PhilSci Archive

Kantian Accounts of Thought Experiments

Buzzoni, Marco (2017) Kantian Accounts of Thought Experiments. [Preprint]

[img] Text
Buzzoni-Kantian Accounts of TE(Routledge Companion to TE).docx - Accepted Version

Download (57kB)

Abstract

The paper outlines a critical history of the concept of TE from a broadly Kantian viewpoint. The thread of our discussion has been Kant's position on the nature of the a priori and how each neo-Kantian theory of TEs can be understood in terms of its own position on this issue. Section 2 examines some aspects of Kant's philosophy that are related to today's debate on TEs. Section 3 is devoted to the precursors of neo-Kantian accounts of TEs, with a special emphasis on Ørsted's account. This author wavers between two positions: sometimes he claims that TEs are merely the hypothetical aspect of REs while other times he assigns to them the capacity of determining a priori some fundamental laws of natural science. The latter position recalls the "material" aspect of the Kantian a priori, a notion which was abandoned by the philosophy of science at the end of the nineteenth century.
This is probably the main reason Ørsted's point of view had no real influence on the historical development of the concept of TE and why some recent Kantian or neo-Kantian accounts of TE depart from Ørsted's concept of the a priori. I, on the other hand, have defended an interpretation of the a priori as purely functional by retaining the necessary and universal character of Kant's a priori while rejecting the material a priori, since content can be given only by experience. On this view, TE and RE are complementary in a sense similar to the complementarity of form and matter in Kant: TEs without REs are empty; REs without TEs are blind (Section 4). On the other hand, Yiftach Fehige has defended a relativized and contingent notion of the a priori which has been recently advocated by many authors, notably by Michael Friedman. Unlike myself, Fehige rejects the universality and necessity of Kant's a priori but retains the idea that the a priori, as a constitutive element of experience, is endowed with material content that may be made explicit by thought experimentation (Section 5).


Export/Citation: EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL
Social Networking:
Share |

Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Buzzoni, Marcomarco.buzzoni@unimc.it0000-0002-4729-7169
Keywords: A priori, relativised account of the; A priori, operational and reflexive-transcendental account of the; Experiments of pure reason; Kant; Kantian Account of Thought Experiment; Ørsted; Lichtenberg; Novalis
Subjects: General Issues > Thought Experiments
Depositing User: Buzzoni Marco
Date Deposited: 30 Aug 2017 11:27
Last Modified: 30 Aug 2017 11:27
Item ID: 13379
Subjects: General Issues > Thought Experiments
Date: 30 August 2017
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/13379

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item