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45 results

Page 1 of 3

  • Normative Foundations of Kant’s Cosmopolitan Right: The Overlooked Legacy of Kant’s Metaphysics of Nature

  • Michela Massimi
  • Journal:
    Kantian Review / Volume 28 / Issue 3 / September 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    22 June 2023, pp. 373-395
    Print publication:
    September 2023
    • Article
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  • Kant’s philosophy of natural science has traditionally concentrated on a host of issues including the role of laws of nature and teleological judgements. However, so far, the literature has made virtually no contact with the no less important tradition in Kant’s legal and political philosophy. This article explores one aspect of such connection in relation to the normative foundations of Kant’s notion of cosmopolitan right. I argue that Kant’s argument for cosmopolitan right is based on two main premises: the first is what I call the law of equilibrium, and the second is the premise of physical interaction (commercium in Latin) at work behind what Kant called the original ‘community of land’. The article argues that the relevant notion of community qua commercium should be understood in the context of Kant’s metaphysics of nature as a ‘real community of substances’ governed by a dynamical law of equality of action and reaction. This metaphysical-causal interpretive reading has far-reaching implications for the foundations of cosmopolitan right and its scope of applicability well beyond Kant’s envisaged right to universal hospitality.

  • Chapter 10 - Absolute Space as a Necessary Idea

  • Edited by Michael Bennett McNulty
  • Book:
    Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
    Published online:
    22 October 2022
    Print publication:
    11 August 2022, pp 215-239

  • Summary

    Kant’s engagement with Newton’s notion of ‘absolute space’ is fascinating, complex, and spans over both the pre-Critical and the Critical period. The received view has it that in the pre-Critical period Kant shifted from an originally Leibnizian view of space (still visible in Physical Monadology [MonPh, 1756], and New Doctrine of Motion and Rest [NLBR, 1758]) to a proper Newtonian view of absolute space via the incongruent counterparts argument in Directions in Space (GUGR, 1768), for then abandoning absolute space in the Inaugural Dissertation (MSI, 1770). Indeed, the same argument from incongruent counterparts was later employed in the Prolegomena (1783) as an argument for space as “the form of outer intuition of … sensibility” (Prol, 4:286).

  • Two Kinds of Exploratory Models

  • Michela Massimi
  • Journal:
    Philosophy of Science / Volume 86 / Issue 5 / December 2019
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2022, pp. 869-881
    Print publication:
    December 2019

  • I analyze the exploratory function of two main modeling practices: targetless fictional models and hypothetical perspectival models. In both cases, I argue, modelers invite us to imagine or conceive something about the target system, which is known to be either nonexistent (fictional models) or just hypothetical (in perspectival models). I clarify the kind of imagining or conceiving involved in each modeling practice, and I show how each—in its own right—delivers important modal knowledge. I illustrate these two kinds of exploratory models with Maxwell’s ether model and supersymmetric particle models at the Large Hadron Collider.

  • Perspectival Modeling

  • Michela Massimi
  • Journal:
    Philosophy of Science / Volume 85 / Issue 3 / July 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 January 2022, pp. 335-359
    Print publication:
    July 2018

  • The goal of this article is to address the problem of inconsistent models and the challenge it poses for perspectivism. I analyze the argument, draw attention to some hidden premises behind it, and deflate them. Then I introduce the notion of perspectival models as a distinctive class of modeling practices whose primary function is exploratory. I illustrate perspectival modeling with two examples taken from contemporary high-energy physics at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which are designed to show how a plurality of seemingly incompatible models (suitably understood) is methodologically crucial to advance the realist quest in cutting-edge areas of scientific inquiry.

Kant and the Laws of Nature
  • Edited by Michela Massimi, Angela Breitenbach
  • Published online:
    31 March 2017
    Print publication:
    16 March 2017
  • Laws of nature play a central role in Kant's theoretical philosophy and are crucial to understanding his philosophy of science in particular. In this volume of new essays, the first systematic investigation of its kind, a distinguished team of scholars explores Kant's views on the laws of nature in the physical and life sciences. Their essays focus particularly on the laws of physics and biology, and consider topics including the separation in Kant's treatment of the physical and life sciences, the relation between universal and empirical laws of nature, and the role of reason and the understanding in imposing order and lawful unity upon nature. The volume will be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of Kant's philosophy of science, and to historians and philosophers of science more generally.

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