About

Houston Smit is an Associate Professor and Core Faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona. His primary research focuses on the history of philosophy, with a particular emphasis on Kant's critical philosophy, especially the theoretical aspects. In addition to his work on Kant, he has published on Aquinas, Leibniz, and Hume. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1994. Houston Smit is involved in teaching and advising within the department, contributing to the academic community through his expertise in the history of philosophy.

Research topics

• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Cognitive science

Selected publications

• The Schematism

  2023-06-22

  book-chapterSenior author

  In this chapter, we focus on clarifying the nature of the problem that Kant sets out to solve in the Schematism chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. This problem is the apparent impossibility of the pure concepts of the understanding having any use in subsuming under them objects that are given to us in our sensibility. What makes any such use seem impossible is, Kant tells us, the fact that these concepts are “entirely unhomogenous” with sensible intuition and thus are concepts that “can never be encountered in any intuition.” Previous attempts to clarify the nature of this problem have, we suggest, been hampered by the failure to get into sufficiently clear focus just how Kant conceives of the subsumption of an object under a concept. Attending carefully to his conception of such subsumption, and of how schemata make this subsumption possible, leads to a new reading of what Kant takes the problem to be. It also points the way to a new reading of how, in identifying transcendental time determinations as what correspond to the pure concepts of the understanding as their schemata, Kant provides what he contends is the only possible solution to this problem.

  PublisherDOI

• Two Kinds of Insight and the Critique of Pure Reason

  De Gruyter eBooks · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Epistemology
  • Philosophy
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Kant’s “I think” and the agential approach to self-knowledge

  Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Epistemology
  • Psychology
  • Cognitive science
  PublisherDOI

• Kant's“I think” and the agential approach to self-knowledge

  Canadian Journal of Philosophy · 2019-01-01 · 17 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper relates Kant'saccount of pure apperception to the agential approach to self-knowledge. It argues that his famous claim ‘The I think must be able to accompany all of my representations’ (B131) does not concern the possibility of self-ascribing beliefs. Kant does advance this claim in the service of identifying an a priori warrant we have as psychological persons, that is, subjects of acts of thinking that are imputable to us. But this warrant is not one to self-knowledge that we have as critical reasoners. It is, rather, an a priori warrant we have, as thinkers, to prescribe to given representations their conformity to principles of thinking inherent in our capacity of understanding itself.

  PublisherDOI

• Essence, Nature, and the Possibility of Metaphysics

  2019-10-17 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter provides Immanuel Kant’s critical metaphysics and developing further. It explains the different sorts of essences that Kant distinguishes in the course of his critique of pure reason and the sort of essence of which, on his account, he achieves cognition in executing this critique. The transcendental philosopher’s insight employs, and need employ, only a mere representation, as against a cognition, of combination in general and pure apperception as the actus of spontaneity that would, as its noumenal ground, have to originate this unity. The Transcendental Analytic does, however, in the service of providing a transcendental deduction of the categories, establish the principle of the synthetic unity of apperception as the highest principle of all cognition. The Copernican Revolution Kant proposes for metaphysics sets out to meet this real need, but in a way entirely different from that pursued by traditional ontology.

  PublisherDOI

• Love of honor, emulation, and the psychology of the devilish vices

  2015-01-01 · 27 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• AMOR PELA HONRA, EMULAÇÃO, E A PSICOLOGIA DOS VÍCIOS DIABÓLICOS

  Dissertatio · 2015-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Nos últimos anos, muito foi escrito a respeito das virtudes e das virtudes particulares expostas na ética de Kant, concentrando-se em particular no Tugendlehre, parte II da Metafísica da Moral (ver, por exemplo, Betzler 2008). Menos atenção foi dada ao que Kant tem a dizer sobre os vícios e sobre os vícios particulares. A própria discussão de Kant a respeito dos vícios escolhidos no Tugendlehre é bastante breve, pontuada por observações a respeito das fontes psicológicas de traços de caráter viciosos. Em contraste, o que encontramos em algumas das anotações de aula, é uma discussão consideravelmente rica sobre a psicologia de outros vícios relacionados envolvendo aquilo a que Kant se refere como emulação – um “impulso” implantado na natureza humana que inclina fortemente os homens a serem “iguais aos outros em cada aspecto” (V 27:695). Embora este impulso implantado tenha o bem do auto-melhoramento como seu propósito, sob algumas circunstâncias ele contribui para os vícios diabólicos da inveja, da ingratidão e da Schadenfreude. Nosso objetivo básico aqui é fornecer uma interpretação das ideias de Kant a respeito da psicologia dos vícios diabólicos – como indivíduos sucumbem a estes vícios – baseados em observações das Lectures. É de particular interesse em que medida estes vícios compartilham de uma unidade psicológica subjacente, uma afirmação sugerida por algumas das observações de Kant.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Love of honor, emulation, and the psychology of the devilish vices

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2014-12-31 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Kant on the Apriority and Discursivity of Philosophy

  2013-10-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Kant’s Grounding Project in The Doctrine of Virtue

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2013-04-09 · 26 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In the general introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals where Kant discusses the concept of obligation and its law, he remarks that “the simplicity of this law in comparison with the great and various consequences that can be drawn from it must seem astonishing at first…” (MS 6: 225). In the Doctrine of Virtue, Kant sets forth a system of duties to oneself and to others in which he appears to derive them from the humanity formulation of the CI, thus illustrating the “great and various consequences” that follow from the moral law. Smit and Timmons understand Kant’s derivations in the Doctrine of Virtue as purporting not only to justify in the sense of proving or showing true various claims about the deontic status of various types of actions and associated attitudes, but they view the derivations as also purporting explain why the various actions and attitudes have the deontic status Kant claims they have. The aim of their contribution is to (1) provide an interpretation of the humanity formulation which, they argue, is rich in content, and then (2) examine the various derivations featured in the Doctrine of Virtue in order to evaluate their success in providing plausible explanations of the various duties to self and duties to others Kant discusses.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mark Timmons

  University of Arizona

  5 shared