Critique of Impure Reason
Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning is a book by American philosopher Steven James Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, research monographs, collections of papers, and many articles in professional journals. The book is a study of the limits of knowledge, reference, epistemic possibility, and meaning (philosophy). The massive treatise of 884 pages presents solutions to a large number of problems which traditional philosophy has debated for many centuries. The volume is the most extensive philosophical work by Bartlett to date. Renowned German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von  Weizsäcker contributed the book's Foreword. In the book, Bartlett explains that by a ""critique of impure reason"" is meant a critique of the limitative boundaries beyond which concepts and claims lead to ""impure reason"," undermining the very conditions of their "possible" meaning. The central thesis of the book is that many major traditional philosophical problems can be solved in a rationally compelling manner once we recognize and rein in the many ways in which we seek to overstep these limiting boundaries. When we try to trespass beyond these boundaries, which the "Critique of Impure Reason" calls the ""horizons"" of  reference, we employ concepts and make claims that violate the very conditions that must be granted for them to possess any "possible" meaning. The book's objective is to understand the unavoidable boundaries of the frameworks we use, and to help us to avoid conceptual confusions that come about when attempts are made to transgress beyond what is possible and meaningful. Background. Previously published work by Bartlett leading to the "Critique of Impure Reason". In the "Critique of Impure Reason" Bartlett builds on a series of previous publications by him that span a period of more than 50 years. Publications  directly allied to the "Critique of Impure Reason" include: Relationship to Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" and to Kant's notion of a "negative science". Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", published in two editions, in 1781 and 1787, sought to provide a critique of the "faculty of reason in general," and by doing this it attempted to supply an analysis of the preconditions of experience and knowledge. In contradistinction, Bartlett's "Critique of Impure Reason" seeks to provide a critique of the unavoidable limitations of philosophically fundamental concepts that "conflict" with the preconditions of possible reference, meaning  (philosophy), and knowledge. The latter task is essentially one of identifying, correcting, and eliminating the pervasive variety of conceptual error which it is the book's central purpose to analyze. It is this project which makes the book a critique of ""impure reason"" –- that is, reason that seeks to trespass beyond the limits of possible reference and meaning. Bartlett makes clear that the "Critique of Impure Reason" is neither intended as a commentary on Kant, nor as an elaboration of Kant's approach to philosophy. Instead, Bartlett directs attention to a notion, never developed by Kant but only briefly hinted  at by him in a 1770 letter he wrote to Swiss-German philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Johann Heinrich Lambert. In that letter, Kant suggested the need for a ""negative science"", a ""phaenomenologia generalis"." To Kant it seemed that such a "negative science" is "presupposed by metaphysics." As Bartlett interprets and develops Kant's briefly sketched notion, a "negative science" would set the general task for itself to avoid conceptual confusions that lead to meaninglessness. Bartlett stresses the need for and the importance of such a "negative science" in philosophy: As Bartlett develops it, negative science serves as a means to  differentiate between what is meaningful and what is meaningless: Specifically, its application would identify, correct, and eliminate the widespread form of conceptual error with which Bartlett is concerned, which he calls ""projection"" (more technically in the "Critique of Impure Reason" this is called ""metalogical projection""). Such a "negative science" would provide assurance that we employ only concepts, propositions, and statements that do not undermine their very possibility of possessing meaning. Bartlett's "Critique of Impure Reason" is essentially a treatise that develops such a negative science. The structure and contents of the "Critique of Impure Reason". The structure of the  book. The thesis of the "Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning" is elaborated in three stages: In the first stage (Part I: Why Philosophy Has Made No Progress and How It Can), Bartlett emphasizes the need for philosophy to evolve to the point where the discipline can supply noncontroversial, determinate, provable solutions to philosophical problems. He supports a rigorously scientific approach to philosophy, one that can establish conclusive results that cannot coherently be evaded or denied. In this first stage of the book, Bartlett identifies a group of psychological blocks or shortcomings found among many philosophers  that stand in the way of the discipline's ability to reach indisputable conclusions. For readers not interested in considering the psychological profile characteristic of many philosophers both in the past and today, Bartlett suggests that the first two psychologically-focused chapters of the book can be skipped without loss of the book's main content. The second principal stage in the book's development contains the technical, substantive core of Bartlett's approach (Part II: The Metalogic of Reference: A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy). Here, Bartlett formulates step-by-step in a series of 13 chapters the  methodology that makes it possible to identify, correct, and eliminate the widespread form of conceptual error with which the book is concerned. This central portion of the book formulates a ""self-validating"" method, one which cannot be rejected without undermining the very possibility of reference and meaning. This part of the book defines an approach to conceptual analysis that makes it possible to recognize the ""metalogical horizons"" beyond which it is impossible to go without incurring the special variety of ""projective"" self-referential incoherence which Bartlett was the first to identify, name, and analyze in his 1970 doctoral dissertation . The third main stage of analysis in the "Critique of Impure Reason" (Part III: Philosophical Applications of the Metalogic of Reference: Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science) applies the so-called ""de-projective method"," developed in Part II, to a wide range of major problems of philosophy, including problems of ontology; the problem of the external world; the problem of other minds; the problems of realism and idealism; the problem of time, space, space-time and causality; the problem of the self and of solipsism; as well as others. Part III culminates in three chapters  that apply the de-projective method to relativity physics and quantum theory. Bartlett's aim in these latter chapters is to show that the results reached by the "Critique of Impure Reason" confirm or support in a number of important ways many of the same results reached by theoretical physicists in both relativity theory and quantum theory. The book concludes with Part IV: Horizons, which contains two chapters. The first urges a rigorous, scientific approach in philosophy that goes beyond the mere beliefs that have defined traditional philosophy, and the second summarizes the principal results the long study has reached . The contents of the "Critique of Impure Reason". The following is an abbreviated table of contents of the "Critique of Impure Reason"; for conciseness, sections and sub-sections of individual chapters are not listed here: How the "Critique of Impure Reason" demonstrates or proves its claims. Central to the book's technique of analysis is Bartlett's ""method of de-projection"." Briefly stated, the method is designed to bring to light the ""metalogical presuppositions"" entailed by any frame of reference if that frame of reference is to be capable, in principle, of identifying the class of objects for which the  framework is intended. "Metalogical presuppositions" are those that cannot be denied or rejected without undermining the very possibility of reference to that class of objects. This approach to philosophical analysis is characterized by Bartlett's original conception and approach to "transcendental argumentation", which has a long history, most notably dating back to Kant. In this tradition, and briefly stated, a transcendental argument is one which seeks to demonstrate the necessary "preconditions" without which a thesis or position or claim to knowledge would be rendered impossible. Once the metalogical presuppositions of a frame of reference have been identified, Bartlett's  method of de-projection comes into play whenever any concept or claim involves an assertion about a set of objects that they possess an autonomy or are separable from the frame of reference permitting their identification. Such concepts or claims are then recognized as attempted transgressions of the inescapable "metalogical horizon" of that framework of reference. The "Critique of Impure Reason" claims to demonstrate that such assertions of autonomy or separability are ""metalogically projective""—that is, such assertions undermine their own possibility of reference and hence their own possibility of meaning. Throughout the main body of the treatise, this method of  analysis is applied in a large variety of philosophical contexts, to many of the major problems and questions that have concerned philosophers for centuries. The "Critique of Impure Reason" seeks to show that a great many major philosophical problems can conclusively be solved in this way. The philosophical purpose of the "Critique of Impure Reason". The "Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning" claims to break new ground in philosophy in the following ways: The book systematically analyzes one major philosophical problem after another, and in each case offers solutions designed to avoid horizon-trespassing, meaningless-entailing attempts  to go beyond what can coherently and rationally be thought or expressed. The book then describes how many philosophical problems and the concepts they presuppose can be understood in non-projective ways that do not lead to self-undermining incoherence. In this way, the book proposes a new and revisionary philosophical understanding. In more specific terms, the philosophical purpose of "Critique of Impure Reason" is made clear by the volume's systematic development in individual chapters of a general theory of possibility (Chapter 7), a broad-spectrum theory of presuppositions (Chapter 8), an inclusive theory of meaning (Chapter 11), and , key to the book's analytical method, a general theory of frameworks and of reference (esp. Chapters 5 and 10). The book's cover states that the book provides "a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought." Bartlett explains that such a shift in philosophical thinking comes about once philosophers realize that many of the principal concepts they rely upon—concepts that are presupposed by the major problems which have occupied traditional philosophy—are self-undermining on the level of their "possible meaningfulness". If the book is successful in justifying this claim, then the "Critique of Impure Reason" would be revolutionary  for the discipline of philosophy, for then much that has occupied philosophers over millennia would be reinterpreted in a fundamentally revisionary way. The book's critique would then be justified in asserting that a great many of the questions of philosophy fall under the heading of "impure reason", violating the conditions that must be granted for them to possess possible meaning. The "Critique of Impure Reason" is a work with a wide philosophical scope, applying a systematically developed method of analysis to many major problems that have engaged philosophers. The treatise of nearly 900 pages and more than 303,000 words  is a thoroughgoing work of scholarship with references to more than 600 individual publications, and containing more than 400 explanatory notes. Recognition of Bartlett's work in philosophy and commendations of the "Critique of Impure Reason". Bartlett's work in philosophy has received widespread recognition. In addition to the publication of more than 20 books, edited collections, research monographs, and many papers in professional journals, his research has been funded under grants by the National Science Foundation, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, the Alliance Française, the RAND Corporation, the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, the American Association for the  Advancement of Science, the Lilly Endowment, and others. The "Critique of Impure Reason" has received strong commendations from leading philosophers: