Julius Sensat / Philosophy 453: Kant / Notes / Installment 1: The need for a critique of reason

These notes discuss the prefaces and introductions of the first and second editions of C1.
The first-edition preface
There is a striking difference between the two prefaces. The first is almost perfunctory, with very
little guidance to the reader about the problem Kant is addressing or the special nature of his
approach in tackling it. He begins with a brief sketch of a diagnosis:
Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with
questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of
reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human
reason [A vii].
He goes on to elaborate briefly, saying that because it is naturally led to inquire about ever more
remote conditions underlying a given phenomenon to be explained, it eventually takes refuge in
principles that overstep all possible experience, and it thereby falls into obscurity and incoherence
that it does not know how to escape. As a consequence, metaphysics becomes a "battlefield" of
endless controversies and subject to skeptical challenges.
Here we have a statement of the problem, a problem whose solution requires a self-examination by
human reason itself, one that would institute a "court of justice" by which it can "secure its rightful
claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to
its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason
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itself" (A xi-xii). This critique must attain absolute certainty and completeness concerning the
capacity of reason to achieve knowledge independently of experience, and it must lead thereby to a
complete and permanent metaphysical foundation for human knowledge.
Notice how little argument there is here that the task Kant describes is worth undertaking. I said last
time that Kant was addressing, more or less self-consciously, certain fundamental tensions and even
inconsistencies in the self-conception of emergent modern European society and culture, expressions
of struggles and endeavors in which quite a bit was at stake, for people generally and not just in
esoteric academic debate. But there is very little indication of that here. Kant does broach these
matters somewhat in the second preface, perhaps because the first edition provoked a good deal of
criticism, skepticism and complexity, and this reception was certainly not the one Kant expected.
Kant thought of his approach in the Critique as transcending that of the rationalism he had once
embraced, which he viewed as dogmatic. However, the first preface may show signs that Kant had
not completely emancipated himself from this sort of dogmatism, for what justifies his assertion of
the desirability and completability of a permanent metaphysical foundation for human knowledge?
Is this not a dogmatic rationalist holdover? He seems just to assume that it is bad for metaphysics to
be a battlefield of controversies. But transcendental philosophy is a matter of deep human
self-reflection, and if so, why should we not expect that the content of philosophy will somehow be
expressive of contemporary social and cultural struggles and endeavors?
I mention these things because philosophical breakthoughs have to proceed through a process of
ridding themselves of old preconceptions, and in major breakthroughs like Kant's it should not be
surprising to find this process to be a somewhat long and difficulty one.
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Another illustration of this fact is provided by Kant's own description of his approach in this first
preface. It is clear that he wants to distinguish this approach from the naturalism of Hume and
Locke (whose "physiology of the understanding" is explicitly mentioned only to be rejected). In a
way, both Locke and Hume sought to do for humanity's cognitive and moral nature what Newton
had done for physical nature, namely specify its "laws of motion". It is clear that Kant wants to
dissociate his project from this one. Yet he runs the danger of clouding this issue by his repeated
references to the "nature of human reason." As his reference to a "tribunal" suggests, perhaps a
clearer way of describing what Kant traces reason's predicament to is not its "nature" but rather its
"normative structure"--what it has a right to do--as determined by its own interests and principles.
The second preface
In the second preface Kant is more forthcoming and his own account of what he is doing is
improved. For example, I mentioned last time that Kant was struggling with the problem of
vindicating our status as free, responsible agents and reconciling that status with the causality of
nature as revealed by science. Here he gives us some indication that this problem is indeed at stake
in his investigations, and he gives us some indication of his proposed solution. See the discussion at
B xvi-xxxv.
His basic strategy is to distinguish between theoretical and practical points of view and to work out
a conception of reason as having theoretical and practical interests (see B ix-x) that can both be
satisfied in a harmonious way. If we view humans theoretically, that is, as possible objects of
theoretical cognition, we have to place them in the nexus of natural causality. However, when we
reason about what to do, we don't view ourselves in this way. We take our desires not as forces that
buffet us, but rather as data that we can evaluate with respect to their worthiness to be satisfied. We
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see ourselves as having a free power of choice, as able to refrain from acting on any given desire
unless its satisfaction can be incorporated into an interpersonally justifiable principle of action---a
"maxim" that any reasonable person must find acceptable. Kant argues that this conception of
ourselves, properly understood, is not threatened by our status as part of the natural order and is in
fact a conception to which we are entitled. Natural causality is part of a conceptual structure we
impose on the world in order for it to be a possible object of theoretical knowledge. We need not
impose that structure on ourselves when we are deciding what to do. Thus our conception of
ourselves as subject to nature's determinism is not troubling once its rational scope and limits have
been clearly established. One important task of the Critique is to establish that scope and those
limits. If Kant can show that theoretical reason has no right to inquire into the reality or unreality of
freedom, that makes room for practical reason to step in and answer the question. And Kant will
argue that when practical reason takes up that question, it answers it in the affirmative.
At Bxvi Kant draws an analogy between his reconceptualization of the problem of determining the
conditions under which metaphysical knowledge is possible and Copernicus's reinterpretation of the
data of astronomy as a way of arriving at an explanation of celestial motions (see also Bxxii[n]).
The comparison might be puzzling at first, because there is a sense in which Copernicus made
astronomy less anthropocentric by opposing his heliocentric hypothesis to Ptolemy's geocentric one,
whereas Kant seems to want to make knowledge more rather than less anthopocentric when he says
that for metaphysics to be possible its objects must conform to conditions imposed by the nature of
human cognition. While these points are correct, so are the following parallels:
Copernicus explains the apparent motion of celestial bodies as being due in part to the motion
of the human observer. Kant similarly traces certain features of the objects of knowledge, for
example their spatio-temporal character, to the requirements of human cognition, to the nature
1.
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of our "cognitive apparatus," as it were (though this way of putting it misleadingly suggests
Locke's "physiology of the understanding." "We" make a contribution to the phenomena being
explained in each case.
Thus there is a sense in which both Copernicus and Kant (if Kant is right) are less
anthropocentric than their predecessors, where being anthropocentric means taking a feature of
the human situation and attributing it to an independent reality.
2.
Though it is not Kant's main point, there is another parallel: the Copernican hypothesis is
simpler than the Ptolemaic in accounting for the things we observe. However, why are we
entitled to accept the simpler hypothesis? Why can't the world be complicated? While Kant will
not be concerned to prove that the world cannot be complicated, he sees the need for a
specification and defense of our right to use criteria like simplicity in our scientific endeavors.
3.
Kant's remarks about his Copernicanism, along with some other things he says in the B preface, can
help us to understand what his doctrine of transcendental idealism amounts to and how Kant hopes
to justify it. A very brief way of stating the doctrine is this:
The objects of human knowledge are transcendentally ideal.
Of course, we need to unpack and explicate this. Kant does this to some extent in the following
passage:
In the analytical part of the critique it is proved that space and time are only forms of
sensible intuition, and therefore only conditions of the existence of the things as
appearances, further that we have no concepts of the understanding and hence no elements
for the cognition of things except insofar as an intuition can be given corresponding to these
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concepts, consequently that we can have cognition of no object as a theing in itself, but only
insofar as it is an object of sensible intuition, i.e. as an appearance; from which it follows
the limitation of all even possible specculative cognition of reason to mere objects of
experience [Bxxv-xxvi].
If we can understand this passage, we will have gone a long way toward understanding the doctrine.
Following Allison, we can clarify things a bit by beginning with a very general sense of "ideality" as
"mind dependence" or "being in the mind" and an opposing general sense of "reality" as "mind
independence" or "being external to the mind". There are for Kant two different senses of "ideality"
so defined (and two corresponding senses of "reality"): empirical ideality (and reality), on the one
hand, and transcendental ideality (and reality) on the other. A good way to proceed is to try to get a
handle on the empirical version of ideality and then to understand the transcendental version as
something different. Then we will be better placed to avoid misinterpreting Kant.
In the empirical sense, ideality characterizes the private data of an individual mind, as opposed to
the spatio-temporal world of objects and events that is intersubjectively accessible to us on the basis
of observational evidence, which is "reality" in the empirical sense. By private data of an individual
mind, I mean things like ideas in Descartes's or Locke's sense, as well as Berkeley's sensible ideas
and Hume's impressions and ideas.
In the transcendental sense, "ideality" means mind dependent in the sense of "subject to certain
conditions stemming from the requirements of our cognitive faculty." For example, space and time
are such conditions for Kant. He believes that space and time are "a priori conditions of our
sensibility". They are a priori forms that structure all our sensations, a priori in the sense of not
being based on or derived from sense perception or observation but themselves necessary for the
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possibility of such perception or observation. They are due to the way our cognitive nature is
constituted to receive sensations. A different sort of example is provided by the concept of causality
and the corresponding principle that every event have a cause. This concept is what Kant refers to
as a "pure concept of the understanding," and the corresponding principle is an a priori condition of
human knowledge. Unlike space and time, it is not an a priori condition of our sensibility (i.e. not an
a priori sensible condition of human knowledge), but an a priori condition of our understanding
(i.e., an a priori intellectual condition of human knowledge). But like space and time, it is an a priori
condition in not being based on or derived from sense perception or observation, but itself necessary
for the possibility of objective perception in the first place.
The doctrine of transcendental idealism is the doctrine that the possible objects of human
knowledge are subject to such sensible and intellectual conditions. Since physical objects are
possible objects of knowledge so far as Kant is concerned, his doctrine implies that physical objects
are transcendentally ideal. But this claim does not imply that physical objects are empirically ideal;
and Kant in fact was at pains to deny this and to support the view that they are empirically real.
Thus Kant's idealism is not at all like the idealism of Berkeley, who claimed that physical objects
are just collections of ideas. In Kant's terminology, Berkeley is an empirical idealist who denies the
empirical reality of the external world, which Kant fully affirms. As we will see, the first edition
was interpreted by many as espousing a view like Berkeley's. Kant argued that this was a
misinterpretation, and to counter it he added a section to the second edition called "A Refutation of
Idealism", a section that we will read at the appropriate time. Further evidence that Kant was
concerned to distance his views from empirical idealism is the long footnote on the subject in the B
preface (see Bxxxix).
Kant thinks that transcendental idealism is necessary to provide a correct account of the scope and
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limits of human knowledge, including metaphysical knowledge. He takes himself to be the first to
recognize this; other theories of knowledge, whether they be rationalist theories that make
extravagant claims about the possibilities of metaphysical knowledge or empiricist approaches that
threaten skepticism, have been one and all versions of "transcendental realism". That is, they have
viewed the objects of human knowledge as "transcendentally real", that is, as not mind dependent in
the sense of subject to conditions deriving from the structure of our faculty of cognition. In other
words, they have all treated knowledge as knowledge of things "as they are in themselves" rather
than knowledge of things "as appearances", that is, as subject to the foregoing cognitive conditions.
The Introduction
In the Introduction Kant formulates the problem of the possibility of legititmate metaphysical claims
in terms of the problem of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. This formulation is
perhaps best understood in terms of Kant's reaction to Hume's empiricist critique of metaphysics.
Hume says the following in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity of school metaphysics, for instance, let us
ask: Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it
contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No.
Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and confusion.
Hume's challenge might be put in the following way: all cognitively meaningul statements, that is,
all potential knowledge claims, either assert "relations of ideas" (roughly, logical and mathematical
relations) or "matters of fact and existence." The truth of the former is based on the principle of
contradiction--to deny them is self-contradictory. The latter depend on sense experience--
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observation and experiment--for their verification. Take any so called metaphysical claim--for
example, the claim that humans have an immortal soul. It is obvious that it is not self-contradictory
to deny this, so it does not assert a relation of ideas. But it is just as obviously not verified through
observation either. Hence it is not a potential candidate for knowledge. It is not cognitively
meaningful.
Kant replies that Hume's distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact needs closer
scrutiny. There are really two distinctions that it is important to make instead of just one. There is
the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments on the one hand, and the distinction
between a priori and a posteriori judgments, on the other. Analytic judgments correspond to Hume's
relations of ideas, and a posteriori judgments correspond to his matters of fact and experience. But
since there are two distinctions, the abstract possibilities are four:
Judgments that are analytic and a priori 1.
Judgments that are analytic and a posteriori 2.
Judgments that are synthetic and a priori 3.
Judgments that are synthetic and a posteriori. 4.
If we restate the first premise of Hume's argument in terms of these abstract possibilities, it claims
that the second and third categories are empty--there are no significant judgments of those kinds to
be made. Kant agrees with respect to the second category, he disagrees about the third. He takes
both mathematics and natural science to contain significant, cognitively meaningful synthetic a priori
judgments. Moreover, fundamental metaphysical judgments are precisely of this kind as well. So, to
determine whether metaphysical judgments can be legitimate, we have to determine when we are
justified in making synthetic a priori judgments.
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To clarify the issues here as well as Kant's view, let's take a closer look at his two distinctions. The
distinction between a priori and a posteriori judgments is fundamentally a distinction concerning
how we verify judgments, more specifically whether their verification rests on experience (sensory
or observational evidence) or not. If it does, then it is an a posteriori or empirical judgment. If it
doesn't, that is if we can establish it without appeal to observational evidence, then it is an a priori
judgment.
Examples of a posteriori judgments:
Susan's car has an ugly scratch on it 1.
Salt is soluble in water. 2.
Every human being dies before reaching 300 years of age. 3.
If you undermine the foundation of your house it will fall. [Note what K says about this one at
B2.]
4.
Examples of a priori judgments:
2+2=4. 1.
Every alteration has a cause. [Note that at B3 K says this is a priori but not "pure"; however,
this use of "pure" is not his usual one; see for example B5. Generally, pure = a priori and
empirical = a posteriori for K.]
2.
All bachelors are male. 3.
Kant says that in making a a priori judgment we are making a claim of necessity and universality
that we don't make when we make an empirical claim. To see this, perhaps it is useful to compare
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our third empirical example with our second a priori example. Even though claiming that humans
die before their 300th birthday is claiming something to be true of all human beings, still, we don't
claim that it is impossible that we might find somewhere at sometime a human who lives to be 300
and thus that we might have to retract the claim. However, our judgment that every alteration has a
cause is meant to exclude the possibility of empirical refutation; we are not worried that we might
get a counterexample that would make us retract the claim; thus our judgment is one of strict
universality and necessity.
Consider now the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. Kant says that with analytic
judgments the the predicate "is contained in" the concept of the subject, whereas with synthetic
judgments the predicate "lies outside" the concept of the subject, though it is connected with it. He
gives the example of "all bodies are extended" as analytic and "all bodies are heavy" as synthetic (B
10-11). Later commentators unhappy with the spatial or container imagery have formulated the
distinction in terms of meaning of terms. Thus we might say that "All bachelors are male" is true
because being male is part of the meaning of "bachelor", so that this is an analytic judgment,
whereas "all swans are white" is synthetic because being white is not part of the meaning of "swan."
Denying an analytic judgment leads to a contradiction, so the truth of analytic judgments rests on the
principle of contradiction, and therefore there are no analytic but empirical judgments: "It would be
absurd to found an analytic judgment on experience" (B11).
However, this does not imply that there are no judgments that are a priori and yet synthetic rather
than analytic. Consider "every effect has a cause". This is indeed an analytic judgment since to have
a cause is the very meaning of "effect". But the proposition "Every event has a cause," while a
priori because known independently of experience, is synthetic, because to have a cause is not part
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of the meaning of "event". While this is a proposition of metaphysics, and indeed one on which
natural science depends, according to Kant there are other synthetic a priori judgments that are part
of our accepted bodies of knowledge. Kant mentions propositions of mathematics, such as 7+5=12,
and certain principles of physics, such as the following principle of conservation of mass: "in all
changes of the material world the quantity of matter remains unchanged" (B17).
Kant would say about all of these that their truth does not rest on the principle of contradiction, and
yet they are independent of experience for their verification. How are they verified? This is a
difficult question, on which the possibility of metaphysics rests. To answer the question is to
provide a critique of pure reason, an establishment of the conditions under which human reason is
entitled to make synthetic a priori claims.
Kant spends the rest of the book trying to justify an answer to this question, but the B preface gives
an indication of what his answer is, and we should try to benefit from this. Basically, Kant will say
that we cannot account for synthetic a priori knowledge except on the assumption that "objects
must conform to our knowledge" rather than the other way around.
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