Stephen Palmquist

Stephen R. Palmquist is Professor in the Religion and Philosophy Department at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he has taught since obtaining his doctorate from Oxford University (St. Peter's College) in 1987. Focusing his research on the architectonic structure and perspectival orientation of Kant’s philosophical System, he has become a leading figure in what is now called the "affirmative" approach to interpreting Kant’s philosophy of religion; he is also currently exploring the relevance of Kant's philosophy to modern revolutions in science.

His 125 publications, mostly on Kant, include nine books (e.g., the first two volumes of a projected four-volume work, entitled <Kant's System of Perspectives>) and multiple articles in the following journals: Kant-Studien, Faith & Philosophy, Heythrop Journal, Journal of Religion, Philosophy & Theology, Polish Journal of Philosophy, and Review of Metaphysics. He organized the Kant in Asia conference, held in Hong Kong in May of 2009, and recently edited the proceedings, entitled <Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy>(de Gruyter, 2010).

Academic Degrees

D.Phil. (Philosophical Theology), Oxford University (St. Peter’s College), 1987.

B.A. (Religious Studies), Westmont College, Santa Barbara, 1979 (magna cum laude).

Academic Positions

1987- : Department of Religion and Philosophy, Hong Kong Baptist University (rank: Professor).

Visiting Scholar, Stanford University, 2006-2007.

Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley, 2001.

Selected Publications

‘The Kantian Grounding of Einstein’s Worldview: (II) Simultaneity, the Synthetic A Priori and God’, Polish Journal of Philosophy V:1 (Spring 2011).

‘The Unity of Architectonic Reasoning in Kant and I Ching’, in Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy, ed. Stephen R. Palmquist (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp.811-821.

‘The Ethics of Grace: Kant’s Perspectival Solution to the Moral Problems with Divine Assistance’, Journal of Religion 90:4 (2010), pp.530-553.

‘The Kantian Grounding of Einstein’s Worldview: (I) The Early Influence of Kant’s System of Perspectives’, Polish Journal of Philosophy 4:1 (2010).

‘Introduction’, in Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, tr. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009), pp.xv-xlix.

‘Kant’s Religious Argument for the Existence of God—The Ultimate Dependence of Human Destiny on Divine Assistance’, Faith and Philosophy 26 (January 2009), pp.3-22.

‘Kant’s Quasi-Transcendental Argument for a Necessary and Universal Evil Propensity in Human Nature’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 46.2 (Summer 2008), pp.261-297.

‘Philosophers in the Public Square’, in Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, ed. Stephen R. Palmquist and Chris L. Firestone (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).

Kant’s Critical Religion: Volume Two of Kant’s System of Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

Kant’s System of Perspectives: An architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).

Kant’s Perspectival Solution to the Mind-Body Problem—

Or Why Eliminative Materialists Must Be Kantians

Stephen R. Palmquist

Department of Religion and Philosophy

Hong Kong Baptist University

   Kant’s pre-1770 philosophy responded to the mind-body problem by applying a theory of “physical influx”. His encounter with Swedenborg’s mysticism, however, left him disillusioned with any dualist solution to Descartes’ problem. One of the major goals of the Critical philosophy was to provide a completely new solution to the mind-body problem. Kant’s new solution is “perspectival” in the sense that all Critical theories are perspectival: it acknowledges a deep truth in both of the controversy’s extremes (i.e., what we might nowadays call eliminative materialism and an absolutely ideal folk psychology), by viewing both as ways of considering the issue, rather than as the only correct approach. Once we take into account its perspectival character, a new way of understanding Kant’s philosophy of mind emerges. The mind is no longer separate from the body, but is a manifestation of it, viewed from another (specifically human, rational) perspective.

   Kant’s transcendental conditions of knowledge (spatio-temporal intuition, categorial conception, and principled schematization) do not portray the mind as somehow creating the physical world; rather, they imply the opposite, that knowledge of objects is necessarily structured by a set of unconscious assumptions about the physical world. Our pre-conscious (or pre-mental, in Descartes’ sense of “mental”) encounter with an assumed spatio-temporal, causal nexus is entirely physical. A reincarnated Kant’s solution to today’s mind-body problem would be: eliminative materialism is good science; but only the “explanatory idealist” can consistently be an eliminative materialist. Philosophically, multiple perspectives are necessary in order to understand anything we say or do.