Congratulations to our newest PhD, Damian Melamedoff-Vosters! Damian successfully defended “The Grounds of Transcendental Idealism,” written under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Stang, on June 28, 2021. No changes were required of his thesis.
Damian’s dissertation focused on the role of ground in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In it, Damian argued that many of the standard objections to Kant’s arguments for transcendental idealism (the direct argument in the Aesthetic, and the indirect argument in the Antinomy) fail when Kant’s arguments are understood in the context of 18th-century thinking about ground. He showed that a novel and philosophically strong interpretation of transcendental idealism can be arrived at by focusing on what Kant thinks about grounds of truth. In short, Kantian appearances are transcendentally ideal in that they are not the grounds of the truth of our judgments.
The department is extremely proud of Damian and wishes him all the best for his future endeavours.
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