Murray Miles
Biographic Data
| ID | 3698519 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Murray Miles |
| GIVEN NAMES | Murray |
| FAMILY NAME | Miles |
| SIGNATURE | MILES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brock University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8473-6191 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Much Ado about ‘Something ( Etwas )’: ‘Noumenon’, ‘Thing in Itself’, and ‘Transcendental Distinction’ in Kant’s Meta-metaphysical Thought Experiment
Detailed analysis of the expression ‘things in general and in themselves’ reveals two further uses of ‘noumenon’ (and ‘thing in itself’) in addition to the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ senses distinguished by Kant himself. It follows ( pace various ‘reductive’ interpretations) that Kant’s transcendental distinction comprises four different contrasts. On a new resolution of the long-running ‘one or two objects?’ dispute, there follows a complete re-i…
Alternative to Ontology or Alternative Ontology? Allison on the ‘Proud Name’ of Ontology (A247/B303)
This paper argues that, far from supporting, an oft-cited passage of the Phenomena and Noumena chapter (A247/B303) instead belies, Allison’s influential thesis that Kant’s transcendental idealism is not an ‘alternative ontology’ but a methodological or meta-epistemological ‘alternative to ontology’ that is devoid of specific metaphysical content. Following a programmatic sketch of Kant’s system of principles as a regional ontology of nature, it i…
Kant's Radicalization of Cartesian Foundationalism: Thought Experiments, Transcendental Arguments, and Level Circularity in the Paralogisms
Kant's critique of rational psychology is a thought experiment that targets no individual or school, but rather the natural tendency of human reason to “hypostatize” the highest intellectual condition of all cognition (the pure ‘I think’) as though it were itself a cognition of the ‘I.’ To do so is to violate the very anti-circularity stricture also at work in Kant's better-known transcendental critiques of Locke and Hume. Along with a new type o…
Kant’s ‘Five Ways’: Transcendental Idealism in Context
In 1772, Kant outlined the new problem of his critical period in terms of four possible “ways” of understanding the agreement of knowledge with its object. This study expands Kant’s terse descriptions of these ways, examining why he rejected them. Apart from clarifying the historical context in which Kant saw his own achievement (the Fifth Way), the chief benefits of exploring the historical background of Way Two, in particular, are that it (1) e…
Insight and Inference: Descartes's Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy
Connaissance de Dieu et conscience de soi chez Descartes
La méthode analytique par laquelle Descartes établit le premier principe de sa philosophie ( cogito, ergo sum ) consiste en un procédé cognitif associant intuition directe et inférence non-logique qui diffère significativement du modèle déductif que l’on prête depuis toujours au rationalisme du dix-septième siècle. Cet article démontre que ce même processus analytique est à l’œuvre dans la preuve de l’innéité de l’idée de Dieu, où, pourtant, il y…
Kant's ‘Copernican Revolution’: Toward Rehabilitation of a Concept and Provision of a Framework for the Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason
1. Introductory It is a commonplace by now that the expressions ‘Copernican revolution’ and ‘the Copernican hypothesis’ do not actually occur in that portion of the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter: ‘the Preface’) that contains the only references to Copernicus to be found in the Kantian corpus. Kant speaks rather of “der erste Gedanke des Copernicus” ( Kr V, B XVI) – literally, “the original idea” or “the i…
Some Historical Texts on Disability in the Classical Muslim World
The paper reviews brief texts in the Qur'an and hadiths, the Hedaya of al-Marghinani, and some historical Arab education literature, that have pertinence to people with disabilities. The selection intends to be informative rather than definitive.
Insight and Inference: Descartes's Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy
In this major re-examination of Descartes's founding principle, cogito, ergo sum, Murray Miles presents a portrait of Descartes as the Father of Modern Philosophy that is very different from the standard one. Viewing Descartes in both a historical and a systematic perspective, Miles presents a wealth of original analyses, arguments, and re-interpretations of key texts. The result is a fresh and illuminating account of Descartes's metaphysical pro…
Plato on Suicide ("Phaedo" 60C-63C)
as quickly as he can (rv cox(povfi, T?h t tKcetyV 6oS CdiXto) (61b8). It soon becomes apparent (cf. 61c6) that the conditional clause might be glossed as if he is a philosopher; for when Cebes replies, He'll hardly be willing to obey (61b4-5), Socrates asks, Isn't Evenus a philosopher? (61b6). The implication is clear: (1) at least some men, namely the wise or wisest (a class that includes, and may even be restricted to, philosophers) are willing…
Leibniz on Apperception and Animal Souls
In Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought , Robert McRae alleges a flat “contradiction” (McRae 1976, p. 30) at the heart of Leibniz's doctrine of three grades of monads: bare entelechies characterized by perception; animal souls capable both of perception and of sensation; and rational souls, minds or spirits endowed not only with capacities for perception and sensation but also with consciousness of self or what Leibniz calls (introducin…
Heidegger and the question of humanism
The Idea of Extension: Innate or Adventitious? On R. F. McRae's Interpretation of Descartes
In two separate studies, published some four years apart, Robert McRae has argued the provocative thesis that the idea of extension is not to be numbered among the ideas accounted innate by Descartes, but among the adventitious. He has defended this view despite explicit statements to the contrary by Descartes both in the Correspondence and in the second part of the Principles of Philosophy . Against such evidence McRae has urged the overriding i…
McRae on Innate Ideas: A Rejoinder
It will come as no surprise that I have a different interpretation of the four passages in which, McRae claims, Descartes “definitely includes extension and its modes in what is given through the senses”. In the first, Descartes includes extension, etc., among his ideas of corporeal bodies . This is not to say that he includes them among his adventitious ideas , though. All adventitious ideas are ideas of external bodies. But the converse is not …
Psycho-Physical Union: The Problem of the Person in Descartes
The problem of the person may be described as the crux of Descartes' philosophy in the fairly obvious literal sense that it is the point of intersection of the two chief axes of the system, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind. The actual, if not professed aim of the former is the ousting of the occult powers and faculties of Scholastic-Aristotelian physics by the mechanical concept of force or action-by-contact. The chief tenet of…
Plato on Suicide ("Phaedo" 60C-63C)
as quickly as he can (rv cox(povfi, T?h t tKcetyV 6oS CdiXto) (61b8). It soon becomes apparent (cf. 61c6) that the conditional clause might be glossed as if he is a philosopher; for when Cebes replies, He'll hardly be willing to obey (61b4-5), Socrates asks, Isn't Evenus a philosopher? (61b6). The implication is clear: (1) at least some men, namely the wise or wisest (a class that includes, and may even be restricted to, philosophers) are willing…
Psycho-Physical Union: The Problem of the Person in Descartes
The problem of the person may be described as the crux of Descartes' philosophy in the fairly obvious literal sense that it is the point of intersection of the two chief axes of the system, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Mind. The actual, if not professed aim of the former is the ousting of the occult powers and faculties of Scholastic-Aristotelian physics by the mechanical concept of force or action-by-contact. The chief tenet of…
The Idea of Extension: Innate or Adventitious? On R. F. McRae's Interpretation of Descartes
In two separate studies, published some four years apart, Robert McRae has argued the provocative thesis that the idea of extension is not to be numbered among the ideas accounted innate by Descartes, but among the adventitious. He has defended this view despite explicit statements to the contrary by Descartes both in the Correspondence and in the second part of the Principles of Philosophy . Against such evidence McRae has urged the overriding i…
McRae on Innate Ideas: A Rejoinder
It will come as no surprise that I have a different interpretation of the four passages in which, McRae claims, Descartes “definitely includes extension and its modes in what is given through the senses”. In the first, Descartes includes extension, etc., among his ideas of corporeal bodies . This is not to say that he includes them among his adventitious ideas , though. All adventitious ideas are ideas of external bodies. But the converse is not …
Heidegger and the question of humanism
Leibniz on Apperception and Animal Souls
In Leibniz: Perception, Apperception, and Thought , Robert McRae alleges a flat “contradiction” (McRae 1976, p. 30) at the heart of Leibniz's doctrine of three grades of monads: bare entelechies characterized by perception; animal souls capable both of perception and of sensation; and rational souls, minds or spirits endowed not only with capacities for perception and sensation but also with consciousness of self or what Leibniz calls (introducin…
Plato on Suicide ("Phaedo" 60C-63C)
as quickly as he can (rv cox(povfi, T?h t tKcetyV 6oS CdiXto) (61b8). It soon becomes apparent (cf. 61c6) that the conditional clause might be glossed as if he is a philosopher; for when Cebes replies, He'll hardly be willing to obey (61b4-5), Socrates asks, Isn't Evenus a philosopher? (61b6). The implication is clear: (1) at least some men, namely the wise or wisest (a class that includes, and may even be restricted to, philosophers) are willing…
Some Historical Texts on Disability in the Classical Muslim World
The paper reviews brief texts in the Qur'an and hadiths, the Hedaya of al-Marghinani, and some historical Arab education literature, that have pertinence to people with disabilities. The selection intends to be informative rather than definitive.
Insight and Inference: Descartes's Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy
In this major re-examination of Descartes's founding principle, cogito, ergo sum, Murray Miles presents a portrait of Descartes as the Father of Modern Philosophy that is very different from the standard one. Viewing Descartes in both a historical and a systematic perspective, Miles presents a wealth of original analyses, arguments, and re-interpretations of key texts. The result is a fresh and illuminating account of Descartes's metaphysical pro…
Kant's ‘Copernican Revolution’: Toward Rehabilitation of a Concept and Provision of a Framework for the Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason
1. Introductory It is a commonplace by now that the expressions ‘Copernican revolution’ and ‘the Copernican hypothesis’ do not actually occur in that portion of the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter: ‘the Preface’) that contains the only references to Copernicus to be found in the Kantian corpus. Kant speaks rather of “der erste Gedanke des Copernicus” ( Kr V, B XVI) – literally, “the original idea” or “the i…
Connaissance de Dieu et conscience de soi chez Descartes
La méthode analytique par laquelle Descartes établit le premier principe de sa philosophie ( cogito, ergo sum ) consiste en un procédé cognitif associant intuition directe et inférence non-logique qui diffère significativement du modèle déductif que l’on prête depuis toujours au rationalisme du dix-septième siècle. Cet article démontre que ce même processus analytique est à l’œuvre dans la preuve de l’innéité de l’idée de Dieu, où, pourtant, il y…
Insight and Inference: Descartes's Founding Principle and Modern Philosophy
Kant’s ‘Five Ways’: Transcendental Idealism in Context
In 1772, Kant outlined the new problem of his critical period in terms of four possible “ways” of understanding the agreement of knowledge with its object. This study expands Kant’s terse descriptions of these ways, examining why he rejected them. Apart from clarifying the historical context in which Kant saw his own achievement (the Fifth Way), the chief benefits of exploring the historical background of Way Two, in particular, are that it (1) e…
Kant's Radicalization of Cartesian Foundationalism: Thought Experiments, Transcendental Arguments, and Level Circularity in the Paralogisms
Kant's critique of rational psychology is a thought experiment that targets no individual or school, but rather the natural tendency of human reason to “hypostatize” the highest intellectual condition of all cognition (the pure ‘I think’) as though it were itself a cognition of the ‘I.’ To do so is to violate the very anti-circularity stricture also at work in Kant's better-known transcendental critiques of Locke and Hume. Along with a new type o…
Much Ado about ‘Something ( Etwas )’: ‘Noumenon’, ‘Thing in Itself’, and ‘Transcendental Distinction’ in Kant’s Meta-metaphysical Thought Experiment
Detailed analysis of the expression ‘things in general and in themselves’ reveals two further uses of ‘noumenon’ (and ‘thing in itself’) in addition to the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ senses distinguished by Kant himself. It follows ( pace various ‘reductive’ interpretations) that Kant’s transcendental distinction comprises four different contrasts. On a new resolution of the long-running ‘one or two objects?’ dispute, there follows a complete re-i…
Alternative to Ontology or Alternative Ontology? Allison on the ‘Proud Name’ of Ontology (A247/B303)
This paper argues that, far from supporting, an oft-cited passage of the Phenomena and Noumena chapter (A247/B303) instead belies, Allison’s influential thesis that Kant’s transcendental idealism is not an ‘alternative ontology’ but a methodological or meta-epistemological ‘alternative to ontology’ that is devoid of specific metaphysical content. Following a programmatic sketch of Kant’s system of principles as a regional ontology of nature, it i…
Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Historical Philosophy and Science (6 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (4 works) · Linguistics (4 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (4 works) · Transcendental number (4 works) · Extension (predicate logic) (3 works)