The Fallibilism of Kant's Architectonic

2. The Fallibilism of Kant’s Architectonic

Gabriele Gava

1. Introduction

At various points in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claims that the

arguments and proofs he offers in his inquiry must be able to

provide apodictic certainty. He maintains that this certainty is

immediately connected with the necessary status of the

propositions he defends and with the a priori justification he

offers. Taking these contentions into consideration, it is easy

to conclude that Kant attributed an infallible status to his

philosophical claims. This seems to be confirmed from this

passage contained in the preface to the first edition of the

Critique:

As far as certainty is concerned, I have myself pronounced the

judgment that in this kind of inquiry it is in no way allowed to

hold opinions, and that anything that even looks like an

hypothesis is a forbidden commodity, which should not be put up

70

for sale even at the lowest price but must be confiscated as soon

as it is discovered. For every cognition that is supposed to be

certain a priori proclaims that it wants to be held for absolutely

necessary, and even more is this true of a determination of all

pure cognitions a priori, which is to be the standard and thus even

the example of all apodictic (philosophical) certainty. (CPR A

xv)1

In this passage, Kant regards the claims to a-priority,

necessity, and certainty as inescapably connected. Insofar as he

argued that we have a priori cognitions that are necessarily valid

in possible experience, it is thus quite unsurprising that he

also maintains that his arguments for sustaining this view are

certain and infallible.2 In this respect, Kant was a man of his

time and for him claiming a-priority and necessity implied 1 References to Kant’s work will be given according to the standard edition (1900-), using the abbreviation KGS and indicating volume and page number. References to the Critique of Pure Reason (CPR) will use A and B to refer respectively to the paging of the first and the second original editions. English translations are given according to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.2 Kant famously maintains that the identification of necessary propositions can only rest on a priori cognitions (CPR B 3-4). In the Critique of Pure Reason he also stresses that a priori cognitions of necessary propositions are the only basis of certainty (CPR B 5), while in the Jäsche Logic he concedes that we can also have empirical certainty (KGS 9:70-1). In both contexts, however, he maintains that a claim to a priori knowledge about necessary propositions requires certainty in order to be justified.

71

claiming certainty and infallibility.3 These aspects of Kant’s

thought are evidently in contrast to the fallibilism advocated by

all the pragmatists. Accordingly, they have cast serious doubts

on the appropriateness of reading pragmatism as developing some

Kantian ideas, or, alternatively, on the possibility of taking

Kant as anticipating pragmatist insights.

Nowadays, the entailment relationship among claims to a-

priority, necessity, and certainty (or infallibility) has been

put into question,4 and the plausibility of fallible a priori

justification (claiming necessity) has been defended.5

Accordingly, it has been argued that it is not contradictory to

regard some claims about the necessary status of some

propositions as both a priori justified and fallible. This is so

because we can identify cases of valid a priori justification which

3 In a similar way Watkins and Willaschek (unpublished manuscript) and Pasternack (2014) maintain that Kant endorsed an infallibilist account of justified claims to knowledge (not limited to a priori claims). They argue that for Kant justified claims to knowledge entail the consciousness of the truth of the justified claim. Watkins and Willaschek also argue that this account ofjustification is compatible with a form of fallibilism, according to which we can be wrong about the grounds we have. It is possible that we believe ourselves to have a ground when in fact we do not. However, in this case we would still know that if we had that ground, we would have known with certainty the proposition which would have been supported by that ground. 4 See for example: Haack 1979, Warenski 2009.5 The most relevant defenses of fallible a priori justification are: Bonjour 1998, Casullo 2003.

72

do not exclude the possibility of our being mistaken about the

necessary truth of the propositions in question. In a similar

way, I will here argue that if we closely consider Kant’s account

of reason and its powers, as well as his account of philosophy

and philosophical argument, it makes much more sense to see Kant

as proposing a strong (at least in his own eyes), but fallible,

defense of the a priori and necessary status of some synthetic

claims about experience. Whilst thus Kant, unlike many, but not

all, pragmatists, certainly considers it possible to obtain a

priori knowledge about necessary propositions, his views about

reason and philosophy suggest that he could coherently associate

a fallibilist account of a priori justification for claims to

knowledge with his contentions about the possibility of a priori

knowledge. This fallibilism concedes that there are cases in

which we could be justified in claiming to have a priori knowledge,

even though we in fact have not it. If this is true, there might

be much more continuity between Kant’s views on justification and

those of the pragmatists.

This interpretation of Kant might strike some as implausible

regarding Kant, and inconsistent in its own right. As a quick

73

answer to these worries, I offer two brief remarks. First, Kant

is clear in stressing that our reason has a natural tendency to

deceive itself with respect to its powers of obtaining necessary

and a priori truths concerning transcendent objects. Accordingly,

Kant claims that human reason “is already dialectical on account

of the tendency of its nature” (CPR A 849/B 877).6 This account

of reason seems to require a more modest perspective on its

contentions. Second, the compatibility of fallibilism with claims

to a-priority and necessity can be made a bit less implausible if

we consider for a moment mathematics and geometry. We normally

regard mathematical claims as being a priori justified claims

concerning the necessary status of some mathematical

propositions. It is however a historical fact that claims in

mathematics and geometry are fallible. Maintaining that the sum

6 Of course one can argue that Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason, identifies the philosophical tools that are required in order to avoid this self-deception and thus be certain, and apodictically certain, about the claims we advance through reason. However, reason is evidently non transparent to itself, and this seems to agree with the recognition of the possibility, no matter how slight it might be, of being mistaken. Westphal (2004) argues at various points that Kant endorsed a fallibilist account of justification, while he links this position to an externalist perspective. By contrast, in this paper I will attribute to Kant an internalist view on justification. Since Westphal bases his interpretation of Kant’s fallibilism on other passages than those here taken into consideration, it would be interesting to see how all these passages should be read together. This seems to be particularly appropriate ifwe want to avoid attributing to Kant two opposed theories of justification.

74

of the angles of a triangle is necessarily 180° could be

considered justified, and indeed justified a priori, in a context

in which non-Euclidean geometry was still yet to come.7 The claim

that the proposition was true could be regarded as a priori

justified even though the proposition is false. This is just to

give at least provisional plausibility to the idea that one can

coherently maintain that an argument for the necessary character

of some propositions is both a priori justified and fallible.

In this paper I will defend the view that we can find some

hints that Kant allowed room for fallibilism concerning his

philosophical edifice, his architectonic of reason, even though

he certainly wanted to identify necessary and a priori justified

principles.8 When Kant explicitly addresses the status of his

philosophical claims he maintains that they are necessarily true,

7 It seems also reasonable to maintain that this contention was justified in that context even if we consider the issue from our own perspective, that is, a perspective in which we know that the contention is false. An alternative would be to consider the contention unjustified, both in our historical context and before the development of non-Euclidean geometries. This would setthe bar for a priori justification very high and would render it very difficult to find criteria for determining if we are in fact justified in claiming something or if it just seems that we are justified.8 In Gava 2011 I have argued, from a different perspective, that transcendental philosophy can endorse fallibilism. In that context, I maintained that when we claim that a proposition is a priori necessary, we must not claim that it is in principle indubitable. By contrast, a claim to infallibility requires exactly this latter contention.

75

that they are a priori justified, and that they are consequently

absolutely certain. This seems to be based on a common assumption

that Kant shared with his rationalist predecessors. For him, a

claim to knowledge, and especially to rational knowledge,

requires certainty (KGS 9:66). Still, if we have to make sense of

Kant’s account of reason as a fallible faculty, and of his

identification of philosophy with an archetype (Urbild) which we

have not reached yet (CPR A 838/B 866), it seems plausible to

read his arguments as allowing room for fallibilism, while

claiming to provide a strong a priori justification for supposedly

necessary propositions. I will begin in section 2 by introducing

Kant’s criteria for justified claims to knowledge, especially as

they are presented in the section “On Having Opinions, Knowing,

and Believing” of the first Critique (CPR A 820-31/B 848-59). In

section 3, I will then illustrate Kant’s modest account of reason

and philosophy, giving particular attention to the “Discipline of

Pure Reason” and the “Architectonic of Pure Reason.” In section 4

I will identify what I see as a sustainable account of a priori

fallible justification for claims to knowledge. To finish, in

section 5 I will develop a more modest criterion for the

76

justification of our claims to knowledge starting from Kant’s

account of conviction (Überzeugung).

Before moving to the next section, let me make some

preliminary distinctions. Throughout this paper I will use the

form “justified claims to knowledge” rather than the form

“justified beliefs,” for two main reasons. First, this is meant

to avoid confusion in my discussion of Kant’s concept of belief,

which, according to him, is a justified assent that cannot be

taken as a claim to knowledge. The notion of belief currently

used in philosophical inquiry seems to be much broader than

Kant’s and include claims to knowledge as a special case.

Therefore, second, the reference to “justified claims to

knowledge” is intended to make clear that the main interest of

this paper is epistemic justification. I follow Chignell (2007,

34) in defining epistemic justification as identifying the

conditions of rational acceptability for assents that are

candidates for knowledge and thus at least claim to be knowledge.

On the other hand, non-epistemic justification identifies the

conditions of rational acceptability for assents that are not

candidates for knowledge.

77

2. Justifying Claims to Knowledge

In the section of the “Canon of Pure Reason” entitled “On Having

Opinions, Knowing, and Believing” (CPR A 820-31/B 848-59), Kant

identifies knowledge as a kind of assent or taking-to-be-true

(Fürwahrhalten). Kant defines assent in general as “the subjective

validity of judgment” (CPR A 822/B 850), meaning by that the

propositional attitude we have with respect to a particular

proposition. He then identifies three stages or kinds of assent

which are: having an opinion, believing, and knowing. Having an

opinion is an assent that is both subjectively and objectively

insufficient, while believing is only subjectively sufficient,

and knowing is both subjectively and objectively sufficient (CPR

A 822/B 850). What does Kant mean by that? What are subjective

and objective sufficiency? What does this imply for the criteria

used to decide if a claim to knowledge is justified or not?

It seems plausible to read subjective sufficiency as

identifying some grounds that are sufficient to produce the

acceptance of a proposition in a particular subject.9 These

9 For a similar reading see: Pasternack 2011, 202; Watkins and Willaschek (unpublished manuscript).

78

subjective grounds can be of different types. They can simply be

what we take to be objective grounds for our assent,10 or they can

be practical grounds that do not aim at objective validity,11 but

that can nonetheless be relevant grounds of assent for non-

epistemic justification. On the other hand, objective sufficiency

identifies intersubjectively valid grounds,12 for which we are

conscious that they entail the truth of the proposition we assent

to.13 A sufficient subjective ground is thus a ground that is 10 This seems to be the relevant sense for the kinds of assent Kant calls opinion (Meinung) and knowledge (Wissen), where thus subjective sufficiency seems to refer mainly to the psychological state of the subject.11 This sense is relevant for belief (Glaube). In this case subjective sufficiency has both a psychological and a normative component, insofar as thesubjective grounds are not simply those that we take to be objective, but are grounds that have justificatory force from a practical point of view. Accordingly, both Chignell (2007, 49, 53) and Stevenson (2003, 87-8) argue that Kant uses two very different understandings of sufficient subjective grounds for opinion and knowledge, on the one hand, and for belief, on the other. This is certainly true. However, these two different understandings canbe read as two cases of a broader category, that is, as two cases in which a ground is sufficient to produce an assent in a particular subject. 12 “If it [the assent, or taking-to-be-true, my note] is valid for everyone merely as long as he has reason, then its ground is objectively sufficient” (CPR A 820/B 848).13 Accordingly, in the Jäsche Logic Kant identifies knowledge with certainty (KGS9:70), and he claims that certainty “is combined with consciousness of necessity,” while uncertainty “is combined with consciousness of contingency or the possibility of the opposite” (KGS 9:66). Given that Kant will later argue that we can have certainty on empirical propositions, here necessity andcontingency should not be taken as expressing characteristics of the propositions themselves, but rather of the relationship between our grounds and the propositions they are supposed to justify. Thus, if our grounds make certain that a contingent proposition is true, our assent can be combined withthe consciousness of the impossibility of the opposite, even though the proposition in question is in itself empirical and contingent, and thus, from a metaphysical perspective, the opposite would be possible. Saying that the

79

sufficient to produce the acceptance of a proposition from the

point of view of a particular subject,14 while an objective ground

is a ground that not only can be intersubjectively recognized as

a valid ground, but also warrants (i.e. provides certainty) that

the proposition is true.

According to this description of subjective and objective

grounds, having an opinion is a doxastic state where I do not

have grounds that are sufficient either to produce subjective

acceptance, or to provide an intersubjectively valid epistemic

justification for acceptance. This does not mean that in

opinions we do not have any grounds at all, but only that they

are not sufficient to produce acceptance or justify a claim to

knowledge. When I have an opinion, I recognize that the objective

grounds that I have are sufficient to make the truth of a

proposition more probable than that of its opposite, but are

grounds entail the truth of a proposition should thus be taken as applicable to the justification of both contingent and necessary propositions. With reference to the passage quoted in this note, it should also be highlighted that Kant’s emphasis on consciousness points toward an internalist account of justification.14 An assent based on sufficient subjective grounds can be either justified ornot. It is not justified if these grounds are only grounds that we take to be objectively sufficient. This would be a case of persuasion (Überredung) for Kant. It is justified if our subjective grounds are sufficient to produce acceptance and, at the same time, we recognize that these grounds are not candidates for objective sufficiency.

80

insufficient to epistemically justify acceptance of the former.

On the other hand, believing is a state where I have sufficient

subjective grounds, that is, I have grounds that are able to

produce an acceptance of the proposition in question when I

consider the matter from my own perspective, but I have not

sufficient objective grounds and I am conscious of that. This

means that a subjective ground which is a ground that I take to

be objective and is not cannot be a relevant ground in a state of

belief, insofar as for Kant in this state I must be able to

recognize that my ground is not a candidate for objective

sufficiency. A subjective ground that I take to be an objective

one and is not would generate persuasion (Überredung), and not

belief (CPR A 820/B 848).15 Since it consciously lacks objective

grounds, the justification of beliefs is therefore non-epistemic.

Finally, knowledge is an assent that is able to produce

acceptance (and has thus sufficient subjective grounds), and is

based on objective grounds that can be intersubjectively

15 Recall that Kant’s concept of belief is not our own. Belief is not simply the attitude of considering something to be true, but, roughly, can be equatedwith a justified belief that is not a candidate for epistemic or theoretical justification. It would probably make much more sense to connect the contemporary concept of belief to Kant’s concept of assent or taking-to-be-true. See: Chignell 2007 and Stevenson 2003.

81

recognized and that warrant the truth of the proposition we

assent to, while we are conscious that they do so.

As is evident from this reconstruction, Kant approaches the

concept of knowledge by means of the kind of justification a

claim to knowledge requires, where the justification that is

needed must be able to warrant the truth of the proposition in

question and we must be conscious of this ability. This means

that Kant’s account of justification for claims to knowledge is

pretty demanding and requires infallibility. In order to be

justified in claiming to know that p, we must possess grounds

that warrant the truth of p and we must be conscious of that.

Accordingly, following Kant, we cannot have cases of justified

claims to knowledge which do not entail knowledge. As stated in

the Jäsche Logic, this requirement for justified claims to knowledge

applies to both a posteriori and a priori inquiries and Kant recognizes

claims to knowledge that can be justified by either empirical or

rational grounds (KGS 9:70-1).16 Here, the fact that, for Kant, we

16 If both a posteriori and a priori justification require certainty, it is a priori justification that is the best candidate for reaching this latter standard. Thus, when it is possible to choose between rational and empirical grounds to sustain our claims to knowledge, we should always prefer the former: “[w]e cannot have rational certainty of everything, but where we can have it, we must put it before empirical certainty” (KGS 9:71).

82

can only recognize the truth of contingent propositions on

empirical grounds should not generate confusion. The

infallibility of a claim to knowledge concerns the relationship

of our grounds with the truth of the propositions they are

intended to support and does not affect the contingent or

necessary status of the proposition itself. Thus, given the

grounds that I have, I might be in a position to be certain that

a particular proposition about a contingent fact is true, even

though, from a metaphysical perspective, the proposition in

question is not necessarily true, insofar as what it expresses is

not necessarily the case. Therefore, unlike what Kant suggests in

the first Critique, in his Lectures on Logic he acknowledges that

certainty is not necessarily only associated with a-priority and

necessity, but can be reached also in the case of the

justification of claims to knowledge concerning contingent

empirical propositions.17

17 If we want to apply the distinction between necessity and contingency to the discussion of fallibility and infallibility, we can say that in the case of infallibility the truth of the claim we intend to justify is necessarily implied by our grounds, be they empirical or rational. By contrast, in the case of fallibility, the truth of the claim in question remains “contingent” given the grounds we have. Obviously, this is quite different from saying thatfallibility and infallibility correspond to the contingent or necessary character of the propositions themselves.

83

However, if both a priori and a posteriori justified claims to

knowledge require infallibility, Kant seems to think that in

cases of a priori epistemic justification no other form of assent

can be justified than knowledge. This means that we are either

able to justify a claim to knowledge, or we cannot have any other

form of doxastic assent, like opinion, or belief.18 This is clear

for example in the following sentence: “[i]n judging from pure

reason, to have an opinion is not allowed at all. For since it

will not be supported on grounds of experience, but everything

that is necessary should be cognized a priori, the principle of

connection requires universality and necessity, thus complete

certainty, otherwise no guidance to the truth is forthcoming at

all” (CPR A 822-3/B 850-1).

From this brief reconstruction, it is evident why Kant,

according to his own account of a priori justification, described

the claims he advanced in his philosophy as being infallible.

Accordingly, when he explicitly addresses the status of the

18 Kant argues that both opinion and belief are inadequate in inquiries aimingat a priori knowledge. Opinion is inadequate because a priori grounds must be able to show that a proposition is necessary. Kant seems here to confuse the necessity of the proposition itself with the necessity with which it should follow from our grounds. On the other hand, belief, in its Kantian sense, is astate of assent that is misplaced in inquiries aiming at knowledge.

84

contentions in his theoretical philosophy, he maintains that they

provide an infallible a priori epistemic justification of some

necessary truths (concerning mathematical and empirical

cognitions). On the other hand, it seems that he regarded the

claims in his practical philosophy as involving two kinds of

infallible justification: an epistemic infallible a priori

justification of necessary moral principles,19 and a non-

epistemic, practical, but infallible, a priori justification of

claims concerning God and the soul (CPR A 823ff./B 851ff.). In

this latter kind of justification, our aim is a state of belief

based on moral grounds, and not knowledge.20 In the following I

will focus on the kind of justification required for claims to a

priori knowledge. I will thus avoid considering the kind of

19 “It is just the same with the principles of morality, since one must not venture an action on the mere opinion that something is allowed, but must knowthis” (CPR A 823/B 851).20 The infallibility of moral beliefs seems to be compatible with regarding the belief as possibly false from a theoretical perspective. Accordingly, in the Jäsche Logic Kant identifies belief as a subclass of uncertain assent, where we have “consciousness of the contingency or the possibility of the opposite” (KGS 9:66). However, belief is uncertain only from the point of view of epistemic justification based on objective grounds, where I am at the same time certain that the belief cannot be proved either true or false on the basis of those grounds. From the point of view of practical, non-epistemic justification, belief provides certainty, “which is necessary only in a practical respect given a priori, hence an assent of what I accept on moral grounds, and in such a way that I am certain that the opposite can never be proved” (KGS 9:67).

85

justification Kant attributes to his claims to belief in his

practical philosophy. In this respect, it is clear that when Kant

explicitly considers the status of the claims he advances in his

theoretical philosophy he maintains that they are apodictically

certain and infallible.

3. Kant’s Fallibilism in the “Discipline” and the “Architectonic”

Kant’s ascription of certainty and infallibility to his claims to

a priori knowledge seems to contrast with his modest description of

reason and his modest account of the capacity to build

philosophical systems. I will address these two issues in turn.

Kant’s account of reason is modest in at least two important

respects:21 1) reason is a faculty that is not transparent to

itself, and the claims that it can justify are not immediately

evident; 2) reason is described as a faculty that we have in

common, as something requiring intersubjective agreement.

As to the first point, a central theme in the

“Transcendental Dialectic” and the “Discipline of Pure Reason,” a21 For a modest reading of Kant’s conception of reason see: O’Neill 1992. By “reason,” I here refer to Kant’s broad concept of reason, the one referring toall our higher faculties of cognition and including reason in the narrow sense, as the faculty of inference, and understanding (cf. CPR B 169, A 835/B 863).

86

theme that is relevant for understanding the whole Critique of Pure

Reason, is that human reason has a natural tendency to develop

illusory transcendent ideas, which, while giving the impression

of being necessarily valid and indubitable, are in fact sources

of deception and insoluble conflicts in speculative metaphysics.

From this point of view, reason presents us “an entire system of

delusions and deceptions” (CPR A 711/B 739). This is why we need

a critique of our capacity to cognize objects through reason and

ultimately a discipline which erects “a system of caution and

self-examination out of the nature of reason and the objects of

its pure use, before which no false sophistical illusion can

stand up but must rather immediately betray itself” (CPR A 711/B

739). Moreover, even if we consider the valid cognitions that are

justifiable through theoretical reason, as mathematical

cognitions and a priori cognitions concerning experience are, the

way in which they are so justifiable is not immediately clear.

This does not mean that we should doubt the validity of

mathematical cognitions or of a priori cognitions concerning

possible experience. By contrast, their validity can be taken for

granted for Kant (CPR A 710-1/B 738-9). However, what is not

87

immediately clear are the sources that lie at the basis of these

cognitions.22

As to the second point, in the “Discipline of Pure Reason”

Kant maintains that reason “has no dictatorial authority.”

Accordingly, a claim of reason “is never anything more than the

agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express

his reservations, indeed even his veto, without holding back”

(CPR A 738-9/B 766-7). Reason is not a private faculty by means

of which I can easily obtain an evident and certain justification

of my claims to knowledge. On the contrary, reason is essentially

a public affair and when I follow its commands I need to seek the

agreement of others, just as to listen to their objections and

counterproposals. “This lies already in the original right of

human reason, which recognizes no other judge than universal

human reason itself, in which everyone has a voice; and since all

improvement of which our condition is capable must come from

this, such a right is holy, and must not be curtailed” (CPR A

22 In both cases our capacity to have a priori cognitions rests on the possibility to connect a priori concepts and intuitions, even if relevant differences are at stake, as it is expressed in the Kantian distinction between rational cognitions from the construction of concepts and rational cognitions from concepts (cf. CPR A 713ff./B 742ff.).

88

752/B 780).23 The lack of self-transparency and the public

dimension of reason contrast with the absolute certainty and

infallibility that Kant ascribes to claims to a priori knowledge by

reason. If reason can be deceptive and if we must test the

validity of our claims in a domain that is essentially public,

the self-ascription of absolute certainty for our claims seems to

be misplaced.

We can find a confirmation that this is the case if we

consider for a moment Kant’s modest account of philosophy in the

“Architectonic of Pure Reason.” In this chapter, Kant first

identifies a general condition of scientificity, that is,

architectonic unity, and then he points out the way to attain

this standard in philosophy. He describes architectonic unity as

a collection of cognitions, where the relationships between the

parts is not the result of an accidental combination, but is

dependent on an idea which anticipates the form of the whole (CPR

A 832/B 860). This idea of the whole must be given a priori by

reason.24 However, even if the idea must be given a priori by

23 The recognition of this public character of reason is totally different from a form of relativism as O’Neill (1992, 305) emphasizes.24 It might seem odd to claim that the idea of the whole of a science should be given a priori by reason. After all the sciences are historical entities. As

89

reason, due to the lack of self-transparency of reason, the idea

which lies at the basis of a science often remains hidden and

unclear for a very long time, and in the meantime we arrange the

notions of the science in a way that does not reflect the

fundamental idea. In other words, we can be mistaken about the

way in which we represent a science and the fundamental

relationships among its doctrines.

Nobody attempts to establish a science without grounding it on an

idea. But in its elaboration the schema, indeed even the

definition of the science which is given right at the outset,

seldom corresponds to the idea; for this lies in reason like a

seed, all of whose parts still lie very involuted and are hardly

recognizable even under microscopic observation. (CPR A 834/B

862)

a remedy to this perceived oddity, one can notice that in this passage Kant isreferring to rational sciences, that is, to sciences based on rational a priori cognitions. Moreover, the a-priority of the idea should not be understood in astrict sense, as an idea that is identifiable independently of particular inquiries. Rather, the idea of the whole of a science can be interpreted as being a priori in the sense that, in considering the system of cognitions of a particular science, we should see the various parts of that system as occupying a place that follows from our very idea of the whole. That is, the idea of the whole must be considered as if it were prior to the parts. On thispoint see: Gava 2014.

90

Thus, reason can fail to recognize the fundamental structure of a

science which, in the end, is based on principles of reason that

are however hidden and unclear to reason itself. Philosophy, as a

particular discipline that seeks to attain scientificity, also

experiences this difficulty in recognizing its fundamental idea.

Accordingly, in the “Architectonic,” Kant presents the history of

philosophy as a series of failed attempts to clarify the idea on

which a coherent system of philosophy should be built. As a

remedy to this history of failures, Kant tries to identify the

idea which should be placed at the basis of philosophy, thus

allowing philosophy to become architectonic and scientific.

According to him, philosophy should be constructed following its

“cosmic concept” (CPR A 838-9/B 866-7), where the idea that gives

unity to the science is the orientation toward the “essential

ends,” and ultimately the “final end,” of human reason. These

ends are considered by moral philosophy (CPR A 838-40/B 866-8).

Establishing what philosophy according to its cosmic concept

exactly is, and determining what Kant considered the essential

ends of reason to be, is not an easy task, but it is not one that

we need to address here. What is relevant for our discussion is

91

that Kant regarded the idea of an ultimate and complete system of

philosophy based on a fundamental idea of reason as an

“archetype” (Urbild) (CPR A 838/B 866) which we must try to

approach, but which we cannot ever be sure to have achieved. Kant

seems to think that it is possible to match this archetype,25 but

even if we do so (or if we think we do), we cannot be totally

sure of our success and our views on the scientific character of

philosophy must continue to be subjected to the criticism of

public reason.

The need to submit our views on philosophy to the judgment

of public reason is clear if we analyze for a moment Kant’s

distinction between learning philosophy and learning to

philosophize. This distinction makes clear that even in the case

in which our views on philosophy in fact reflect the ultimate

system of philosophy, nonetheless we could never be completely

sure that this is the case and we should always submit those

views to the rational judgment of ourselves and other human

beings. Accordingly, Kant maintains that we cannot learn 25 “In this way philosophy is a mere idea of a possible science, which is nowhere given in concreto, but which one seeks to approach in various ways until the only footpath, much overgrown by sensibility, is discovered, and the hitherto unsuccessful ectype, so far as it has been granted to humans, is madeequal to the archetype” (CPR A 838/B 866).

92

philosophy, but we can only learn to philosophize (A 837/B 866),

meaning by that that we cannot approach philosophy as the

assimilation of a complete and definitive system of doctrines.26

To begin with, Kant claims that we cannot learn philosophy

because for him there was not a philosophy to learn yet, since,

at least according to his diagnosis of the philosophy of his

time, philosophy as an ultimate and coherent system of cognitions

based on an idea of reason was still only an archetype.27 However,

Kant claims that even if this archetype were achieved, the

appropriate way to approach the philosophical system which

realized it would be to submit it to the judgment of one’s own

reason. Thus, we would not have to learn the system as a static

set of doctrines, but we would have to approach it by

philosophizing on the views it presented, being able to

rationally recognize those views as ours. Philosophy can either

be learned “historically,” that is, as a given series of

teachings that are part of a particular philosophical system, or

26 On the distinction between learning philosophy and learning to philosophizesee: Hinske 1998, ch. 3; La Rocca 2003, 225-7, 235-42.27 “Until then [that is, until we have matched the archetype, my note] one cannot learn any philosophy; for where is it, who has possession of it, and bywhat can it be recognized? One can only learn to philosophize” (A 838 B 866).

93

“rationally,” that is, as a system of principles and concepts

that we recognize as valid after we have subjected it to the

judgment of our own reason (CPR A 835-7/B 863-5). The right way

to do philosophy however is to do it rationally, and, from this

perspective, even if there were an ultimate and complete system

of philosophy, we would always need to subject it to the

criticism of our own reason.28 In other words, to do philosophy

appropriately we must not apprehend a particular system (we must

not learn a philosophy), even if it were the ultimate and

definitive one, but we should always rationally evaluate the

views we are scrutinizing, trying to develop them further (we

must then learn to philosophize). This description of philosophy

and of the correct way of approaching its claims is strongly

related to Kant’s public account of reason. Accordingly, Kant

argues that it would be pretentious to claim that we are in

possession of the ultimate system of philosophy, the one that

everybody could learn as a definitive and immutable system. He

maintains: “[i]t would be very boastful to call oneself a

28 “But even granted that there were a philosophy actually at hand, no one wholearned it would be able to say that he was a philosopher, for subjectively his cognition of it would always be only historical” (KGS 9:25).

94

philosopher in this sense and to pretend to have equaled the

archetype, which lies only in the idea” (CPR A 839/B 867). This

seems to imply that our claims to knowledge in philosophy should

always be subjected to the scrutiny of public reason. Kant seems

to partially recognize the consequences of this account of reason

and philosophy for his criteria for justified claims to knowledge

when he stresses that “[w]ith knowledge one still listens to

opposed grounds” (KGS 9:72). This means that even when one is

justified in claiming knowledge, one should always submit one’s

views to the judgment of other human beings.

In following this reconstruction of Kant’s account of reason

and philosophy, it seems that Kant, when he explicitly considers

the justification required by claims to knowledge, sets the bar

too high for the powers he himself assigns to our reason. This

fact does not entail a skeptical result. On the contrary, it is

possible to develop a modest account of a priori justification

that, while maintaining that our a priori claims to knowledge can

be justified, leaves room for fallibilism concerning these

claims. This is what I will try to do in the next section. After

95

that, I will find some hints toward this fallible justification

in Kant’s concept of “conviction” (Überzeugung).

4. Fallible A Priori Justification

Kant’s reason is thus not transparent to itself and is

essentially public. At least at a first glance, it seems possible

and consistent to consider the justified claims advanced by this

reason as being fallible, even though these claims ascribe

necessity to some propositions through a priori justification. But

how should we understand fallibilism in this context?

By fallibilism I mean an attitude toward our justified

claims to knowledge which regards them as not excluding the

possibility that the claims in question are false and that our

justification for them is defeasible. By infalliblism I mean an

opposite attitude. That our claims to knowledge concerning

empirical objects can be considered justified and fallible at the

same time seems something that can easily be conceded. To turn a

Kantian example to our needs, we could consider the claim stating

that the sun rotates around the earth as justified in a context

in which Copernican astronomy was unavailable. However, the claim

96

was obviously fallible, insofar as it is false and it has been

defeated by better grounds of justification.

Maintaining that a claim to knowledge which identifies a

supposedly necessary proposition can be both justified a priori and

fallible seems to be more controversial. The fact that a priori

justification does not rest on empirical data and that it

normally claims necessity for the propositions it justifies makes

it quite easy to see a priori justification as necessarily

involving infallibility.29 The basic thought seems to be

expressible in the following question: how can we claim that a

proposition is a priori necessary if we cannot demonstrate that our

justification for this claim is infallible? This seems to be an

intuitive and common way to consider the relationship between

claims to a priori necessity and infallibility.

The thesis that a priori justification of claims concerning

necessary propositions entails infallibility involves the

association of two different senses of necessity: the necessity

of the proposition we claim to know and the necessary 29 The entailment relationship among claims to a-priority, necessity, and infallibility has been attacked from various perspectives. Saul Kripke (1980),for example, defended the possibility of contingent a priori propositions, whileBonjour (1998, chs. 1, 4) and Casullo (2003, ch. 3) have argued that a priori justified beliefs can be fallible and revisable.

97

relationship existing between our a priori justification and the

truth of the proposition in question. Accordingly, an

infallibilist account of a priori justification for claims to

knowledge would involve the following idea: we are a priori

justified in claiming that a proposition p is necessarily true

only if the truth of the necessary proposition is de facto entailed

by our a priori justification and we know it. This account of a priori

justification set the bar very high for a priori justified claims

to knowledge. According to this view, we have justification for a

priori claims to knowledge only if those claims are equivalent to

knowledge, where the knowledge of p is dependent on the knowledge

that p is de facto entailed by our a priori justification. But how

can we establish that there is this de facto necessary relationship

between our a priori justification and the truth of the necessary

proposition in need of justification? How can we determine that

we in fact have knowledge of the existence of this entailment

relationship and not only a fallible justification for claiming

to know that there is this entailment relationship? The answer

seems to be that we need a second order infallible justification

of the claim that our a priori justification entails the truth of

98

the necessary proposition in question.30 But can we really hope

for this second order infallible justification? If we consider

the refutation of basic claims of Euclidean geometry for example,

this infallible justification seems unavailable even in those

cases that seemed to be the best candidates for infallibility,

that is, mathematics and geometry. An a priori justification (for

example a mathematical demonstration) we regard as entailing the

truth of a proposition could simply contain errors that were

inaccessible to our considerations, or it could be based on

premises that turn out to be false. Alternatively, it could

simply be misleading. Accordingly, we cannot identify criteria

that infallibly indicate that the truth of a proposition

necessarily follows from our a priori justification, and this is

exactly the kind of second order infallible justification that

infallible accounts of a priori justification for claims to

knowledge need. If this is true, we cannot be absolutely certain

of knowing that the truth of a proposition is de facto entailed in 30 Alternatively, we could endorse an externalist position: in this case we would be justified in advancing a claim to knowledge only if our a priori justification de facto entailed the truth of the claim in question, without taking into consideration if we are conscious of this de facto relationship or not. This is of course a plausible proposal, but it does not seem to go in thedirection of Kant’s own views, insofar as Kant, at various points, claims thatwe must be conscious of the grounds we have.

99

our a priori justification for it. Maintaining that this kind of

justification is required for a priori claims to knowledge would

render it impossible to identify any claim that satisfies these

criteria. Moreover, this would have counterintuitive consequences

concerning those claims that we regard as a priori justified in

some historical contexts, but turned out to be false or

defeasible. If we recall the example I have used in the

introductory section, it seems reasonable to maintain that the

claim that the sum of the internal angles of a triangle is always

180° was justified before the development of non-Euclidean

geometries. If this is true, the claim was justified a priori, but

of course the justification did not entail the truth of the claim

in question and it was also defeasible.31

A more plausible account of a priori justification for claims

to knowledge is possible if we endorse a fallibilist standpoint.

From this point of view, we would regard differently the

supposedly necessary relationship existing between our a priori

justification and the truth of the necessary proposition in

31 One could argue that the claim was in fact unjustified, because the a priori grounds we had in fact did not entail the truth of the claim in question. However, as I have already suggested, this would render very hard the task of finding the criteria to decide if our a priori claims are justified or not.

100

question. Accordingly, a fallibilist account of a priori

justification for claims to knowledge does not require actual

knowledge, and more specifically actual infallible knowledge, of

an existing entailment relationship between our a priori

justification and the truth of the necessary proposition we aim

to justify. On the contrary, a priori justification for claims to

knowledge would only involve the following idea: we are a priori

justified to claim that a proposition p is necessarily true only

if our a priori justification can justifiably be regarded as entailing the

truth of the necessary proposition in question. According to this

perspective, we do not need to provide a second order infallible

justification of the claim that our a priori justification entails

the truth of the proposition in question. When we consider the

relationship between our a priori justification and the truth of

the proposition in question, we need only to be fallibly

justified in regarding the latter as entailed by the former. This

perspective is of course compatible with the absence of an actual

entailment relationship between our a priori justification and the

truth of the proposition in question.

101

But what are the criteria to decide if an a priori claim to

knowledge is fallibly justified or not? I have suggested that

criteria to identify valid a priori justifications are unavailable

if we endorse an infallibilist perspective. By contrast, we are

in a much better position with a fallibilist standpoint, insofar

as from this point of view we do not need to identify criteria

which guarantee that there is actual knowledge of a de facto

necessary relationship between our a priori justification and the

truth of the proposition in need of justification. On the

contrary, we only need to identify criteria which indicate that

we are fallibly justified in regarding our a priori justification

as entailing the truth of the proposition in question, while it

is in fact completely possible that this alleged entailment

relationship does not apply. Accordingly, we can be considered a

priori justified in claiming that a proposition is necessarily true

if we can reasonably expect our claim to be intersubjectively

recognized as valid. This fact highlights an important

characteristic of fallible a priori justification for claims to

knowledge: a priori fallible justification is historically

102

contextual.32 Ancient geometers were justified in claiming that

the sum of the internal angles of a triangle was always 180°, but

contemporary geometers are not. Accordingly, a claim can be

considered a priori justified if, in our historical context, we can

rationally expect our a priori justification for that claim to be

intersubjectively recognized as entailing the truth of the claim

in question. The rationality of this expectation is thus decided

by the recognizability of our justification in a particular

historical context, which decides what is the set of basic

knowledge and presuppositions which is required to a particular

subject. The relevance of the historical context for a priori

justification of claims to knowledge should not be confused with

the claim that a priori knowledge is historically contextual. When a

fallibly a priori justified claim to knowledge actually amounts to

knowledge, that is, when our justification for the claim not only

32 This historical contextualism might suggest that a priori justification is notat all a priori after all. Somebody could argue that if our justification is dependent on the kind of reasons that can be accepted as a priori sufficient forsustaining a claim to knowledge in a particular historical context, this meansthat those reasons are not in fact a priori. However, this historical contextualism simply acknowledges that the domain of a priori reasons is not immediately clear and transparent for us. By contrast, our access to these reasons is always perspectival and influenced by what we can expect to be considered a valid and sufficient a priori reason for a claim to knowledge in a particular historical context. In other words, the reasons and the grounds arenot historical in themselves, but our access to them is.

103

can be regarded as entailing the truth of the proposition we

claim to know in our historical context, but actually entails it,

our claim to a priori knowledge would amount to knowledge and would

have validity regardless of the historical context.

To summarize, an infallibilist account of a priori

justification for claims to knowledge requires not only that our

a priori justification for claiming that proposition p is

necessarily true de facto entails the truth of p and we know it,

but also that we have a second order infallible justification for

claiming that our a priori justification entails the truth of p. On

the contrary, a fallibilist account of a priori justification for

claims to knowledge only requires that the truth of p can justifiably

be regarded as entailed by our a priori justification. In this way, our

fallibly justified claim that there is such an entailment

relationship is compatible with its actual absence. The criterion

that decides if we are fallibly justified in claiming that our a

priori justification entails the truth of a supposedly necessary

proposition is the rationally expectable acceptance of our claim

by other rational inquirers in our historical context.

104

5. Kant on Conviction

In section 2 we have seen that when Kant explicitly addresses the

conditions for justified claims to knowledge, he maintains that

justified claims to knowledge need to be based on both subjective

and objective sufficient grounds, where the latter are

intersubjectively valid grounds for which we are conscious that

they entail the truth of our claims. This form of justification

is required for both claims to a priori and to empirical knowledge.

I have suggested that this account of epistemic justification is

too demanding for Kant’s own description of reason as a faculty

that is not transparent to itself and that is essentially public.

Even though Kant’s explicit treatment of the justification

required by our claims to knowledge endorses a form of

infallibilism, we can use his distinction between conviction

(Überzeugung) and knowledge for developing an account of epistemic

justification, and indeed of a priori epistemic justification, that

better suits his account of reason and philosophy that I have

presented in section 3.

Besides the distinction between having an opinion,

believing, and knowing, Kant identifies a further distinction to

105

differentiate between different forms of assent, that is, the

distinction between conviction (Überzeugung) and persuasion

(Überredung). Conviction and persuasion should not be considered

as two further members of the former group, though. Rather, they

identify a different distinction which overlaps with the former

in ways that are not immediately clear.33 Here I do not want to

consider the complex relationship between these two distinctions.

By contrast, I want to focus on the relationship between

knowledge and conviction.

The key feature to distinguish conviction from persuasion

is intersubjective recognizability.34

The touchstone of whether the assent is conviction or mere

persuasion is therefore, externally, the possibility of

communicating it and finding the assent to be valid for the

33 For example, Chignell (2007, 49) and Stevenson (2003, 82) represent very differently the way in which persuasion should be placed within the general scheme.34 In his contribution to this volume Marcus Willaschek associates conviction with subjective validity. Kant himself makes this identification at CPR A 822/B 850, but in this context he is not discussing the difference between conviction and persuasion. When Kant addresses this latter distinction he associates conviction with intersubjective validity. It thus seems that in thepassage to which Willaschek refers Kant is using another sense of conviction than the one that is relevant here.

106

reason of every human being. (CPR A 820-1/B 848-9, translation slightly

modified)

Accordingly, Kant describes conviction as an assent that “is

valid for everyone merely as long as he has reason” (CPR A 820/B

848). On the other hand, persuasion “has only private validity,

and this assent cannot be communicated.” (CPR A 820/B 848).

Intersubjective recognizability is here a means to identify

assents which are based on sufficient objective grounds (CPR A

820/B 848). Kant thus emphasizes different aspects of sufficient

objective grounds, when these are considered as conditions of

either conviction or knowledge respectively. While the

distinctive feature to recognize sufficient objective grounds for

conviction is intersubjective acceptability,35 the distinctive

feature to recognize sufficient objective grounds for knowledge

35 Kant’s analysis of conviction is sometimes confusing, because he identifiesa kind of conviction based on sufficient subjective grounds (and lacking sufficient objective grounds). He calls this kind of conviction practical (KGS9:72), and he associates it with a moral belief, which he sometimes defines asa conviction based on sufficient subjective grounds (cf. CPR A 829/B 857). Thecriterion to decide if what seems a practical conviction is a case of persuasion or not cannot rest on public recognizability because, resting on subjective grounds, a practical conviction cannot be intersubjectively accepted. From these remarks, it is clear that Kant uses two different understandings of conviction, with different conditions of validity. In this section I am only concerned with convictions based on sufficient objective grounds.

107

is infallibility or certainty (they are grounds that de facto

entail the truth of the proposition we assent to and we know it).

It is reasonable to think that for Kant these different ways of

describing sufficient objective grounds ultimately identify the

same thing. From this point of view, universal agreement could be

obtained only for those grounds that infallibly sustain the truth

of the claim they support. In this way, sufficient objective

grounds for conviction and sufficient objective grounds for

knowledge would amount to the same thing for Kant. Kant himself

suggests this, when in the Jäsche Logic he associates logical

conviction with knowledge and objective certainty (KGS 9:72).

Still, it seems that between persuasion, as a form of assent

that has only private validity, and knowledge, as a form of

assent that has universal validity because it is based on grounds

for which we know that they actually entail the truth of the

proposition we assent to, it is possible to recognize a whole

spectrum of possibilities with growing degrees of intersubjective

recognizability. Within this spectrum, there are surely claims to

knowledge that are justifiably regarded as candidates for

universal recognizability, because, in a particular historical

108

moment, they are generally seen as universally valid and as based

on grounds that entail their truth. Again, here Euclidean

geometry can help us in clarifying the issue. Some claims in

Euclidean geometry that we now regard as false could be

considered as candidates for universal recognizability, because,

in a particular historical moment, they were generally seen as

universally valid and as based on grounds that entailed their

truth. As this example shows, we can distinguish two kinds of

claims here. On the one hand, a claim can reasonably be regarded

as a candidate for universal validity, because, in a particular

historical moment, we can reasonably expect it to be publicly

recognized as valid and as based on grounds that entail the truth

of the claim in question. On the other hand, a claim can actually

amount to knowledge because it is based on grounds that entail

the truth of the claim in question and these grounds are thus

universally recognizable as sufficient grounds for that claim. Of

course, in this case the validity of our justification would not

be restricted to a particular historical context. It would be

actually universal. Kant does not seem to recognize the

difference between these two situations. For him, a claim to

109

knowledge has either only private validity or it is universally

recognizable as valid insofar it is based on grounds that entail

its truth and we are conscious of this.36 As we have seen in

section 2, on this account, we are justified to claim knowledge

only if we in fact have knowledge on the basis of infallible

grounds.

In section 4 I have suggested that it would be impossible to

identify criteria that would tell us when we in fact have this

kind of infallible justification and Kant seems to recognize this

fact in his own account of philosophy and reason. Recall that

Kant describes the idea of an ultimate and complete philosophical

system as an archetype that, until his times at least, we were

not able to achieve. He also claims that even if we reached this

archetype, we would still need to continue to test its universal

validity by submitting our claims or the claims of others to the

judgment of our public reason. This suggests that an absolute

certainty is unreachable by our philosophical claims, and even if

we reached the archetype, that is, even if we obtained a system

36 Opinion and belief are kinds of assent that are not relevant in this respect. Both cannot be considered claims to knowledge, insofar as in both cases we recognize to lack sufficient objective grounds.

110

of interconnected claims to knowledge where our a priori

justification for these claims entailed their truth, we could not

decide the universal validity of these claims on our own, and we

would always have to wait for the judgment of other rational

beings, without being able to establish universal validity once

and for all. This means that infallibility is too high a

condition for our justified claims to knowledge, and especially

for our justified claims to knowledge in philosophy. In this

respect, it makes more sense to develop further the Kantian

distinction between conviction and knowledge in order to

differentiate between justified claims to knowledge, and

justified claims to knowledge that actually amount to knowledge.

Accordingly, a conviction, which I here interpret as a

justified claim to knowledge, would be a claim that can

reasonably be regarded as a candidate for universal validity,

because, in a particular historical moment, we can reasonably

expect it to be publicly recognized as valid and as based on

grounds that entail the truth of the claim in question. This is a

pretty high requirement for justified claims to knowledge,

because they must be able to be seen as candidates for universal

111

validity in a particular historical moment and they should be

publicly recognizable as based on grounds which entail the truth

of the claims in question. However, this requirement leaves open

the possibility that a justified claim to knowledge is false and

thus revisable. On the other hand, knowledge, which I here

interpret as a justified claim to knowledge that actually amounts

to knowledge,37 would be a claim that is based on grounds that

actually entail the truth of the claim in question and are thus

universally recognizable as sufficient grounds for that claim.

However, if, in doing philosophy and other kinds of inquiry, we

always need to submit our claims to the judgment of public reason

even when we are in possession of knowledge, it means that we do

not have the criteria to distinguish if we have a justification

which actually entails the truth of the claim in question, or

simply a justification which we are justified in regarding as

entailing the truth of the claim in question, insofar as it is a

candidate for universal validity. If we cannot actually determine

with certainty if we are in possession of knowledge, that is, if

37 This seems to be in contrast with Timothy Williamson’s account of knowledge, which regards the latter as a sui generis mental state that is not analyzable in terms of other concepts, like justification and belief (cf. Williamson 2000). I do not have the space to take up this issue here.

112

we are in possession of a justification that actually entails the

truth of our claims, it means that we must regard that idea of

knowledge as the archetype we must always try to attain, but that

we cannot ever be completely and absolutely certain to have

achieved.

6. Conclusion

In this paper I have shown how Kant’s claims concerning the

infallible and certain status of the theses he defends in his

theoretical philosophy are based on his demanding account of

justification for our claims to knowledge. According to this

account of justification, a justified claim to knowledge is a

kind of assent based on grounds for which we are conscious that

they entail the truth of the proposition we assent to. Kant

argues that both empirical and a priori claims to knowledge should

meet this demanding criterion of justification. However, what is

distinctive about a priori epistemic justification is that it

cannot justify forms of assent different from knowledge.

According to Kant, we cannot have an a priori epistemically

113

justified opinion.38 In a priori inquiries aiming at knowledge, we

can either claim knowledge or nothing else. Since for Kant, as we

saw in section 2, a justified claim to knowledge has to entail

actual knowledge, it is quite unsurprising that he maintains that

the theses he defended in his theoretical philosophy are

infallible and certain.

However, in section 3 I have argued that this infallibilist

account of epistemic justification is too demanding for Kant’s

own account of reason and philosophy. Kant describes reason as a

faculty that is not transparent to itself and that can be

deceptive. Moreover reason is essentially public and requires us

to always submit our claims to the judgment of other rational

beings. These features of reason are reflected in Kant’s account

of philosophy in the “Architectonic of Pure Reason,” where Kant

claims that nobody can maintain to have achieved the ultimate

system of philosophy. By contrast, a philosophy scholar should

38 For Kant, we are justified in holding an opinion when we have some objective grounds for our assent, even if we lack sufficient objective groundsfor a claim to knowledge. He maintains that a state of opinion can only be justified in empirical inquiries. In a priori inquiries a ground can either showthe necessity of the proposition we assent to, or it cannot be considered an objective ground at all (cf. CPR A 822/B 850).

114

always expect her views to be rationally scrutinized by other

inquirers.

In section 4 I have introduced an account of fallible a priori

epistemic justification that better suits this characterization

of reason and philosophy. According to this account, a claim to

knowledge concerning a supposedly necessary proposition is a priori

justified when the a priori grounds we have can reasonably be

regarded as entailing the truth of the proposition in question.

This justification is compatible with the absence of an actual

entailment relationship and thus presents an account of a priori

justification which regards the latter as fallible and revisable.

To finish, in section 5 I have used Kant’s distinction between

conviction and knowledge in order to find some hints toward a more

modest account of epistemic justification in his own philosophy.

According to this interpretation, a conviction is a justified

claim to knowledge insofar as it is a claim that can reasonably

be regarded as a candidate for universal validity, because, in a

particular historical moment, we can reasonably expect it to be

publicly recognized as valid and as based on grounds that entail

the truth of the claim in question. We can apply this account of

115

conviction to a priori claims to knowledge, where the distinctive

feature of the latter is that they are based on a priori grounds.

If we understand conviction in this way, Kant could well have

argued that his philosophical claims, in order to be considered

justified a priori, should have been able to be considered

convictions and thus worthy of public recognition. However, this

would have been compatible with a fallibilist standpoint on those

views that recognized the fallibility of our reason and the

necessity to continuously submit our views to the judgments of

others.39

References

Bonjour, L. 1998. In Defense of Pure Reason: A Rationalist Account of A Priori

Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chignell, A. 2007. “Kant’s Concept of Justification.” Noûs,

41(1): 33-63.

39 I would like to thank Marcus Willaschek and Robert Stern for their commentson previous drafts of this paper.

116

Gava, G. 2011. “Can Transcendental Philosophy Endorse

Fallibilism?” Contemporary Pragmatism, 8(1): 133-51.

______. 2014. “Kant’s Definition of Science in the Architectonic of

Pure Reason and the Essential Ends of Reason.” Kant-Studien, 105(3):

372-93.

Haack, S. 1979. “Fallibilism and Necessity.” Synthese, 41: 37–63.

Hinske, N. 1998. Zwischen Aufklärung und Vernunftkritik. Studien zum Kantschen

Logikcorpus. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog.

Kant, I. 1900-. Kants gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: De Gruyter,

Reimer. References in English are given according to: The Cambridge

Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant, edited by P. Guyer and A. Wood.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992-.

Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard

University Press.

117

La Rocca, C. 2003. Soggetto e Mondo: Studi su Kant. Venezia: Marsilio.

O’Neill, O. 1992. “Vindicating Reason.” In The Cambridge Companion

To Kant, edited by P. Guyer, 280-308. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Pasternack, L. 2011. “Kant’s Doctrinal Belief in God.” In

Rethinking Kant, vol. 3, edited by O. Thorndike, 200-18. Newcastle

upon Tine: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

______. 2014. “Kant on Opinion: Assent, Hypothesis, and the Norms

of General Applied Logic.” Kant-Studien, 105(1): 41-82.

Stevenson, L. 2003. “Opinion, Belief or Faith, and Knowledge.”

Kantian Review, 7: 72-101.

Warenski, L. 2009. “Naturalism, Fallibilism and the A Priori.”

Philosophical Studies 142(3): 403–26.

118

Watkins, E. and Willaschek, M. Unpublished manuscript. “Kant on

Cognition and Knowledge.”

Westphal, K. 2004. Kant’s Transcendental Proof of Realism. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

119