Saturday, November 17, 2012

Reason, Consistency, Pluralism

In #40 of the Critique of Judgment, Kant, digressing from the main exposition, distinguishes: 1. thinking for oneself; 2. thinking from the standpoint of everyone else; and 3. thinking always consistently.  He characterizes these, as, respectively, "unprejudiced", "broadened", and "consistent", thinking.  He also classifies their sources as, respectively, "understanding", "judgment", and "reason",  Now, practical correlates of these three can be discerned in his fundamental principle of Pure Practical Reason, respectively: acting on a maxim, the universalization of a maxim, and the non-contradictoriness of a universal law.  Hence, these distinctions confirm what has been previously proposed here--that the Pluralism of his doctrine does not derive from Reason, specifically, i. e. the criterion of non-contradiction that governs Reason does not entail a multiplicity of thinkers.  In fact, if, as Leibniz argues, the principle of Contradiction is derived from the principle of Identity, Pluralism is antithetical to Reason

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