Kant International Relations
How "realistic" is Kantian "empirical realism"? Mainly by way of commentary on passages from the Analytic of Principles and Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Abela offers, first, the "priority-of-judgment" view: "Kant...banish[es] the idea of any epistemic intermediary between belief and the world" (35); "there is nothing outside judgment...that informs, constrains, or ultimately grounds objectively valid judgment" (139-40). The ultimate ground is simply the totality of one's judgments. Second, representation of empirical reality presupposes a grasp of realistic truth-conditions, i.e., conditions construable neither pragmatically nor as mere assertion-conditions (230-49).
On several occasions Abela weakens the first claim, speaking rather only of Kant's rejection of a determinate "given" or a determinate "subjective foundation" for judgment (e.g., 60, 99, 151). But that must be an understatement. One might think to connect it with Abela's reading of the Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of Perception (115-39). There, Kant is said to be concerned with highly "indeterminate" judgments which Abela equates with empirical intuitions regarding the extensive and intensive magnitude of sensations (viewed as modifications of one's sense organs). But there is no epistemic priority here: "the product of these judgments is not, in my estimation, the first line of conscious, cognitive engagement with the world....They do not offer an informative or evidential basis for objective representation" (115). Since Abela formulates the point (a bit misleadingly, to be sure, since the judgments involve concepts) with reference to Kant's talk about the "blindness" of intuitions, I take it that this is supposed to be Kant's view as well.
Chapter 1 divides contemporary efforts to honor Kantian realism into attempts to promote whatever degree of realism might be compatible with pragmatic or assertion-condition approaches (Epistemic Humanism) and appeals to
On several occasions Abela weakens the first claim, speaking rather only of Kant's rejection of a determinate "given" or a determinate "subjective foundation" for judgment (e.g., 60, 99, 151). But that must be an understatement. One might think to connect it with Abela's reading of the Axioms of Intuition and Anticipations of Perception (115-39). There, Kant is said to be concerned with highly "indeterminate" judgments which Abela equates with empirical intuitions regarding the extensive and intensive magnitude of sensations (viewed as modifications of one's sense organs). But there is no epistemic priority here: "the product of these judgments is not, in my estimation, the first line of conscious, cognitive engagement with the world....They do not offer an informative or evidential basis for objective representation" (115). Since Abela formulates the point (a bit misleadingly, to be sure, since the judgments involve concepts) with reference to Kant's talk about the "blindness" of intuitions, I take it that this is supposed to be Kant's view as well.
Chapter 1 divides contemporary efforts to honor Kantian realism into attempts to promote whatever degree of realism might be compatible with pragmatic or assertion-condition approaches (Epistemic Humanism) and appeals to