Kant's realism. An investigation into the essential interdependence of the formal and material conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge in Kant's epistemology

Abstract

My central claim in this dissertation is that in Kant's epistemology (1) the conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge (CPEK) comprise not only formal but also material conditions, i.e. CPEK = FCPK and MCPK, and (2) these two kinds of conditions are essentially co-dependent. I shall call this thesis, i.e. (1) and (2), the No-Priority thesis (NPT). By formal conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge I mean: general a priori anticipatable conditions signifying necessary features of the empirically knowable world. By material conditions for the possibility of empirical knowledge I mean; general but not a priori anticipatable conditions signifying contingent features of the empirically knowable world. While the difference between these two kinds of conditions is, in general, evident from this characterization we ought to observe that both conditions are general - general as opposed not to specific but to particular in the sense in which the materially given content is not general but particular.