Abstract
Consider your right hand and a mirror image duplicate of it. Kant calls such pairs incongruent counterparts. According to him they have the following puzzling features. The relation and situation of the parts of your hand with respect to one another are not sufficient to distinguish it from its mirror duplicate. Nevertheless, there is a spatial difference between the two. Turn and twist them how you will, you cannot make one of them occupy the exact boundaries now occupied by the other. In his 1768 paper, ‘Concerning the Ultimate Foundations of the Differentiation of Regions in Space’, Kant uses these claims to argue against relational accounts of space and goes on to argue that the difference between incongruent counterparts depends on a relation to absolute space as a whole. In his 1770 Inaugural Dissertation he argued that this difference could not be captured by concepts alone but required appeal to intuition. In the Prolegomena (1783) and again in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) Kant appealed to these puzzling features of incongruent counterparts to support his transcendental idealism about space.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bennett, J. (1966) Kant’s Analytic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Bennett, J. (1970) ‘The difference between right and left,’ American Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 7, No. 3, 175–191. This volume, pp. 97–130.
Buroker, J. V. (1981) Space and Incongruence, the Origin of Kant’s Idealism, Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht.
Dewdney, A.K. (1984) The Planiverse (computer contact with a two-dimensional world), Poseidon Press, New York.
Earman, J. (1971) ‘Kant, incongruous counterparts and the nature of space and spacetime,’ Ratio 13, 1–18. This volume, pp. 131–149.
Earman, J. (1987) ‘On the other hand …: a reconsideration of Kant, incongruent counterparts, and absolute space.’ This volume, pp. 235–255.
Friedman, M. (1983) Foundations of Space-Time Theories, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Friedman, M. (1986) ‘Kant on the Foundations of Newtonian Science,’ in Butts, ed. (1986).
Gardner, M. (1964, 2nd edition 1969, reprinted 1979) The Ambidextrous Universe, Charles Scribner and Sons, New York.
Grünbaum, A. (1973) Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (2nd enlarged edition), D. Reidel, Dordrecht.
Harper, W. L. (1984) ‘Kant on space, empirical realism and the foundations of geometry,’ Topoi 3, 143–161.
Harper, W. L. (1986) ‘Kant on the a priori and material necessity,’ in Butts, R. E. (1986) ed., Kant’s Philosophy of Physical Science, Reidel Publ. Co., Dordrecht, pp. 239–272.
Kant, I. (1768) ‘Concerning the ultimate foundations of the differentiation of regions in space,’ in Kerferd, G. B. and Walford, D. E. (1968) eds. and trans., Kant, Selected Pre-Critical Writings and Correspondence with Beck, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 36–43. Editor’s note: The Handyside translation is reprinted in this volume, pp. 27-33.
Kant, I. (1770) (Inaugural Dissertation) On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, in Kerferd, G. B. and Walford, D. E. (1968), pp. 46–92.
Kant, I. (1781) Critique of Pure Reason, N. K. Smith (1933) trans., Macmillan, London.
Kant, I. (1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Beck, L. W. (1950) ed. and trans., Bobbs Merrill, New York.
Kant, I. (1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Ellington, J. (1970) trans., Bobbs Merrill, New York.
Körner, S. (1966) Kant, Penguin Books, Baltimore.
Lewis, D. (1979) ‘Attitudes De Dicto and De Se,’ The Philosophical Review 88, pp. 513–43; reprinted in Lewis (1983), pp. 133–156.
Lewis, D. (1983) Philosophical Papers, Vol. I, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Mortenson, C. and Nerlich, G. (1983) ‘Space-time and Handedness,’ Ratio XXV, Vol. 1, pp. 1–13.
Nerlich, G. (1973) ‘Hands, knees, and absolute space,’ Journal of Philosophy 70, 337–351. Revised version reprinted in this volume, pp. 151–172.
Nerlich, G. (1976) The Shape of Space, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Reichenbach, H. (1927) Space and Time, Reichenbach, M. trans. (1958), Dover Publ. Inc., New York.
Remnant, P. (1963) ‘Incongruent counterparts and absolute space,’ Mind (bd72, 393–399. This volume, pp. 51–59.
Sklar, L. (1974) Space, Time, and Space-Time, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Spivak, M. (1979) A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Vol. 2, 2nd ed., Publish or Perish, Inc., Berkeley.
Toretti, B. Philosophy of Geometry from Riemann to Poincaré
Van Cleve, J. (1987) ‘Right, left, and the fourth dimension,’ Philosophical Review XCVI, 33–68. This volume, pp. 203-234.
van Fraassen, B. (1966) ‘Singular terms, truth value gaps, and free logic,’ Journal of Philosophy 63, 481–495.
van Fraassen, B. (1970) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space, Random House, New York.
Walker, R. C. S. (1978) Kant, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Weyl, H. (1952) Symmetry, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harper, W. (1991). Kant on Incongruent Counterparts. In: Van Cleve, J., Frederick, R.E. (eds) The Philosophy of Right and Left. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 46. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3736-2_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3736-2_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5661-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-011-3736-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive