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Kant on the Continuity of Alterations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2019

Tim Jankowiak
Tim Jankowiak*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Towson University, Towson, Maryland, USA
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Abstract

The metaphysical “Law of Continuity of Alterations” (“LCA”) says that whenever an object alters from one state to another, it passes through a continuum of intermediate states. Kant treated LCA as a transcendental law of understanding. The primary purpose of the paper is to reconstruct and evaluate Kant’s three arguments for LCA. All three are found to be inadequate. However, a secondary goal of the paper is to show that LCA would have more naturally been construed as a regulative principle of reason (rather than a law of understanding). I conclude with some remarks about how this could work.

Keywords

Kantcontinuityalterationstimecausationregulative principles
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 49 - 66
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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