CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Varciu, Alin-Paul |
|---|---|
| Title | Kant's Model of Causality in terms of Essences |
| Summary | Traditional interpretations of Kant’s model of causality consider events to be causes of other events. Eric Watkins proposed an account where the cause is not some event but an unchanging essence of the objects involved. This unchanging essence is unchanging both in terms of securing the object’s identity and in terms of being permanently active: the object attempts to produce changes in other objects even if it doesn’t succeed in doing so. By being permanently active Watkins says that these essences are temporally indeterminate. Through this he avoids the regress problem of determining grounds. In the present thesis I show that the regress problem can be avoided even through temporally determinate grounds. For that I introduce an account of real essences being active in causal processes. The advantage of such an account is that whereas Watkins’ account can merely show how spatial interactions between objects defined as bodies can work my account can show how other types of interactions between objects work. I contend that Watkins’ account fails to do that because he overlooked the distinction between the mathematical conception of time and the dynamical conception of time which Kant develops in his table of categories and of which he explicitly talks in the Second Analogy of Experience at A203. |
| Supervisor | Huoranszki, Ferenc |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/varciu_alin-paul.pdf |
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