My Final Essay on Kant’s Critique
My Final Essay on Kant’s Critique
(By Alexander Koudlai)
1) What is meant by Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”?
While the natural philosophers
used to think of space, time, and objects of perception as of reality existing
“out there”, Kant claims that those exist but in us. Space and
time are forms of pure intuition, and objects are mere appearances (phenomena)
of transcendental things (noumena). So Kant made human psyche the center
of phenomenal world, when the a priori categories were the rules for all
empirical knowledge, pre-determined by those categories and pure (not
empirical) intuitions of space and time.
2) What is the “Transcendental Aesthetic”” about?
In
B36 Kant gives his own definition of the term:
I
call a science of all principles of a priori sensibility the transcendental
aesthetic. There must therefore be such a science, which constitutes the
first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements, in contrast to that
which contains the principles of pure thinking and is named transcendental
logic.
Transcendental
Aesthetic is that part of Kant’s transcendental Philosophy, which deals with an
explanation “how are synthetic a priori propositions possible?
– namely pure a priori intuitions, space and time, in which, if we
want to go beyond the given concept in a priori judgment, we encounter
that which is to be discovered a priori and synthetically connected with
it, not in the concept but in the intuition that corresponds to it; but on this
ground such a judgment never extends beyond the objects of the senses and can
hold only for objects of possible experience”(B73).
3. Explain
what Kant means by (l) intuition, pure intuition, empirical intuition; (2)
concept, pure concept, empirical concept; (3) transcendent; (4) transcendental;
(5) a dogmatic procedure of reason; (6) critical.
(1)
“ In whatever way and through whatever means a cognition may relate to objects,
that through which it relates immediately to them, and at which all thought as
a means is directed as an end, is intuition”. (A19/B33)
The
intuition is pure if it is not grounded in experience, but exists a priori. Kant
claims that there are only two pure intuitions of space and time. Those are
necessary preconditions for all kinds of experience. They are general ways of
experiencing all kinds of sensual objects. There are also particular
intuitions. “That intuition which is related to the object through sensation is
called empirical” (A20).
(2)Objects
are given through intuitions but “thought through understanding, and from it
arise concepts” (A19/B33). This is about empirical concepts. But there are also
pure concepts of understanding, the categories, the a priori forms for
all kinds of possible empirical knowledge without which we could not have any
understanding of nature at all.
(3)
transcendent and (4)transcendental
Look first at A296/B352-3, for the meaning of
"transcendent" and how it's different from
"transcendental". Transcendent principles, or a transcendent
employment of principles, go beyond possible experience. Look at A309, A326-327.
B427,B448, B487.
In the Transcendental
Logic Kant speaks of transcendent principles of pure
understanding as those which “would fly beyond the boundaries of immanent”
ones which belong to possible experience. Kant’s concern is about “illusions”
of dialectic (“a logic of illusion” A293/B249) He tries to clarify the
principles of thinking and to establish the boundaries of different kinds of
those.
In
A296 he writes: “We call the principles whose application stays wholly and
completely within the limits of possible experience immanent, but those
that would fly beyond these boundaries transcendent principles (“that
actually incite us to tear down all those boundary posts and to lay claim to a
wholly new territory, that recognizes no demarcations anywhere). But by the
latter I do not understand the transcendental use or
misuse of categories, which is a mere mistake of the faculty of judgment, when
it is not properly checked by criticism, and thus does not attend enough to the
boundaries of the territory in which alone the pure understanding is allowed
its play”.
So,
if I understand it correctly, Kant says that there is a possibility of a transcendental
use-misuse of immanent as well as transcendent principles . He wants
us to be careful (critical) in our thinking.
(5)
a dogmatic procedure of reason is transcendental thinking of transcendent
or immanent without proper verification: that which may create an illusion of
knowledge, based on a misuse of abstract logic in the sphere of possible
experience, and categories in the sphere of pure ideas. Sophistry without a content.
(6)
critical thinking or dialectical rigorous investigation is opposed to mere
sophistry and can be compared to the skeptical method in A424. “This
method of watching or even occasioning a contest between assertions, not in
order to decide it to the advantage of one party or the other, but to
investigate whether the object of the dispute is not perhaps a mere mirage… It
is entirely different from skepticism, a principle of artful and scientific
ignorance…”
4. Kant sometimes formulated the central
problem of the first Critique this way: “How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?”
Explain what he means by this question. Give examples of the kinds of
judgments Kant thinks in need of defense? Explain why he thinks that
these examples are neither (i) a posteriori (empirical), nor (ii) analytic.
John Locke and many others thought that our knowledge of the
real world starts with sense impressions, which are followed by simple ideas
and then complex ideas; the analytical knowledge for those was just the matter
of words. Hence, any synthetic a priori knowledge
would not be possible on that account.
Kant
offered another theory of Transcendental Aesthetic where there were two pure
intuitions of space and time, necessary for any experience even to begin,
because all possible experiences occur in space and in certain sequences
(time). There were also empirical intuitions, “but all our intuition (of the
kind) is nothing but the representation of appearance; … the things that we
intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them to be, nor are their relations
so constituted in themselves as they appear to us: and if we remove our own
subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then
all constitution, all relation of objects in space and time, indeed space and
time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in
themselves, but only in us” (A42).
From
Kant’s point of view there were problems also with the Leibnizian-Wolffian
philosophy which “directed all investigations of the nature and origins of our
cognitions to an entirely unjust point of view in considering the distinction
between sensibility and the intellectual as merely logical, since it is
obviously transcendental, and does not concern merely the form of distinctness
or indistinctness, but the origin and content, so that through sensibility we
do not cognize the constitution of things in themselves merely indistinctly,
but rather not at all…” (B62).
For
all empirical cognitions we need immediate intuitions in space and concepts
which are built in the frame of time. And still, all those are about mere
appearances, the nature of the latter being objective.
Now,
Kant felt that it was necessary to defend his foundational judgments about
space:
1)
Space is not an empirical
concept. For in
order certain sensations to be related to something outside me (… in another
place in space from that in which I find myself)… not merely as different but
as in different places, the representation of space must already be their
ground. Thus, the representation of space cannot be obtained from the relations
of outer appearances through experience, but this outer experience is itself
possible only through this representation. (B38)
2)
Space is a necessary
representation, a priori, that is the ground of all outer intuitions. One can never represent
that there is no space, though one can very well think that there are no
objects to be encountered in it…(A24/B39)
3)
Space is not a discursive or
as is said, general concept of relations of things in general, but a pure
intuition. For first
one can only represent a single space, and if one speaks of many spaces, one
understands by that only parts of one and the same unique space… the manifold
in it, thus… rests merely on limitations… Thus also all geometrical
principles, e. g., that in a triangle two sides together are always greater
than a third, are never derived from general concepts of line and triangle, but
rather are derived from intuition and indeed derived a priori with
apodictic certainty (A25).
4)
Space is represented as an
infinite given magnitude.
And
he concluded: ”Therefore the original representation of space is an a
priori intuition, not a concept” (B40).
He
also defended his judgments about time:
1)
Time is not an empirical
concept (B46)
2)
Time is a necessary representation
that grounds all intuitions (A31)
3)
This a priori necessity
also grounds the possibility of apodictic principles of relations of time, or
axioms of time in general. It has only one dimension: different times are not
simultaneous, but successive (just as different spaces are not successive, but
simultaneous). (B47)
4)
Time is not discursive or, as
one calls it, general concept, but a pure form of sensible intuition.(A32)
5)
The infinitude of time
signifies nothing more that that every determinate magnitude of time is only
possible through limitations of a single time grounding it. (B48)
Space
is not a posteriori in our cognition, because we need it already in
place to have any empirical cognition (which happens in space and never
otherwise) at all. Time is also a necessary precondition for any perception of
change: first state A then state B. When we judge first-then,
already we are using the foundation (time) which allows us to do so. Space and
time are not analytic concepts, because we do not deduce them from any other
concept, but simply accept axiomatically as a necessary ground for all
empirical cognition.
5. Explain Kant's contention that space and time are (l)
intuitions, rather than concepts, (2) a priori, rather than a posteriori. (In
what sense, exactly, are they supposed to be "prior" to objects of
experience?)
I believe there is already an answer to this in the above
disclosure, but to add: We intuit inner and outer space in our inner and outer
experiences, in imagination and contemplation of mental and physical objects.
We think (about things) and percept them invariably in space, and their
transformations and interactions consequentially (in time). They are prior to
objects in the sense that we already need them to perceive objects, which
always possess their characteristics and do not take those intuitions away with
them when we dismiss objects.
6. What does Kant mean by the
"transcendental ideality" of space and time? What motivates his
claim? What are his arguments in support of the claim? What problems does
he think this theory solves, that other alternatives do not?
Transcendental
ideality of S & T means that those are not objects, not their appearances,
but rather conditions (deduced by pure reason) of all appearances (objects of
cognition). They are necessary for our understanding of our experiences of
objects at all.
S
& T transcend all possible experience being a necessary precondition for
those and not the objects of senses themselves. When there are no objects we
can think space and time as needed for possible objective experience.
“It is nothing as soon as we leave aside the condition of the possibility of
all experiences, and take them as something that grounds the things in
themselves” (A28).
In
§3, Transcendental exposition of the concept of space, Kant says: “I
understand by a transcendental exposition the explanation of a concept
as a principle from which insight into the possibility of other synthetic a
priori cognitions can be gained. For this aim it is required 1) that such
cognitions actually flow from a given concept, and 2) that these cognitions are
only possible under the presupposition of a given way of explaining this
concept.” (B40) He thinks that other concepts of space do not satisfy these
conditions, and his does. Using the example of Geometry (a science that
determines the properties of space synthetically and yet a priori) he
argues that it must originally be intuition; for from a mere concept no
propositions can be drawn that go beyond the concept, which however happens in
geometry. Geometrical propositions are all apodictic. Hence, space must be not
an empirical intuition… it has its seat merely in the subject, as its formal
constitution for being affected by objects and thereby acquiring immediate
representation, i.e., intuition, of them, thus only as the form of outer sense
in general. Kant thinks that his “explanation alone makes the possibility of
geometry as a synthetic a priori cognition comprehensible…” (B41) So, his
theory solves the problem of how geometry is possible, while others (he
believes) don’t.
7. Which of Kant's arguments aims to show that space and/or time
is knowable a priori?
# (1)
On space and time.
Which one argues that space and/or time is not a concept? # (3)on space and (4) on time
Which one that they are not the "matter" but the
"forms" of perceptions?
#
(2) Space and time, p.5&6 in the above text.
8. How does Kant deal with the objection that, for all we know,
"things in themselves" might be spatio-temporal?
Kant
thinks that the above objection is wrong. In A47 he argues that, if we suppose
that space and time are in themselves objective and conditions of the
possibility of things in themselves, then there would be a priori
apodictic and synthetic propositions about both, but especially about space.
Geometrical propositions are cognized synthetically a priori and with
apodictic certainty. We may take such necessary and universal truths only
through concepts or through intuitions, a priori or posteriori.
The latter cannot yield any synthetic proposition, but only empirical, thus it
can never contain necessity and universality that is nevertheless
characteristic of geometrical propositions. So those are not posteriori.
Considering the first means for attaining such cognitions, however, namely
through mere concepts or a priori intuitions, it is clear that from mere
concepts only analytical ones can be attained. Now we are forced to take refuge
in intuition, as geometry always does. And this is a pure a priory intuition.
If space (and time as well) were not a mere form of intuition that contains a
priori conditions, then we could not make absolutely nothing synthetic and a
priori about outer objects. “It is therefore indubitably certain and not
merely possible or even probable that space and time, as the necessary
conditions of all (outer and inner) experience, are merely subjective
conditions of all our intuition, in relation to which therefore all objects are
mere appearances and not things given in themselves in this way; about these
appearances, further much may be said a priori that concerns their form
but nothing about the things in themselves that may ground them” (A49). I think
this is a fair and sufficient response to the above objection.
9. Speaking of causality, Kant writes: "the very
concept of a cause so manifestly contains the concept of a necessity of
connection with an effect and of the strict universality of the rule, that the
concept would be altogether lost if we attempted to derive it, as Hume has
done, from a repeated association of that which happens with that which
precedes, and from a custom of connecting representations, a custom originating
in this repeated association, and constituting therefore a merely subjective
necessity."
[a] Explain what Kant is saying in this passage and exactly what Kant
thinks is wrong with Hume's analysis of causality.
A, we say, is the cause of B, if A is
necessarily connected with B universally. A physical body B is
attracted to a physical body A , because when ever anyone observes B in
the proximity of A, B is affected by A in a strict accordance
with universal gravitation law. It could be described, predicted and precisely
calculated anywhere in the known universe. If we like to think about the
proximity of A and B arbitrary it does not affect the objective
reality of physical law of gravitation (at least in the case of ordinary human
beings, which Hume and Kant might have in mind – both would not consider
miracles being a part of physical reality). No matter what one thinks stepping
out of the window, his body will fall with certain acceleration, attracted by
earth. This necessity of physical laws hardly could be explained on the ground
of Hume’s Law of association. So Kant thinks that causality is not merely psychological.
Homosexuals
could think that their love relationships are objective necessity and perfectly
like those between heterosexuals (we can even grant them their rights to
think so and to do what they want to do among themselves) but objectively that
kind of relationships, in a strict accordance with biological laws, will not
produce the offspring and is useless in terms of procreation and a sense of
biological family; that kind of thinking constitutes merely an illusion. The
same kind of illusion developed one step further turns into sexual relations
between humans and animals, humans and mechanical devices. All of those are
causally impotent to procreate - which proves the illusive nature of those
arbitrary judgments about reality of sex, its purpose and psychological
mechanism installed by nature, in order to insure that purpose. But the laws of
physics and biology are not an illusion. So the category of causality must be
something more than merely a psychological category.
[b] Explain Kant's argument in the Second Analogy, and how that argument
can be construed as an answer to Hume.
Everything
that happens presupposes something which it follows in accordance with a rule.
Or
All
alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and
effect.
These
two formulations of a causal necessity in observation of alterations in
nature and a slight difference which some claim they represent will not be
the subject of my attention here. I will rather focus on the proof and how
it shows the necessity and the nature of Kant’s causality opposed to Hume’s
concept of merely arbitrary one.
First
Kant reminds that “All change (succession) of appearances is only
alteration; for the arising or perishing of substance are not alterations
of it, since the concept of alteration presupposes one and the same subject as
existing with two opposed determinations, and thus as persisting” (B233).
Then,
like Hume, he describes the observation of the process of alteration and
grants: ”I am … only conscious that my imagination places one state before and
the other after, not that one state precedes the other in the object; or, in
other words, through the mere perception the objective relation of the appearances
that are succeeding one another remains undetermined”.
Then
he attempts to show what it means to be determined the actual determination of
this cognition:
“Now
in order for this to be cognized as determined, the relation between the two
states must be thought in such a way that it is thereby necessarily determined
which of them must be placed before and which after rather than vice versa. The
concept, however, which caries a necessity of synthetic unity with it can only
be a pure concept of understanding, which does not lie in the perception, and
that is here the concept of the relation of cause and effect, the
former of which determines the latter in time, as its consequence, and not as
something that could merely precede in the imagination (or not even be
perceived at all)”. (Remember, Hume said about two billiard balls, “I don’t
perceive the cause betwixt them”?) Therefore it is only because we subject
the sequence of the appearances and thus all alterations to the law of
causality that experience itself… is possible; consequently they
themselves, as objects of experience, are possible only in accordance with this
law”(B234).
Further
Kant expands on the subject and gives two contrasting examples of perception
with and without causal determination. His perception of the ship’s position
downstream invariably follows the perception of its position upstream, and it
is impossible that in apprehension of this appearance for the ship to be
perceived otherwise. The necessity is present in this case of causal apperception.
In the case of observing the house he is not obliged to observe parts of it in
a certain predetermined order, because there is no causality involved here.
Could Hume’s theory account for such a difference?
I
believe that Kant succeeded in his criticism of Hume’s theory, which was also
successfully criticized by Thomas Reid in his Common Sense philosophy.
10. Explain Kant's "Copernican Revolution" in
Metaphysics. Make clear what the problems were that led Kant to think
such a "revolution" was required, and how Kant's new
"transcendental" metaphysics was supposed to solve those problems.
There
were two major problems in metaphysics for Kant: the possibility of knowledge
(synthetic and a priori) that transcends the bounds of experience and
the problem of antinomies. Kant deals with both problems by reversing the usual
way of viewing cognition and instead of thinking of our knowledge as conforming
to a realm of objects, we think of objects as conforming to our way of knowing.
Kant thinks that our knowledge is limited to phenomena, while noumena are
thinkable but not actually knowable. The possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge
of objects is explicable, because such objects must necessarily conform to the
conditions under which they can become objects for us. The contradiction of
antinomies arises from considering the spatio-temporal world as it were as it
were the world of things-in-themselves. On Kant’s account, when we reject that
consideration, it can be seen that the phenomenal world is neither finite nor
infinite and causal determinism (in nature) is reconcilable with the freedom
needed for morality (we considered as noumena).
11. Kant asserts that "concepts without intuitions are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind." [A51=B75] What does he mean
by this? Give some examples of "empty" concepts and how they
have been illegitimately employed by other philosophers. Are there
possible legitimate uses for any empty concepts?
Our
cognition for Kant arises from two fundamental sources in the mind, the
reception of representations (the receptivity of impressions) and the faculty
for cognizing the object by means of these representations (spontaneity of
concepts): through the former the object is given to us, through the
latter it is thought in relation of that representation
(receptivity-sensibility and spontaneity-of- cognition-understanding).
Intuition is the way by which we are affected by objects. Understanding is the
faculty for thinking of objects. Without sensibility we have no object, and
without understanding none is thought. That is why thoughts without content are
empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding is not capable
of intuiting anything and the senses are not capable of thinking anything.
The
concept of a walking fish is empty (unless we actually see something like
this), like a concept of an angel (if we did not see him/her ourselves or
dismiss the testimonies of others, who would be witnesses). The concept of God,
even manifested in human forms of alternative forms described in thousands of
books of many nations (if not all of them) is an empty concept, because Kant
did not see those manifestations himself, and all miraculous reports are
labeled as simpleminded people’s delusions, or those of perpetrators, and
cannot be considered as sensible. The possibility of totality representing
itself in a limited form to conform with the limitations of human understanding
is not considered by Kant as a philosophical issue. The regular
empirical criterion is too strong. Hume’s future can easily be under
no obligation to mimic the past, but God should be definitely under
obligation to manifest Himself to everybody and anytime, to have the right even
to be considered as also an empirical reality. The soul too is not the object
of intuition if it is considered only as transcendentally thinkable. The pure
intuition of self without sense perception of any kind as well as thinking of
any kind cannot be legitimate, because Kant does not experience anything of the
kind and neither his colleagues do. I think that creates a problem (of illusory
and legitimate concepts) which has to be dealt with in future. May be the
concepts Kant considered as paralogisms are not really that. May be human
intuition can reach farther than Kant expected. May be the Greek word empireia
(observation) can be legitimately used not just in the realm of physical
senses. But the detailed discussion on that is not the subject of this paper
and should be treated separately, in a book with a name like Transcending
the Ordinary Limitations of Observable ( including the possibility and logic of
pure intuition of truth).
12. "The rainbow in a sunny shower may be called a mere
appearance..." (A45=B63,). Explain very carefully what Kant is
saying here, and what he means by "mere appearance". Does Kant
think that "Roses are red, violets are blue" is false?
To
answer this question we have to consider a preceding § (B62), because in
(A45/B63) Kant attempts to illustrate his objection to the Leibnizian-Wolfian
philosophy concerning the nature and origin of our cognitions. He thinks that
the distinction between sensibility and the intellect is not merely logical,
but transcendental, does not concern merely the form of distinctness or
indistinctness, but the origin and content. Through sensibility we do not
cognize things in themselves merely indistinctly, but rather not at all. Without
our subjective constitution, the represented object can not be encountered, for
it is just this subjective constitution that determines its form as appearance.
In
the beginning of A45 Kant describes the origin of the illusion occurring
when we try to apply our ordinary distinction between sense in general and
contingent appearances of this sense to the essentially transcendent sphere of
noumena and to the immanent phenomena. That is how our transcendental
distinction gets “lost, and we believe ourselves to cognize things in
themselves, though we have nothing to do with anything except appearances (in
the world of sense), even in the deepest research into its objects”. So it is by
mistake “we would certainly call a rainbow a mere appearance in a
sun-shower, but would call this rain the thing in itself”. It would be correct
only if we understood “the latter concept in a merely physical sense”.
About
roses and violets and their colors the judgment is not false as long as we
understand that all we actually know of those belong to the sphere of phenomena
and not noumena, but if we think of them as noumena, it is false to claim that
we know anything more about them that they exist somehow affecting our
sensibility, which we construe as flowers and their colors.
14. Explain what Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories
tries to prove, and, at least roughly, how the argument goes. Make clear,
in passing, what Kant means by "deduction",
"synthesis", and by "transcendental unity of apperception".
Kant
calls “the explanation of the way in which concepts can relate to objects a
priori their transcendental deduction” (A85). So he wants to prove
that it is possible and to explain how it is possible for non-empirical
concepts to relate to empirical objects.
He
distinguishes it from “the empirical deduction, which shows how the
concept is acquired through experience and reflection on it” (A85).
There
are two kinds of a priori concepts: categories are a priori concepts
of understanding of all possible experiences, while the pure intuitions of
space and time are a priori forms of sensibility (B118).
As it was shown before, to have any experience at all we need sensibility and
concepts (without which the sensibility would be blind). But why the pure ones?
Because we could not have understood anything particular without general rules
for all experiences already presupposed, as we could not have any particular
sensible intuition without general pure intuitions of space and time already
presupposed.
In
B127-128 Kant criticizes Locke and especially Hume for that “their empirical
derivation . . . cannot be reconciled with the reality of the scientific
cognition a priori that we possess, that namely of pure mathematics
and general natural science, and is therefore refuted by the fact”. Kant
now attempts to “steer human reason between Lock’s enthusiasm and Hume’s
skepticism”. He further explains the categories as “concepts of an object in
general, by means of which its intuition is . . . determined with regard
to one of the logical functions for judgments”.
Speaking
of the latter he is concerned with the relationship of the subject to the
predicate, saying that object’s “empirical intuition in experience must always
be considered as subject, never as mere predicate” (B129) with all categories.
“Pure
a priori concepts can certainly contain nothing empirical . . . must
nevertheless be strictly a priori conditions for a possible experience,
as that alone on which its objective reality can rest” (A95)
“Now
these concepts, which contain a priori the pure thinking in every
experience, we find in the categories, and it is already a sufficient deduction
of them and justification of their objective validity if we can prove that
by means of them alone the object can be thought. . . we must first assess
the transcendental constitution of the subjective sources that comprise the a
priori foundations for the possibility of experience” (A97).
Kant
further describes the faculties which make cognition possible. Receptivity
here must be combined with spontaneity. “This is now the ground of
threefold synthesis, which is necessarily found in all cognition: that, namely,
of the apprehension of the representations, as modifications of the mind
in intuition; of the reproduction of them in the imagination; and of
their recognition in the concept” (A98).
Synthesis
here means a combination of intuition an thinking. A merely analytical
cognition is applicable only to the words, but not to the objects. It obviously
could not be used for the deduction of categories for empirical knowledge. We
have to remember that even the knowledge of pure mathematics is a synthetic one
for Kant.
“Every
intuition contains a manifold in itself, which however would not be represented
as such if the mind did not distinguish the time in the succession of
impressions on one another; for as contained in one moment no
representation can ever be anything other than absolute unity. Now in
order for unity of intuition to come from this manifold (as, say in the
representation of space), it is necessary first to run through and then to take
together this manifoldness, which action I call the synthesis of
apprehension” (A99).
It must be exercised a priori. For without it we could not have a
priori representations of space and time (generated only through the
synthesis of the manifold that original sensibility provides. We therefore have
a pure synthesis of apprehension (A100).
Further Kant explains why the synthesis of apprehension is combined with the
synthesis of reproduction and how the later belongs among the transcendental
actions of the mind (transcendental imagination).
In § 3 Kant says that one consciousness unifies the manifold that has
been successfully intuited, and then also reproduced into one representation.
We compose geometrical figures in accordance with the rule according to which
such intuitions can be always exhibited. This unity of the rule
determines every manifold and limits it to conditions that make the unity of
apperception possible. (A105)
Every necessity has a transcendental condition as its ground. “Now I call this
original and transcendental condition . . . the transcendental apperception.
. . The consciousness of oneself in accordance with the determinations of our
state in internal perception is merely empirical . . . and is called inner
sense or empirical apperception. That which should necessarily be
represented as numerically identical cannot be thought of as such through
empirical data. There must be a condition that precedes all experience and
makes the latter itself possible, which should make such a transcendental
presupposition valid.
Now no cognitions can occur in us, no connection an unity among them, without
of that unity of consciousness that precedes all data of the intuitions, and in
relation to which all representation of objects is alone possible. This pure
original, unchanging consciousness I will now name transcendental
apperception. That it deserves its name is obvious from this, that even the
purest objective unity, namely that of the a priori concepts (space and
time) is possible only through the relation of the intuitions to it. The
numerical unity of this apperception therefore grounds all concepts a priori,
just as the manifoldness of space and time grounds the intuitions of
sensibility” (A107).
If I simplify this argument:
(1)The
unity of apperception is a necessary condition of experience. (2)Necessity
makes it transcendental. (3)Still it is applicable to experience. Hence the
product of such apperception the categories can be pure and applicable to the
experience. At this point the task of the argument Kant endeavored is pretty
much accomplished. It is strong convincing and revealing. The rest is merely a
detailed presentation of the categories.
15. Explain Kant's distinction between the
"constitutive" and "regulative" employment of
concepts. Give examples of concepts that Kant believes to have a
legitimate "constitutive" use and concepts that have only a "regulative"
use.
The
principles are called constitutive if using them we “would be able to compose
and determine a priori,
i.e., construct the degree of the sensation of sunlight out of about 200000
illuminations from the moon” (A179) They have to bring the existence of
appearances under rules.
The
regulative “principles can concern only the relation of existence of appearances under rules a priori.
Here therefore neither axioms no intuitions can be thought of” Under
those the “existence cannot be construed” (B222).
Mathematical
principles are constitutive, while philosophical ones (categories) regulative.
16. Explain Kant's Third Antinomy and his resolution of it.
What did he mean by saying that a human being is a citizen of two worlds? [You
may find Kant's Groundwork, 107-109, helpful here.] How does the distinguishing
our regarding things as "phenomena" from our regarding things as
"noumena" come into this story?
Kant
points out that there are two contradicting ideas of reason on the possibility
of freedom, and there are seemingly consistent proofs for each of them.
One states that another causality through freedom is also necessary in order to
explain the derivation of the appearances of the world.
The
other: There is no freedom, but everything in the world happens in accordance
with laws of nature.
The first is proved by looking at the natural causality in the world as needed
causal explanation itself. Here we are offered to look at natural causality as
one of the appearances, which are under that law.
The second is proved by pointing out that freedom as a special kind of
causality could be looked up on as requiring a cause itself in accordance with
that assumed law of nature.
Kant’s solution is that freedom does not belong to the phenomenal world of
appearances, but rather to the world of noumena, about constitution of which we
have no real idea, because our lack of intuition of the kind. The causal
determination on the other hand belongs to the world of phenomena, which is
grounded in our own psychological structure. The former is given to our
sensibility and understanding, while the latter is deduced by pure reason.
Reason still has its limits and no insight into noumena.
Without
noumena we could not give any account for objectivity of the phenomenal world.
Man
is a citizen of two worlds means that he is physically determined to the extent
of his physical nature and free in his noumenal sense. Freedom is
transcendental, natural causality (determinism) immanent. Freedom is real
determination is just an appearance, which is determined by our structure the
foundation of which is unknown to us.
Kant
begins his attempt on the presupposition that (1) God is a thing; (2)we have
just empirical intuitions of things, and if we don’t it is impossible to think
a thing into existence, or logic is always abstract from existence or reality.
The predicate of being is illegitimate. The contradiction may arises only if
the thing with its predicates is given, but if we cancel the existence of a
thing all its predicates are automatically cancelled. God does possess the
predicate of the greatest, but this predicate exists only as far the concept of
God is posited. It the latter is cancelled, the former is cancelled too without
a contradiction. Hence, the ontological argument is a tautological one, because
it proves what was already presupposed…
We
can doubt (1), saying God is not a thing, not anything like we encounter in
sensual experience. It is the greatest in transcendental sense. Also we
can doubt (2), and say: we possibly can have non-empirical intuitions, which
are transcendent to our regular ones. Still, those transcendent intuitions deal
with different kind of reality, or existence, beyond the realm of physical
senses.
In
this case Kant’s noumena becomes Knowable to us when ever we have those
transcendental intuitions, which are usually inaccessible for the majority of
us, and that is why we need proofs of logic.
We
can also say: “God being transcendental sometimes projects Himself as a
phenomenon, in order for those without developed transcendental intuition to
perceive His at least in this reduced fashion”. At those times He is given even
in empirical intuition and is not just an empty concept.
But
can we (on the condition of these) prove the possibility of the ontological
argument and save it from Kant’s critique? I think it is worth a try. I already
wrote on the subject before, and believe, can do more and better, but it will
be in some other essay, because the limits of this one are already
overstretched.
18. Critics of Kant say that while Hume awakened him from his
dogmatic slumbers, the moral argument for God and immortality [in either the
second Critique or in the Canon of Pure Reason in the first Critique,
culminating in A815/B843] shows him returning comfortably to that sleep. Is
that fair? Does Kant’s distinction between an “immanent” and a “transcendent”
moral theology [Cf. A819/B847] provide an answer to such a critic?
It
is not a precise question, because it does not state what kind of critics are
those and what are their favorite conception of Hume. Also, it presupposes that
Hume himself was not dogmatic, which is at least not obvious. We could also
question Kant’s possible dogmatism even before that chapter on the Cannon of
Pure Reason. But anyway, we could speculate in general and give an answer as
good or bad as the question itself is.
Hume
was an empiricist which with his skepticism brought the empiricism itself to a
ridicules position, but his reasoning looked consistent, powerful and
impressive to many and Kant himself. It was also offensive toward contemporary
dogmatic philosophy and theology. But the point is that before and after Hume
was a believer “in the name of Fact” as C. Dickens put it:
Now, what I
want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are
wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only
form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts: nothing else will ever be of any
service to them. . . . Stick to Facts, sir!” (Charles Dickens, Hard Times,
Chapter I)
Baconian
method impressed so many, that Hume and others started to apply it to all human
knowledge and understanding. Kant was also excited, but could not remain blind
to the ridicules paradoxes of that kind of philosophy, its incapability to
answer certain questions, particularly, how it is that contingent world of
experience allows apodictic laws of science and pure mathematical certainty,
how experience itself can be possible without presupposing the unity of
apperception, etc.
Kant
surely appreciated empirical knowledge and even set the limitations for pure
reason, which made him awake for empiricists. But they could not forgive
Kant serious speculation on any possible valid knowledge about “the freedom of
the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God” (A798). They
loved Kant’s confession that “it is humiliating for human reason that it
accomplishes nothing in its pure use…” (A795), but hated his “final aim to
which in the end the speculation of reason in its transcendental use is
directed…”(A798). So they went ad hominem and claimed that Kant was “returning comfortably to that sleep”.
Kant’s argument for God’s existence is based on the validity for reason of the
ideas of happiness, worthiness, freedom, and purpose. All those are applicable
to the sensual world in a certain sense, but form moral laws which transcend
its causality. The moral laws command us to freely choose certain actions in the
world which would make us worthy of happiness desired by us. ”Do that
through which you will become worthy to be happy” (A809).
Appealing “to the
moral judgment of every human being” Kant says: “Pure reason thus contains –
not in its speculative use, to be sure, but yet in a certain practical use,
namely the moral use – principles of a possibility of experience, namely of
those actions in conformity with moral precepts… since they command that those
actions ought to happen, they must also be able to happen” (A807) He points to
the history full of facts of moral behavior making his assertion stronger. “The
idea of moral world thus has objective reality, not if it pertained to an
object of an intelligible intuition, but as pertaining to the sensible world, although
as an object of pure reason in its practical use and a corpus mysticum
of the rational beings in it, insofar as their free choice under moral laws has
thoroughgoing systematic unity in itself as well as with the freedom of
everyone else” (A808.)
The
very existence of such presented morality “cannot be cognized through reason if
it is grounded merely in nature, but may be hoped for only if it is at the same
time grounded on a highest reason, which commands in accordance with
moral laws, as at the same time the cause of nature”(A810). Kant calls that
idea of such intelligence the ideal of the highest good. Only in this
can pure reason find the ground for the practically necessary connection of
both elements of the highest derived good, i.e., moral world. Thus God
and the future life are two presuppositions that pure reason imposes on us in
accordance with its principles.
I
think that Kant fairly produces his argument for the existence of God and
immortality from the observed morality. If this is dogmatic what isn’t? Hence
the critique of his opponents is unfair. In addition he says in A819: “So fat
as practical reason has the right to lead us, we will not hold actions to be
obligatory because they are God’s commands, but will rather regard them as divine
commands because we are internally obligated to them”. For Kant “moral theology
is only of immanent use, namely for fulfilling our vocation here in the world
by fitting into the system of all ends, nor for fanatically . . . abandoning
the guidance of a morally legislative reason . . . . a transcendental use, like
the use of mere speculation, must pervert and frustrate the ultimate ends of
reason”. So reason is still the judge and its laws are valuable and should not
be ignored.