British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
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BA PDF Symposium 200526 April 2005 AbstractsDr Oliver PooleyLeft and RightIn 1768 Kant published an argument that purported to show that the difference between left and right hands was incompatible with relationalism (the doctrine that all spatial facts supervene on facts about the relative distances between material objects). In response Kant initially embraced substantivalism (the doctrine that space itself is a substantial entity that exists in its own right). He soon came to reject this position too, in favour of his transcendental idealist view that space is the form of outer sense. I will outline my preferred account of handedness, which is a relational account, and defend it against Kant's argument, and other more recent variants. Although I will touch on the relationalist-substantivalist debate, my principal concern will be what the correct account of handedness is. Dr Oliver Pooley completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Balliol College, Oxford and currently holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford. His interests include metaphysics, the nature and status of space-time and individuality and trans-world identity. Publications include 'Concerning the ultimate ground of the differentiation of directions in space' in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy , 1755–1770, and 'Handedness, parity violation, and the reality of space' in K. Brading & E. Castellani (eds), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections (CUP, 2003), 250–80. |