The Problem of Objectivity: Kant v. Wittgenstein From Subjectivity to Intersubjectivity

Subject Areas : Epistemological researches

MohammadReza  Esmkhani ¹ (Science Studies Department, the Iranian Institute of Philosophy, Tehran, Iran)

Received: 2019-10-08 Accepted : 2019-12-25 Published : 2021-01-20

Keywords: Rationality, Truth, Philosophy of Science, Conceptual Scheme, Objectivity,

Abstract :

In this paper, having described the problem of objectivity, I’ll try to reconstruct the solutions of two important philosophers, Kant and Wittgenstein, and then I’ll attempt to deal with the different consequences of these two divergent attitudes regarding some of our most significant epistemic-semantic concepts. The problem of Objectivity concerns with the question that, what is the source of the ‘objective validity’ or ‘objective reference’ of our representations (mental or linguistic), and what makes them something totally different from some ‘arbitrary impressions’ and ‘mere appearances’? Kant’s response to this question is to rely on the transcendental structure of human mind, particularly the pure categories of the understanding, and Wittgenstein’s response is to advert to the normative structure of social institution or practice; i.e. they try to explain the objectivity of our representations in terms of, respectively, the subjectivity and the intersubjectivity. And in the final part, I’ll try to show that these two different attitudes to the problem of objectivity, give rise to totally different pictures of some of our most important epistemic-semantic concepts: truth, concept-application, conceptual scheme, rationality, and the appropriate form of the field of philosophy of science.

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