Kant on Empirical Knowledge and Induction in the Two Introductions to the Critique of the Power of Judgment

Seide, Ansgar

Abstract

In their interpretations of the two introductions to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Juliet Floyd and Henry Allison argue that Kant’s account of the reflecting power of judgment can be read as his vindication of inductive inference and as an answer to Hume’s worries concerning induction. Paul Guyer, on the other hand, argues that Kant’s account in these passages falls short of providing an adequate answer to Hume’s arguments. In this paper, I want to show that the strongest account of Kant’s vindication of inductive inference appears when we combine a reading of Kant’s account of the reflecting power of judgment in the first introduction along the lines suggested by Floyd and Allison with Guyer’s interpretation of Kant’s account in the second introduction. As we will see, Kant’s vindication of inductive inference is stronger than Guyer suspects, although it does not amount to a straightforward refutation of Hume’s worries concerning the uniformity of nature.