Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T22:42:23.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Real Grounds’ in Matter and Things in Themselves

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2018

Rae Langton
Rae Langton*
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
*
Email: rhl27@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Matter’s real essence is a ground for certain features of phenomena. Things in themselves are likewise a ground for certain features of phenomena. How do these claims relate? The former is a causal essentialism about physics, Stang argues; and the features so grounded are phenomenally nomically necessary. The latter involves a distinctive ontology of things in themselves, I argue; but the features so grounded are not noumenally nomically necessary. Stang’s version of Kant’s modal metaphysics is admirable, but does not go far enough. Kant’s causal essentialism involves the essences of fundamental properties, as well as of matter. And things in themselves are grounds, because they are substances, the ‘substrate’ of phenomena.

Keywords

logical essencereal essencegroundprimary qualitiessecondary qualitiestertiary qualitiesattractionimpenetrabilitylawscausal essentialismthings in themselvesphenomenasubstratumrelational propertiesintrinsic propertiesforcenecessitycontingency
Type
Author Meets Critics
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 435 - 448
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bird, Alexander (2005) ‘Laws and Essences’. Ratio, 18, 437–461.Google Scholar
Ellis, Brian and Lierse, Caroline (1994) ‘Dispositional Essentialism’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72, 27–45.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, John (2001) ‘Causal Structuralism’. Philosophical Perspectives, 15, 361–378.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1929) Critique of Pure Reason, Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1970) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Trans. J. Ellington. Indianapolis, IN: Library of Liberal Arts.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1973) The Kant-Eberhard Controversy. Trans. Henry Allison. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1986) Kant’s Latin Writings . Ed. Lewis White Beck. New York: P. Lang.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1992) Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997) Lectures on Metaphysics. Trans. and ed. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2002) Theoretical Philosophy after 1781 . Ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae (1998) Kantian Humility: Our Ignorance of Things in Themselves. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae (2015a) ‘Humility and Co-Existence in Kant and Lewis: Two Modal Themes, with Variations’. In Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer (eds), The Blackwell Companion to David Lewis (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 491–503.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae (2015b) ‘Ignorance of Things in Themselves’. In Alex Byrne, Joshua Cohen, Gideon Rosen and Seana Shiffrin (eds), The Norton Introduction to Philosophy (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.), pp. 335–344.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae and Robichaud, Christopher (2010) ‘Ghosts in the World Machine? Humility and its Alternatives’. In Allan Hazlett (ed.), New Waves in Metaphysics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 156–178.Google Scholar
Stang, Nicholas F. (2016) Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Sydney (1980) ‘Causality and Properties’. In P. Van Inwagen (ed.), Time and Cause (Dordrecht: D. Reidel), pp. 109–135.Google Scholar
Watkins, Eric (2005) Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar