A physicist's approach to Kant
pp. 481-490
in: Michel Bitbol, Pierre Kerszberg, Jean Petitot (eds), Constituting objectivity, Berlin, Springer, 2009Abstract
Since Kant's time considerable developments in physics greatly modified the set of the conceivable word views that are compatible with what we factually know. And this, in turn, was bound to induce substantial changes as regards the relationship between Kantism and physics and the degree of compatibility of the former with the latter. The main changes are examined. As could be expected, it is found that several significant aspects of Kantism, including both arguments in its favor and consequences derived from it, cannot be kept in their original form. On the other hand it turns out that quantum physics as well as the outcomes of recent physical experiments yield strong support to two of its most essential features, the ideality of space (or space-time as now we would preferably say) and the (correlated) fact that, far from being independently existing out there, phenomena are essentially representations in our mind.
