Title: The Formal Purposiveness of Nature: Did we Solve Kant’s Problem?
By Nick Stang (Toronto, Philosophy)
Date: Thursday, April 30, 2026
Time: 1530-1700
Room: Humanities Seminar Room (H-232)
Abstract: In the two Introductions to the Critique of Judgment Kant raises a problem for his own critical philosophy of Nature: in the first Critique proved that Nature must be governed by universal laws, but, he now points out, this laws might be so complex, or depart so much from observable regularities, that we could never discover them empirically. How is empirical knowledge of the laws of Nature possible? Kant argues that this is only possible if we investigate nature guided by the idea of its formal purposiveness; in short, we must investigate Nature as though it were created by a supersensible intelligence for the purpose of being cognized by us, without being able to assert that Nature is so created (much less explain it in this fashion.) In this talk, after explaining the problem and Kant’s argument for the formal purposiveness of Nature, I will turn to contemporary philosophy and ask: do we have a better explanation of how empirical knowledge of the laws of Nature are possible? I will argue that we do not, and that Kant’s argument in the Introductions to the third Critique thus merits serious philosophical reconsideration.
About the speaker: Nicholas Stang is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He works mainly on Kant, the German Idealists, and metaphysics. He is the author of Kant’s Modal Metaphysics (2016, OUP) and co-editor of The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds: New Essays on Kant’s Metaphysics and Epistemology (w/ Karl Schafer, 2022, OUP) and Systematic Metaphysics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (w/ Aaron Segal, forthcoming, OUP). His work has appeared in such journals as the Kantian Review, Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
Organized by the Department of Philosophy