Necessity and Possibility: The Logical Structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

If logic provides rules for thought, can there be similar rules for human experience? Kurt Mosser argues that reading Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
as an argument for such a logic of experience makes more defensible many of Kant’s most controversial claims, and makes more accessible Kant’s notoriously difficult text. By pursuing this strategic hint, Kant’s philosophical claims about human experience are seen as extraordinarily strong - as universal and necessary - but only as providing the conditions for experience to be possible. Thus, just as logic does not determine what thoughts are about, logic of experience does not determine the content of experience.Drawing on Kant’s published and unpublished texts and a wide range of texts from the history of logic and philosophical inquiries into language, Mosser provides an interpretation of some of Kant’s most complex arguments, such as the Metaphysical Deduction. He demonstrates that, in spite of appearances, Kant appeals to common sense to reveal both the scope and limits of human knowledge.Engaging a wide range of writers, including W. V. Quine, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, and Michel Foucault, the author also shows that Kant’s arguments retain considerable relevance to contemporary issues in epistemology, the philosophy of language, and current debates over postmodernism.