The Systematic Unity of Reason and Empirical Truth in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

This paper attempts a reconstruction of reason’s contribution to empirical truth in connection with Kant’s definition of truth as the agreement of cognition with its object. I argue that Kant’s treatment of truth in the Transcendental Analytic gets completed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic with an often neglected but compelling argument (what I shall call the Variety Argument). This argument postulates such a variety in the appearances as to undermine any attempt at formulating empirical truths. Crucially, I argue that this variety does not depict an extreme-case scenario, but our own epistemic situation without reason. Reason completes Kant’s theory of truth by allowing the understanding (i.) to form empirical concepts and (ii.) approximate to empirical truth

Kant’s Space of Theoretical Reason and Science: A Perspectival Reading

This paper aims to show how Kant’s account of theoretical reason can inform the contemporary debate over unity and pluralism of science. Although the unity of science thesis has been severely criticized in recent decades, I argue that pluralism as the sole epistemic principle guiding science is both too strong and too weak a principle. It is too strong because it does not account for the process of theory unification in science. It is too weak because it does not answer the question of how science ought to be done. I then look at a promising ‘perspectival’ (i.e., epistemically situated) approach to the problem Kant presents in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. I argue that the logical principles of systematicity (homogeneity, specification, continuity) form a ‘perspectival space’ within which scientists can pursue both unity and disunity of cognition. Finally, I suggest that the existing conflict between pluralism and unity ultimately resides in a metaphysical characterization of unity that does not correctly capture its epistemic significance in science. Looking at Kant’s ‘perspectivism’ not only allows us to resolve this apparent antinomy, but also to rethink unity and pluralism as mutually inclusive regulative principles

Regulative Idealization: A Kantian Approach to Idealized Models

Scientific models typically contain idealizations, or assumptions that are known not to be true. Philosophers have long questioned the nature of idealizations: Are they heuristic tools that will be abandoned? Or rather fictional representations of reality? And how can we reconcile them with realism about knowledge of nature? Immanuel Kant developed an account of scientific investigation that can inspire a new approach to the contemporary debate. Kant argued that scientific investigation is possible only if guided by ideal assumptions—what he calls “regulative ideas”. These ideas are not true of objects of nature, and yet they are not heuristic tools or fictional represen- tations. They are necessary rules governing the construction and assessment of scientific explanations. In this paper, I suggest that some idealizations can be interpreted as having necessary regulative value and as being compatible with scientific realism. I first analyze the puzzle of the nature of idealization and present the main approaches to this topic in the literature. Second, I reconsider the puzzle vis-a-vis a restricted, Kantian definition of idealization and a novel characterization of the relation between idealization and truth. Finally, I discuss in detail an example of idealization (the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium) along the suggested Kantian lines

Kant and the systematicity of nature. The regulative use of reason in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

What makes scientific knowledge possible? The philosopher Immanuel Kant in his magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason, had a fascinating and puzzling answer to this question. Scientific knowledge, for Kant, is made possible by the faculty of reason and its demand for systematic unity (or, ‘systematicity’). In other words, cognition about empirical objects can aspire to be scientific only if it is rationally embedded within or transformed into a system. But how can such system form once we take into account the perspectival nature of knowledge, i.e., its being situated in individual human cognitive faculties? My PhD thesis has a two-pronged objective: (i.) to reconstruct the complexity of the notion of systematicity in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; and (ii.) to defend its plausibility in contemporary debates on the unity or plurality of scientific knowledge. As far as (i.) is concerned, Kant’s position is far from being clearly understood in the literature. Despite a renewed interest in Kant’s notion of systematicity in recent decades, existing contributions fail to offer a satisfactory account of it. The aim of my thesis is to provide a unified reading of reason’s systematicity as an essential feature of Kant’s analysis of the sources of cognition. In particular, I defend a novel account of theoretical reason the aims to support the following claims: (a.) systematicity is grounded in a legitimate use of reason’s ideas as prescriptive rules for empirical investigation; (b.) it is necessary to make empirical cognition possible and generate scientific hypotheses; and (c.) it gives us fundamental insights into Kant’s ‘empirical realism’ and his understanding of the role of metaphysics in science. With regard to (ii.), I show that Kant’s account of theoretical reason has much more to offer than generally acknowledged. In particular, I present it as providing a reconciling solution to the conflict between unity and pluralism in contemporary philosophy of science. Drawing inspiration from Kant’s ‘perspectivism,’ I argue that unity and pluralism are to be thought as mutually inclusive principles of scientific knowledge

Kant on Phenomenal Substance

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analyzed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates a general notion of substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism

Kant on Relational Properties and Real Changes

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant often remarks that phenomena consist only in relations. This is a highly puzzling thesis that is not easily reconcilable with the explanation of natural processes. More specifically, it is not clear whether and how a network of mere relations (such as ‘being higher than’, ‘being next to’, etc.) can give rise to genuine changes in nature. I call this the problem of global relationality. In this paper, I suggest a solution to this problem by showing that Kant’s specific sense of relationality is ultimately grounded in the spatiality of phenomena and differs from the one usually assumed in the contemporary debate. I argue that a subset of empirical properties can be regarded as ‘comparatively intrinsic’ since they preserve a genuine sense of intrinsicness while being fully relational in space. As a result, real changes can take place in the phenomenal realm if they concern comparatively intrinsic properties of empirical objects

What Can I Know? Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Preface A and B

What can we know? We know many things about the world around us: whether it is raining outside, the result of last night’s game, or how vaccines work. But we also want to know more. For example, we may want to know the ultimate origin of the universe, whether God exists, or whether there are such things as souls. Philosophers have long asked this type of questions — questions that concern a kind of knowledge that goes beyond our experience. A wide range of answers (often contradicting each other) have been endlessly debated. Dissatisfied with this state of inquiry, Kant proposes a revolution in philosophy, which does not consist in devising new answers to these questions, but rather in analyzing our own capacity for knowledge. Such an analysis aims to shed light on the limits of our cognitive faculties and to reveal their true potential. In this article, we will see how Kant’s philosophy offers a revolutionary approach to our deep thirst for knowledge

Natures, Ideas, and Essentialism in Kant

Despite recent essentialist approaches to Kant’s laws of nature, it is unclear whether Kant’s critical philosophy is compatible with core tenets of essentialism. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s position by identifying the key metaphysical and epistemological features of his notion of ‘nature’ or ‘essence’. Two theses about natures can be found in the literature, namely that they are noumenal in character (noumenal thesis) and that they guide scientific investigation as regulative ideas of reason (regulative thesis). I argue that Kant’s notion of nature does not entail the noumenal thesis and, based on his model of causal explanation, I propose a novel, phenomenal thesis, that allows for a better understanding of the function of natures as regulative ideas. In the last part of the paper, I show that Kant’s ‘essentialism’ is a genuine form of essentialism committed to de re modality, although it differs in several respects from major contemporary essentialist accounts. I conclude by suggesting that Kant’s essentialism (if appropriately updated) can be relevant to the contemporary debate, which has so far been dominated by Humean and Aristotelian proposals

The polymorphism L412F in TLR3 inhibits autophagy and is a marker of severe COVID-19 in males

The polymorphism L412F in TLR3 has been associated with several infectious diseases. However, the mechanism underlying this association is still unexplored. Here, we show that the L412F polymorphism in TLR3 is a marker of severity in COVID-19. This association increases in the sub-cohort of males. Impaired macroautophagy/autophagy and reduced TNF/TNFα production was demonstrated in HEK293 cells transfected with TLR3L412F-encoding plasmid and stimulated with specific agonist poly(I:C). A statistically significant reduced survival at 28 days was shown in L412F COVID-19 patients treated with the autophagy-inhibitor hydroxychloroquine (p = 0.038). An increased frequency of autoimmune disorders such as co-morbidity was found in L412F COVID-19 males with specific class II HLA haplotypes prone to autoantigen presentation. Our analyses indicate that L412F polymorphism makes males at risk of severe COVID-19 and provides a rationale for reinterpreting clinical trials considering autophagy pathways. Abbreviations: AP: autophagosome; AUC: area under the curve; BafA1: bafilomycin A1; COVID-19: coronavirus disease-2019; HCQ: hydroxychloroquine; RAP: rapamycin; ROC: receiver operating characteristic; SARS-CoV-2: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; TLR: toll like receptor; TNF/TNF-α: tumor necrosis factor

Common, low-frequency, rare, and ultra-rare coding variants contribute to COVID-19 severity

The combined impact of common and rare exonic variants in COVID-19 host genetics is currently insufficiently understood. Here, common and rare variants from whole-exome sequencing data of about 4000 SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals were used to define an interpretable machine-learning model for predicting COVID-19 severity. First, variants were converted into separate sets of Boolean features, depending on the absence or the presence of variants in each gene. An ensemble of LASSO logistic regression models was used to identify the most informative Boolean features with respect to the genetic bases of severity. The Boolean features selected by these logistic models were combined into an Integrated PolyGenic Score that offers a synthetic and interpretable index for describing the contribution of host genetics in COVID-19 severity, as demonstrated through testing in several independent cohorts. Selected features belong to ultra-rare, rare, low-frequency, and common variants, including those in linkage disequilibrium with known GWAS loci. Noteworthily, around one quarter of the selected genes are sex-specific. Pathway analysis of the selected genes associated with COVID-19 severity reflected the multi-organ nature of the disease. The proposed model might provide useful information for developing diagnostics and therapeutics, while also being able to guide bedside disease management. © 2021, The Author(s)