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The Philosophy Of Right And Left

Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature of Space

  • Book
  • © 1991

Overview

Editors:
  1. James Cleve

    1. Brown University, USA

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  2. Robert E. Frederick

    1. Bentley College, USA

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

Part of the book series: The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science (WONS, volume 46)

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
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  2. Introduction to the Argument of 1768

    • Robert E. Frederick
    Pages 1-14

  3. Introduction to the Arguments of 1770 and 1783

    • James Van Cleve
    Pages 15-26

  4. On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space

    • Immanuel Kant
    Pages 27-33

  5. Selection from Section 15 of Dissertation

    • Immanuel Kant
    Pages 35-36

  6. Prolegomena, Section 13

    • Immamuel Kant
    Pages 37-38

  7. On Higher Space

    • August Ferdinand Möbius
    Pages 39-41

  8. The Paradox of Incongruous Counterparts

    • Norman Kemp Smith
    Pages 43-47

  9. Tractatus 6.36111

    • Ludwig Wittgenstein
    Pages 49-49

  10. Incongruent Counterparts and Absolute Space

    • Peter Remnant
    Pages 51-59

  11. The Fourth Dimension

    • Martin Gardner
    Pages 61-74

  12. The Ozma Problem and the Fall of Parity

    • Martin Gardner
    Pages 75-95

  13. The Difference Between Right and Left

    • Jonathan Bennett
    Pages 97-130

  14. Kant, Incongruous Counterparts, and the Nature of Space and Space-Time

    • John Earman
    Pages 131-149

  15. Hands, Knees, and Absolute Space

    • Graham Nerlich
    Pages 151-172

  16. Incongruous Counterparts, Intrinsic Features and the Substantiviality of Space

    • Lawrence Sklar
    Pages 173-186

  17. Incongruent Counterparts

    • Ralph Walker
    Pages 187-194

  18. Showing and Telling: Can the Difference Between Right and Left be Explained in Words?

    • Martin Curd
    Pages 195-201

  19. Right, Left, and the Fourth Dimension

    • James Van Cleve
    Pages 203-234

  20. On the Other Hand ...: A Reconsideration of Kant, Incongruent Counterparts, and Absolute Space

    • John Earman
    Pages 235-255
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Keywords

About this book

Incongruent counterparts are objects that are perfectly similar except for being mirror images of each other, such as left and right human hands. Immanuel Kant was the first great thinker to point out the philosophical significance of such objects. He called them "counter­ parts" because they are similar in nearly every way, "incongruent" because, despite their similarity, one could never be put in the place of the other. Three important discussions of incongruent counterparts occur in Kant's writings. The first is an article published in 1768, 'On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space', in which Kant con­ tended that incongruent counterparts furnish a refutation of Leibniz's relational theory of space and a proof of Newton's rival theory of absolute space. The second is a section of his Inaugural Dissertation, published two years later in 1770, in which he cited incongruent counterparts as showing that our knowledge of space must rest on intuitions. The third is a section of the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics of 1783, in which he cited incongruent counterparts as a paradox resolvable only by his own theory of space as mind-dependent. A fourth mention in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science of 1786 briefly repeats the Prolegomena point. Curiously, there is no mention of incongruent counterparts in either of the editions (1781 and 1787) of Kant's magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Brown University, USA

    James Cleve

  • Bentley College, USA

    Robert E. Frederick

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Philosophy Of Right And Left

  • Book Subtitle: Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature of Space

  • Editors: James Cleve, Robert E. Frederick

  • Series Title: The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3736-2

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-0844-7Published: 28 February 1991

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-94-010-5661-8Published: 28 September 2012

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-011-3736-2Published: 06 December 2012

  • Series ISSN: 1566-659X

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-1974

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 373

  • Topics: Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics

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