A Guide to Kant’s Psychologism: Via Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Wittgenstein

351 Pages·2019·2.673 MB·English

by  Wayne Waxman

A Guide to Kant’s Psychologism
This book presents an interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
as a priori psychologism. It groups Kant’s philosophy together with
those of the British empiricists—Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—in a single
line of psychologistic succession and offers a clear explanation of how
Kant’s psychologism differs from psychology and idealism. The book
reconciles Kant’s philosophy with subsequent developments in science and
mathematics, including post-Fregean mathematical logic, non-Euclidean
geometry, and both relativity and quantum theory. It also relates Kant’s
psychologism to Wittgenstein’s later conception of language. Finally,
the author reveals the ways in which Kant’s philosophy dovetails with
contemporary scientific theorizing about the natural phenomenon of
consciousness and its place in nature. This book will be of interest to Kant
scholars and historians of philosophy working on the British empiricists.
Wayne Waxman is the author of Kant’s Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind,
Kant and the Empiricists, Hume’s Theory of Consciousness, and Kant’s
Model of the Mind. He is retired and lives in New Zealand.
Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy
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A Sublime Science of Simple Souls
Jason Neidleman
Kant and the Scottish Enlightenment
Edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Chris W. Surprenant
Kant and the Reorientation of Aesthetics
Finding the World
Joseph J. Tinguely
Hume’s Science of Human Nature
Scientific Realism, Reason, and Substantial Explanation
David Landy
Hume’s Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Psychology
Edited by Philip A. Reed and Rico Vitz
Kant and the Problem of Self-Knowledge
Luca Forgione
Kant on Intuition
Western and Asian Perspectives on Transcendental Idealism
Edited by Stephen R. Palmquist
Hume on Art, Emotions, and Superstition
A Critical Study of the Four Dissertations
Amyas Merivale
A Guide to Kant’s Psychologism
via Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Wittgenstein
Wayne Waxman
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Eighteenth-Century-Philosophy/book-series/SE0391
A Guide to Kant’s
Psychologism
via Locke, Berkeley, Hume,
and Wittgenstein
Wayne Waxman
First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Wayne Waxman to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
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A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-14111-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-03022-2 (ebk)
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He mea tāpae tēnei pukapuka ki a Immanuel Kant,
ā, nā tōna rapunga whakaaro i āhei atu ahau ki ngā
momo whakaaro mutungakore me ngā whakamānawa
mātauranga huhua noa, tae atu ki te iwi whakamīharo
o Aotearoa mō te ngākau makuru, ngākau atawhai
hoki i whakamanuhiri nei i tēnei manene nō tētahi
whenua e noho ana i roto i te pōuri.

Contents
Abbreviations Used in Referencing viii
Introduction: Kant’s Copernican Revolution 1
1 Breaking the Mold 18
PART I
The Path to Kant: Psychologism and Conventionalism 33
2 Locke’s Oyster 39
3 Berkeley’s Vision 65
4 Hume’s Cement 93
5 From Hume to Kant via Wittgenstein 129
PART II
Nature in Mind: Through Kant’s I’s 147
6 The Kantian Cogito 155
7 The Logical I 167
8 The Aesthetic I 198
9 The Objective I 229
10 The I of Nature 262
Conclusion: After Kant 304
Glossary of Kantian Terms 319
Bibliography 329
Index 331
Abbreviations Used in Referencing
Kant. All references are to, or derived from, critical editions based on the
Prussian Academy edition of the Gesammelte Schriften, begun in 1901,
and generally cited as the Akademie Ausgabe, abbreviated “AA.” For
Kant’s published works, I mostly use the standard abbreviation scheme:
“CPR” for the Critique of Pure Reason, with “A” for the 1781 edition and
“B” for the 1787 edition; “CPrR” for the Critique of Practical Reason,
“CJ” for the Critique of Judgment, “ID” for the Inaugural Dissertation,
“PFM” for Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, and “MFPNS” for
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science. Some works I refer to
by name: “Discovery” for On a Discovery Whereby Any New Critique
of Pure Reason Is to Be Made Superfluous by an Older One, “Anthro-
pology” for Anthropology From a Pragmatic Viewpoint, and “Logic”
for the work of that name published posthumously by Kant’s editor G. B.
Jäsche. Translations are my own.
Locke. The edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding
I employ is the 1975 Oxford Clarendon, edited by Peter H. Nidditch,
abbreviated “ECHU.” References will conform to the following practice:
“ECHU 2.3.6” refers to the second of the Essay’s four books, chapter 3,
numbered paragraph six. I have occasionally taken the liberty of updat-
ing Locke’s syntax and punctuation.
Berkeley. Nearly all references are to Philosophical Works, Including
the Works on Vision, edited by Michael R. Ayers (London: J. M. Dent,
1975). References will conform to the following practices: “V” for the
New Theory of Vision; “VV” for A New Theory of Vision Vindicated;
“PHK Intr. §3” for the third section of the Introduction to A Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge; and “Alciphron” fol-
lowed by the dialogue and section numbers for Alciphron, or the Min-
ute Philosopher in Focus, edited by David Berman (London: Routledge,
1993). I have occasionally taken the liberty of updating Berkeley’s syntax
and punctuation.
Hume. Citations of A Treatise of Human Nature are from the Oxford
Clarendon 1978 edition by Peter H. Nidditch, revising the 1888 edition
by L. A. Selby-Bigge, abbreviated “T” followed by book, section, and
Abbreviations Used in Referencing ix
paragraph. Citations from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understand-
ing are from the 1999 Oxford University Press edition by Tom L. Beau-
champ, abbreviated “EHU IV/i ¶3,” for the third paragraph of the first
part of the fourth section. I have occasionally taken the liberty of updat-
ing Hume’s syntax and punctuation.
Descartes. All references to Descartes are from the translation by John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny,
published in 1984, by Cambridge University Press. References cite abbre-
viated names or parts of individual works, such as “First Meditation”
for Meditations on First Philosophy, together with the relevant volume
and page number of the standard Latin and French edition by Adam and
Tannery, e.g. “AT VII 27.”
Other. Since I shall have occasion to refer to some of my p revious
books, I shall use the abbreviations “KEUU” for Kant and the E mpiricists:
Understanding Understanding (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005), “KAIM” for Kant’s Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014), “HTC” for Hume’s Theory of Con-
sciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), and “KMM”
for Kant’s Model of the Mind: A New Interpretation of Transcendental
Idealism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).