What is this Thing Called ‘Scientific Knowledge’? – Kant on Imaginary Standpoints And the Regulative Role of Reason

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8104045
AutoresMichela Massimi (0000-0001-6626-9174, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen9
Número1
Páginas63-84
Fecha de publicación2017-09-26
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaKant Yearbook (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1868-4599 • E-ISSN: 1868-4602
EditorialDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/kantyb-2017-0004
OpenAlexW2612028043
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14
Referencias citadas4

In this essay I analyse Kant’s view on the regulative role of reason, and in particular on what he describes as the ‘indispensably necessary’ role of ideas qua foci imaginarii in the Appendix. I review two influential readings of what has become known as the ‘transcendental illusion’ and I offer a novel reading that builds on some of the insights of these earlier readings. I argue that ideas of reason act as imaginary standpoints, which are indispensably necessary for scientific knowledge by making inter-conversational agreement possible. Thus, I characterise scientific knowledge as a distinctive kind of perspectival knowledge. This novel reading can illuminate the role of reason in complementing the faculty of understanding and sheds light on the apparent dichotomy between the first and the second part of the Appendix. More to the point, this novel reading takes us right to the heart of what scientific knowledge is, according to Kant, and how it differs from bogus knowledge and opinion

Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Illusion · Linguistics · Point (geometry · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Sociology of scientific knowledge · The Imaginary · Transcendental number · Mathematics · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Philosophy