| This dissertation is an exercise in Kant interpretation which develops and defends a threefold thesis, namely: (a) Kant's transcendental deductions (the Transcendental Aesthetic [=TA] and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categoried [=TD]) comprise a single, consistent and coherent argument; (b) That argument is a (puported) apodictic proof for Transcendental Idealism (=TI); and (c) That argument entails Ontological Realism.;The interpretation thus constitutes a critical rejoinder to the Strawsonian 'separability thesis', (which holds that TI a) is inconsistent with the Critique's main argument; and (b) entails phenomenalism) by arguing that (a) the TA and the TD constitute an consistent whole, and (b) TI entails Ontological Realism.;Chapter 1 presents textual sources that provide preliminary justification for the following two theses: (a) Rather than attempting to 'defeat' the skeptic, Kant was attempting to develop what Hume had begun. Kant's 'experiment' of pure reason is to take Hume's point in its most universal form, accept it as a hypothesis, and follow it to its logical conclusion (b) While conducting this experiment, Kant suspends consideration of the epistemological entailments of the experiment until it has been completed (he practices 'epistemological agnosticism').;Chapter 2 applies these two theses as principles of interpretation, and argues that the TA and the TD form a single, coherent transcendental argument when read from the standpoint of an acceptance of these two theses.;Chapter 3 argues that the claimed consistency makes patent the way in which TI entails ontological realism. The form of ontological realism I claim is entailed is roughly equivalent to that argued for in the Refutation of Idealism. However, I argue that while the entailment is genuine, the proof-structure of the transcendental deductions indicates that one result of them was supposed to be that, having made the copernican turn, we should no longer stand in need of a 'proof of the external world' (instead we see that to find the external world problematic is based on a paralogism of pure reason). This provides the occasion to complete the critique of Strawsonian readings of the Critique, which tend to see the Refutation of Idealism as the crowning achievement of Kant's critical method. |
