Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
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 point out:
“To some, the conception of a
previous life with its opportunity for a glimpse of the eternal essences may appear
fantastic. Yet to any one 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 Nous,
arguably no less spooky that Plato. So
is the only alternative to spooky metaphysics an epistemological skepticism?
Kant does not think so. However, he credits Hume with posing the
problem so clearly.
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.[2]
One of the errors which lead
Empiricism to its skeptical conclusions according to Kant, was their passive
view of mind and experience. Think the
passive metaphors employed by Locke and Hume for instance. (“Tabula Rasa,” “Impressions”) Such views
suggest that experience of the world is passive affair where the mind merely
“received” what it “given” in perception.
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 had a point; 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.
Key Kantian Insight: Mind is NOT passive in experience, but rather
active. Mind constructs experience out of the raw sense data that the world provides. (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?”
We do not have access to the
world as it exists in-itself (what Kant refers to as Noumenon), since all human
experience is mediated by the active application of concepts (categorizing) of
mind.
We can and do have precise
knowledge of the world as organized and
interpreted by human cognition (what Kant refers to as Phenomena).
According to Kant, the noumenal
world may exist, but it is completely unknowable to humans.
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.
Thus I have knowledge of how my 100th record and any other
record will look (in broad outline) that is a priori (that is may knowledge 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.
Kant is very specific about what
these forms and categories of experience are, but I’ll only refer to a few for
illustration purposes.
Space and Time are the two pure
forms of experience according to Kant.
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).
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:
If a truth is not true because
of our experiences, nor is it true because of the grammar or meanings of the
sentences of our language, how else could it be defended? Kant gives a way in
his synthetic a priori knowledge, knowledge
that is 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, if it
is one of those rules that we impose to constitute our experience. 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 necessarily true (of necessity the world will appear to us In the
form of effect 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 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.
Given’s 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, for the objects of our experience are all the objects
that there are for (our) reality.
And elements of this knowledge
can be know with certainty, for, he 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.
Some might object here. The world as I constitutes it in NOT the
“real” world. 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. First,
I’ll never see (or taste, or touch, or hear, of feel or smell) that “real
world.” The world I live in, the world
that makes a common sense difference to me is not the ideal world of speculations
dreamed up by philosophers. There are
the root s pragmatism here, I think.
Second, were I asking to understand the world UN-constituted by mind,
what sort of request would that be? Am I
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 and well as an epistemological impossibility.
Let us return to Hume’s critique
of induction and causality.
Hume asks: If a truth is not 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 (LOL)
"Truths of reason" nor
"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
Matter 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.
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. Alternativelly, 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 nor a trivial truth, 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 pervious “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.
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.
Positive and negative noumena
It is important not to think of
noumena and phenomena as two different set of object. 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".[3]
"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."[4]
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;s does not believe in
these hypothesized mode 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). There “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.[5]
The noumenon as a limiting concept
The noumena act as a limiting
concept. They demonstrate that our
knowledge of phenomena is knowledge 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".[6]
"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".[7]
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:
·
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 the every
effect will have a cause since this is the way our minds always puts it
together for us.
·
(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.
·
Freewill
Dilemma:
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)
requires precisely the sort of personal free agency that casual 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, 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 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, a claim about things-in-themselves
(i.e. that we have free will). We can be
a (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.
Opens the door to Radical Relativism:
Kant believed that our (human) empirical knowledge was subjective but
also universal (NOT RELATIVE)
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 in pretty much the same
way that I am porting the world together.
Thus my subjective truth is the same as yours. Therefore, he could believe that what is true
for one human is true for all humans.
(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 object to Kant’s view.
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” 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.
[1] [1] Introduction to Plato Selections, ed. Raphael Demos (1927) http://www.ditext.com/demos/plato.html
[2] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. Lewis White Beck. Copyright © 1959. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ.
[3]Critique of Pure Reason A250/B307,P267(NKS)
[4] Critique of Pure Reason A250/B30,P2677(NKS)
[5] Critique of Pure Reason B309,P270(NKS)
[6] Critique of Pure Reason A253/B310
[7] Critique of Pure Reason A256/B312,P273