Research

In my thesis, I argue, among other things, that “cognition” is Kant’s most central and most demanding concept of epistemic success, comparable to the concept of “knowledge” in contemporary epistemology. Moreover, I argue that “objective reality” functions as a success criterion for Kant’s concept of cognition. This is important because transcendental idealism is supposed to explain the possibility of knowledge, i.e., of cognition. We therefore need to understand what Kant means by “cognition” in the first place to assess whether transcendental idealism is plausible.

Unfortunately, as I show in the last chapter of my thesis, Kant only offers an incomplete account of cognition. Objective reality does function as a criterion of success. But it is difficult to make sense of what precisely “objective reality” means or requires, given Kant’s transcendental idealist commitments. In my ongoing research projects, I am developing two different avenues for solving this problem of the objectivity of knowledge for transcendental idealism.

I have argued that Kant’s concept of objective reality can be understood as “nomic actuality,” that is, as an actuality in accordance with relevantly applicable systems of laws. In my thesis, I argue that a law-based conception does not invoke any troubling sorts of metaphysical grounding, does not require idealism, and can explain the sense in which both nature and morality can have objective reality. Here I aim to develop the notion of nomic objectivity further, showing that it has independent philosophical merit as an account of objectivity.

To address the problem of objectivity, Fichte starts with an account of the concept of subjectivity: because knowledge is always knowledge of a subject, objectivity is to be understood as a feature of subjective experience. My thesis is that he ultimately argues this is only possible if subjective experience is conceptualised as part of a wider social context, a shared social world of experience. I aim to produce a commentary on, introduction to, and interpretation of the Wissenschaftslehre.