Tyke Nunez

I am an assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of South Carolina. I received my PhD in April 2015 from the University of Pittsburgh. My research is primarily on Kant and the History of Analytic Philosophy. I have secondary interests in the Philosophy of Logic, Philosophical Logic, Ancient Philosophy, 19th and 20th Century European Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, and Environmental Ethics.

My work usually centers on Kant and focuses on questions in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, as well as their history. Because Kant conceives of a body of systematic knowledge as analogous to an organism, I have also written on topics in Kant’s teleology that are bound up with his philosophy of mind and metaphysics.

Long term, I am working to develop an interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy that begins from Kant’s conception of the distinction between receptive and spontaneous faculties for knowledge and examines the differences developing from these between the a priori rational sciences of mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. I want to understand the ways in which, and why, Kant takes determinate knowledge of individual objects to require both intuitions and concepts, and the problems that he takes to arise from the confusion of these representations (especially in Leibniz). I also want to understand the different senses in which pure general logic and transcendental logic are each formal. Here I believe it is helpful to think about form as what makes a thing what it is or answers the question “what is it?”, as Plato and Aristotle did.

Since the fall of 2020, my main project has been a book manuscript on Bertrand Russell’s conception of space in his early, An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. In it, I argue we find an interesting and novel conception of space and spatial intuition that is both worth study in its own right and that illuminates a direct and unappreciated influence of Kant’s on the advent of modern logic. This is because in Foundations we find a serious attempt to synthesize Kant’s and Carl Stumpf’s views of space and spatial representation, in order to develop a conception of these that can ground both projective and metric geometry. The resulting position has both Leibnizian and Kantian elements. Russell takes it to resolve a few antinomies that he thinks afflict both Stumpf's and Kant's views. Russell’s Foundations conception of space, however, has a serious instability stemming from chiral objects, or what Kant calls “incongruent counterparts,” like a left and right hand. This instability is what drives Russell to eventually develop his logic of relations, and to reject space as a foundation for mathematics altogether.

Publications

“Not quite yet a hazy limbo of mystery: Intuition in Russell's An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry.” Mind. 2024. Print Version. (abstract)

I argue that in Bertrand Russell's An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (1897) his forms of externality serve the same fundamental role in grounding the possibility of geometry that Immanuel Kant's forms of intuition serve in grounding geometry in his critical philosophy. Specifically, both provide knowledge of bare numerical difference, where we have no concept of this difference. Because on both accounts geometry deals with the composition of such conceptually homogeneous magnitudes, on both accounts the forms of intuition or externality (respectively) are at its foundation.

“The Formality of Kant's Logic and Consciousness of Logical Laws.” In The Palgrave Handbook for German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy. Ed. by Jonas Held and James Conant. (Forthcoming). (abstract)

I examine how Kant understood the formality of pure general logic, which is what distinguishes it from other sciences. This formality is grounded in his conception of the understanding as the faculty for thinking, and as the faculty that contributes the form to cognition. Pure general logic is formal cognition or formal philosophy because it studies the laws of thinking that make thinking what it is, as thinking. I investigate how we should understand this task of pure general logic by proposing two plausible interpretations of it, one that is more, another that is less, Fregean. On the more Fregean proposal, pure general logic makes distinct the concepts <concept>, <judgment>, and <inference>, while on the less Fregean proposal it merely articulates the system of the laws that govern material cognitions in virtue of their form, or what they are as thoughts. Ultimately, I argue that the crux of the difference between these proposals comes down to how they understand Kant’s conception of consciousness or awareness (Bewußtsein), which is “a representation that another representation is in me” (JL, 9:33). According to the more Fregean proposal this is a second-order representation. According to the less Fregean proposal consciousness is formal. It is the form of the original representation and is what makes the representation what it is. I argue that ultimately Kant’s system of logic dissolves on the more Fregean interpretation, and that the less Fregean proposal is truer to Kant.

“The Doctrine of Internal Relations: Russell’s 1897 Rejection.” In Early Analytic Philosophy: Essays on its Origins and Transformation. Ed. by Gilad Nir and James Conant. (Forthcoming). (abstract)

Bertrand Russell’s rejection of the doctrine of internal relations — the doctrine that all relations are grounded in intrinsic properties of the terms related — was a critical step in his development away from his geometry focused idealist philosophy of mathematics of the 1890s and towards his logic of relations and the logicism of Principles of Mathematics. Although this rejection is usually tied to his 1898 discussions with Moore (Hylton) or reading of Leibniz (Griffin), I argue that in his 1897 An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry Russell rejects the doctrine within geometry. I make this argument by examining his discussion of Hermann Lotze, Carl Stumpf, and William James in resolving what Russell calls “the antinomy of spatial relations.” In this examination I argue that Russell rejects Stumpf’s conception of spatial figures as grounded in an underlying “absolute content” (which is grounded in an acceptance of the doctrine of internal relations) in favor of a conception where spatial figures are merely relations. Russell finds support for this view in James. Even though Russell strives to stay neutral on the metaphysical issue of whether space is real or ideal, his Foundations view of space and the non-spatial atoms that underlie it is closer to Lotze’s interpretation of Kant’s view of phenomena and things in themselves than Lotze’s own, which is grounded in the doctrine of internal relations. Tied to this, in closing I argue that reencountering Lotze’s argument against Kant early in 1898 may have been one catalyst for Russell’s warming to the doctrine of internal relations within geometry, before his rejection of it later that year. On the interpretation I’m offering, then, Russell rejects the doctrine in geometry in Foundations, comes to accept it in 1897 to 1898, before rejecting it again at the end of 1898, and in examining Russell’s “early idealism,” interpreters need to distinguish these fundamentally different positions.

“Kant on Plants: Self-activity, Representations, and the Analogy with Life.” Philosopher's Imprint. Volume 21, No. 11, May, pages 1-30, 2021. (handout) (abstract)

Do plants represent according to Kant? This is closely connected to the question of whether he held plants are alive, because he explains life in terms of the faculty to act on one’s own representations. He also explains life as having an immaterial principle of self-motion, and as a body’s interaction with a supersensible soul. I argue that because of the way plants move themselves, Kant is committed to their being alive, to their having a supersensible ground of their self-activity, and to their having desires (although these are not conscious). I then spell out the important ramifications of this for Kant’s teleology and philosophy of mind.

“Kant on Vital Forces and the Analogy with Life.” Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress ‘The Court of Reason.’ (Oslo, 6-9 August 2019) ed. by Camilla Serck-Hanssen and Beatrix Himmelmann. Vol 2, Pages 961-972. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. 2021. Print Version. (abstract)

In this essay I examine Kant's analogy with life from §65 of the Critique of the power of Judgment. I argue that this analogy is central for understanding his notion of a natural end, for his account of the formative power of organisms in the third Critique, and for situating Kant's account of this power in relation to the Lebenskräfte of the Vitalists. (There is overlap between §2-4 of this essay, and §3 of my “Kant on Plants: Self-activity, Representations, and the Analogy with Life.”)

“Kant, Frege, and the Normativity of Logic: MacFarlane's Argument for Common Ground” European Journal of Philosophy. Volume 24, Issue 4, December, pages 988-1009. 2021. Print Version. (abstract)

According to what was the standard view (Poincaré Wang, etc.), although Frege endorses, and Kant denies, the claim that arithmetic is reducible to logic, there is not a substantive disagreement between them because their conceptions of logic are too different. In his “Frege, Kant, and the logic in logicism,” John MacFarlane aims to establish that Frege and Kant do share enough of a conception of logic for this to be a substantive, adjudicable dispute. MacFarlane maintains that for both Frege and Kant, the fundamental defining characteristic of logic is “that it provides norms for thought as such” (MacFarlane, 2002, p.57). I defend the standard view. I show that MacFarlane's argument rests on conflating the way that pure general logic is normative as a canon and as a propaedeutic, and that once these are distinguished the argument is blocked.

“Logical Mistakes, Logical Aliens, and the Laws of Kant's Pure General Logic.” Mind. Volume 128, Issue 512, Pages 1149–1180. 2019. Print Version. (abstract)

---Winner of the American Philosophical Association, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Prize (2019).

There are two ways interpreters have tended to understand the nature of the laws of Kant's pure general logic. On the first, these laws are unconditional norms for how we ought to think, and will govern anything that counts as thinking. On the second, these laws are formal criteria for being a thought, and violating them makes a putative thought not a thought. These traditions are in tension insofar as the first depends on the possibility of thoughts that violate these laws, and the second makes violation impossible. In this essay I develop an interpretation of Kant's pure general logic that overcomes this tension. It accounts for the possibility of logical mistakes, as the first tradition does, while still establishing the absolute impossibility of logical aliens, as the second tradition does. I then argue that the formalist insight that illogical exercises of the understanding are not alternate ways coherent thoughts could have been, but are mere confusions, is fundamental for achieving a proper understanding of the absolute normativity of the laws of pure general logic.

"Modeling Unicorns and Dead Cats: Applying Bressan's ML^ν to the Necessary Properties of Non-existent Objects." Journal of Philosophical Logic. Volume 47, Pages 95–121. 2018. Print version. (abstract)

Should objects count as necessarily having certain properties, despite their not having those properties when they do not exist? For example, should a cat that passes out of existence, and so no longer is a cat, nonetheless count as necessarily being a cat? In this essay I examine different ways of adapting Aldo Bressan's ML^ν so that it can accommodate an affirmative answer to these questions. Anil Gupta, in The Logic of Common Nouns, creates a number of languages that have a kinship with Bressan's ML^ν, three of which are also tailored to affirmatively answering these. After comparing their languages, I argue that metaphysicians and philosophers of language should prefer ML^ν to Gupta's languages because it can accommodate essential properties, like being a cat, while being more uniform and less cumbersome.

“Definitions of Kant’s Categories.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Supplemental Volume on Mathematics in Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Volume 44, Issue 5 – 6, Pages 631–657. 2014. Print version. (abstract)

The consensus view in the literature is that, according to Kant, definitions in philosophy are impossible. While this is true prior to the advent of transcendental philosophy, I argue that with Kant’s Copernican Turn definitions of some philosophical concepts, the categories become possible. Along the way I discuss issues like why Kant introduces the ‘Analytic of Concepts’ as an analysis of the understanding, how this faculty, as the faculty for judging, provides the principle for the complete exhibition of the categories, how the pure categories relate to the schematized categories, and how the latter can be used on empirical objects.

Critical Notices

“Robert Sinclair (ed.) Science and Sensibilia, by W. V. Quine: The 1980 Immanuel Kant Lectures.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy. Volume 11, Number 3, pages 11-19. 2023. (abstract)

I give an overview of each of Quine's 1980 Kant lectures, as well as a critical discussion of the six interpretive essays in the volume. I close with a high-level reassessment of the relationship between the philosophical views of Quine, Kant, and Hume.

“Lu-Adler's Kant and the Science of Logic: A Historical and Philosophical Reconstruction.” Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, Volume 8, Number 7, pages 17-31. 2020. (abstract)

A critical discussion of Lu-Adler's chapter on Kant's mature view of pure general logic. I sketch an alternative interpretation of its formality on which Kant would hold no deduction is possible of this logic's laws.

Popular Writing

"Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Academic Philosophy." This is a short blog post on Daily Nous where I discuss what it has been like in academic philosophy as someone with dyslexia and dysgraphia.

"Remarks on the occasion of Kant’s 300th birthday." These are brief remarks about why Kant is still relevant to the world today that I gave to a salon-birthday party on the eve of Kant's 300th.