Andrew Chignell, Princeton :: Knowledge and Ignorance in Kant

Abstract: At some point during the “silent decade” leading up to the publication of the first Critique, Kant came to think that a necessary condition on cognizing a proposition is that we be in a position to establish that the items it refers to are “really possible” or “really impossible.” Substantive claims about the positive features of individual things-in-themselves, in turns out, cannot meet this condition, and this (I argue) is what motivates Kant’s famous “noumenal ignorance” doctrine. Here I discuss the condition in detail, Kant’s central arguments for it, and why it should be regarded, in contemporary terms, as a broadly coherentist constraint on substantive knowledge.

http://www.chignell.net/

Talks are held at the Burnaby Campus in room WMC 3510 from 3:30 - 5:00 p.m., unless otherwise indicated. They are free and open to the public.

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