Kant's Theory of Judgment/ To be used in Dissertation/ Margith Strand/ Fielding

Kant's Theory of Judgment

First published Wed Jul 28, 2004; substantive revision Thu Apr 23, 2009
Theories of judgment bring together fundamental issues in semantics, logic, philosophical psychology, epistemology, and action theory: indeed, the notion of judgment is central to any theory of human rationality. But Kant's theory of judgment differs sharply from many other theories of judgment, both traditional and contemporary, in three ways: (1) by taking the capacity for judgment to be the central cognitive faculty of the human mind, (2) by insisting on the semantic, logical, psychological, epistemic, and practical priority of the propositional content of a judgment, and (3) by systematically embedding judgment within the metaphysics of transcendental idealism . Several serious problems are generated by the interplay of the first two factors with the third. This in turn suggests that the other two parts of Kant's theory of judgment can be logically detached from his transcendental idealism and defended independently of it.

•1. The Nature of Judgment
◦1.1 The power of judgment and the other faculties of cognition
◦1.2 Judgments are essentially propositional cognitions
◦1.3 Judgments, objective validity, objective reality, and truth
◦1.4 Judging, believing, and scientific knowing
•2. Kinds of Judgments
◦2.1 Kinds of logical form
◦2.2 Kinds of propositional content
•3. The Metaphysics of Judgment: Transcendental Idealism
◦3.1 Judgment, transcendental idealism, and truth
◦3.2 Is Kant a verificationist?
•4. Problems and Prospects
◦4.1 The bottom-up problem: non-conceptual intuitions, rogue objects, and the gap in the B Deduction
◦4.2 The top-down problem: judgment, transcendental affinity, and the systematic unity of nature
◦4.3 The dream-skeptical problem: judgment, problematic idealism, and the gap in the Second Analogy
◦4.4 Conclusion: judgment without transcendental idealism?
•Bibliography
•Other Internet Resources
•Related Entries

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