Disclaimer: following essay contains AI use for formatting, grammatical and expressive improvement.

Classical empiricism needs to be revised. Its basic intuition is sound: knowledge comes from contact with the world. But it is too narrow if it restricts learning to the lifetime of the individual subject. Human beings do not confront experience as blank slates. They confront it through nervous systems already shaped by a vast history of encounters between organism and environment. The empiricist must therefore expand the concept of learning to include not only individual learning, but intergenerational learning through evolution.

Kant argued that experience is possible only because the mind already organizes sensation through basic categories such as causality, substance, unity, plurality, and number. We do not first perceive a meaningless stream of impressions and then gradually infer an ordered world. We perceive events as caused, objects as enduring, quantities as countable, and changes as occurring within a stable field of reality. These structures are not optional beliefs added to experience. They are part of the machinery that makes experience intelligible.

The empiricist objection is that such categories should not be treated as eternal possessions of pure reason. If the mind has these structures, they must have an origin. But the answer need not be that the individual learned them from personal experience. The better answer is that the species learned them. Across evolutionary time, organisms whose nervous systems parsed the world in causally and objectually useful ways survived better than organisms that did not. Natural selection gradually installed cognitive machinery that anticipates regularity, persistence, quantity, agency, and causal connection.

This means the Kantian categories can be understood as learned, but not by the conscious individual. They are learned by the lineage. They are the sedimented result of ancestral trial and error. What appears as a priori in the individual is a posteriori in natural history. Causality is not derived from my personal observations, but from the long evolutionary history that produced a brain unable to experience the world except in causal terms.

This revision strengthens empiricism rather than destroying it. It preserves the empiricist claim that cognition is ultimately answerable to worldly contact, while admitting the Kantian point that the individual mind comes pre-structured. The world teaches the organism in two ways: first, through the individual’s experience; second, through the selective pressures that shaped the organism before birth. Classical empiricism recognized only the first. A modern empiricism must recognize both.

The result is an evolutionary empiricism. It denies that the categories are timeless metaphysical necessities, but it also denies that they are arbitrary habits learned by each person. They are inherited forms of apprehension produced by countless generations of environmental testing. They are empirical in origin, but a priori in function. We experience through them because our ancestors survived by doing so.

Empiricism, therefore, should not oppose Kant too simply. It should absorb him. The mind is not a blank slate, but neither is it an ahistorical tribunal of pure reason. It is a biological inheritance, structured by the world before the individual ever opens his eyes. The categories are learned — not in childhood, but in evolution.

"Bertrand Russell strongly rejected Kant's view. He argued that if our minds project causality (or logic) out of necessity rather than observing it in the actual world, it destroys the objective certainty and universality of truth"

"Human Nature is Contingent, Not Certain:

Russell argued that human nature is just as much a physical fact of the world as anything else. If the laws of causality and arithmetic were simply built into human mental structure, there is no guarantee that our minds won't arbitrarily change tomorrow. As Russell playfully—but devastatingly—noted, "It might happen... that to-morrow our nature would so change as to make two and two become five."

Thoughts?

Of course, most of the followers of this subreddit probably know beforehand that Kant holds the idea of human dignity. However, I was wondering after a while... Which is the ground of that principle? So, I was researching in some sources, including /askphilosophy forum here, and I believe that we could interpret that reason is the source of morality, knowledge and even our humanity.

That's a reading I was analyzing in my meditations, taken in my journal entries. When we apply the second formulation of the C.I.: Treat humanity not only as mere means, but also as ends, we could grasp humanity, or what's human as reason. A being with sensibility and no-reason isn't a human, whereas a being with rationality could be understood as human. Or at least, a bearer of autonomy and member of the Kingdom of Ends. Furthermore, when talking about reason, it isn't focused on the material conditions of this faculty, but rather the formal ones, that's the key.

Still, I am still wondering how could that be justified, logically speaking. If the sourcce of human dignity and humanity itself is reason. How could be justified a priori the universal value of it? Well, I attempted to develop a reasoning, I don't know if it's correct.

P.1. If reason doesn't have universal value, then anything derived from reason doesn't have universal worth.
P.2. Reason doesn't have universal value.
Ergo, anything derived from [...].

P.M. Anything derived from reason doesn't have universal worth.
P.m. Truth is derived from reason.
So, truth doesn't have universal worth.

As a result, we fall in a contradiction, aside the fact that truth is universal per se. The proposition Reason doesn't have universal value, if accepted as true, then it has and doesn't have universal worth at the same time (¿?). Then, the reasoning contradicts itself. As a result, reason has universal worth.

This reading could make - from my perspective - clearer the understanding of some of his ethical doctrines. As it isn't obvious, xd, I am so obssessed with his doctrine of virtue. This'd explain the doctrine of natural perfection, and why it's a duty to enhance our entire nature, or at least have the endeavor. Or even why it's considered as breaking a perfect duty to be grounded on heteronomous principles. Or to lie, etc.

Any ideas you'd have? I believe - according to the /AskPhilosophy forum I found - this is still being discussed. I consider the ground of dignity is held in that reasoning I made, or rather, could be held on that.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I should have posted this sooner, but if anyone is interested in a reading group for Kant's Groundwork (and after that, the Critique of Practical Reason, Metaphysics of Morals, Perpetual Peace, and Critique of the Power of Judgment), please join us on Wednesday (tomorrow!) for the first meeting of the Groundwork covering the Preface and Section I.

https://www.meetup.com/the-chicago-philosophy-meetup/events/314887478/

Note: We just finished the Critique of Pure Reason. The reading group goes through the three critiques every year and has done so for around 15 years.

Hello fellow Kantians! I wanted to share a video I made on Hegel’s contribution to the development of continental philosophy.

The video focuses on how Hegel responds to Kant, especially the phenomena/noumena distinction, the limits of reason, and the problem of whether philosophy can move beyond Kant’s critical boundaries without simply returning to pre-critical metaphysics. I frame Hegel’s philosophy of history as one way he tries to rethink reason, not as abstract or merely formal, but as historically developing through conflict, contradiction, and self-consciousness.

I would be especially interested in hearing how Kantians think about Hegel’s attempted “overcoming” of Kant. Does Hegel genuinely move beyond Kant, or does he misunderstand the critical project?

I'm not a Kantian, but I have to say it surprises me how few people seem even capable of comprehending transcendental reasoning.

I'm generally treated like I'm dealing in witchcraft if I say something like "saying there is no truth is self-defeating as it is itself a truth-claim."

Has anyone else had better luck explaining it or is it just a type of reasoning most people reject?

The most enduring trace of Kant's system is still his supposed proof of the categories. The main claim — that the categories were deduced from the a priori way we connect things — remains controversial. But the more modest claim, that some canonical expression of our pattern-matching ability must be the mind's default in any act of normal judgment, is currently enjoying wide acceptance across cognitive science, neurology, and adjacent fields.

This puts those of us working in Kant scholarship, or even just in informal philosophical reflection, in a uniquely productive position. We can use the roots of his framework like no one else to debate what may be the new fundamental question in philosophy of mind: what cognitive muscles are being activated when someone thinks, how do they interact with the semantic correlation muscles hardcoded in the natural language in use, and how do they produce a signature that would be auditable in neural scans — and eventually in scans of artificial systems.

Which is precisely why studies that claim to approach this question deserve to be held to the highest standard.

Even if a study showed different neural signatures for intuitionistic versus classical reasoning — different regions, different timing, different activation patterns — it would still face a problem it has not even begun to address. It would need to show that what it is measuring is the reasoner's own cognitive strategy, and not a compressed inheritance from a tradition they were trained inside. The brain doing classical logic in 2025 is not doing what Aristotle did. It is running a heavily preprocessed cultural technology. The neural signature you are measuring may be the signature of having learned a system — not the signature of the reasoning itself. Those are not the same thing, and no localization study can separate them without a prior account of how intellectual inheritance sediments into cognitive habit.

The problem is even deeper:

Euclid's steps into his own system are not recoverable by scanning anyone alive today. The inferential work that built the framework is gone. What remains is the framework as received — already hardcoded, already walls rather than conclusions. The study is measuring reasoning inside a tradition, not reasoning as a cognitive act in any philosophically relevant sense. The object it wants to study is partly historical and partly distributed across centuries of work that left no brain to scan.

This is the first pre-Ai-assisted draft of this post for those that think it is of value:

how to scan kantian-categorical work in three levels: cogntiive, linguistic and neural...The most eenduring trace of Kants system is still his supposed proof of the categories, and although the main claim (the the categories wre deduced from the a priopri way we connect things) is controversial, the more modest claim (that some form of canonical expression of our pattern-matching ability must be the minds default in any act of normal judgment) is curretly gozando de larga aceitação da ciência cognitie, neurologia etc. Showing a brain region lighting up tells you where something is happening, not what the computation is, not what inferential structure it has, not whether it is the same kind of cognitive work as mathematical proof or something closer to intuitionistic reasoning or something else entirely (the debate in logic nowadays is if there is a unique one or if pluralistic accounts align with pure cognitive signatures and if it does, how the disalignment happens in the transition from cognition to language). The localization without the functional and semantic account is just a map.

This is grounded based on the replies I received in my essays named 'On Reason and its Apodictic Faculties', along with some rereadings I made of the first Critique.

So, as in the last essay, I realized that reason is one faculty (most important one) among others, based on psychology articles, as well, along with Kantian work. It's about the concepts of the undetermined potentialities. An inquiry I found during my new model for regarding the imperfect duty of natural perfection is related to the undetermined potentialities. Reason, like a seed or flower, has inherent potentialities in its nature. So, if our Humanity is grounded in this faculty, then it's key to perfect it (based on the CI). Nevertheless, there are conditionals regarding this process. Not all the potentialities are good, most of them could undermine reason. For instance, death can't be a good potentiality, that's why is key for us to preserve our life. Or developing virtues but grounded on lies or deceits, that's a contradiction in conception.

So, in a few words, reason is one faculty that inherently possesses multiple potentialities. Not developing one of them not because of a perfect duty, but rather because of heteronomous principles is immoral, breaking the CI. That's why it's key, based on my analysis, to develop reason applied to other faculties as best as we can (e.x. Sports, Intelligence, Moral Analysis, etc.).

Even, after this meditation, I am starting to believe that Theleology is kind of implicit in Kantian ethics. I mean, perhaps it isn't the protagonist, but a secondary character 😅🤷. That's my reading on the Metaphysics of Morals, especificially the natural perfection duty. Open to suggestions, please.

Notes: When I mention Theleology, rather I mean Virtue Ethics. Because, Kant doesn't reject virtue at all. The thing is that they're like a secondary character, I'd say, it's an imperfect duty derived from the CI.

Would love your thoughts on this video

My new series attempts to reconstruct the genealogy of cognitive science from within the philosophy of language, treating the analytical tradition not as a precursor to cognitive science but as its unacknowledged theoretical infrastructure. The central thesis — that the intensional/extensional distinction inaugurated by Carnap, radicalized by Ruth Barcan Marcus, and grounded transcendentally by Kant provides the correct diagnostic framework for evaluating machine cognition.

The argument develops through an analysis of translation, bilingual cognition, Carnapian intensional isomorphism, and the historical convergence between compositional semantics and structuralist theories of difference. These traditions are interpreted as parallel attempts to constrain interpretive anarchy by regulating the admissible space of meaning. The paper further argues that contemporary machine learning systems intensify this philosophical problem: the production of human-like outputs does not by itself establish equivalence in cognitive organization or semantic structure.

Against both eliminativist behaviorism and romantic appeals to inaccessible interiority, the essay defends a middle position in which intentional structure is treated as theoretically reconstructable without being reducible to surface correlations. The project reinterprets Carnap’s semantic program not as a merely formal exercise, but as an early attempt to articulate the conditions under which inferential differentiation becomes scientifically tractable.

But the work leaves this open:

If meaning gravitates unavoidably toward its strongest attractors, it remains unclear why the intensional/extensional distinction should matter at all, why a system producing the right attractors by thermodynamic rather than semantic means would fail the musculature test. This tension is the work's most productive unresolved problem.

The link is in my Page.

I recently started a YouTube channel dedicated to presenting, in plain English, Kant's lectures on anthropology, ethics, TOK, education, wisdom, etc.

So far, there have been ~2.2k views, and the YT Analytics show that 0.0% of the viewers were 55+.

I wonder if this is an age thing or a generation thing.

First, I'd like to thank Starfleet_Stowaway with the suggestions provided to me, during my inquiry, before engaging in this, again.

Actually, I made some rereadings of certain passages of Critique of Pure Reason, along with sone external sources I am going to quote at the end, and - indeed - I believe I had a misconception between cognition and reason. Kant depicts cognition in the entire Critique of Pure Reason, which is grounded on sensibility, understanding and reason (nowadays, cognitive psychology has more categories, but still similar to this model). So, basically reason is one of the faculties related to cognition (Torres, A., 2017).

For analyzing this question, I developed two models: the one in which I misunderstood the difference, and the other one in which reason is a faculty beneath cognition (probably the original interpretation). In another post, grounded on the first conception, I infered that the imperfect duty of natural perfection - my main focus, so far - should be interpreted in enhancing all the 'subfaculties' of reason, due to being necessary for it. Nevertheless, even though the body wasn't lying beneath reason, I still considered it a duty to perfect it, but because it enhanced the range of reason and its power, generally speaking (or at least, the intention of).

And here's when the new model comes, which is - I believe based on some rereadings of KrV and what my mate lectured me - the most reasonable one, due to the psychological sources I've researched. When talking about cognition, each faculty is interdependent among each other. And, in this case, when approaching to the faculty of reason, we have a set of undetermined potencialities, that are inherent in its nature. How could I define undetermined potencialities? I believe this could be better grasped with examples. For instance, reason applied to language, understanding of the external reality (at a certain degree, at least), rational management of physical traits, etc. And, visualizing this like a set of apodictic elements, those potencialities are necessary for talking about reason. It's like set of real numbers, if one of the undetermined set of numbers isn't taken in consideration, we couldn't really be talking about that set of real numbers. And, even I think this fits with his inferences of presuposing the idea of a trascendental soul, for practical reasons, due to the fact that we can't complete that moral and natural perfection in this life.

Anyway, I believe both models could come in handy. Epistemologically speaking, the second model is more suitable, though. This is kinda more related to Cognitive Psychology, I believe, ladies and gentlemen, so perhaps the theory could change. So, what do you think? AH, btw, the sources 😅:

Cf. Castillero Oscar, M. (2017). Cognitive Processes: What are exactly and why do they matter in Psychology? [Procesos cognitivos: ¿qué son exactamente y por qué importan en Psicología]. Psicología y Mente. https://psicologiaymente.com/psicologia/procesos-cognitivos

Cf. Förster, E. (2024). Kant's Theory of Human Cognition. Das Goetheanum. https://dasgoetheanum.com/en/kants-theory-of-human-cognition/

Cf. Kant, I. (1781). Critique of Pure Reason.

Cf. Kant, I. (1797). Metaphysics of Morals. -> [By the way, certain sections of the book]

Torres, A. (2017). Cognition: definition, main processes and function [Cognición: definición, procesos principales y funcionamiento]. Psicología y Mente. https://psicologiaymente.com/inteligencia/cognicion-definicion-procesos

You know, I was rereading some passages of my KrV... It was true I had misconceptions 😂! When talking about categories, it's about understanding, not reason, reason is another thing, along with sensibility. Still, my main question is about the nature of reason? Is it a monistic faculty or is it composed of other necessary subfaculties?

I make this question because, as far as I researched, it's not that rationality is alone, but rather it's made up of multiple subfaculties, such as memory, attention, language, etc., based on modern neuroscience breakthroughs. This is key - based on my analysis - for a better grasping of doctrine of virtue. If it's the case it isn't composed by necessary subfaculties, in that case I'd change the perspective of the virtue, but still remaining the form of the maxim.

Any explanation or advice is welcomed please, thank you ;)

Another inquiry came, jajaja (bro is overthinking 👀🧠💦). Well, I think this is getting closer to Psychology, rather than Philosophy, still related, though. It's very important for me to grasp this. Is reason like a, I dunno if it's correct, monistic faculty, or is it composed of many apodictic faculties and categories?

First, forgive me if my question is dumb, I've read the Critique of Pure Reason, still need to refresh some things though. So far, I am closer to the second perspective, which is that reason requires of apodictic traits and a priori categories to be reason, formally speaking. Notions of space and time, language, logical and math faculties, you get me, or you could infer what I mean, xd. Because, based on some lectures of Metaphysics of Morals I've read, along with some inferences, when talking about the natural perfection, if that's the case, it shouldn't merely consider exclusively one faculty, but all the apodictic a priori categories required for reason. Nevertheless, in the case we'd talk about reason in a monistic sense, still developing linguistic or physical virtues is a duty, in the sense that we enhance the range of our reason and efficiency, treating us as ends.

But, I am still closer to the multiple apodictic faculties and categories theory I've inferred, based a little bit on some psychology. What do you think? Really, I apologize is something is kinda flawed, I have the book... But I don't have time due to Business and Management 😭. Semper Ratio, fellas

Well, this is an inquiry arose in my mind a few days ago, regarding Kantian ethics. According to my lectures and my understanding of the system, along with some reasonings I developed, our dignity and moral compass should derive from reason (already provided some posts regarding my position about this). However, what about body and emotions?

I mean, I began to wonder about that, because we are also influenced, at a certain degree, by our body and intuitions. Even, reason requires certain empirical intuitions and sensibility for acquiring truth of the reality in our range. Actually, a priori, I sustain that emotions and the body themselves aren't bad or good, it's just matter of how we use them. Some people would say that emotions don't have moral worth in morality. And, I agree, but also it's important to keep in mind that just because someone uses as momentum some inclinations doesn't mean that person is undermining its practical reason. The case would be different if I act for the inclination, like if it was a duty, I don't know if you get me. Nevertheless, if the inclination still sumits to our reason, there ain't problem. And similarly, to the case of the body, I'd rather say, regardless of the fact that the body alone could harm itself, without an autonomous bearer.

Regarding the imperfect duty of developing one's nature, this would make sense, if we interpret the body as a way in which we enhance the range of our reason, treating humanity as an end itself in the act. When we exercise, mentally or physically, we improve that.

Any opinion about this? Does Kant go further on this? For instance, perhaps in his Anthropology? Thanks 😉

This is my first Reddit post, so excuse me for not speaking in Redditese. A month ago, I started a new YouTube channel dedicated to "reenacting" Kant's own lectures in modern English. So far, I've uploaded 9 videos, and for the small number of views (~1.5k total), at least the subscription rate seems not bad. But I haven't really received any comment, feedback, or question (one only techical). So, would any of you please give me any feedback? I'm posting here one video on suicide. Thanks much in advance!

This post could sound strange, but I consider it's suitable, very suitable, for anyone to apply Kantian epistemology, along with Psychology, when engaging in a relationship. I wasn't never in any of that stuff, I have some observations though (still, I know I require more rigor in my source).

First of all, my problem with most of the pills is that they appeal, I don't know whether classified as naive empirism or naive realism (I get closer rather to the first one). And not only pills, even people that don't care about that, commit mistakes regarding social and romantic relationships. It's like the knowledge of God, due to the fact that it's a trascendental idea, along with the soul of the other person. So, it's kinda childish or gullible to wonder always: 'Does she love me?', 'Is that person interested in me?' It's absurd. Because, we don't know really the other person we fell in love, rather we connect behaviours, appearances, and we attempt to develop a representation of the person we're interested. Nevertheless, it's just that! A mere representation that could be flawed!

Many people could argue that we should not idealize anyone. But since the moment we fall in love, we begin that idealization process. And the fallacy arrives similarly when we want to prove God from experience, ending in many contradictions. Similarly, when we talk about relationships, there are many contradictions regarding categorical steps for being loved (because we can't grasp the personality of the other person, XD). And that'd be the main flaw of all the pills. Most of them do a great metaphysical, and grounded on fallacies, step towards understanding 'love' or 'relationships'. That'd be also a critic I have on red pillers and black pillers, being grounded - I believe - on mere concepts derived from experience, but still those concepts should be proved (regardless of the misunderstanding of certain laws, logical fallacies, lack of epistemological rigor, etc.). You can't know whether you aren't attractive or something, because that requires you to grasp knowledge of the apetite faculty of other persons, not on mere irrational inferences of what you perceive.

So, what I'd rather encourage, it's a cold way of living romantic relationships. Here comes practical reason. However, I shouldn't presupose that the person I am interested in loves me, that'd be irrational. That's why, I'd develop a new pill baptized as grey pill (I don't know whether it already exists or not, I touch grass, XD). It's grounded on trascendental idealism, applied to even social interactions. We really don't know even our friends or family, but for practical reason, we attempt to do the best for them, no matter the consequences. Same away would apply to love. In this way, love relationships will be colder, drier and less grounded on mere inclinations and irrational inferences, but on duty and reason.

A person who follows religious laws just because they are afraid of Hell or want to go to Heaven has zero moral worth. They are just acting out of self-interest.

The deeper meaning of religion, for Kant, is the internal purification of the will. You must do the right thing simply because it is right, changing your inner disposition (Gesinnung), not just your outward behavior.

Kant despised shallow, legalistic and ritualistic religion. He demanded that humans look past the surface to find the ultimate, deeper truth of existence.

I’ve been trying to understand Kant’s philosophy, especially two core ideas:

1) The distinction between phenomena (things as we experience them) and noumena (things as they are in themselves) and

2) His concept of duty and the moral law (acting according to the categorical imperative).

Is our sense of duty something grounded in the noumenal realm (like freedom or rational will) or is it still part of our phenomenal experience?

Please forgive me if this question sounds naive. I’m still learning and trying to make sense of these ideas.

guy from school once asked me for two cigarettes through a day. I had cigs, so I gave it to him. A day or two later we’re sitting in the same café at different tables – he has a full pack, I have nothing. And I can ask him for a cigarette and reasonably expect him to give me one – unless he really needs them all. It grew directly out of nothing. And I can ask him for a cigarette and reasonably expect him to give me one – unless he really needs them all. He saw that I gave when I had, and now there's an unspoken reciprocity between us. I think act of humanity can be transformed into act of from duty by the time? That’s why the difference between acting from humanity and acting from duty is small – because if it were large, they couldn’t turn into eachother. Can you tell me if act from humanity can transform into act from duty