“Both make the point that this validates Kant’s claim that space is an innate concept prior to experience.”
I think this misses the point of Kant’s claim. Kant absolutely did not want to say that we are biologically ordered such as to represent geometry in three dimensional space. And Kant, given the results of this study, would deny that rats ‘represent space’ at all: rats can’t ‘represent’ in the sense Kant thinks is relevant to rational beings. He (and I guess I also) would say that this is to anthropomorphize rats. Rats don’t have concepts, representations, experiences, etc. in any sense comparable with rational beings.
Kant’s point is that an a priori representation of space (from which we glean euclidian geometry) is a feature of finite rational beings such that it would be the same for any finite rational being that has any form of sensibility whatsoever. So it’s a claim that’s totally independent of biology. Our a priori access to space is just what it means to have an outer world. Kant would have considered the biological point irrelevant because it concerns our empirical experience of space via our brains and sense organs. But the our a priori understanding of space is (logically, not temporally) prior even to the empirical claims that we have brains and sense organs, and its by having such an a priori concept that a natural, biological science can be meaningful. The synthetic a priori propositions which forest geometry are grounded on pure reason. This doesn’t mean that experience is irrelevant to them, just that any particular experiences of space are.
So the study doesn’t support or harm Kant, it’s just irrelevant to his claims. He wasn’t really interested in anything like the biological or psychological aspects of our capacity to experience the outside world. Cognitive science, Kant might say, just studies a different subject matter entirely. Lastly:
“I’ve often wished for a list of cases where philosophy has proven useful”
Why do you think philosophy is supposed to be useful?
“Both make the point that this validates Kant’s claim that space is an innate concept prior to experience.”
I think this misses the point of Kant’s claim. Kant absolutely did not want to say that we are biologically ordered such as to represent geometry in three dimensional space. And Kant, given the results of this study, would deny that rats ‘represent space’ at all: rats can’t ‘represent’ in the sense Kant thinks is relevant to rational beings. He (and I guess I also) would say that this is to anthropomorphize rats. Rats don’t have concepts, representations, experiences, etc. in any sense comparable with rational beings.
Kant’s point is that an a priori representation of space (from which we glean euclidian geometry) is a feature of finite rational beings such that it would be the same for any finite rational being that has any form of sensibility whatsoever. So it’s a claim that’s totally independent of biology. Our a priori access to space is just what it means to have an outer world. Kant would have considered the biological point irrelevant because it concerns our empirical experience of space via our brains and sense organs. But the our a priori understanding of space is (logically, not temporally) prior even to the empirical claims that we have brains and sense organs, and its by having such an a priori concept that a natural, biological science can be meaningful. The synthetic a priori propositions which forest geometry are grounded on pure reason. This doesn’t mean that experience is irrelevant to them, just that any particular experiences of space are.
So the study doesn’t support or harm Kant, it’s just irrelevant to his claims. He wasn’t really interested in anything like the biological or psychological aspects of our capacity to experience the outside world. Cognitive science, Kant might say, just studies a different subject matter entirely. Lastly:
“I’ve often wished for a list of cases where philosophy has proven useful”
Why do you think philosophy is supposed to be useful?