Kant on Formal and Transcendental Logic

My dissertation deals with the relation of formal logic (what Kant calls “pure, general logic”) to transcendental logic in the Critique of Pure Reason. There are two main debates in the scholarship on Kant’s philosophy of logic. 

Firstly, there is the question of the scope of transcendental logic in relation to formal logic. While most authors have taken transcendental logic to be either domain-exclusive or domain-subordinative with regard to formal logic,[1] this reading has recently been challenged more and more. Increasingly, authors argue that transcendental logic is, for Kant, as general and wide in scope as formal logic. Some authors take this to mean that transcendental logic must be concerned solely with the unschematized, pure categories and can thus govern all judgements regardless of whether the objects of these judgments be sensible or non-sensible objects.[2] Others have argued that transcendental logic is as universal as formal logic since an account of the thoughts relation to the object, the subject matter of transcendental logic, must be part of an analysis of logical form itself. On this reading, formal logic is thus dependent on transcendental logic since the former can give no “self-standing account of the form of thought.”[3]

Secondly, there is a debate about the status of the laws of formal logic in Kant. The question here is what it means that pure, general logic is a “canon for the understanding” (A53/B77) and that it “contains the absolutely necessary rules of thinking, without which, no use of the understanding takes place.” (A52/B76) This can be understood normatively or formalistically, i.e., we can understand the laws of logic as constitutive norms that describe how one ought to think, or as indications of the form of thought that describe how thought necessarily must be to be thought at all.[4] The issue is how we can grant the normativist point that we often make logical mistakes and if the laws of logic weren’t normative with regard to these illogical thoughts we wouldn’t be able to flag them as wrong due to their violation of logical laws, while not allowing for illogical thought on a global scale, i.e., for the possibility of logical aliens, which formalists insist must be a non-sensical impossibility.

These two issues in Kant’s philosophy of logic have largely been dealt with separately. My dissertation aims to connect them by arguing that the conflict between formalists and normativists can only be solved if we properly understand the relation between formal and transcendental logic. The form of thought cannot be fully understood independently of thoughts relation to an object and the formal-logical account of this form cannot be understood in its role as giving both normative rules for thought and formalist laws of thought without the insights of thoughts relation to an object in the unity of a judgment that we get from transcendental logic.

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[1] Cf. for the former position for instance: Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, 2. ed., rev.enl (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1992); Friedrich Ueberweg, SYSTEM DER LOGIK (S.l.: SALZWASSER-VERLAG GMBH, 2020); Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie Der Erfahrung (Berlin: Dümmler, 1871); and for the latter: Klaus Reich, The Completeness of Kant’s Table of Judgments, Stanford Series in Philosophy Studies in Kant and German Idealism (Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992); H. J. Paton, ‘FORMAL AND TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC’ 49, no. 1–4 (1 January 1958): 245–63, https://doi.org/10.1515/kant.1958.49.1-4.245; H. J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience (London: Routledge, 2003); For an overview of positions on this question, see: Clinton Tolley, ‘The Generality of Kant’s Transcendental Logic’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 50, no. 3 (2012): 417–46.

[2] Tolley, ‘The Generality of Kant’s Transcendental Logic’.

[3] Sebastian Rödl, ‘Logical Form as a Relation to the Object’, Philosophical Topics 34, no. 1–2 (2006): 376, https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics2006341/213.

[4] I here follow the labels given to the two camps in Tyke Nunez, ‘Logical Mistakes, Logical Aliens, and the Laws of Kant’s Pure General Logic’, Mind 128, no. 512 (1 October 2019): 1149–80, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzy027; A typical normativist position is given in: John MacFarlane, ‘What Does It Mean to Say That Logic Is Formal?’ (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh, 2000); A classical account of a formalist reading can be found in: James Conant, ‘The Search for Logically Alien Thought: Descartes, Kant, Frege, and the Tractatus’, in The Logical Alien, ed. Sofia Miguens (Harvard University Press, 2019), 27–100, https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674242821-002.

 

Short Biography:

Lukas Nehlsen studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Witten/Herdecke (B.A.) and received an M.A. in Philosophy from the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, London. Before coming to a.r.t.e.s. he was a scholarship holder at the SchauflerLab@TUDresden. From 2023-2024 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Philosophy Department at Harvard University sponsored by Prof. Samantha Matherne. Besides the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the Philosophy of Logic he has keen interests in Phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, early Analytic Philosophy (especially Wittgenstein) and the Philosophy of AI.

 

Contact: lukas-nehlsen[at]web.de

 

Publications:

Articles in Journals (peer reviewed articles marked with ‚*‘): 

* Sauter, Aurora A./Nehlsen, Lukas (2024): „Too Hot to Handle? Hitzewellen als Bekundungen der Klimakrise“. In: Phänomenologische Forschungen 2024 (1), S. 5-20. 

Sauter, Aurora A./Nehlsen, Lukas (2024): „Wirkungsloses Wirken. Kann die Klimakrise mein Handeln motivieren?“. In: Journal Phänomenologie 61/2024, S. 10-25. 

Nehlsen, Lukas (2023): „Worum geht es zwischen Rorty und McDowell?“ In: Journal Phänomenologie 60/2023, S. 8-22. 

Nehlsen, Lukas (2021): „Andere Intelligenzen? Überlegungen zur Möglichkeit einer Phänomenologie der KI“. In: Journal Phänomenologie 55/2021, S.39-46. 

Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (2021): „Sprache und Berührung in der digitalisierten Palliative Care. Intention und Qualität von Interaktion am Lebensende“. In: pflegen:palliativ 51/2021, S.34-36. 

 

Book chapters and edited books: 

Sauter, Aurora A./Nehlsen, Lukas (2025): „Nur richtig erzählen muss man können? Narrativität und Klimakrise.“ In: Schnell, Martin W. (ed.) (2025): Vulnerabilität der Natur. Mensch, Tier, Erde. Velbrück Wissenschaft: Weilerswist. 

Nehlsen, Lukas (2022): „Chatten mit Nirgendwo? Der Leib als Ausdruck und die Sprache der KI.“ In: Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (Eds.) (2022): Begegnungen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz. Intersubjektivität, Technik, Lebenswelt. Velbrück Wissenschaft: Weilerswist. 

Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (Eds.) (2022): Begegnungen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz. Intersubjektivität, Technik, Lebenswelt. Velbrück Wissenschaft: Weilerswist. 

Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (2022): „Einleitung“. In: Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (Eds.) (2022): Begegnungen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz. Intersubjektivität, Technik, Lebenswelt. Velbrück Wissenschaft: Weilerswist. 

Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (2022): „Gespräch mit einer KI – eine Analyse“. In: Schnell, Martin W./Nehlsen, Lukas (Eds.) (2022): Begegnungen mit Künstlicher Intelligenz. Intersubjektivität, Technik, Lebenswelt. Velbrück Wissenschaft: Weilerswist. 

 

Reviews:

Catherine Malabou (2019): Morphing Intelligence. From IQ Measurements to Artificial Intelligence, Columbia University Press: New York (published in: Journal Phänomenologie 54/2021)

Byung-Chul Han (2021): Undinge. Umbrüche der Lebenswelt. Ullstein: Berlin. (published in: Journal Phänomenologie 56/2022)