Abstract

Chapter Two focuses on Philip Pettit, who stands out among nearly all his analytic peers for range of research, including not merely epistemology, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, but also ethics and philosophy of mind. In particular the chapter examines Pettit’s notion of global response-dependence, which it uses to liberate Kantianism further from Immanuel Kant’s own transcendental idealism. It then shows that Kantianism can take the subjective source of empirical concepts, terms, or properties to be anthropocentric in scope. Conceptual, linguistic, and perceptual capacities can be had by subjects qua human. Next the chapter engages a debate between Pettit, and Michael Smith and Daniel Stoljar, concerning noumenalism, the thesis that reality has an intrinsic nature or aspect that remains unknowable.