UC San Diego

My dissertation defends a non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of nature. Inspired by the picture of nature in the Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, most readers align Kant with Early Modern mechanists, who claim that we can know that the internally purposive form of causality characteristic of organisms has no place in nature. To these mechanistic readers, Kant banishes internal purposiveness from nature. To moderate mechanistic interpreters, because we cannot know whether there are internally purposive things in nature and we can demonstrate that mechanism applies to nature, Kant pushes us to believe that any seemingly internally purposive natural products will eventually be explained in mechanistic terms. To strong mechanistic interpreters, Kant gives us the tools to know that there is no room for the special kind of teleology organisms exhibit in nature. My non-mechanistic interpretation rejects this trend by arguing that Kant urges us to believe that the internally purposive activity characteristic of organisms exists in nature. Belief in this context is a firm, positive, and voluntary attitude that aligns with and serves a subject’s interests and ends, and that has implications for the subject’s rational action, assertion, and deliberation. Kant’s stated goal in the third Critique is to bridge the gulf between freedom and nature. My non-mechanistic interpretation offers a new account of how Kant promises to construct this bridge.