Philosophy department plans colloquium Philosophy department plans colloquium

The WSU Department of Philosophy Colloquium will feature a presentation by assistant professor of philosophy Susan Castro at 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, in 107 McKinley Hall. Her lecture is titled "The Metacognitive Character of Kant's Formula of Universal Law of Nature: Acting 'as if' and Autonoetic Mental Time Travel."

Abstract: This paper is a contemporary deduction of the prima facie pretention of acting as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature. In the "Final Aim" of the first "Critique," Kant provides a deduction of three prima facie pretentious transcendental ideas, in which he explains how their regulative, as if use can be objectively valid.

Though the transcendental ideas are theoretical, Kant's appeal to the subjective necessity of acting under the idea of freedom in "Groundwork III" strongly suggests that acting as if can be objectively valid in a similar manner.

This quite complex cognitive activity mandated by FULN is consistent with Kant's repeated comments to the effect that even the most common understanding can do it, on analogy with walking; and it is empirically vindicated by current cognitive science, cf. "full agency" involving autonoetic "mental time travel" roughly as understood by Philip Gerrans. FULN is thus neither pretentious nor obviously false.