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Author | Steven James Bartlett |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of science |
Published | 2021 (Studies in Theory and Behavior) |
Media type | Book |
Pages | 884 |
ISBN | 9780578886466 |
Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning is a book by American philosopher Steven James Bartlett. A study of the limits of knowledge, reference, epistemic possibility, and meaning, it is the most extensive philosophical work by Bartlett to date.
In the book, Bartlett explains that by a "critique of impure reason" is meant a critique of the limitative boundaries beyond which concepts and claims lead to "impure reason," undermining the very conditions of their possible meaning. The central thesis of the book is that many major traditional philosophical problems can be solved in a rationally compelling manner once we recognize and rein in the many ways in which we seek to overstep these limiting boundaries. When we try to trespass beyond these boundaries, which the Critique of Impure Reason calls the "horizons" of reference, we employ concepts and make claims that violate the very conditions that must be granted for them to possess any possible meaning. The book's objective is to understand the unavoidable boundaries of the frameworks we use, and to help us to avoid conceptual confusions that come about when attempts are made to transgress beyond what is possible and meaningful.
In the Critique of Impure Reason Bartlett builds on a series of previous publications by him that span a period of more than 50 years. Publications directly allied to the Critique of Impure Reason include:
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, published in two editions, in 1781 and 1787, sought to provide a critique of the "faculty of reason in general," and by doing this it attempted to supply an analysis of the preconditions of experience and knowledge. In contradistinction, Bartlett's Critique of Impure Reason seeks to provide a critique of the unavoidable limitations of philosophically fundamental concepts that conflict with the preconditions of possible reference, meaning (philosophy), and knowledge. [16] The latter task is essentially one of identifying, correcting, and eliminating the pervasive variety of conceptual error which it is the book's central purpose to analyze. It is this project which makes the book a critique of "impure reason" –- that is, reason that seeks to trespass beyond the limits of possible reference and meaning.
Bartlett makes clear that the Critique of Impure Reason is neither intended as a commentary on Kant, nor as an elaboration of Kant's approach to philosophy. [17] Instead, Bartlett directs attention to a notion, never developed by Kant but only briefly hinted at by him in a 1770 letter he wrote to Swiss-German philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Johann Heinrich Lambert. In that letter, Kant suggested the need for a "negative science", a "phaenomenologia generalis." [18] To Kant it seemed that such a "negative science" is "presupposed by metaphysics." As Bartlett interprets and develops Kant's briefly sketched notion, [19] a "negative science" would set the general task for itself to avoid conceptual confusions that lead to meaninglessness. [20]
Bartlett stresses the need for and the importance of such a "negative science" in philosophy: As Bartlett develops it, negative science serves as a means to differentiate between what is meaningful and what is meaningless: [20] Specifically, its application would identify, correct, and eliminate the widespread form of conceptual error with which Bartlett is concerned, which he calls "projection" (more technically in the Critique of Impure Reason this is called " metalogical projection"). [21] Such a "negative science" would provide assurance that we employ only concepts, propositions, and statements that do not undermine their very possibility of possessing meaning. Bartlett's Critique of Impure Reason is essentially a treatise that develops such a negative science.
The thesis of the Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning is elaborated in three stages:
In the first stage (Part I: Why Philosophy Has Made No Progress and How It Can), Bartlett emphasizes the need for philosophy to evolve to the point where the discipline can supply noncontroversial, determinate, provable solutions to philosophical problems. He supports a rigorously scientific approach to philosophy, one that can establish conclusive results that cannot coherently be evaded or denied. In this first stage of the book, Bartlett identifies a group of psychological blocks or shortcomings found among many philosophers that stand in the way of the discipline's ability to reach indisputable conclusions. For readers not interested in considering the psychological profile characteristic of many philosophers both in the past and today, Bartlett suggests that the first two psychologically-focused chapters of the book can be skipped without loss of the book's main content.
The second principal stage in the book's development contains the technical, substantive core of Bartlett's approach (Part II: The Metalogic of Reference: A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy). Here, Bartlett formulates step-by-step in a series of 13 chapters the methodology that makes it possible to identify, correct, and eliminate the widespread form of conceptual error with which the book is concerned. This central portion of the book formulates a "self-validating" method, one which cannot be rejected without undermining the very possibility of reference and meaning. This part of the book defines an approach to conceptual analysis that makes it possible to recognize the "metalogical horizons" beyond which it is impossible to go without incurring the special variety of "projective" self-referential incoherence which Bartlett was the first to identify, name, and analyze in his 1970 doctoral dissertation. [1]
The third main stage of analysis in the Critique of Impure Reason (Part III: Philosophical Applications of the Metalogic of Reference: Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science) applies the so-called "de-projective method," developed in Part II, to a wide range of major problems of philosophy, including problems of ontology; the problem of the external world; the problem of other minds; the problems of realism and idealism; the problem of time, space, space-time and causality; the problem of the self and of solipsism; as well as others. Part III culminates in three chapters that apply the de-projective method to relativity physics and quantum theory. Bartlett's aim in these latter chapters is to show that the results reached by the Critique of Impure Reason confirm or support in a number of important ways many of the same results reached by theoretical physicists in both relativity theory and quantum theory.
The book concludes with Part IV: Horizons, which contains two chapters. The first urges a rigorous, scientific approach in philosophy that goes beyond the mere beliefs that have defined traditional philosophy, and the second summarizes the principal results the long study has reached.
Central to the book's technique of analysis is Bartlett's "method of de-projection." [22] Briefly stated, the method is designed to bring to light the "metalogical presuppositions " entailed by any frame of reference if that frame of reference is to be capable, in principle, of identifying the class of objects for which the framework is intended. [23] "Metalogical presuppositions" are those that cannot be denied or rejected without undermining the very possibility of reference to that class of objects. This approach to philosophical analysis is characterized by Bartlett's original conception and approach to transcendental argumentation, which has a long history, most notably dating back to Kant. In this tradition, and briefly stated, a transcendental argument is one which seeks to demonstrate the necessary "preconditions" without which a thesis or position or claim to knowledge would be rendered impossible. [24]
Once the metalogical presuppositions of a frame of reference have been identified, Bartlett's method of de-projection comes into play whenever any concept or claim involves an assertion about a set of objects that they possess an autonomy or are separable from the frame of reference permitting their identification. [21] Such concepts or claims are then recognized as attempted transgressions of the inescapable "metalogical horizon" of that framework of reference. [25] The Critique of Impure Reason claims to demonstrate that such assertions of autonomy or separability are "metalogically projective"—that is, such assertions undermine their own possibility of reference and hence their own possibility of meaning. [26]
Throughout the main body of the treatise, this method of analysis is applied in a large variety of philosophical contexts, to many of the major problems and questions that have concerned philosophers for centuries. The Critique of Impure Reason seeks to show that a great many major philosophical problems can conclusively be solved in this way.
The Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning claims to break new ground in philosophy in the following ways: The book systematically analyzes one major philosophical problem after another, and in each case offers solutions designed to avoid horizon-trespassing, meaningless-entailing attempts to go beyond what can coherently and rationally be thought or expressed. [27] The book then describes how many philosophical problems and the concepts they presuppose can be understood in non-projective ways that do not lead to self-undermining incoherence. [27] In this way, the book proposes a new and revisionary philosophical understanding. [28]
In more specific terms, the philosophical purpose of Critique of Impure Reason is made clear by the volume's systematic development in individual chapters of a general theory of possibility (Chapter 7), a broad-spectrum theory of presuppositions (Chapter 8), an inclusive theory of meaning (Chapter 11), and, key to the book's analytical method, a general theory of frameworks and of reference (esp. Chapters 5 and 10).
The book's cover states that the book provides "a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought." Bartlett explains that such a shift in philosophical thinking comes about once philosophers realize that many of the principal concepts they rely upon—concepts that are presupposed by the major problems which have occupied traditional philosophy—are self-undermining on the level of their possible meaningfulness. If the book is successful in justifying this claim, then the Critique of Impure Reason would be revolutionary for the discipline of philosophy, for then much that has occupied philosophers over millennia would be reinterpreted in a fundamentally revisionary way. The book's critique would then be justified in asserting that a great many of the questions of philosophy fall under the heading of impure reason, violating the conditions that must be granted for them to possess possible meaning. [29]
The Critique of Impure Reason is a work with a wide philosophical scope, applying a systematically developed method of analysis to many major problems that have engaged philosophers. The treatise of nearly 900 pages and more than 303,000 words is a thoroughgoing work of scholarship with references to more than 600 individual publications, and containing more than 400 explanatory notes.
Bartlett's work in philosophy has received widespread recognition. In addition to the publication of more than 20 books, edited collections, research monographs, and many papers in professional journals, his research has been funded under grants by the National Science Foundation, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the Alliance Française, the RAND Corporation, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Lilly Endowment, and others.
The Critique of Impure Reason has received strong commendations from leading philosophers:
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy, being called the "father of modern ethics", the "father of modern aesthetics", and for bringing together rationalism and empiricism earned the title of "father of modern philosophy".
In its most common sense, philosophical methodology is the field of inquiry studying the methods used to do philosophy. But the term can also refer to the methods themselves. It may be understood in a wide sense as the general study of principles used for theory selection, or in a more narrow sense as the study of ways of conducting one's research and theorizing with the goal of acquiring philosophical knowledge. Philosophical methodology investigates both descriptive issues, such as which methods actually have been used by philosophers, and normative issues, such as which methods should be used or how to do good philosophy.
German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism or simply post-Kantianism. One scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel.
Fideism is a term used to name a standpoint or an epistemological theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths. The word fideism comes from fides, the Latin word for faith, and literally means "faith-ism". Philosophers have identified a number of different forms of fideism. Strict fideists hold that reason has no place in discovering theological truths, while moderate fideists hold that though some truth can be known by reason, faith stands above reason.
The Critique of Pure Reason is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in which the author seeks to determine the limits and scope of metaphysics. Also referred to as Kant's "First Critique", it was followed by his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790). In the preface to the first edition, Kant explains that by a "critique of pure reason" he means a critique "of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience" and that he aims to reach a decision about "the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics". The term "critique" is understood to mean a systematic analysis in this context, rather than the colloquial sense of the term.
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment, it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt. The contemporary sense of critique has been largely influenced by the Enlightenment critique of prejudice and authority, which championed the emancipation and autonomy from religious and political authorities.
Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). By transcendental Kant means that his philosophical approach to knowledge transcends mere consideration of sensory evidence and requires an understanding of the mind's innate modes of processing that sensory evidence.
In philosophy, transcendence is the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning, of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages. It includes philosophies, systems, and approaches that describe the fundamental structures of being, not as an ontology, but as the framework of emergence and validation of knowledge of being. These definitions are generally grounded in reason and empirical observation and seek to provide a framework for understanding the world that is not reliant on religious beliefs or supernatural forces. "Transcendental" is a word derived from the scholastic, designating the extra-categorical attributes of beings.
In Kantian philosophy, a transcendental schema is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical concept is associated with a sense impression. A private, subjective intuition is thereby discursively thought to be a representation of an external object. Transcendental schemata are supposedly produced by the imagination in relation to time.
Ontotheology means the ontology of God and/or the theology of being. While the term was first used by Immanuel Kant, it has only come into broader philosophical parlance with the significance it took for Martin Heidegger's later thought. While, for Heidegger, the term is used to critique the whole tradition of 'Western metaphysics', much recent scholarship has sought to question whether 'ontotheology' developed at a certain point in the metaphysical tradition, with many seeking to equate the development of 'ontotheological' thinking with the development of modernity, and Duns Scotus often being cited as the first 'ontotheologian'.
A priori and a posteriori are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. A priori knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics, tautologies and deduction from pure reason. A posteriori knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge.
A transcendental argument is a kind of deductive argument that appeals to the necessary conditions that make argumentation itself possible. Transcendental arguments may have additional standards of justification that are more demanding than those of traditional deductive arguments.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to metaphysics:
World disclosure refers to how things become intelligible and meaningfully relevant to human beings, by virtue of being part of an ontological world – i.e., a pre-interpreted and holistically structured background of meaning. This understanding is said to be first disclosed to human beings through their practical day-to-day encounters with others, with things in the world, and through language.
Transcendental humanism in philosophy considers humans as simultaneously the originator of meaning, and subject to a larger ultimate truth that exists beyond the human realm (transcendence). The philosophy suggests that the humanistic approach is guided by “accuracy, truth, discovery, and objectivity” that transcends or exists apart from subjectivity.
Patricia W. Kitcher is the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, widely known for her work on Immanuel Kant and on philosophy of psychology. She has held many positions at different universities, is a founding chair of a committee at the University of California, and has a lead role in multiple professional organizations. Kitcher's most notable interests throughout her career regard cognition and Kantian ethics. She is the author of multiple papers and two books.
Béatrice Longuenesse is a French philosopher and academic, who is the Silver Professor of Philosophy Emerita at New York University. Her work focuses on Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the philosophy of mind. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Longuenesse is one of the most prominent living Kant scholars, and her works have generated significant discussion around parts of Kant's corpus that were previously largely overlooked.
In philosophy, naturalism is the idea that only natural laws and forces operate in the universe. In its primary sense, it is also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, pure naturalism, philosophical naturalism and antisupernaturalism. "Ontological" refers to ontology, the philosophical study of what exists. Philosophers often treat naturalism as equivalent to materialism.
Steven James Bartlett is an American philosopher and psychologist notable for his studies in epistemology and the theory of reflexivity, and for his work on the psychology of human aggression and destructiveness, and the shortcomings of psychological normality. His findings challenge the assumption that psychological normality should serve as a standard for good mental health. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books and research monographs as well as many papers published in professional journals in the fields of epistemology, psychology, mathematical logic, and philosophy of science.
Definitions of philosophy aim at determining what all forms of philosophy have in common and how to distinguish philosophy from other disciplines. Many different definitions have been proposed but there is very little agreement on which is the right one. Some general characteristics of philosophy are widely accepted, for example, that it is a form of rational inquiry that is systematic, critical, and tends to reflect on its own methods. But such characteristics are usually too vague to give a proper definition of philosophy. Many of the more concrete definitions are very controversial, often because they are revisionary in that they deny the label philosophy to various subdisciplines for which it is normally used. Such definitions are usually only accepted by philosophers belonging to a specific philosophical movement. One reason for these difficulties is that the meaning of the term "philosophy" has changed throughout history: it used to include the sciences as its subdisciplines, which are seen as distinct disciplines in the modern discourse. But even in its contemporary usage, it is still a wide term spanning over many different subfields.