Deduction of the Categories.
- “Departed Souls: Contradiction in Plato’s Account of the Just Soul”
One puzzling feature of the Republic is that Plato, near the end of the dialogue, seems to take back his account of a tripartite soul—so central to his theory of justice—because it is at odds with the simplicity required of immortal things. This is a longstanding puzzle, and I am not satisfied with the proposed solutions in the secondary literature. I develop and defend a new solution to the problem, one that appeals to Plato’s views on harmony.
- “Representing the Categories: Kant’s Rewriting of the Transcendental Deduction”
In this work I examine Kant’s remarkable decision to rewrite this core argument of the first Critique. Comparison of the differences and similarities between the two versions is very illuminating. I offer a novel explanation of Kant’s decision to recast the argument. I claim that he was unhappy with the original Deduction because it relies, in part, on a merely negative argumentative strategy. That is, Kant arrives at his own position by an indirect reductio argument, eliminating the available alternatives. He later confessed to misgivings about this approach (as did one of his earliest critics), and the changes in the new version of the Deduction are best understood as allowing for a more positive defense and explanation of his own position.
- “Respecting the Law: Two Sides of Duty in Kant’s Groundwork”
In this paper I compare Kant’s distinction between objective and subjective sides of the Deduction with his distinction, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, between objective and subjective aspects of duty. There are some revealing parallels between these two distinctions, and just as the former, properly understood, illuminates the structure of the Deduction, the latter distinction between the two aspects of duty brings clarity to the complicated argumentative structure of the Groundwork. It also highlights the importance of Kant’s notion of respect as the subjective, motivating ground of our ethical lives. This topic reflects a broader concern of mine to map out structural affinities between Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy that have often gone unnoticed.
- “So Humean an Animal: Kant on the Conditions of Non-Rational Sensibility”
Animals are clearly capable of something analogous to experience, and this fact is often raised as a problem—both for Kant and for Kant-influenced philosophers such as McDowell. If, following Kant, we take our perceptions to be inherently concept-laden, then it might seem that we are committed to the absurd view that animals, who lack the relevant concepts, are therefore incapable even of perception. In fact, Kant was aware of this objection. By considering his scattered remarks on animal cognition as well as contemporary criticisms of broadly Kantian views of perception, I will show that there is solid textual support for the Kantian position I am defending. This position, I claim, leaves room for a meaningful notion of animal perception, while still recognizing how the human power of reason radically transforms our perceptual capacities. I suggest that the Kantian distinction between human and animal cognition is obscured by our presumption of a Hume-inspired empiricist model of knowledge.
- “Rehabilitating Kant on the Moral Value of Animals”
Animals are also a problem for Kantian ethics, given its firm grounding in rationality. Kant notoriously claimed that we have no direct duties toward animals, and that treating animals cruelly is wrong only because it makes us more likely to be cruel to other people. I am currently co-writing a paper on this topic with David Svolba, an ethicist at Fitchburg State University. We hope to show that there are the resources, within Kantian ethics, for a more satisfying and direct account of our duties toward nonhuman animals, focusing on a connection between our common capacities for suffering and agency and Kant’s rationally-grounded concern for universality.
Recent Presentations
- “Confronting Skepticism with Kant” (Nov. 17, 2011)
Invited talk (Dept. of Philosophy, Minnesota State University, Mankato)
- “Confronting Skepticism with Kant” (Oct. 21, 2011)
Fall Symposium presentation (Society of Fellows, University of Chicago)
- Comments on Huaping Lu-Adler’s “Kant’s Account of Singular Judgment” (June 3, 2011)
First Biannual North American Kant Society Conference (U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
- “Departed Souls: Contradiction in Plato’s Account of the Just Soul” (May 6, 2011)
Contradiction: the 2011 Weissbourd Conference (University of Chicago)
- Conceiving the Kantian Imagination” (October 22, 2010)
Fall Symposium presentation (Society of Fellows, University of Chicago)
- “A Peculiar Intuition” (May 19, 2010)
Workshop presentation (Society of Fellows, University of Chicago)
- “Kant’s Conceptualism” (October 16, 2009)
Symposium presentation (Society of Fellows, University of Chicago)