Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
The uncreative mind can spot
wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions. -- Anthony
Jay
Key Kantian Insight:
Mind is NOT passive in experience, but rather active. Mind constructs
experience out of the raw sense data that it receives. (Sometimes referred to as Kant’s Copernican
Revolution in Epistemology.) Rather than
asking “How does knowledge impress itself onto mind?” (passive
metaphor) Kant asks “How does mind construct knowledge?”
One of the most
significant developments in modern epistemology was the rejection of direct
realism and the adoption of representational realism. We have already looked at
how both Descartes and Locke dealt with questions of how one moves from
representations of reality to knowledge about reality itself. However, it's not
clear that either of these two resolutions is entirely successful. Modern Rationalists ended up with the
skepticism of Descartes. Modern
Empiricists ended up with the skepticism of Hume. Something is terribly wrong with this
picture. Recall that Plato anticipated
that experience alone could not account for knowledge, but his solution was
rejected by subsequent philosophers as too “spooky” (Speculative). But as Raphael Demos pointed out:
“To some, the conception of a previous life with its
opportunity for a glimpse of the eternal essences may appear fantastic. Yet to
anyone who believes that the soul survives the body. the view that the soul
antecedes the body should not seem unreasonable. In any case, the
transcendental theory is only an interpretation of the immediate fact
that experience fails to account for all of knowledge. The doctrine of the limitation of empiricism remains, whatever one's
view about the origin of abstract ideas may be. We cannot derive our categories
-- thinghood, quality, relation, causality, -- from experience, because we use
them in understanding experience; we cannot derive our laws of thought -- such
as the law of contradiction -- from experience, because they are presupposed in
any actual process of thinking; we cannot derive universal principles from
experience, because experience is limited to particular cases; finally, we
cannot derive any concepts (such as white-square) from experience, because they
constitute standards by which the data of experience are measured. The kernel
of the Platonic theory is rationalism, namely that there is a non-empirical
element in knowledge.”[1] (emphasis added)
As
we have seen, the empiricism of Aristotle avoids these limitations of Locke and
co. only by appeal to “active intellect” or Nous and now, largely
discredited “direct realism,” arguably no less spooky than Plato. So, is the only alternative to spooky epistemology
an epistemological skepticism?
Kant
does not think so. However, he credits
Hume with posing the problem so clearly.
Kant will ultimately reject Hume’s skeptical conclusions. Nevertheless, he accepts Hume’s arguments
against traditional metaphysics and credits Hume’s attack on causality with awakening him from his “dogmatic slumber."
FROM
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics[2]
BY
Immanuel Kant
My purpose is to persuade all
those who think metaphysics worth studying that it is absolutely
necessary to pause a moment and, regarding all that has been done as
though undone, to propose first the preliminary question, "Whether such a
thing as metaphysics can be even possible at all?"
If it be science, how is it
that it cannot, like other sciences, obtain universal and lasting recognition?
If no, how can it maintain its pretensions and keep the human mind in suspense
with hopes never ceasing, yet never fulfilled? Whether then we demonstrate our
knowledge or our ignorance in this field, we must come one and for all to a
definite conclusion respecting the nature of this so-called science, which
cannot possibly remain on its present footing. It seems almost ridiculous,
while every other science is continually advancing, that in this, which
pretends to be wisdom incarnate, for whose oracle everyone inquires, we should
constantly move round the same spot, without gaining a single step. And so its votaries having melted away, we do not find men
confident of their ability to shine in other sciences venturing their
reputation here, where everybody, however ignorant in other matters, presumes
to deliver a final verdict, because in this domain there is actually as yet no
standard weight and measure to distinguish sound knowledge from shallow talk.
Here Kant seems to be suggesting that there are two reasons to be
deeply suspicious of metaphysics as a genuine form of rational inquiry or
science. For one there doesn't seem to be and unquestionable progress towards
greater and greater apprehension of truth. But secondly there doesn't seem to
be a universally agreed upon standard of judgment for distinguishing between
true and false metaphysical theories.
Hume started chiefly from a
single but important concept in metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of
cause and effect (including its derivatives force and action, and so on). He
challenged reason, which pretends to have given birth to this concept of
herself, to answer him by what right she thinks anything could be so
constituted that if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily
be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause. He demonstrated
irrefutably that it was perfectly impossible for reason to think a priori and by means of concepts such a
combination, for it implies necessity. We cannot at all see why, in consequence
of the existence of one thing, another must necessarily exist or how the
concept of such a combination can arise a
priori. Hence he inferred that reason was
altogether deluded with reference to this concept, which she erroneously
considered as one of her own children, whereas in reality it was nothing but a
bastard of imagination, impregnated by experience, which subsumed certain
representations under the law of association and mistook a subjective necessity
(habit) for an objective necessity arising from insight. Hence
he inferred that reason had no power to think such combinations, even in
general, because her concepts would then be purely fictitious and all her
pretended a priori cognitions nothing
but common experiences marked with a false stamp. In plain language, this means
that there is not and cannot be any such thing as metaphysics at all.
Here Kant is briefly rehearsing Hume’s attack on the very nature
of induction, the principle of universal causality, and associated metaphysical
concepts such as the existence of extramental substance (whether that supposed “substance”
be physical or mental). Indeed then,
this is a condemnation of metaphysics as a discipline since it has no principles
or concepts with which to work.
I openly confess my
recollection of David Hume was the very thing which many years ago interrupted
my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative
philosophy a quite new direction. I was far from following him in the
conclusions at which he arrived by regarding, not the whole of his problem, but
a part, which by itself can give us no information. If we start from a
well-founded, but undeveloped, thought which another has bequeathed to us, we
may well hope by continued reflection to advance farther than the acute man to
whom we owe the first spark of light.
I therefore first tried whether
Hume's objection could not be put into a general form, and soon found that the
concept of the connection of cause and effect was by no means the only concept
by which the understanding thinks the connection of things a priori, but rather that metaphysics consists altogether of such
concepts. I sought to ascertain their number; and when I had satisfactorily
succeeded in this by starting from a single principle, I proceeded to the
deduction of these concepts, which I was now certain were not derived from
experience, as Hume had attempted to derive them, but sprang from the pure
understanding. This deduction (which seemed impossible to my acute predecessor,
which had never even occurred to anyone else, though no one had hesitated to
use the concepts without investigating the basis of their objective validity)
was the most difficult task which ever could have been undertaken in the
service of metaphysics; and the worst was that metaphysics, such as it is,
could not assist me in the least because this deduction alone can render
metaphysics possible. But as soon as I had succeeded in solving Hume's problem,
not merely in a particular case, but with respect to the whole faculty of pure
reason, I could proceed safely, though slowly, to determine the whole sphere of
pure reason completely and from universal principles, in its boundaries as well
as in its contents. This was required for metaphysics in
order to construct its system according to a safe plan.
OK. Spoiler alert. I will “cut to the chase,” so to speak. Kant
too is dealing with the notion of mental representations. But what he's claiming is our mental
representations have a dependable, reliable and even necessary character to them which is furnished, not by the objective world, but by
the functioning of human cognition itself. The necessity ascribed to metaphysics is in
fact only the necessity of how our minds present the world to us. The world of our experience (our mental representations)
will always appear to conform to these rules, because these are the very rules
by which human cognition constitutes our experience. The real problem with representational
realism according to Kant was imagining that our mental representations somehow
have to “match up with” or “correspond to” some
supposed mind independent reality. They
do not. True theories are merely
theories that are adequate to our human experience of the world. Once we know that our theories are empirically
adequate, we know that they are true. We
need not worry about whether or not they pick out mind
independent ontological things. Indeed,
we could never know whether they do or not. But this is just a brief
summary of Kant’s position. For
greater details please see below.
Kant
had been a metaphysician (a follower of Leibniz), but reading Hume convinced
him that there was a serious problem, not only for metaphysics, but for our
claims to know the world at all. And Kant, who was also a scientist and an
enthusiastic supporter of Isaac Newton and the new physics, saw that he had to
refute Hume if he was going to keep claiming that scientists (and everyone
else) could know anything at all. But the problem, as he diagnosed it, turned
out to be the unquestioned idea that there was a distinction to be made between
our beliefs and experience of the world, on the one hand, and the world itself,
Reality or Truth, on the other. Kant
will ultimately reject not only classical “direct realism,” but also “representational
realism” (the view that our perception are representations of some extra-mental
realties, and that “truth” can be had only when our representations match “the
way the world really is.”) Instead, Kant
will claim that knowledge is knowledge of our experience alone, experience that
is fabricated by active mind, and that “matching up with the way the world
really is” has nothing to do with either knowledge or truth.
One
of the errors which lead Empiricism to its skeptical conclusions, according to
Kant, was their passive view of mind and experience. Think of the passive metaphors employed by
Locke and Hume for instance. (“Tabula
Rasa,” “Impressions”) Such views suggest that experience of the world is a
completely passive affair where the mind merely “receives” what is “given” in
perception.
• Key
Kantian Insight: Mind is NOT passive in experience, but rather
active. Mind constructs
experience out of the raw sense data that it receives.
For
Kant the problem was we were not paying close enough attention to the active
role that mind plays in the constitution of our experiences of the world. The rationalists were partially right; we
bring something to the party, something without which intelligible experience
would not be possible. And the
empiricist were partially right; all knowledge
originates in experience. But the
rationalists were wrong to believe that what we bring are IDEAS. And the empiricists were wrong to think that
all knowledge is GIVEN in experience.
Kant
insists with the Empiricists that all knowledge begins with experience:
FROM
The Critique of Pure Reason[3]
BY
Immanuel Kant
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PURE (A
PRIORI) AND EMPIRICAL (A POSTERIORI) KNOWLEDGE
That all our knowledge begins
with experience there can be no doubt. For how should the faculty of knowledge
be called into activity, if not by objects which affect our senses, and which
either produce representations by themselves, or rouse the activity of our
understanding to compare, or connect, or to separate them, and thus to convert
the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which
we call experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge within us is
antecedent to experience, but all knowledge begins with it.
But
that does not necessarily mean that all knowledge arises from the content
of that experience alone, as the Empiricists insisted:
But although all our knowledge
begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.
For it is quite possible that even our empirical experience is a compound
of that which we receive through impressions, and of that which our own faculty
of knowledge (incited only by sensuous impressions), supplies from itself, a
supplement which we do not distinguish from that raw material, until long practice has
roused our attention and rendered us capable of separating one from the other.
(My
emphasis)
Here
he is pointing out that once we have experience we can
theoretically divide that experience into content and form. We cannot make this division until we have
some experience to work with, and even then Kant
suggests that it requires ‘long practice’ before we can. But once we can and do
we can note the contributions of active mind in fashioning the content of our
experience. Again, not by furnishing
innate “ideas” (content) but by giving shape to the content (categorical
forms).
Imagine
a perfectly clear glass vase, ready to receive liquid. If it were absolutely clear,
we could not comprehend its form while it was empty. But, once we began to fill
it with something, colored liquid, let’s say, or even smoke, we could then know
the form of the vase, the form it imposed on its content. Note further, that no matter WHAT content we
fill the vase with, it will always conform to the same, dependable
and recognizable form.
It is therefore a question
which deserves at least closer investigation, and cannot be disposed of at
first sight, whether there exists a knowledge independent of experience, and
even of all impressions of the senses? Such knowledge is called a priori, and distinguished from
empirical knowledge, which has its source a
posteriori, that IS, in experience.
"Thoughts without intuitions are
empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."[4]
But
once we can and do separate the form from content of experience, we can note
the contributions of active mind in fashioning the content of our
experience. Mind contributes not by
furnishing innate “ideas” (content), but by giving shape to the
content (categorical forms).
To
understand why he says this, it is necessary to see human experiences as having
different content, but a consistent form. If we were to abstract all content
from human experience we would arrive at the pure form
of experience. Think of this pure
form of human cognition as a blank template into which mind pours all sensory
information and thus arrives at a coherent experience. Alternatively think of my (very
old, MS DOS based) Maillist program that can organize
records according to one and only one pattern.
Every record of this program has the same form. Indeed, the form was provided by
the program. In this case it was: Field One - first name, Field Two - last name, Field Three - telephone number, Field
Four- street address.
Thus
record #1 would read: first name, last name, telephone number, street address. And record #10 would read: first name, last
name, telephone number, street address. And
my cat could walk across the keyboard and the data would conform to: first name, last name, telephone number, street address.
But again, this just because this very
simple program could only organize data according to the preset template.
Thus, I have knowledge of how my 100th
record and any other record will look (in broad outline), knowledge that is a priori. My knowledge here is not grounded in
the particular experience of my 100th
record).
Though
I don’t know what the CONTENT of the record is, I know the form because when I
am referring to this program’s records, I am referring to products of its
organizing function which does not/ cannot change. My knowledge is rooted in the knowledge of individual
records, but it is not the content of any individual record, but rather the form
I have noticed all the records do and must take. Likewise for Kant, the knowledge that Kant is
pointing to is knowledge that begins with and is
rooted in experience, but it is not the content of any experience.
Our
"formative concepts” and our language do not correspond to Reality. They
in fact shape and "set up" (our) reality (as we experience it). In the act of perceiving, we impose
structures on our experience. Note: We
see “material objects” instead of just “lights and colors.” Note further: that babies don’t see
objects. Are our minds receiving more
data than the minds of the newborn? No,
our experience is different because of what we are doing with what we receive;
not because we receive anything different.
What
we refer to as “physical objects” arise in our experience due to our
contributions to experience. Similarly,
Kant argues that we experience events in a cause and-effect relationship,
instead of as mere sequences of events. While
Hume suggests that this is merely because of a habituated practice, Kant argues
instead that this is a category of experience.
The contents of our experience alone does not GIVE
our minds the concept of causality; quite the reverse. Our minds gives to
our experience the structure of causality.
According to Kant. space and time do not exist "out there,"
independent of our experience; we impose the forms of three-dimensional space
and uni-dimensional time on our experience, and only
in so doing can our intelligible experience arise.
Kant’s Rejection of
Representational Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth:
If
all our experience is mediated by the activity of mind, then we do not have
access to the world “as it exists in-itself” (what Kant refers to as Noumenon). The objects of our experience are shaped/
created by the active application of mental constitutive concepts, by
categorizing mind. But this is not an argument
for skepticism. We can and do have precise
knowledge of the world as organized and
interpreted by human cognition (what Kant refers to as Phenomenal). But this is all we really need. In fact, Kant would say, this is all we really typically mean when we talk about
“knowledge of the world.” It amounts to knowledge
of the world populated by chairs and desks and laptop computers and breakfast
cereals and icebergs, and… well, you get the idea. Objects as we experience them.
According
to Kant, the noumenal world (reality unmediated by mental categories) may
exist, but it is completely unknowable to humans. And of course, how could it be
otherwise. How could we even have an
unconceptualized concept of reality?
We
Kant. J But we don’t really need it anyway.
Kant
is very specific about what these forms and categories of experience are, but
I’ll only refer to a few for illustration purposes. (If you are in my Intro to
Philosophy class, you can sort of skip through the text that appears below in green. If
you are in my Philosophy of Science or Epistemology class, please do review the
notes in green.
The Transcendental Aesthetic:
- Space and Time are the two pure forms of experience
according to Kant.
In
his introduction, Kant has calls transcendental
“all knowledge which is occupied not so
much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as
this mode of knowledge is to be possible a
priori”(A12).
Transcendental
philosophy is the (his) system which made up of such concepts.[5] There are two features of human knowing: sensibility, and understanding. The transcendental aesthetic examines
human sensibility. Kant claims that
“in so far as sensibility may be found
to contain a priori representations
constituting the condition under which objects are given to us, it will belong
to transcendental philosophy” (B30).
These
a priori representations are the pure
sensible intuitions of space and time, which constitute the conditions under
which each and every sensible object is given to us.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of
Pure Reason: Transcendental; Doctrine of Elements Paper One Transcendental
Aesthetics (p 63-89
I.
TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF
ELEMENTS.
FIRST PART.
TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC.
SS I. Introductory.
In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may
relate to objects, it is at least quite clear that the only manner
in which it immediately relates to them is by means of an intuition. To
this as the indispensable groundwork, all thought points. But an intuition can
take place only in so far as the object is given to us. This, again, is only
possible, to man at least, on condition that the object affect the mind in a
certain manner. The capacity for receiving representations (receptivity)
through the mode in which we are affected by objects, objects, is called
sensibility. By means of sensibility, therefore, objects are given to us, and
it alone furnishes us with intuitions; by the understanding they are thought,
and from it arise conceptions. But an thought must
directly, or indirectly, by means of certain signs, relate ultimately to
intuitions; consequently, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can
an object be given to us.
The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so
far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation. That sort of intuition
which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical
intuition. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called
phenomenon. That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term
its matter; but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be
arranged under certain relations, I call its form. But that in which our
sensations are merely arranged, and by which they are susceptible of assuming a
certain form, cannot be itself sensation. It is, then, the matter of all
phenomena that is given to us a posteriori; the form must lie ready a priori for them in the mind, and
consequently can be regarded separately from all sensation.
I call all representations pure, in the transcendental meaning
of the word, wherein nothing is met with that belongs to sensation. And accordingly we find existing in the mind a priori, the pure form of sensuous
intuitions in general, in which all the manifold content of the phenomenal
world is arranged and viewed under certain relations. This pure form of
sensibility I shall call pure intuition. Thus, if I take away from our
representation of a body all that the understanding thinks as belonging to it,
as substance, force, divisibility, etc., and also
whatever belongs to sensation, as impenetrability, hardness, colour, etc.; yet there is still something left us from
this empirical intuition, namely, extension and shape. These belong to pure
intuition, which exists a priori in the mind, as a mere form of sensibility,
and without any real object of the senses or any sensation.
The science of all the principles of sensibility a priori, I
call transcendental aesthetic. [6]*
There must, then, be such a science forming the first part of the
transcendental doctrine of elements, in contradistinction to that part which
contains the principles of pure thought, and which is called transcendental
logic.
In
the science of transcendental aesthetic accordingly, we shall first isolate
sensibility or the sensuous faculty, by separating from it all that is annexed
to its perceptions by the conceptions of understanding, so that nothing be left
but empirical intuition. In the next place we shall take away from this
intuition all that belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain but pure
intuition, and the mere form of phenomena, which is all that the sensibility
can afford a priori. From this
investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensuous
intuition, as principles of knowledge a
priori, namely, space and time. To the consideration of these we shall now
proceed.
Thus:
- All human experience will/ must conform to 3 dimensional Euclidian Space.
- All human experience will/ must conform to uni-directional time.
(Past to present to future).
Thus,
it is a necessarily true claim that the shortest distance between any two
points is a straight line. This is a necessarily
true synthetic claim which we can know, nevertheless, a priori. But its necessity arises not from some
metaphysical origins, but rather from our knowledge at all human experience does/will/must
conform to this Euclidian geomatic principle, due to the contributions of
active mine.
So note what Euclid and
the other geometers were discovering was not “mind independent immaterial forms,” according to Kant, but
rather the blueprints the mind uses the make metal images and experience. It will always appear to us that the shortest
distance between two points is a straight line because our minds cannot
image reality for us in any other way.
SECTION I. Of Space.
SS
2. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception.
By
means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves
objects as without us, and these all in space. Herein
alone are their shape, dimensions, and relations to each other determined or
determinable. The internal sense, by means of which the mind contemplates
itself or its internal state, gives, indeed, no intuition of the soul as an
object; yet there is nevertheless a determinate form, under which alone the
contemplation of our internal state is possible, so that all which relates.
For the said rules or criteria are, in respect to their chief
sources, merely empirical, consequently never can serve as determinate laws a
priori, by which our judgement in matters of taste is to be directed. It is
rather our judgement which forms the proper test as to the correctness of the
principles. On this account it is advisable to give up the use of the term as
designating the critique of taste, and to apply it solely to that doctrine,
which is true science—the science of the laws of sensibility—and thus come
nearer to the language and the sense of the ancients in their well-known
division of the objects of cognition into aiotheta
kai noeta, or to share it with speculative
philosophy, and employ it partly in a transcendental, partly in a psychological
signification.
Section II. Of Time.
§§ 5 Metaphysical Exposition of this
Conception.
1. Time is not an empirical conception.
For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us,
if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation a priori.
Without this presupposition we could not represent to ourselves that things
exist together at one and the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously,
or in succession.
2. Time is a necessary representation,
lying at the foundation of all our intuitions. With regard to
phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them
to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well
represent to ourselves time void of phenomena. Time is therefore given a
priori. In it alone is all reality of phenomena possible. These may all be
annihilated in thought, but time itself, as the universal condition of their
possibility, cannot be so annulled.
3. On this necessity a priori is also
founded the possibility of apodeictic principles of the relations of time, or
axioms of time in general, such as: “Time has only one dimension,” “Different
times are not coexistent but successive” (as different spaces are not
successive but coexistent). These principles cannot be derived from experience,
for it would give neither strict universality, nor apodeictic certainty. We
should only be able to say, “so common experience teaches us,” but not “it must
be so.” They are valid as rules, through which, in general, experience is
possible; and they instruct us respecting experience, and not by means of it.
4. Time is not a discursive, or as it is
called, general conception, but a pure form of the sensuous intuition.
Different times are merely parts of one and the same time. But the
representation which can only be given by a single object is an intuition.
Besides, the proposition that different times cannot be coexistent could not be
derived from a general conception. For this proposition is synthetical, and
therefore cannot spring out of conceptions alone. It is therefore contained
immediately in the intuition and representation of time.
5. The infinity of time signifies nothing
more than that every determined quantity of time is possible only through
limitations of one time lying at the foundation. Consequently, the original
representation, time, must be given as unlimited. But as the determinate
representation of the parts of time and of every quantity of an object can only
be obtained by limitation, the complete representation of time must not be
furnished by means of conceptions, for these contain only partial
representations. Conceptions, on the contrary, must have immediate intuition for
their basis.
The following is Kant’s list of twelve
“categories”, made up of four groups (called “moments”) of three categories
each.
Quality = reality, negation, limitation.
• The first two members are “presence” and “absence.”
• Limitation is effectively a compound of presence and absence and it involves a notion of space and/or time,
subdividing a whole into parts.
Quality = reality, negation, limitation.
• "This cat is black" is affirmative (Reality)
• "This cat is not black" is negative (Negation)
• "This cat is non-black" is infinite
(Limitation)
Quantity = unity, plurality, totality.
• Unity refers to this one, i.e. some indicated single (thing)
• Plurality refers to an unspecified number
of units, i.e. many, more than one (thing)
• Totality to all (things of a certain
group).
– Note that totality (all) may be taken as a special case
of plurality (some unspecified number), or as contrary to plurality (if the
latter is read as ‘only some’).
Quantity = unity, plurality, totality.
• "All cats have tails" is a universal judgment
(Unity)
• "Some cats are black" is a particular judgment
(Plurality)
• "This is a cat" is a singular judgment
(Totality)VS
Modality = existence, possibility, necessity.
• Existence here means “actuality” “this indicated fact,
here and now or there and then”
• Possibility is some contingency; that which may occur
under some conditions
• Necessity refers to something that occurs under all
conditions.
– (Modality is also closely related with Causation.)
Modality = existence, possibility, necessity.
• "This cat is dangerous." asserting
• "This cat could be dangerous.” speculating
• "This cat must be dangerous.” apodictic
Relation = inherence and subsistence, causality and
dependence, community.
• He may have in mind here categorical, conditional
and disjunctive propositions.
• All/ No. Some and Some are not- categorical propositions
(substances and their properties)
• If/then Propositions (causal claims)
• Either/ or Propositions -
Relation = inherence and subsistence, causality and
dependence, community.
• "This cat is sleeping" is categorical
(Inherence/subsistence and substance/accidence)
• "This cat is sleeping because it was tired" is
hypothetical (Causality and dependence)
• "This cat is either awake or asleep" is
disjunctive (Community and reciprocity)
The
Synthetic A Priori
“It
is therefore a question which deserves at least closer investigation, and
cannot be disposed of at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge
independent of experience, and even of all impressions of the senses? Such
knowledge is called a priori, and distinguished from empirical knowledge, which
has its source a posteriori, that IS, in experience.[7]
Kant
gives us a way of resolving the age-old disputes of metaphysics-questions
concerning reality as such. Since the claims of the metaphysicians are all
synthetic a priori, Kant provides us
with the following policy with regard to claims:
- There are those claims that are NOT rules by which
we construct our experience. These are
either (1) analytic, (2) contingently true, or (3) contingently false. (i.e. Analytic A
Priori, or Synthetic A
posteriori) –roughly what Hume acknowledged, and termed “Relations of
Ideas” or “Matters of Fact.”
- Those claims that state rules by which we must construct
our experience are true necessarily true. (Synthetic A Priori)
- Those claims which contradict rules by which we
must construct our experience are false necessarily false. (Synthetic A Priori)
- Finally, there are those claims that cannot be
decided by appeal to the rules of our experience. These then make no difference to our
experience one way or the other and are to be rejected as possible topics
of knowledge.- (As Hume would say, “Commit them to the flames…”)
If
a truth is not true because of our experiences, (Matter of Fact) nor is it true
because of the grammar or meanings of the sentences of our language (Relation
of Ideas), there is yet a third possibility: the Synthetic A Priori. Synthetic a priori knowledge is
knowledge of our own rules with which we (necessarily) constitute reality. Hume's fork had only two tines and
consequently left unjustified many of our most important beliefs. Kant provides
a third tine to the fork. A belief can
be true, necessarily true, and is justified, if it is one of those rules that
we (necessarily) impose to constitute our experience.
Thus,
there is no point to wondering whether our concepts “match up to reality.” The only “reality” we know,
or could know is the reality as we experience it/ as
constituted by mind. There is no knowable-reality without (our) concepts. Kant rejects the question: "How can we know that our ideas
correspond with the way the world really is?" as simply misconceived. Instead, he replaces it with: "How do our
mental categories constitute the world?" "What is the structure and what are the
rules (the concepts or categories) of the human mind according to which we 'set
up' our world, the world of our experience?"
Initial
Resistance to this View
Some
might object here. The world as I
constitute it for my experience is NOT the “real” world.[8] The real world exists with or without me,
independently of how I constitute it, and it is THAT real world
that I want to come to know. Anything
less is not genuine knowledge.
But
note two things about this objection:
- You will never see (or taste, or touch, or hear, of
feel or smell) this alleged “real world.”
The world you live in, the world that makes a common
sense difference to you and to me is not the ideal world of speculations
dreamed up by philosophers. (Here I
think we can find the roots of Pragmatism.)
- If you are asking to understand the world UN-constituted
by mind, what sort of request would that be? Are your asking
to conceive of the world without concepts?
To understand the world free of human understanding? On the face of it, that appears to be a
logical as well as an epistemological impossibility.
Note
that Kant restores a kind of certainty; we can be certain of the constitutive
rules of our own experience. Kant
defended the necessity of the truths of arithmetic and geometry as those rules
that have to do with the a priori forms of our intuitions of
space and time. According to Kant's philosophy
in general, reality is the world of our experience, as we constitute it through
the concepts of our understanding. Therefore,
we can know it with certainty, for truth, in general, is our own construction. Some might object that Kant is changing the
meaning of “truth” and “knowledge.” After
all, we traditionally have meant by “truth” “correspondence to some extra
mental reality.” But he would counter it
is precisely that picture of truth that this flawed, premised as it is on a
misconception of perception.
Kant
believes that he has shown that what we
(at least the non-philosopher types) normally mean by
"truth," "knowledge," and "reality" is not an
insatiable appeal to a world beyond our experience a la Plato, but
rather the world of our experience and knowledge the objects of
that experience. Underneath Kant's
spectacular pronouncements there is, once again, a return to common sense. This
world, the one I stand in, touch, and see, is the real world (for me). This world and only this world makes a
practical difference to me.
A reply to Hume:
- Causation
- Induction
- The “external” world
Let
us return to Hume’s critique of induction and causality.
Hume
asks: If a truth cannot be justified on the basis of
our experiences, nor by appeal to grammar or meanings of the sentences of our
language, how else could it be justified?
It
Kan’t … says Hume. (LOL)
"Truths
of reason" and “matters of fact.” were thought to exhaust the possible
types of justification. This was Hume's dilemma, and with this two-test system
of justification, he argued that many of our most important beliefs are both
“unjustified” and "unjustifiable."
Relations of Idea: Analytic A Priori
Matters of Fact: Synthetic A Posteriori
But
Kant gives us a general way of giving an account of all those truths that
metaphysicians have always argued about. Using Kant's terminology, we can say
they are forms of synthetic a priori
knowledge. Such knowledge is in fact knowledge of our own rules with which we
(necessarily) constitute reality. This
then, is a third way: A belief can be justified as necessarily true if we can
demonstrate that it is one of those rules that we impose to constitute our
experience. Incidentally, Kant defended
the truths of arithmetic and geometry claiming that they are synthetic a
priori claims. He attempted to show
that they were the (a priori) forms of intuition, the ways in which we
must experience our world.
While
the principle of universal causation is neither a matter of fact (generalization
from experience) nor a relation of idea (an analytic truth) we can nevertheless
know
that it is true, and necessarily true (of necessity the
world will appear to us in the form of effects with causes). So too with the principle of induction. So too for our belief in the
"external" or material world.
We shall always interpret our experience as the experience of “objects
in space,” as “external” to us and as material or substantial. But notice, our
metaphysical notion of substance is no longer that which is, by definition,
outside of our experience. It is now part of the rules by which we set up our
experience.
Kant
grants that the principle of universal causation is neither a generalization
from experience nor an analytic truth.
What it is, however, is a rule for "setting up" our world. Think about my Maillist
program again. If I ask, how can I be
certain that the “Name” field will always come first? Because that’s the rule my program imposes in
its activity constituting the record.
Alternatively, I know that a rook cannot move diagonally on the chess board
when playing chess. Like a rule in
chess, this is not a move within
the game, but one of those rules that defines
the game.
Likewise
with the principle of induction; it is neither based
upon experience (Matter of Fact) nor a trivial truth (Relation of Ideas), but a
rule with which we govern all of our experience. So too for our belief in the
"external" or material world, which Berkeley and Hume found so
problematic. We shall always interpret
our experience of objects in space as external to us and as material or
substantial, but not because we have empirical proof, but because we cannot
experience the world any other way. But
notice, the previous “metaphysical” notion of substance is no longer that which
is, by definition, outside of our experience. Now it only refers to the rules
by which we set up our experience and make experience intelligible to
ourselves.
Truth is NOT Correspondence (and
never was)
Given
Kant's revolution, truth is no longer correspondence between our ideas and
reality. Rather truth arises from our imposition
of our own system of rules (concepts or categories) upon the sense data given
to us, and by which we constitute our reality (experience). Knowledge then is
no longer to be thought of as gaining an understanding of a reality beyond our experience (i.e. things in themselves), but rather an understanding of
how we constitute experience for ourselves.
This does not mean knowledge of experience is distinct from knowledge of objects.
On the contrary, the objects of our experience are all/the only objects
that there are in (our) reality.
Elements
of this knowledge can be known with certainty, Kant argued. We can be certain of the rules of our own
experience. Kant defended the necessity of the truths of arithmetic and
geometry as those rules that have to do with the a priori forms of our intuitions of space and time. According to
Kant's philosophy in general, reality is the world of our experience, as we
constitute it through the concepts of our understanding. Therefore, we can know
it with certainty, for truth, in general, is our own construction.
Initial Objections:
Objection:
Einstein talks about warped, non-Euclidian space where the shortest distance
between two points is NOT a straight line.
Response: But even Einstein cautions us: don’t try to picture
(image) this.
Objection:
We can imagine (maybe even achieve) time travel.
Response:
But our experiences will still be “forward.” (First I
did, then I did, then ....)
Objection:
Mystics talk about experience where “space and time drop away
and all is one and time is unreal”
Response:
Yes, well, even they claim that such experiences are “ineffable.” They may be simply unintelligible as well,
just as Kant suggests. It is a
controversial matter what, if any, knowledge one can get out of such
experiences.[9]
Positive and Negative Noumena
It
is important not to think of noumena and phenomena as two different set of
objects. Rather, the first is reality uncognized by human mind than the latter of the very same
reality cognized (filtered and interpreted) by human mind.
Kant
distinguishes between positive and negative noumena:
"If by 'noumenon' we mean a thing so far as it is
not an object of our sensible intuition, and so abstract from our mode of intuiting
it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense of the term".[10]
"But if we understand by it an object of a
non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special mode of intuition,
namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we possess, and of which we
cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be 'noumenon' in the positive
sense of the term."[11]
These
positive noumena, if they existed, would be non-empirical but nevertheless
intelligible realities which we apprehended by some special non-sensory
faculty. (Perhaps something like Plato’s
Forms mystically imparted to us, or Aristotle’s Essences which we apprehend
through nous, again a mysterious "intellectual intuition." )
But
Kant does not believe in these hypothesized modes of apprehension. Thus, despite wishing to know the noumena positively,
this is beyond the abilities of humans.
Use
of the categories of understanding therefore can never extend to anything other
than to the objects of our experience (phenomena). These “object(s)” that
correspond to the objects of our experience (source the sense data) but our
concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible
intuition, could not in the least apply to them.
“Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding
to the sensible entities; there may also be intelligible entities to which our
sensible faculty of intuition has no relation whatsoever; but our concepts of
understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition, could
not in the least apply to them. That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon'
must be understood as being such only in a negative sense.[12]
The Noumenon as a Limiting Concept
The
noumena act as a limiting concept. They
demonstrate that our knowledge of phenomena is a limited and qualified kind of
knowledge.
"Further, the concept of a noumenon is necessary,
to prevent sensible intuition from being extended to things in themselves, and
thus to limit the objective validity of sensible knowledge".[13]
"What our understanding acquires through this
concept of a noumenon, is a negative extension; that is to say, understanding
is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits
sensibility by applying the term noumena to things in themselves (things not regarded
as appearances). But in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising that it cannot know these noumena through any
of the categories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title
of an unknown something".[14]
For
Kant, noumenal/ phenomenal distinction is key to limiting reason to what he
perceives to be its proper bounds (human experience). This makes traditional metaphysics and its
questions (such as the existence of God, the soul, and free will) beyond the
scope of theoretical reason. These
questions may ultimately be the proper objects of faith, but not of reason.
Ramifications:
1) (Traditional)
Metaphysics is impossible.
To
conceive of reality (much less talk or speculate about) reality outside of
space and time or "transcendent reality" is impossible, because,
necessarily, any such conception would use human concepts and thus be mediated
by mind. These mediating concepts are
perfectly serviceable for the constitution and organization of human
experience, but inapplicable for gaining immediate knowledge of
things-in-themselves. Hence, we cannot
have theoretical knowledge of the way things "really exist" apart
from human experience or consciousness of them.
Just
as it makes perfect sense to ask, What is west of the
DM building?” or “What is west of San Francisco?”, or “What is west of Japan?”,
to ask “What is west of the moon?” is to misapply an otherwise useful content
concept. This concept has a usefulness
and a jurisdiction, but the latter question is nonsensical because it is an
attempt to apply the concept outside of its proper jurisdiction. In a similar way, to ask, “What is the cause
of this disease?” or “What is the cause of my car not starting?” or “What is
the cause of the stock market crash?” makes perfectly good sense, but to ask, “What
is the cause of reality?” is a misapplication of an otherwise useful concept.
- There is epistemological justification for Causality
(Contra
David Hume)
Human cognition always organizes human
experience of the world according to the concept of causality. Therefore we can be
certain a priori that all human experience will have/must have the same
basic character since human cognition can only organize it one way. In particular, we
can be certain that every effect will have a cause since this is the way our
mind always puts it together for us.
Opens the door to
Radical Relativism:
Kant believed that our (human) empirical
knowledge was subjective but also universal (NOT RELATIVE). This is because the pure
forms of experience and the categories of thought were universal for all
humans. Since you are “running the same organizing program” that I am running,
you are putting the world together for yourself in pretty much the same way
that I am putting the world together for myself. Notice, if I write up a document using WORD
and then I put it on a thumb drive and give it to you and your computer calls
it up for you using WORD, the same document appears both for me and for you. This is because in both cases word is taking
the data and making it conform to the same structure form or template. Thus, my subjective truth is the same as
yours. In this way, Kant can maintain that
what is true for one human is true for all humans and while truth is subjective,
it is also universal.
·
Now
God or aliens from another planet may have very different forms of experience
and thus different knowledge and truths, but the human task of inquiry doesn’t
involve them- yet at least. These are
merely speculative concerns, not practical ones about which scientists need to
worry.
BUT....one might challenge Kant’s view
here.
For instance, what if we do NOT all
put the world together in basically the same way (e.g.
woman according to a female template, men according to a male template)? If “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus”
(Say I’m running WORD and you are running Pages.) then we are not experiencing the same worlds
because we’re building our worlds with the same input but according to
different templates. We are, in a very
real sense, living in different worlds, and truth must be relativized to groups
of cognizers.
Rather than univalent, truth becomes bivalent or, perhaps,
multivalent. It is potentially as
multifaceted as there are minds, and no basis would exist for claiming that any
worldview was privileged among the plurality.
If this were the case, it is unclear what could recommend one worldview
over another except prejudice or a political agenda.
Contemporary philosophers are more
likely to say that the constitutive concepts through which we construct our
experience might actually be rules of language. This in turn raises the intriguing but
controversial possibility that the world might be quite different for people
who speak different languages.
–
(Kant
himself did not believe this.)
The Freewill and Determinism Debate
and The Dilemma of Moral Responsibility:
Determinism[15]:
Similar to Hume’s notion of the principle of universal
causation, is the belief that every event in the universe has a cause.
However,
it follows from this that, since human actions are events in the universe then
human actions have causes. Now, “Caused
by what?” one might ask. Well
determinists disagree, some claiming that is it
behavioral conditioning, other that it is genetic factors, others that is it
id/super ego conflicts, etc. However regardless of what the cause of human actions
is, it seemed that our every action, volition and thought is caused by external
factors. Any “science of human behavior”
would seem to presume the truth of determinism.
But there is a curious (seeming) inconsistency
between theoretical reason and practical reason. Theoretical reason (science)
sees reality as a seamless series of causes and effects (determinism), moral
reason does not. Any judgements of praiseworthiness or blameworthiness require
the concepts of free agency and moral responsibility for personal choices. In
judging the actions of a moral agent right or wrong, one necessarily presupposes
that the action was uncompelled by prior events (free).
In short, making sense of Moral Experience
(and corresponding moral judgements) seems to require precisely the sort of
personal free agency that causal determinism denies.
Kant’s Resolution:
Unconditioned
causes, necessary for moral judgement, never occur nor can they occur in the
world as we experience it
(i.e.
the phenomenal reality: reality as cognized by human minds). However, we have no theoretical evidence
(nor could we) for or against the claim that causal determinism is true of
reality independent of human cognition (things-in-themselves,
Noumenal Reality).
For
all we know (theoretically), causal determinism is not true of
things-in-themselves. Furthermore, given the “freewill” is a
necessary presupposition for rational moral experience (the only alternative to
absurdity) we have moral reason (though no theoretical evidence) to believe in
(have faith in?) freewill.
Since
moral experience only makes sense on the presumption of freewill, we therefore
have moral reason to believe a metaphysical claim,
a claim about things-in-themselves (i.e. that we have
free will). We can be as (morally)
certain that humans have freewill as we are (morally) certain that Hitler ought
not to have done the evil things he did.
And, since there is no theoretical evidence against free will and it is
the only rational alternative to absurd moral judgements, we ought
to believe in freewill where the “ought” is both
rational and moral.
But
for Kant moral/practical reason is the only
vehicle we have to speculate and draw conclusions about
transcendent reality (things-in-themselves).
He believed that the existence of things like God, freedom, and the soul
which could neither be proved nor disproved by theoretical (pure) reason, were
necessary postulates of practical reason (systematic moral experience). From a practical (moral law) point of
view, it makes much more sense to accent to the existence of God, freedom and immortality then to deny them or to remain
agnostic.