Abstract

Abstract. In his masterful essay, “Armchair Knowledge: Some Kantian Reflections”, A.W. Moore claims that Kant lapses into contradiction as a result of invoking transcendental idealism as a solution to the puzzle of what Moore calls “armchair knowledge”. Moore talks about “the incoherence of transcendental idealism” and, through a discussion which includes the question of whether different subjects possess different categories, offers an account of armchair knowledge without transcendental idealism. He suggests we should abandon the Kantian a priori intuitions and, with them, also Kant’s synthetic a priori judgements. In this paper, I examine some of the problems identified by Moore in Kant’s account. I do not aim to show that there is no internal inconsistency in Kant’s thought or that Moore (perhaps continuing in this way Kant’s project of uncovering the deceptions of transcendental judgements) might not be right to point to potential problems in Kant’s texts; my claim is rather that there are resources in the Kantian corpus to explain away the main contradictions and conflicts Moore identifies in Kant.

Key words: Kant, Adrian W. Moore, transcendental idealism, knowledge vs. cognition, armchair knowledge, things in themselves.

Citation

Baiasu, Sorin. 2022. The Possibility of Kantian Armchair Knowledge. Public Reason 14 (1): 44-67.