Experimentation in transcendental philosophy on the transition from experimental confirmation in Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' to Experimental Discovery in Fichte's 'Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre'

The dissertation defends the thesis that, owing primarily to the requirements of scientific philosophy elaborated by K.L. Reinhold and Solomon Maimon, the role of experimentation in transcendental philosophy develops from confirmation modeled on natural science in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to discovery modeled on mathematics in Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre. Having established, in Chapter 2, that Francis Bacon allows that illuminating experiments should be conducted at theoretical crossroads where the correct path is indeterminate, I argue, in Chapter 3, that the experiment of pure reason in the Critique is an illuminating experiment, since the Antinomy of Pure Reason in which it occurs is a theoretical crossroads about the fundamental principle that will allow metaphysics to become a science. Chapter 4 explicates the two necessary facts that the experiment of pure reason must establish in order to decisively determine the correctness of the doctrine of transcendental idealism. I conclude my study of the experiment of pure reason in Chapter 5 with an account of its skeptical and dialectical methods.;Chapter 6 establishes that Fichte's use of experimentation in transcendental philosophy is different than Kant's use of the same. For the former, experiments reveal, rather than confirm, philosophical truths. In Chapter 7, I argue that the method of the experiments with the productive imagination that Fichte discusses in his first presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre require construction in intellectual intuition in accordance with the principle of determinability on the part of the philosopher undertaking them. The thesis of Chapter 8 is that the method of the observational experiment that informs the pragmatic history of the human mind that Fichte presents in the Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre. is intellectual intuition. Through it, the philosopher is able to cognize the series of necessary acts through which the I constructs, for itself, the concept of itself in intellectual intuition.;KEYWORDS: Immanuel Kant, J.G. Fichte, Experiment of Pure Reason, Experiments with the Productive imagination, Observational Experiment.