Charles Parsons
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2012
PRESS
CONTENTS
Preface
ix
Part I: Kant
Note to Part I
42
69
80
Postscript to Part I
100
117
Postscript to Essay 5
131
6 Freges Correspondence
138
Postscript to Essay 6
158
161
190
Bibliography
217
233
PREFACE
PREFACE
PREFACE
The interest of Wahrheit und Evidenz had been urged on me some time before by
Per Martin-Lf.
xi
PREFACE
Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle. On the other hand, I have taken
an interest in figures on the periphery of this history, who were not
analytical philosophers as that is understood by historians but were
close enough to it either to exercise an influence or to be objects of
(sometimes polemical) attention. Husserl plays this role in Essay 8 of
this volume, and Brouwer and Hilbert also played such a role, although that is not emphasized in what I have written about them. One
might say the same about Gdel, who has been the subject of my most
sustained scholarly endeavor concerning twentieth-century philosophy.
In Essay 8 I also argue that Husserl is significant as an object of comparison with analytical philosophers during the development of that
tendency. I believe that there are others who could be fruitfully studied
from that point of view. Some interesting such work has been done by
others, for example Michael Friedman in his book A Parting of the
Ways and other writings.
In writing about these figures, including Kant, I do not claim to be a
historian of philosophy. Although I have taken an interest in a number of
historical figures, and I have tried not to be unhistorical in my approach
to them, I have not attempted to produce a full portrait of the thought of
any of the figures I have written about or of the general development of
sets of ideas that interest me. Thus the essays in this volume and its projected successor are essays and not monographs or fragments of monographs. Without very consciously addressing the question, I have thought
that a larger-scale study of any of these figures would be too great a distraction from systematic work in logic and philosophy of mathematics.
It cant escape the readers notice that these essays reflect a bias in
my attention toward figures who wrote in German. This may have begun
with my interest in Kant, but it also reflects a wider interest in German
culture and history first stimulated by my father. A fuller study of the history of the foundations of mathematics in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries would have to take in a number of British figures, Russell first
of all but also nineteenth-century figures. And one would have to take in
Poincar and other French figures. And at least one American from before
our own time, Charles Sanders Peirce, would have to be included in the
story. But as a writer of essays, I make no apology for the fact that my
choice of subjects rests to some extent on personal attitudes.
I have supplied the essays on Kant and Frege with postscripts, in the
case of Kant somewhat lengthy. The study of Kants philosophy of mathematics was transformed by a new generation of scholars, first Michael
xii
PREFACE
PREFACE
xiv
PART I
KANT
NOTE TO PART I
In these essays the Critique of Pure Reason is cited in the usual A/B
manner. Other writings of Kant are cited by volume and page of the
Academy edition, Gesammelte Schriften, which are given in the translations I have used and in many other translations, including those of the
Cambridge edition. In Essays 1, 2, and 3 the Critique is quoted in Kemp
Smiths translation, sometimes modified. In Essay 4 and the Postscript
the Guyer and Wood translation is used for quotations.
I use the following short titles and other translations:
(Inaugural) Dissertation: De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis
(2:385419). Translated by G.B. Kerferd in Kant, Selected Pre-Critical Writings, ed. Kerferd and Walford.
Metaphysical Foundations (of Natural Science): Metaphysische Anfangsgrnde der
Naturwissenschaft (4:467565). Translated by James Ellington.
Prolegomena (4:255382). Translated by Lewis White Beck (revising earlier
translations).
Regions in Space: Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im
Raume (2:377383). Translated by D. E. Walford in Kerferd and Walford,
op. cit.
Theology lectures: Religionslehre Plitz (28:9891126). Translated by Allen W.
Wood and Gertrude M. Clark as Lectures on Philosophical Theology. Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978.
1
THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC
Among the pillars of Kants philosophy, and of his transcendental idealism in particular, is the view of space and time as a priori intuitions
and as forms of outer and inner intuition respectively. The first part of
the systematic exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason is the Transcendental Aesthetic, whose task is to set forth this conception. It is then
presupposed in the rest of the systematic work of the Critique in the
Transcendental Logic.
I
The claim of the Aesthetic is that space and time are a priori intuitions.
Knowledge is called a priori if it is independent of experience and even
of all impressions of the senses (B2). Kant is not very precise about
what this independence consists in. In the case of a priori judgments,
it seems clear that being a priori implies that no particular facts verified
by experience and observation are to be appealed to in their justification. Kant holds that necessity and universality are criteria of apriority
in a judgment, and clearly this depends on the claim that appeal to
facts of experience could not justify a judgment made as necessary and
universal.1 Because Kant is quite consistent about what propositions
he regards as a priori and about how he characterizes the notion, the
absence of a more precise explanation has not led to its being regarded
in commentary on Kant as one of his more problematic notions, even
though a reader of today would be prepared at least to entertain the
The relevant kind of universality is strict universality, that is . . . that no exception is allowed as possible (B3); thus it itself involves necessity.
5
KANT
2
3
For change, see B3, but Kant is not entirely consistent; compare A82/B108.
Logik, ed. Jsche, 1, 9:91.
6
KANT
Assuming that there are none, it does not follow that, as Jaakko Hintikka maintained in his earlier writings, the immediacy condition is just
a corollary of the singularity condition,7 since the fact that the only intrinsically singular representations are intuitions would not follow from
the singularity and immediacy conditions without the further substantive
thesis that it is only the use of concepts that can be singular. Moreover,
we have so far said little about what the immediacy condition means.
Evidently concepts are expressed in language by general terms. It
would be tempting to suppose that, correlatively, intuitions are expressed
by singular terms. This view faces the difficulty that Kants conception
of the logical form of judgment does not give any place to singular
terms. In Kants conception of formal logic, the constituents of a judgment are concepts, and concepts are general. We are inclined to think
of the most basic form of proposition as being a is F or Fa, where a
names an individual object, to which the predicate F is applied. How
is such a proposition to be expressed if it must be composed from general concepts? Evidently the name must itself involve a singular use of
a concept. Kant does offer examples involving names as cases of singular judgments,8 but also judgments of the form This F is G.9 Kants
acceptance of the traditional view that in the theory of inference singular judgments do not have to be distinguished from universal ones (A71/
B96) implies that the subject concept in a singular judgment can also
occur in an equivalent universal judgment.10
Relation to an object not by means of concepts, that is to say not by
attributing properties to it, naturally suggests to us the modern idea of
direct reference. That that was what Kant intended has been proposed
by Robert Howell.11 It appears from the above that Kants view must
be that judgments cannot have any directly referential constituents, and
7
indeed it has been persuasively argued that Kant has to hold something
like a description theory of names.12 This is, however, not a decisive
objection, since intuitions are not properly speaking constituents of
judgments. This conclusion still leaves some troubling questions, particularly concerning demonstratives. If we render the form of a singular
judgment as The F is G, then the question arises how we are to understand statements of the form This F is G or even those of the form This
is G. The latter form might plausibly (at least from a Kantian point of
view) be assimilated to the former, on the ground that with this is implicitly associated a concept, in order to identify an object for this to
refer to. But now how are we to understand the demonstrative force of
this in This F is G? It only shifts the problem to paraphrase such a
statement as The F here is G. Although there is no doubt something
conceptual in the content of this or here (perhaps involving a relation
to the observer), in many actual contexts it will be understood and interpreted with the help of perception. It is hard to escape the conclusion,
which seems to be the view of Howell,13 that in such a context intuition
is essential not just to the verification of such a judgment and to establishing the nonvacuity of the concepts in it, but also to understanding
its content. But it would accord with Kants general view that the manifold of intuition cannot acquire the unity which is already suggested
by the idea of intuition as singular representation without synthesis
according to concepts, that one should not be able to single out any
portion of a judgment that represents in a wholly nonconceptual way.
In the Aesthetic, the logical meaning of the immediacy condition that
we have been exploring is not suggested. Following the passage cited
above Kant says that intuition is that
to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes
place only in so far as the object is given to us. This again is only
possible, to man at least, in so far as the mind is affected in a certain way. (A19/B33)
The capacity for receiving representations through being affected by objects is what Kant calls sensibility; that for us intuitions arise only through
sensibility is thus something Kant was prepared to state at the outset. It
12
KANT
II
I now turn to the argument of the Aesthetic. The part of the argument
called (in the second edition) the Metaphysical and Transcendental
Expositions of the concepts of space and time (23 [through B41],
45) argues that space and then time are a priori intuitions. The further
conclusions that they are forms of our sensible intuition, that they do
not apply to things as they are in themselves and are thus in some way
subjective, are drawn in the conclusions from these arguments (remainder of 3, 6) and in the following elucidation (7) and general
observations (8, augmented in B). The framework is Kants conception of sensibility, the capacity of the mind to receive representations
through the presence of objects.
By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to
ourselves objects as outside us, and all without exception in space.
(A22/B37)
17
Both, it seems to me, support the claim that intuition is immediate in the sense at
issue. The punctuation of the Latin in the first passage, however, suggests that singulare is being offered as explication of immediate, and thus rather goes against
the claim that the connection between immediacy and seeing obtains by definition. It is not, on the other hand, something for which Kant argues.
18
For example Pippin, Kants Theory of Form, ch. 3.
11
KANT
Outside us cannot have as its primary meaning just outside our bodies, since the body is in space and what is inside it is equally an object
of outer sense.19
Kant alludes at the outset to what is in fact the background of all his
thinking about space (and to a large extent time as well): the issue between what are now called absolutist and relationist conceptions of
space and time, represented paradigmatically by Newton and Leibniz:
What, then, are space and time? Are they real existences? Are
they only determinations or relations of things, yet such as would
belong to things even if they were not intuited? (A23/B37)
Early in his career Kants view of space was relationist and basically
Leibnizian. This was what one would expect from the domination of
German philosophy in Kants early years by Christian Wolffs version
of Leibnizs philosophy. Kant was, of course, influenced from the beginning by Newton and was never an orthodox Wolffian. In 1768, in
Regions in Space, he changed his view of space in a more Newtonian
direction;20 this was the first step in the formation of his final view,
which is in essentials set forth in the Inaugural Dissertation of 1770.
The Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Space gives four
arguments, the first two evidently for the claim that space is a priori,
the second two for the claim that it is an intuition.
(i) The first argument claims that space is not an empirical concept
which has been derived from outer experiences (A23/B38). The representation of space has to be presupposed in order to refer sensations
to something outside me or to represent them as in characteristic spatial
relations to one another.
This argument might seem to prove too much, if its form is, In order
to represent something as X, the representation of X must be presupposed. If that is generally true, and if it implies that X is a priori, the
argument would show that all representations are a priori.
Kant, however, seems rather to be claiming that the representation
of space (as an individual, it will turn out from the third and fourth
19
Although I dont know of specific comments by Kant on proprioceptive sensations, it follows that such objective content as they have would belong to outer sense.
20
This essay is generally represented as (temporarily) completely buying the Newtonian position. Reasons for caution on this point, in my opinion justified, are
given in William Harper, Kant on Incongruent Counterparts.
12
KANT
How far this represents an actual difference of view on Kants part and how much
it is a matter of more careful formulation, I do not know. Even in the second edition of the Critique Kant titles the section we are discussing Metaphysical Exposition
of the Concept of Space. (This contrast between the Dissertation and the Critique
was noted by Kirk Dallas Wilson, Kant on Intuition, p.250.)
15
KANT
Whatever the precise sense of immediate in which Kants thesis implies that the representation of space is immediate, there is a phenomenological fact to which he is appealing: places, and thereby objects in
space, are given in one space, therefore with a horizon of surrounding
space. The point is perhaps put most explicitly in the Dissertation:
The concept of space is a singular representation comprehending
all things within itself, not an abstract common notion containing them under itself. For what you speak of as several places are
only parts of the same boundless space, related to one another
by a fixed position, nor can you conceive to yourself a cubic foot
unless it be bounded in all directions by the space that surrounds
it. (15B, 2:402)
This way of putting the matter has the virtue of describing a sense in
which space is given as infinite (better boundless) which does not commit Kant to any metrical infinity of space (that is, the lack of any upper
bound on distances), although his allegiance to Euclidean geometry did
lead him to affirm the metrical infinity of space. Kant says that space is
given as boundless; he also wishes to say that, without the aid of the
intuition of space, no concept would accomplish this:
A general concept of space . . . cannot determine anything in regard to magnitude. If there were no limitlessness in the progression of intuition, no concept of relations could yield a principle
of their infinitude. (A25)
Kant does not, so far as I can see, argue in the Aesthetic that the infinity of space could not be yielded by mere concepts at all, still less
that no infinity at all could be obtained in that way. His arguments seem
at most to say that a general concept of space could not do this and
are not in my view of much interest. It seems very likely that from Kants
point of view there can be a conceptual representation whose content
would in some way entail infinity (that of God would again be an example24). From a modern point of view, we can describe (say, by logical
24
formulae) types of structure that can have only infinite instances; an axiomatization of geometry would be an example. Such a description would
use logical resources unknown to Kant, and that he would have recognized the possibility of a purely conceptual description of mathematically infinite magnitude is doubtful.25 But even if he did, there would be
the further question of constructing it, which would be the equivalent
for Kant of showing its existence in the mathematical sense. Construction is, of course, construction in intuition. By the progression of intuitions in the above quotation from A25 Kant presumably means some
succession of intuitions relating to parts of space each beyond or outside
its predecessor; such a succession would witness the boundlessness of
space. A similar appeal to intuition is needed also for the construction of
numbers, so that arithmetic does not yield a representation of infinity
whose non-empty character can be shown in a purely conceptual way.
What is accomplished by the Metaphysical Exposition? Kant makes
a number of claims about space of a phenomenological character that
seem to me on the whole sound. That space is in some way prior to
objects, in the sense that objects are experienced as in space, and in the
sense that experience does not reveal objects, in some way not intrinsically spatial, that stand in relations from which the conception of space
could be constructed, seems to me evident. The same holds for the claim
that space as experienced is unique and boundless (in the sense explained
above).
Furthermore, it seems to me that these considerations do form a
formidable obstacle that a relationist view such as Leibnizs has to
overcome. However, they are not a refutation of such a view, since
God is infinite in this sense is free from reference to intuition. Kant also considers
the notion of God as metaphysically infinite:
In this concept we understand perfections in their highest degree, or better yet,
without any degree. The omnitudo realitatis [All of reality] is what is called metaphysical infinity (28:1018, trans. p.49).
Kant concludes that the term All of reality is more appropriate than metaphysical infinity. (A briefer remark with the same purport is in Kants letter to Johann
Schultz of November 25, 1788, 10:557.)
I would conclude that although a purely conceptual characterization of God
does entail that God is infinite, in what Kant considered the proper sense this implication cannot be drawn out without intuition.
25
On this point see II of Friedman, Kants Theory of Geometry, which contains
an interesting discussion of these passages. Compared to my own discussion in the
text, Friedman downplays the phenomenological aspect.
17
KANT
26
KANT
See Nerlich, Hands, Knees, and Absolute Space; also Buroker, Space and Incongruence, ch. 3.
29
For two recent mathematically and physically informed treatments, see Earman,
World Enough and Space-Time, ch. 7, and Harper, Kant on Incongruent Counterparts. Both concentrate on the argument of Regions in Space but also have
something to say about the later versions. Harper is more sympathetic, especially
to the claim of the Dissertation and later writings that intuition is needed to distinguish incongruent counterparts. Harpers paper contains a number of references
to further literature. Earmans discussion places the argument in the context of
20
III
I now turn to the Transcendental Exposition.
I understand by a transcendental exposition the explanation of a
concept, as a principle from which the possibility of other a priori synthetic knowledge can be understood. (B40)
The claim of the Transcendental Exposition is that taking space to be
an a priori intuition is necessary for the possibility of a priori synthetic
knowledge in geometry.
It is therefore a premise of this argument that geometry is synthetic
a priori. Kant clearly understood geometry as a science of space, the
space of everyday experience and of physical science. Thus for us, it
would be very doubtful that geometry on this understanding is a priori;30
indeed, the development of non-Euclidean geometry and its application in physics were, historically, the main reasons why Kants theory
of geometry and space came to be rejected. With regard to geometry, as
with mathematics in general, Kant, however, does not see a need to argue that it is a priori; it is supposed to follow from the obvious fact that
mathematics is necessary (B1415). In this, Kant was in accord with the
mathematical practice of his own time. The absence of any alternative
to Euclidean geometry, and the fact that mathematicians had not
sought for sophisticated verifications of the axioms of geometry, cohered
with the absence of an available way of interpreting geometry so as
to give space for the kind of distinction between pure and applied
the development of the absolutist-relationist controversy from Newton to the present day.
30
In fact, that the geometry of space is empirical was held a generation after Kant
by the great mathematician C.F. Gauss.
Kants view that it is only in transcendental philosophy that it is established
that mathematics yields genuine knowledge of objects probably implies that although it is a synthetic a priori truth that physical space is Euclidean, this is not
intuitively evident in the way geometrical truths are. (Cf. Friedman, Kants Theory of Geometry, p.469 and n.20, also p.482n.36 [of original].) But I do not see
that there could be a Kantian argument for the conclusion that physical space is
Euclidean that did not take as a premise that space as intuited, as described in the
Aesthetic, is Euclidean.
[It is all too easy to represent Kants view as being that philosophy tells us that
space is Euclidean. Any Kantian philosophical argument for the Euclidean character of physical space would take as a premise that space as conceived and studied
in geometry is Euclidean.]
21
KANT
geometry that would imply that only the latter makes a commitment as
to the character of physical space.31
It seems that there should not be any particular problem with Kants
assertion that characteristic geometric truths are synthetic, so long as
we understand geometry as the science of space. But we must now,
as we have not before, take account of the analytic-synthetic distinction. Kant gives the following explanation:
In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought . . . , this relation is possible in two different ways.
Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as something
which is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies outside
the concept A, although it does indeed stand in connection with
it. In the one case I entitle the judgment analytic, in the other
synthetic. (A67/B10)
When a concept is contained in another may not be very clear. As a
first approximation, we can say that a proposition is analytic if it can
be verified by analysis of concepts. Kant thinks of such analysis as the
breaking up of concepts into those constituent concepts that have all
along been thought in it, although confusedly (A7/B11); this would
give rise to a narrower conception of what is analytic than has prevailed in later philosophy.
Kant suggests as a criterion of synthetic judgment that in order to
verify it, it is necessary to appeal to something outside or beyond the subject concept. This may be experience, if the concept has been so derived,
as in Kants example All bodies are heavy (B12, also A8), or if experience
is otherwise referred to. In the case of mathematical judgments it is, on
Kants view, pure intuition.
31
In the second edition of the Critique (B15) and even more in the Prolegomena
Kant talks of pure mathematics. I know of only one use of this phrase in the first
edition (A165/B206) (but mathesis pura occurs in the Dissertation; see note 44
below). Kant does not say explicitly with what non-pure mathematics he is contrasting it, but the A165/B206 passage suggests that the contrast is with applied
mathematics, although he does not use that term there or, so far as I know, elsewhere in the Critique. Additional evidence that that is the contrast Kant intends is
that he distinguishes pure from applied logic (A5253/B7778) and contrasts pure
with applied mathematics in a note to his copy of the first edition of the Critique
(Refl. XLIV, 23:28). (I owe the latter observation to Paul Guyer; cf. Guyer, Kant
and the Claims of Knowledge, p. 189. I am also indebted here to Michael
Friedman.)
22
In arguing that mathematical judgments are synthetic, Kant emphasizes the case of arithmetic, where he seems (reasonably in the light of
history) to have anticipated more resistance. The geometrical example
that he gives, that the straight line between two points is the shortest
(B16), might be more controversial than some alternatives, which either involve existence or had given rise to doubt. The parallel postulate
of Euclidean geometry would meet both these conditions. It is hard to
see how by analysis of the concept point external to a given line one
could possibly arrive at the conclusion that a parallel to the line can
be drawn through it, unless it is already built into the concept that the
space involved is Euclidean. That latter way of looking at such a proposition, however, is alien to Kant.
We can well grant Kants premise that geometrical propositions are
synthetic; the hard questions about the analytic-synthetic distinction
arise with arithmetic and with non-mathematical subject matters. But
his view of geometry as synthetic a priori is tied to the mathematical
practice of his own time. If we make the modern distinction between
pure geometry, as the study of certain structures of which Euclidean
space is the oldest example, but which include not only alternative
metric structures but also affine and projective spaces, and applied geometry as roughly concerned with the question which of these structures
correctly applies to physical space (or space-time), then it is no longer
clear that pure geometry is synthetic; at least the question is bound up
with more difficult questions about the analytic-synthetic distinction
and about the status of other mathematical disciplines such as arithmetic, analysis, and algebra; and the view that applied geometry is a priori
would be generally rejected.
If we do grant Kants premises, however, then the conclusion that
space is an a priori intuition is, if not compelled, at least a very natural
one. That it is precisely intuition that is needed to go beyond our concepts in geometrical judgments might be found to require more argument, particularly since he does admit the possibility of synthetic a
priori judgments from concepts.32 That empirical intuition will not do
32
KANT
A
E
Figure 1.
intuition; space is, one might say, the field in which the constructions are
carried out; it is by virtue of the nature of space that they can be carried
out. Postulates providing for certain constructions are what, in Euclids
geometry, play the role played by existence axioms in modern axiomatic
theories such as the axiomatization of Euclidean geometry by Hilbert.
But not all the evidences appealed to in Euclids geometry are of this particular form; in particular, objects given by the elementary Euclidean
constructions have specific properties such as (to take the most problematic case) being parallel to a given line. On Kants conception, these evidences must also be intuitive. A third role of intuition (connected with
the first) is that we would represent the reasoning involving constructive
operations on a given triangle as reasoning with singular terms (to be
sure depending on parameters). Kant clearly understood this reasoning
as involving singular representations. Free variables, and terms containing them, have the property that Kant requires of an intuition constructing a concept, in that they are singular and yet also express universal
validity in the role they play in arguing for general conclusions.36
A difficult question concerning Kants view is whether the role of
intuition can be limited to our knowledge of the axioms (including the
postulates providing constructions), so that, to put the matter in an
idealized and perhaps anachronistic way, in the case of a particular proof
such as the above-discussed one, the conditional whose antecedent is
the conjunction of the axioms and whose consequent is the theorem
36
This analogy was first noted by Beth, ber Lockes allgemeines Dreieck.
25
KANT
would be analytic. Such a view seems to be favored by Kants statement that all mathematical inferences proceed in accordance with the
principle of contradiction:
For though a synthetic proposition can indeed be discerned in
accordance with the principle of contradiction, this can only be
if another synthetic proposition is presupposed, and if it can be
discerned as following from this other proposition. (B14)
These remarks have generally been taken to imply that it is only because the axioms of geometry are synthetic that the theorems are.37 On
the other hand, Kant describes the proof that the sum of the angles of
a triangle is two right angles as consisting of a chain of inferences
guided throughout by intuition (see above). Interpretations of Kants
theory of construction of concepts by Beth, Hintikka, and Friedman
have all taken that to mean that, according to Kant, mathematical
proofs do not proceed in a purely analytical or logical way from axioms.38 It is clear (as has been given particular emphasis by Friedman)
that had Kant believed that they do, the Aristotelian syllogistic logic
available to him would not have provided for a logical analysis of the
proofs. In fact, one anachronistic feature of the question whether the
conditional of the conjunction of the axioms and the theorem is analytic
is that our formulation of such a conditional would use polyadic logic
and nesting of quantifiers, devices that did not appear in logic until the
nineteenth century.
37
See for example Beck, Can Kants Synthetic Judgments Be Made Analytic?
pp.8990. In his work Prfung der kantischen Critik der reinen Vernunft, vol. 1,
Kants pupil Johann Schultz, who was professor of mathematics at Knigsberg and
who clearly discussed philosophy of mathematics with Kant, seems to have understood Kants view in this way. His argument for the synthetic character of geometry is largely, and his argument for the synthetic character of arithmetic is almost
entirely, based on the fact that these sciences require synthetic axioms and postulates. Regarding arithmetic, however, there are clear differences between Kant and
Schultz (see my Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, pp.121123). [See also Essay 4
in this volume.]
38
Beth, ber Lockes allgemeines Dreieck ; Hintikka, Kant on the Mathematical Method and other writings; Friedman, Kants Theory of Geometry. Interestingly, Kurt Gdel expresses this view in an unpublished lecture draft from about
1961 (thus conceivably influenced by Beth but not by the others). [See now Gdel,
Collected Works, 3:384. An equally likely source of influence is Russell, Principles
of Mathematics, 434.]
26
It is not literally true that Kant could not have formulated such a conditional; it is not that these logical forms could not be expressed in
eighteenth-century German.39 But it would be more plausible to suppose
that Kant thought of mathematical reasoning in terms of which he had at
least the beginnings of an analysis. What we would call the logical structure of the basic algebraic language, in which one carries out calculations
with equations whose terms are composed from variables and constants
by means of function symbols, was well enough understood in Kants
time. Such calculations are described by Kant as symbolic construction.40
And of course Kant would not describe the inference involved in calculation as logical. Friedman has illuminated a lot of what Kant says about
geometry by the supposition that basic constructions in geometry work in
geometric reasoning like basic operations in arithmetic and algebra. And
in a language in which generality is expressed by free variables, and existence by function symbols, the conditional of the conjunction of the
geometric axioms and a theorem could indeed not be formulated, so that
the question whether it is analytic, or logically provable, could not arise.
We do not have to decide this issue, because in any event Kants account of mathematical proof gives clear reasons for regarding geometrical knowledge as dependent on intuition. Nonetheless the Transcendental Exposition is probably not intended to stand entirely on its own
independently of the Metaphysical Exposition. That the intuition appealed to in geometry is ultimately of space as an individual does not
follow just from a logical analysis of mathematical proof 41 or even
39
Formulations of axioms and postulates for geometry that would lend themselves
to expressing such a conditional are given by Schultz, Prfung, 1:6567.
40
A717/B745. It is not possible for me to go into this notion or how Kant understands the role of intuition in arithmetic and algebra. See Parsons, Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic; also Thompson, Singular Terms and Intuitions, IV; J. Michael
Young, Kant on the Construction of Arithmetical Concepts; Friedman, Kant on
Concepts and Intuitions in the Mathematical Sciences.
41
An influential recent tradition of discussion of Kants theory of construction of
concepts, represented by Beth, Hintikka, and Friedman, ignores the more phenomenological side of Kants discussion of these matters. Beth and Hintikka in fact reduce the role of pure intuition in mathematics to elements that would, in modern
terms, be part of logic. Hintikka draws the conclusion, natural on such a view, that
Kants view that all our intuitions are sensible is inadequately motivated. (See Kants
New Method of Thought and His Theory of Mathematics, pp.131132.)
The same tendency is present in Friedmans writings, but because geometry
gives particular constructions, there is a clear place in his account for the intuition
27
KANT
from the observation that what is constructed are spatial figures. Kant
presumably meant here to rely on the third and fourth arguments of
the Metaphysical Exposition.
Before I turn to the further conclusions that Kant draws from his
arguments, I should comment briefly on the Metaphysical and Transcendental Expositions of the Concept of Time. These discussions bring
in no essentially new considerations. The arguments of the Metaphysical Exposition parallel those of the Metaphysical Exposition of Space
rather closely. Since there is not obviously any mathematical discipline
that relates to time as geometry relates to space, one may be surprised
that a Transcendental Exposition occurs in the discussion of time at
all. That time has the properties of a line (i.e., a one-dimensional Euclidean space) Kant evidently thinks synthetic a priori, and he appeals
to properties of this kind (A31/B47).42 Kant also adds that the concept of alteration, and with it the concept of motion, as alteration of
place, is possible only through and in the representation of time (B48).
The concepts of motion and alteration are, for Kant, dependent on
experience,43 which makes Kants statement here misleading, but he
did allow synthetic a priori principles whose content is not entirely a
priori (B3).
Some writers on Kant have thought that Kant thought that arithmetic relates to time in something close to the way in which geometry relates to space. This view finds no support in the Transcendental Exposition or in corresponding places in the Dissertation.44 Though time
For a view of what Kant might have meant by this statement, see Friedman, Kant
on Concepts and Intuitions, 5.
28
IV
I now want to turn to the conclusions Kant draws from his discussion of time and space in the Aesthetic. The one with which Kant begins is the most controversial, and in some ways the most difficult to
understand:
Space does not represent any property of things in themselves,
nor does it represent them in their relations to one another. That
is to say, space does not represent any determination that attaches to the objects themselves, and which remains when abstraction has been made of all the subjective conditions of intuition.
(A26/B42)
Kants distinction between appearances and things in themselves has
been interpreted in very different ways, and accordingly the question
what Kants fundamental arguments are for holding that space does not
represent any property of things in themselves is controversial.
A second conclusion Kant draws is that space is nothing but the
form of all appearances of outer sense, or, as he frequently expresses it,
the form of outer intuition or of outer sense. One might mean by form
of intuition a very general condition, which might be called formal,
satisfied by intuitions or objects of intuition. This is part of Kants understanding of the notion. One must distinguish between the general
disposition by which intuitions represent their objects as spatial, and
what spaces being a form of intuition entails about the objects of outer
intuition, that they are represented as in space, and that they stand in
spatial relations that obey the laws of geometry. The latter seems properly called the form of appearances of outer sense. Kants doctrine of
pure intuition is that this form is itself known or given intuitively.
Relevant texts are the argument for the syntheticity of 7 + 5 = 12 (B1516), the
characterization of number as the pure schema of magnitude (A1423/B182),
and Kants letter to Schultz of November 25, 1788 (10:554558). For two related but still differing interpretations of the connection, see Parsons, Kants
Philosophy of Arithmetic, VI and VII, and Friedman, Kant on Concepts and
Intuitions.
45
29
KANT
That outer intuition has a form in this sense does not by itself imply that space is subjective or transcendentally ideal. It seems that intuitions might have this form and the form be itself given intuitively
without its following that the form represents a contribution of the
subject to outer representation and knowledge of outer things.46 Kant,
however, denies this. Space is the subjective condition of sensibility,
under which alone outer intuition is possible for us (A26/B42). Kants
arguments, both in the Aesthetic and in corresponding parts of the
Prolegomena, are based on the idea that the fact that a priori intuition is possible can only be explained if the form of intuition derives
from us, as we will see. There are two different things that are to be
explained, one specific to the Aesthetic and one not: first, the fact that
there is a priori intuition of space; second, the fact that there is synthetic a priori knowledge concerning space, in particular in geometry. Of course, the existence of such knowledge is one of Kants arguments for a priori intuition. But in arguing for the subjectivity of space
Kant appeals specifically to a priori intuition rather than to synthetic a
priori knowledge. Thus even in the Transcendental Exposition he
writes:
How, then, can there exist in the mind an outer intuition which
precedes the objects themselves, and in which the concept of
these objects can be determined a priori? Manifestly, not otherwise than in so far as the intuition has its seat in the subject only,
as the formal character of the subject, in virtue of which, in being affected by objects, it obtains immediate representation, that
is intuition, of them, and only so far, therefore, as it is merely the
form of outer sense in general. (B41)
Kant appeals to the same consideration in arguing that space and time
are not conditions on things in themselves:
For no determination, whether absolute or relative, can be intuited prior to the existence of the things to which they belong,
and none, therefore, can be intuited a priori. (A26/B42)
46
Some later writers influenced by Kant seem to have taken the idea of a form of
intuition in this way. This is not to say that the form represents things as they are
in themselves in Kants or some other sense; rather it means merely that whether
this is so is a further question.
30
Were it [time] a determination or order inhering in things themselves, it could not precede the objects as their condition, and be
known and intuited a priori by means of synthetic propositions.
But this last is quite possible if time is nothing but the subjective
condition under which all intuition can take place in us. (A33/B49)
Kant thus argues on the same lines both to the conclusion that a priori
intuitions do not apply to things in themselves and to the conclusion
that space and time are forms of intuition.
In the presentation of the argument in 89 of the Prolegomena,
Kant makes clearer that what is advanced is a consideration specific to
intuition:
Concepts, indeed are such that we can easily form some of them
a priori, namely such as to contain nothing but the thought of an
object in general; and we need not find ourselves in an immediate relation to an object. (4:282)
Thus with regard to a priori intuition, there is a problem about its very
possibility; with regard to a priori concepts, the problem only arises
from the fact that to have sense and meaning they need to be applicable to intuition, and at this stage it is not evident that that intuition
has to be a priori.47
Why should it be obvious that a priori intuition which precedes the
objects themselves must have its seat in the subject only? It is tempting to see this in causal terms: there could not be any causal basis for
the conformity of objects to our a priori intuitions unless this basis is
already there with the intuition itself. We could imagine Kant arguing
as Paul Benacerraf does in a somewhat related context:48 we cant understand how our intuitions yield knowledge of objects unless there is
an adequate causal explanation of how they conform to objects, and in
47
Kant could presumably argue that the subjectivity of space is needed to explain
synthetic a priori knowledge in geometry by appealing to the Copernican hypothesis that we can know a priori of things only what we ourselves put into them
(Bxviii). The more specific claim about intuition Kant evidently thought more directly
evident. Thus Kant says of the Copernican hypothesis that
in the Critique itself it will be proved, apodeictically not hypothetically, from the
nature of our representations of space and time and from the elementary concepts
of the understanding. (Bxxii n.)
48
KANT
33
KANT
perceived as spatial, but in themselves, as they really are, they are not
spatial. One might call this general view of the relation of appearances
and things in themselves the Distortion Picture. It arises naturally from
viewing things in themselves as real things, of which Kants Erscheinungen are ways these things appear to us. It identifies how things are
in themselves, in Kants particular sense, with how they really are.52
This view certainly rules out the neglected alternative. But it
seems to do so by fiat. It is difficult to see how, on this interpretation,
the thesis that things in themselves are not spatial is supported by argument.53 Indeed, if the idea that things in themselves are spatial merely
means that their relations have the formal properties that our conception of space demands, the thesis that they are not is pretty clearly incompatible with the unknowability of things in themselves. Space has
to be what is represented in the intuition of space, as it were as so
represented.
A plausible line of interpretation with this result, favored by several
passages in the Aesthetic (e.g., that from B41 quoted above), might be
called the Subjectivist view. This is what is expressed in Kants frequent
statements that empirical objects are mere representations.54 A better
way of putting it might be that for space and time and therefore for the
objects in space and time, the distinction between object and representation collapses, or that an empirical version of the distinction can
52
This remark is, however, the conclusion of an argument that Kant would have
disclaimed in application to space and time in the Critique, appealing to the variability of the modification of sensibility in different subjects, as Paul Guyer
points out (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, p.341). Also, the formulation itself seems to be criticized in the Critique (A258/B313); see Prauss, Kant und das
Problem der Dinge an sich, p.59n.13. Still, the passage encourages the idea that
the Distortion Picture is the view with which Kant started when he first came to
the view that space is a form of sensibility representing things as they appear.
53
Indeed, it may lead to actual inconsistency, as Robert Howell, who seems to
adopt this view, argues in A Problem for Kant.
54
Such statements are, however, rare in passages added in the second edition, and
the argument where this conception is most strongly relied on in its simple form, the
refutation of idealism in the Fourth Paralogism, is omitted; in the new Refutation
empirical objects are more clearly distinguished from representations.
34
only be made in some way within the sphere of representations.55 According to this view, the neglected alternative is ruled out because there
would be a kind of category mistake in holding that things in themselves, as opposed to representations, are spatial.
Paul Guyer, in his discussion of the Aesthetics case for transcendental idealism, relies heavily on an interpretation of an argument from
geometry in the General Observations to the Aesthetic. I see his interpretation as making this argument turn on just such a subjectivist view.
Commenting on Kants first conclusion concerning space, Guyer says
that Kant assumes that
it is not possible to know independently of experience that an object genuinely has, on its own, a certain property. Therefore space
and time, which are known a priori, cannot be genuine properties
of objects and can be only features of our representations of them.56
Guyer objects to this assumption on the ground that one might conceivably know, because of constraints on our ability to perceive, that
any object we perceive will have a certain property; our faculties would
restrict us to perceiving objects that independently have the properties
in question, so that it would not follow that the objects cannot on
their own have them.
According to Guyer, Kant nonetheless relies on this assumption because he conceives the necessity of the spatiality of objects and their conformity to the laws of geometry as absolute; he holds not merely
(1) Necessarily, if we perceive an object x, then x is spatial and
Euclidean;
but rather
(2) If we perceive an object x, then necessarily, x is spatial and
Euclidean.57
This has to be a condition on the nature of the objects, not merely a
restriction on what objects we can perceive. Hence, according to Guyer,
this view commits Kant to the view that spatial form is imposed on
objects by us.
55
35
KANT
Guyer discerns an appeal to (2) in the second clause of the following remark:
If there did not exist in you a power of a priori intuition, and if
that subjective condition were not also at the same time, as regards
its form, the universal a priori condition under which alone the
object of this outer intuition is itself possible; if the object (the
triangle) were something in itself, apart from any relation to you,
the subject, how could you say that what necessarily exist in you
as subjective conditions for the construction of a triangle must
of necessity belong to the triangle itself? (A48/B65)
Here the first necessarily can express the kind of necessity expressed
in (1), but the second necessity does not have the form of being conditional on the subjects construction, intuition, or perception.
Guyer states that that the absolute necessity claimed in (2) can be
explained only by the supposition that we actually impose spatial form
on objects.58 It is, indeed, a reason for not resting with the restriction view that Guyer regards as the major alternative.59 Apart from its
relevance to questions about the distinction between appearances and
things in themselves, the point is relevant also to another controversial
point: whether Kants argument for transcendental idealism in the Aesthetic makes essential appeal to geometrical knowledge, or whether it
needs to rely only on the kind of considerations presented in the Metaphysical Exposition. Clearly the Metaphysical Exposition yields at best
conditional necessities of the general form of (1); an argument from
absolute necessity to transcendental idealism has to rely on geometry.
In my view, Guyers exegesis of the argument from the General Observations is quite convincing, and this argument is clearer than what can
be gleaned from the arguments that proceed more directly from a priori
intuition (i.e., B41, A26/B42, and Prolegomena 89, all commented
on above).60
58
Ibid., p.361.
Regarding the power of a priori intuition as the universal a priori condition
under which alone the object of this outer intuition is itself possible (emphasis
mine) hardly squares with the restriction view.
60
Guyer seems to suppose that the argument he derives from the General Observations is the same argument as that of the above passages. That seems to me doubtful. He does, however, point to other passages in Kants writings where he is pretty
clearly arguing from necessity.
59
36
KANT
is not the only one that Kant deploys even within the Subjectivist conception, as one can see from the discussions of the concept of object
in the A deduction (esp. A104105) and the Second Analogy (A191/
B236).
I would like now to introduce a third possible meaning of the nonspatio-temporality of things in themselves, what I will call the Intensional view. According to this view, the conclusion from the argument
of the Aesthetic is that the notions of space and time do not represent
things as they are in themselves, where, however, represent creates
here an intensional context, so that in particular it does not entitle us
to single out things in themselves as a kind of thing, distinct from appearances. The manner in which we know things is not as they are in
themselves, but rather as they appear. But talk of appearances and
things in themselves as different objects is at best derivative from the
difference of modes of representation. However, there is an inequality
between the two, in that representation of an object as it appears is
full-blooded, capable of being knowledge, while representation of an
object as it is in itself is a mere abstraction from conditions, of intuition in particular, which make such knowledge possible.
Assuming that it has been shown that knowledge of things as spatial is not knowledge of them as they are in themselves, on this view
there cannot be a further question whether things as they are in themselves are spatial; either things in themselves are not spatial merely
repeats what has already been shown, or it presupposes that there is a
kind of thing called things in themselves.
This is a philosophically attractive idea, and it is supported by
many passages where Kant expresses the distinction as that of considering objects as appearances or as things in themselves, as in the following striking remark:
But if our Critique is not in error in teaching that the object is to
be taken in a twofold sense, namely as appearance and as thing
in itself; if the deduction of the concepts of understanding is valid,
and the principle of causality therefore applies only to things
taken in the former sense, namely, insofar as they are objects of
experiencethese same objects, taken in the other sense, not being subject to the principlethen there is no contradiction in
supposing that one and the same will is, in the appearance, that
is, in its visible acts, necessarily subject to the law of nature, and
38
61
39
KANT
65
40
to identify aspects of the content of our knowledge that are conditioned entirely by our own subjectivity but are still knowledge of objects, reflected in the most objective physical science. That one should
be able to identify such a purely subjective aspect of objective knowledge is surprising and even paradoxical. Even granted a priori knowledge
of necessary truths about space, I have found Kants arguments in the
Aesthetic for this conclusion less than apodeictic. But that premise
does give them enough plausibility so that it is not surprising that more
modern views that reject this particular radical turn of Kants transcendentalism also reject the premise.
The Aesthetic is of course not the only place where Kant argues for
transcendental idealism or says things bearing on its meaning. In particular, the Analytic probably contributed more to the development of the
modern conception just alluded to. I should end by emphasizing once
again the very limited scope of the present discussion of transcendental
idealism.66
66
I wish to thank the editor for his comments on an earlier version, for his explanation of his own views, and for his patience. I am also indebted to the participants
in a seminar on Kant at Harvard University in the fall of 1989.
41
2
ARITHMETIC AND THE CATEGORIES
number and compare what is said in the first edition of the Critique
with some texts from 17881790. This comparison yields some puzzles of interpretation having to do with the place of number with respect
to the pure and schematized categories. I will preface this whole discussion with some remarks about Kants view of mathematical objects in
general.
This story has no overwhelming moral. It does show that however
different his picture of the basic concepts of mathematics was from our
own, however confused it may have been when measured against what
we can now do with the help of set theory and modern logic, Kant had
more to say about the concept of number and related concepts than
has been appreciated.
I
From our modern point of view, a noteworthy feature of Kants philosophy of mathematics is the absence of an articulated account of
mathematical objects. Kant does talk in a highly general way about objects, in particular in saying that the categories spell out the concept
of an object in general. But even the pure categories, once they are
distinguished from the forms of judgment, envisage concrete objects,
since they include substance, causality, and community. Kants fullblooded notion of object is that of an object of experience, that is, a
spatio-temporal object.1
Thus Kant rarely expresses a philosophical commitment to specifically mathematical objects, although passages that we would read as
involving reference to such objects abound in his writings. Exceptions
are the statement that 7 + 5 = 12 in a singular proposition (A164/
B205) and the statement that we can give it [the concept of a triangle]
an object wholly a priori, that is, construct it (A223/B271). In another
passage Kants language is even stronger:
As regards the formal element, we can determine our concepts in a
priori intuition, inasmuch as we create for ourselves, in space and
time, through a homogeneous synthesis, the objects themselves
these objects being viewed simply as quanta. (A723/B751)
KANT
In the second of these three places, Kant partly takes away what he
has given in saying that the triangle is only the form of an object,
thus apparently shifting from a use of object that would comprehend
mathematical objects to one that does not.2
Even when he is most explicit about mathematical objects, Kant
does not attribute existence to them. In fact he seems to reject such an
attribution in saying that in mathematical problems there is no question of . . . existence at all (A719/B747).3 The pure category of existence is schematized as existence at a definite time (A145/B184); it
implies actual existence (Wirklichkeit). To know the actual existence of
something requires connection with an actual perception by means of
the analogies of experience (A225/B272). For this reason it seems clear
that mathematical existence is not a form of actuality. There are indications rather that Kant thought of it under the category of possibility.
This is said quite explicitly by Kants disciple Johann Schultz, in criticizing Eberhard for interpreting Kants concept of the objective reality
of a concept as meaning the actual existence of objects falling under it
instead of their possibility:
But unfortunately the example from pure mathematics does not
fit, for in mathematics possibility and actuality are one, and the
geometer says there are (es gibt) conic sections, as soon as he has
shown their possibility a priori, without inquiring as to the actual
drawing or making of them from material.4
What plays the role of mathematical existence in Kants usage is
constructibility. It is tempting to regard this as possible existence: the
construction of a concept shows the possible existence of an object
whose form is given by the construction. Given Kants understanding
of possibility, however, construction in pure intuition is not sufficient
2
Kants notion of an object of experience as explicated by the schematized categories does give place to one type of object that is at least not a spatio-temporal
thing, namely the accidents or states of substances. This would license an analogous shift in the use of object. Probably Kant thought of the forms of objects
as quanta as similarly provided for by the categories of quantity.
3
See Thompson, Singular Terms and Intuitions in Kants Epistemology, pp.338
339; also Parsons, Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, Postscript, p.148.
4
Review of vol. 2 of Eberhards Philosophisches Magazin (1790), in Ak. 20:386n.
This review was written in close collaboration with Kant and is partly based
on manuscripts by Kant; however, the passage quoted does not occur in those
manuscripts.
44
to show such possible existence without the aid of certain philosophical considerations. To be possible is to agree with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts (A218/B266; emphasis mine). The latter conditions are of course
the categories. In his discussion, Kant is quite explicit about the relevance to the mathematical realm of this conception of possibility.
When he says, as we noted above, that a constructed triangle is only
the form of an object, he goes on to say that to determine the possibility of an object of which it is the form, it must be the case that such
a figure is thought under no conditions save those upon which all
objects of experience rest (A224/B271). These are not only space, as a
condition of outer appearance, but that the formative synthesis through
which we construct a triangle in imagination is precisely the same as
that which we exercise in the apprehension of an appearance, in making for ourselves an empirical concept of it. These are just the considerations advanced in the Axioms of Intuition. But the consequence
seems to be that knowledge of the objective reality of mathematical
concepts, that is, the possible existence of instances of them, is philosophical rather than purely mathematical knowledge.5
This state of affairs poses a dilemma for Kants philosophy with
regard to the status of mathematical knowledge. Kants conception of
mathematical knowledge as resting on demonstrative proof in which
the essentially mathematical element is construction in pure intuition
makes it of a quite different character from philosophical; of course
that contrast is the main theme of the Discipline of Pure Reason in its
Dogmatic Employment. It seems quite clear that Kant thinks of such
knowledge as independent of philosophy. But mathematical demonstration seems not to yield knowledge of objects in the genuine sense,
unless it is supplemented by some philosophical reflection. A much-cited
remark in the second edition Transcendental Deduction illustrates the
difficulty:
Through the determination of pure intuition we can acquire
apriori knowledge of objects, as in mathematics, but only in regard to their form, as appearances; whether there can be things
which must be intuited in this form, is still left undecided. Mathematical concepts are not, there, by themselves knowledge, except
5
KANT
Something like the second of these three solutions may be read into
the above-cited remark by Schultz, but more direct evidence that Kant
faced the issue of the ontology of mathematics is lacking. It is instructive to ask, however, whether Kant could have adopted the first
solution and accepted mathematical objects, as he indeed seems to do
in some passages cited above. He would have to acknowledge a use of
quantifiers wider than over objects in his full sense of objects of experience, but his conception of the logical use of the understanding
seems to make this acknowledgment already. If, with Schultz, he were
to read the particular quantifier as es gibt, this would not connote
Dasein or Wirklichkeit, but that would not commit Kant to a real theory
of nonexistent objects of the sort that is attributed to Meinong or
inspired by him.8
A possibly more serious question that would arise for a Kantian
conception of mathematical objects, and of mathematics as knowledge
of such objects, comes from his view that knowledge of objects requires
intuition. When Kant speaks in this vein, he does regard construction
of concepts in pure intuition as yielding such objects; in that sense,
there would be intuition of them. But strictly speaking, this probably
applies only to what Kant calls ostensive construction, which is characteristic of geometry, as contrasted with symbolic construction, characteristic of algebra (A717/B745). It is the former that is said to be of the
objects themselves. This leaves somewhat unclear in what sense it
would be open to Kant to say that construction gives the objects of
arithmetic and algebra. J. Michael Young seems to me reasonable in
describing the construction involved in the intuitive verification of
7 + 5 / 12 in the second edition Introduction as ostensive.9 But although Kant does speak of seeing the number 12 come into being
(B16), what is constructed is clearly a set or configuration of twelve
objects. In passing in this passage, and more explicitly in the Schematism
(A140/B179), he refers to such a configuration as an image of the number (see below). We shall see below that Kants remarks about number
frequently show a conflation of the notions of a particular number n
and of a set of n objects. This may have prevented him from facing the
8
Cf. the comparison of Kant with Frege in Objects and Logic, pp.494495, [or
Mathematical Thought and Its Objects, pp.57]. A Meinongian view would be of
course quite foreign to Kant.
9
Kant on the Construction of Arithmetical Concepts, pp.3031.
47
KANT
question whether numbers, strictly speaking, can be constructed in intuition. It is noteworthy that both in the Introduction and in the Axioms of Intuition Kant focuses on singular propositions about numbers,
so that the question how to interpret generalizations about them is not
raised. It is at the latter point that we ourselves are inclined to see the
problem of ontological commitment to numbers as arising. Young
suggests that Kant might regard statements about numbers as statements about finite sets, but he considers only a singular example.10
In one way or another, Kant must regard some objects of arithmetic
and algebra as at a conceptual remove from the intuitions that found
statements about them. This, rather than his conception of existence,
seems to me to be the most principled difficulty in the way of Kants
adopting the mathematical-objects picture. In some cases, such as
rational numbers, it seems that Kant would fall back on the notion
of symbolic construction. Positive and negative rational numbers are
talked of in the context of a calculus, in which there are definite rules
for manipulating expressions of the form m/n, where m and n range
over natural numbers. By adding symbols for roots, we can similarly
accommodate algebraic real numbers. Kant did, however, make a distinction of status between rational and irrational numbers. When, in a
letter of September 1790, August Wilhelm Rehberg asked why the understanding cannot think 2 in numbers (11:206), Kant does not
challenge the formulation; for him number meant primarily whole
10
II
Kants conception of the categories of quantity combines two kinds of
notions: quantity as understood in logic in his time, and conceptions
of whole and part. The connection between these two kinds of ideas is
not very clearly made. The first is reflected in the Table of Judgments,
in which judgments are classified with respect to quantity as universal,
particular, or singular (A70/B95). In the universal and particular cases,
quantity is what we would express by the quantifiers all and some.
Kants conception of a singular judgment is less clear. It would be
most natural to us to count as a singular judgment one of the form a is
B, where a is a singular term, and indeed Kant gives such examples.12
But in the language of concepts, that would suggest that a singular
judgment is one in which a concept of a different type (or perhaps even
not a concept at all, but an intuition) is the subject. Kant repudiates
this suggestion in saying that it is not concepts but their use that can be
singular.13 Kant gives his most explicit explanation when, after talking
of the use of the concept house in universal and particular judgments,
he remarks:
Or I use the concept only for a single thing, for example: This
house is cleaned in such and such a way. It is not concepts but
judgments that divide into universal, particular, and singular.14
11
49
KANT
16
50
the categories of quantity as pure categories is not entirely clear. Although Kants explanations are often obscure and sometimes inconsistent with one another, the issues involved in both these matters concern a subject of modern discussion, namely the relation of the set/
element relation to the whole/part relation. To learn more about how
Kant understood notions of quantity, whole and part, we will turn to
Kants Reflections attached to the sections of Baumgartens Metaphysica dealing with whole and part17 and to the notes from Kants
lectures on Metaphysics, which generally contain a section corresponding to the same place in Baumgarten.18
In the Axioms, Kant tells us that an extensive quantity is one in
which the representation of the parts makes possible that of the whole
(and therefore necessarily precedes it) (A162/B203). All appearances
are intuited as aggregates (multiplicities) of previously given parts
(A163/B204). The term translated multiplicity is Menge, later used
by Cantor and now the standard German term for set. How it should
be translated in Kant is a problem; plurality, collection, and multitude are also possibilities; my choice of multiplicity is somewhat
arbitrary.19 It is suggested by the fact that in one place Kant equates
17
155164, Totale et partiale, reprinted in Ak. 17:5861. Some, but not all, of
Kants analysis follows Baumgarten. The close connection between ideas of quantity and of whole and part is shared with Baumgarten; indeed it can be traced back
to Aristotles Categories. The role of a concept in conceptions about quantity (see
below) is not in Baumgarten.
The Reflections we cite are dated by Adickes between 1780 and the beginning
of the 1790s; they are in vol. 18 of Ak. and are cited merely by number. Earlier
Reflections are briefer and, on the whole, less independent of Baumgarten. (But see
note 26 below.)
18
The relevant sections, all in vol. 28 of Ak., are Metaphysik Volckmann (c. 1784/
1785), pp.422428, esp.422424; Metaphysik von Schn (c. 1789/1790), pp.504
506; Metaphysik L2 (WS 1790(1), pp.560562; Metaphysik Dohna (1792/1793),
pp. 636637; Metaphysik K2 (early 1790s), pp. 714715. The passage from
Metaphysik L2 agrees verbatim with the corresponding section of Phlitz, Immanuel Kants Vorlesungen ber die Metaphysik, pp.3132 of the 1924 reprint.
These materials are all cited merely by page number.
With reference to notes from Kants lectures, a statement such as Kant says . . .
should be regarded with caution; in my usage it should be regarded as an abbreviation for Kant is reported to say . . .
19
I am agreeing with Kemp Smiths translation of Menge at A140/B179, but here
he translates it as complex. For my own purpose, a uniform translation is
desirable.
51
KANT
Menge with the Latin multitudo.20 In the Axioms, where what is primarily at issue is the schematized categories of quantity, Kant is talking
of the relation of extended objects to their spatial parts. What Kant
calls an aggregate or multiplicity is therefore closer to a mereological
sum. This spatial model is evidently not conceived by Kant to be the
only form taken by the schematized categories of quantity; indeed he
generally, though not always, regards time as more fundamental than
space. We shall turn to this question.
Let us now turn to the pure categories of quantity. Kant says that totality is nothing but plurality considered as unity (B111). This should
remind you of Cantors explanation of the notion of set.21 This is reinforced by the following remarks from lectures on metaphysics:
Vieles insofern es Eins ist, ist die Allheit. Id, in quo est omnitudo
plurium, est totum.22
Kant does not distinguish very clearly between the whole/part and
the set/element relation. I will show, however, that there is some basis,
even though not clearly articulated, for Kant to make such a distinction. Something like the latter relation is needed to make sense of the
relation of the categories to the concept of number.
Kants most elementary notion concerning whole and part is that of
a compositum, which seems to be simply an object in which parts can
be distinguished. He is concerned to distinguish compositum from
quantum, in which the parts must be homogeneous,23 but also from
totum.24 The latter distinction is not too clear. Two distinguishable
ideas are that a totum is not part of something further, or at least not
20
Metaphysik Volckmann, p.422. In his German translation of the Inaugural Dissertation, Klaus Reich translates multitudo in 1 as Menge; see Kant, De mundi,
pp.45.
21
Especially Cantors characterization of a set as jedes Viele, welches sich als
Eines denken lsst, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 204. I am not pressing any
claim of an anticipation of Cantor by Kant; rather, it seems to me that Cantors
explanations are based on older ways of thought and that ideas about whole and
part are not entirely absent from his own conception of what a set is.
Kant, however, associates Menge with the category of plurality (B111). This
passage was pointed out to me by Pierre Keller.
22
Metaphysik L2, p.560.
23
B203, also Refl. 5836, 5842. Cf. B201n.
24
Allheit, the third category of quantity in Kants table, is rendered in Latin as
totum in the above-quoted passage, but as totalitas in Refl. 5838. A distinction
52
KANT
how the parts can be homogeneous except by falling under some such
derivative concept, which returns us to the first reading of the above
passage.27
We have been considering remarks of Kant that are on an abstract
level and could plausibly be taken to be explicating pure categories. In
the case of spatio-temporal objects, however, Kant evidently thinks
that spatio-temporal extension itself constitutes the basic form of division into homogeneous parts. To that extent, the parts of an object are
homogeneous simply by virtue of being parts of that object, and clearly
there is a deeper homogeneity of the spaces occupied by the parts; because the representation of a spatial whole is a result of synthesis, the
synthesis is of the sort Kant calls mathematical (B201n.). Both of these
forms of homogeneity will be bound up with a third, there being some
concept that offers unification of the second of the two types mentioned
above.28
Kant evidently intended his definitions concerning quantity to cover
both discrete and continuous quantity, and the distinction seems still to
be defined in abstraction from space and time:
A quantum by whose magnitude the multiplicity of its parts is
undetermined, is called a continuum; it consists of as many parts
as I wish to give it; it does not consist of individual parts. On the
other hand, every quantum through whose magnitude I wish to
represent the multiplicity of its parts is discrete.29
A quantum through whose concept the multiplicity of its parts
is determined, is discrete; one through whose concept of quan-
27
In one text, Refl. 4822 (1775/1779, 17:738), Kant complicates the matter further by saying that in a quantity (Grsse) the whole must be homogeneous with
the parts. Here he seems to be thinking of quantities in the sense in which it is
filled out by a mass term; his example is a quantity of money, and he seems to reject the idea of a quantity of ducats. On this conception, a quantity differs both
from a mereological sum and from a set.
28 One would not expect Kant to conceive recognition of the same object at different times on the model according to which an enduring object is a whole that has
as parts temporal stages. Nonetheless, the mathematical representation of time
as a line, on which Kant lays great stress, means that persistence through time will
have some formal features of extension in space.
29
Metaphysik L2, p.561.
54
Refl. 5844. In both these passages, Menge could quite appropriately have been
translated set.
31 In one place, however, Kant intimates a distinction between infinity in the sense
of nonfiniteness, and unsurpassably large quantity:
The former [the concept of the infinite] does not determine at all, how large something is; however, the concept of maximum does determine quantity. The concept
of the infinite shows that my quantum is larger than my power of measuring.
Therefore God is the infinite being does not say as much as God is the greatest
being. (Metaphysik K2, p.715)
32
Here he goes beyond his usual characterization of a quantum in assuming that the
parts are homogeneous not only with each other but with the whole, but the situation is not the special one envisaged in Refl. 4822 (see note 27 above). He is here
apparently thinking of spatio-temporal quanta.
55
KANT
quantity does not stop further division; that is, further division is possible, although the resulting parts would not any longer fall under the
concept. That must be the situation if we are to make sense in these
terms of attributions of cardinal number. Kant sometimes regarded this
concept as not intrinsic to the quantum, so that a quantum that is continuous if one considers its possible divisions into parts can be considered as discrete:
Quantum discretum is that whose parts are considered as units;
that whose parts are considered as multiplicities is called a continuum. We can also consider a continuum as discrete; for example, I can consider the minute as unit of the hour, but also as
set which itself contains units, namely 60 seconds.33
If, stretching Kants explicit formulations, we allow nonconnected
objects to count as wholes, we can accommodate the assignment of
cardinalities in the physical realm: the number of people in this room
would attach to their mereological sum, conceived as having individual
people as parts (as opposed to some other conceivable division).
Elsewhere Kant describes a discrete quantity per se as one in
which the number of parts is determined arbitrarily by us.34 The text
goes on:
Number is therefore called quantum discretum. Through number
we represent every quantum as discrete.
The situation evidently results from combining the dependence on
aconcept, of a division into parts that gives a definite number and the
taking of this concept as not intrinsic to the quantum. In fact Kant
goes further in treating number as dependent on our representation.
But some backtracking will be necessary before we can go into this.
33
Up to now we have concentrated on Kants purely abstract discussion of part, whole, and quantity; to all appearances these notions belong to the pure categories. Some considerations concerning space and
time have, however, crept in. When Kant begins to talk of number, the
amount that can be said on the pure categorical level seems to be very
limited. Already in the Inaugural Dissertation (1), Kant finds an abstract intellectual conception of the composition of a whole of parts to
be possible, but to follow up such a conception and represent it in
the concrete involves temporal conditions:
Thus it is one thing, given the parts, to conceive for oneself the
composition of the whole, by means of an abstract notion of the
intellect; and it is another thing to follow up this general notion,
as one might do with some problem of reason, through the sensitive faculty of knowledge, that is to represent the same notion to
oneself in the concrete by a distinct intuition. The former is done
by means of the concept of composition in general, insofar as a
number of things are contained under it (in mutual relations to
each other), and so by means of ideas of the intellect which are
universal. The second case rests upon temporal conditions, insofar as it is possible by the successive addition of part to part to
arrive genetically, that is by synthesis, at the concept of a composite, and in this case falls under the laws of intuition. (2:387)
The same duality arises again when, in 12 of the Dissertation, Kant
refers to the concept of number:
In addition to these concepts there is a certain concept which in
itself indeed is intellectual, but whose actuation in the concrete
(actuatio in concreto) requires the assisting notions of time and
space (by successively adding a number of things and setting
them simultaneously beside one another). This is the concept of
number, which is the concept treated in arithmetic.35
I shall not try to sort out what, at this stage, belongs to the abstract
concept and what to its actuation in the concrete. From Kants later
critical standpoint, any construction that would yield models of math35
KANT
ematical notions such as that of number will involve the forms of intuition; this seems to be true even of the most basic notion of a compositum. In the Critique of Pure Reason, the status of the pure categorial
notions is obscured by Kants characterizing number as the schema of
quantity (A142/B182) and by the fact that most of Kants explanation
of notions of quantity occurs in the Axioms, where he is principally
concerned with the schematized categories. Later texts return to a position close to that of the Dissertation, as we shall see.
The problem that Kant faces is how much beyond some basic definitions he can develop without construction, which on his own account
will involve intuition. With respect to number, a further factor is that he
tends not to distinguish a multiplicitys having a certain number from
our knowledge of that fact; indeed from the point of view of transcendental idealism the two should be essentially connected. He tends even
to characterize number in epistemic terms:
To know a multiplicity distinctly by adding of unit to unit is to
count. A number is a multiplicity known distinctly by counting.36
Very often, when Kant talks of the relation of number and arithmetic to time, time seems to play the role of a subjective condition of apprehension. Needless to say, this does not strengthen Kants case for
the view that arithmetic is synthetic and dependent on intuition. On
this matter, I have already written elsewhere.37
The above citation illustrates another phenomenon that is frequent
in Kants remarks about number. That is that he tends not to distinguish, for a given number n, between a multiplicity with cardinal
number n and the number n itself.38 This conflation illustrates the lack,
discussed above, of an articulated theory of mathematical objects in
Kant, and with respect to the idea of ostensive construction of numbers may have contributed to it. Note also that by number Kant evidently means primarily cardinal or ordinal number, at all events whole
36
Metaphysik Volckmann, p. 423 (in Latin); cf. Metaphysik von Schn, p. 506;
also Metaphysik Dohna, pp.636637.
37 Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, esp. pp. 128142. But on the treatment
there of Kants conception of mathematical objects, see the Postscript, pp.147
149, which I of the present essay amplifies. [On this subject see further the
Postscript.]
38
Cf. B16; Metaphysik L2, p.561 (cited above).
58
III
I shall now turn to the discussion of number in the Schematism and to
the texts of 17881790 that seem to be inconsistent with it. Kant appears in the Schematism to reject the idea expressed in the Dissertation
and implicit, though not consistently held to, in the Metaphysics lectures, of describing the concept of number in terms of the pure
categories.
In the Schematism, Kant uses a numerical example in the course of
explaining the notion of schema and distinguishing it from that of image (Bild). If I put five points one after another, he tells us,
this is an image of the number five (A140/B179). Its relation to its object will seem to us quite different from that in the other cases he mentions, such as the concepts of triangle and dog (A141/B180). At all
events he continues:
But if, on the other hand, I think only a number in general, whether
it be five or a hundred, this thought is rather a representation of a
method whereby a multiplicity, for instance a thousand, may be
represented in an image in conformity with a certain concept, than
the image itself. (A140/B179)
It is not entirely clear whether he is here describing the thought of
number in general, that is, the entertaining of the general notion of
natural number, or giving a general description of the thought of a particular number (so that it is the description, rather than the thought
described, that is general over the natural numbers). The former reading seems to me slightly more likely. However, even the thought of a
particular number will have to be distinguished from an image of it;
moreover, the thought of a number as large as 1,000 will in practice
have to involve general operations on numbers.
However, even for a number like 5, for which there is no difficulty
in obtaining the sort of thing Kant calls an image, we do not have a
method of representing a multiplicity in an image in conformity with a
59
KANT
certain concept, unless the multiplicity itself is determined by a concept, in the example at hand something like dot on the page. This is
just Freges point that a number attaches to a concept.39 We have already seen Kant wrestling with this issue and attempting to fit it into a
conception of multiplicities based on whole/part ideas.
It is curious that when Kant comes to enumerate the schemata of
the individual categories, it is only for the categories of quantity that
he describes an image, and what he says does not exactly fit what he
has said previously:
The pure image of all magnitudes (quantorum) before outer sense
is space; that of all objects of the senses in general is time. But
the pure schema of magnitude (quantitatis), as a concept of the
understanding, is number, a representation which comprises the
successive addition of homogeneous units. Number is therefore
simply the unity of the synthesis of the manifold of a homogeneous intuition in general, a unity due to my generating time itself in the apprehension of the intuition. (A142143/B182)
No doubt what is meant by calling space and time pure images of
quanta is that their structure relevant to the application of the categories of quantity can be represented by spatial or temporal structure. In
particular, the image of a number in the sense of the previous passage
will be spatio-temporal. Indeed, Kants emphasis on successive addition
in descriptions of the concept of number makes it possible that here he
conceives the image to be essentially temporal: the points are an image
of the number five by being put one after the other (hintereinander);
thus, they constitute an image of a number by virtue of being generated
in succession.40
Kant at this time seems to have rejected the distinction of the Dissertation between the intellectual concept of number and its actuation
in the concrete. The abstract conception of whole, part, and quantity
39
It is unlikely that it is this concept, rather than the concept of number in general
or of a single number such as 5 or 1000, that Kant has in mind when he speaks of
representing in an image in conformity with a certain concept. For it seems clear
from the last sentence of the paragraph that it is the latter concept whose schema
is being described; hence it must be the concept of totality or perhaps of number.
40
In A140/B179, Kemp Smith translates wenn ich fnf Punkte hintereinander setze
as if five points be set alongside one another, thus losing the implication of successive setting.
60
61
KANT
There is also a conceptual gap which, whether or not Kant was conscious of it, makes his definitions of discrete quantity fall short of capturing the notion of finite quantity, which he would need for his own
conception of number. A discrete quantity, as Kant defines it, will have
a definite number of parts, but there is no necessity that this number
should be finite; in fact, on this level Kant does not offer much of a
conceptual basis for comparing magnitudes and for formulating answers to questions about the magnitude of particular quanta.42 Kants
appeal to successive repetition was possibly an attempt to capture
the notion of finiteness. Consider:
The concept of magnitude in general can never be explained except by saying that it is that determination of a thing whereby
we are enabled to say how many times a unit is posited in it. But
this how-many-times is based on successive repetition, and therefore on time and the synthesis of the homogeneous in time.
(A242/B300)
We might compare the situation with that obtaining once we have the
set-theoretic notion of cardinality. In his definition of discrete quantity
and identification of number with it, Kant leaves open the possibility
of infinite number, even though other remarks of his reject it. But he
does not take the key step taken by Cantor, giving a general definition
of when two sets have the same cardinal number, and what he says
about greater and less is somewhat crude.43 But even when all this has
been done, two further steps need to be taken for a set-theoretic theory
of cardinal number: the notion of cardinal has to be related to that of
ordinal; from Cantor on it has been accepted that an informative answer
to the question of the cardinality of a set will place it in the sequence of
pp.241243, but the paper contains a number of further criticisms of Hintikkas
conception of a preliminary Kantian theory. She is perhaps the only one of Hintikkas critics to engage him on his own grounds, with respect to his use of a Euclidean conception of mathematical proof; see especially 7 on ekthesis and logic
in Kant.
42
Since Kants discussion of quantity comprehends the continuous as well as the
discrete, knowledge of magnitude involves more than just determination of cardinalities (i.e., counting); it will involve measurement. I have not gone into such issues
at all here. Some commentators have read the Axioms of Intuition as concerned with
the possibility of measurement of physical phenomena. See for example Gordon
Brittan, Kants Theory of Science.
43
E.g., Metaphysik Volckmann, p.424; Metaphysik Dohna, p.637.
62
ordinals.44 Second, finiteness has to be characterized. The finite ordinals and ordinals in general are often explained in terms of different
notions of iteration; finite iteration is an abstract counterpart of the
notion of successive repetition. But to describe it in abstract terms was
quite beyond the logical and mathematical resources of Kant and his
contemporaries; the task was first accomplished in the 1880s by Frege
and Dedekind.
Whatever considerations may have motivated Kants position of 1781,
in some later texts he returns to a view close to that of the Dissertation,
and holds that at least some essentials of the concept of number are intellectual and presumably derive from the pure categories. This may have
been made possible for him by his reworking of the Transcendental
Deduction for the second edition of the Critique, with its distinction
between a more abstract level of the argument, presented in 1520,
which considers the synthesis of a given manifold of intuition in general,
without making any assumptions about our particular forms of intuition,
and the application of these abstract considerations to our forms of intuition, in the argument of 2426. In particular, Kant distinguishes in this
context between intellectual and figurative synthesis (B151). The former
is that which is thought in the mere category in respect of the manifold
of an intuition in general.
How this new formulation works out for the categories of quantity
and the notion of number is not very explicit in the second edition of the
Critique. It is reasonable to conjecture, however, that Kant saw the notion of intellectual synthesis as a framework into which to fit the abstract
conceptions of quantity developed in his lectures. Note that he characterizes the concept of a quantum as the consciousness of the manifold
[and] homeogeneous in intuition in general (B203).45
44
Hence the centrality to the theory of cardinals of the axiom of choice, which
implies that every cardinality can be located somewhere in the sequence of ordinals, and of the continuum problem, which is the question where in the sequence
of ordinals the cardinality of the continuum lies.
45
Kemp Smith translates consciousness of the synthetic unity of the manifold . . . ,
following Vaihinger, who emended Bewusstsein des mannigfaltigen Gleichartigen to Bewusstsein der synthetischen Einheit des mannigfaltigen Gleichartigen.
(See Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Schmidt, p.217 [or ed. Timmermann,
p.261]. As an interpretation, this seems to me reasonable enough.
[I no longer think so. Daniel Sutherland has argued at length and convincingly
against this proposed emendation. See The Role of Magnitude, pp.418426.]
63
KANT
So far, Kant has not put the concept of number into his framework.
But that is just what he seems to do in his letter to Johann Schultz of
November 25, 1788. There he says that arithmetic had for its object
merely quantity (Quantitt), i.e. a concept of a thing in general by
determination of magnitude (10:555), and he goes on to say:
Time, as you quite rightly remark, has no influence on the properties of numbers (as pure determinations of magnitude), . . . and
the science of number, in spite of the succession, which every
construction of magnitude requires, is a pure intellectual synthesis which we represent to ourselves in our thoughts. (10:557)
Kant might seem to be responding to the point, later much emphasized
by Frege, that the concept of number applies to objects in general, independently of such conditions as those Kant associates with sensibility.
But although, according to Kant, we may have such an intellectual concept of number, it is applicable only to sensible things (sensibilia). This
much would, however, be to be expected if what is at issue is application
to yield knowledge of objects in the full sense. But what Kant says by
way of argument for it may just as well include pure mathematics:
Insofar, as quantities are to be determined in accordance with it
[the science of number], they must be given to us in such a way
that we can take up their intuition successively, and so this taking up must be subjected to the condition of time, so that we can
still subject no object to our estimation of quantity by numbers
except that of our possible sensible intuition. (Ibid.)
Kant thus leaves doubt about how much of a science of number
there can be without intuition and time; it is not entirely clear that the
difference between his position here and that of 1781 is more than
terminological.
Kants response to Rehberg seems, however, to be more emphatic.
Rehberg challenges the formulations of the Schematism. He admits
that the application of arithmetical truths to sensible appearances
would be subject to the condition of time, but he claims that to see the
truth of the arithmetical propositions themselves no intuiting of the
form of sensibility is necessary
since no intuiting of time is required, in order to carry out arithmetical and algebraic proofs, which are rather immediately evident
64
KANT
49
66
Refl. 6314 (1790). This is one of a group of texts in which Kant returns to the
ideas of the Refutation of Idealism. For a discussion of them in that connection, see
Guyer, Kants Intentions in the Refutation of Idealism.
51
Cf. Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, p.140.
52
Cf. my Mathematical Intuition; also Intuition and the Concept of Number.
[These themes are discussed at much greater length in Mathematical Thought and
Its Objects, especially chapters 3, 5, and 6. In the remark in the text, I must have
67
KANT
taken it as obvious that a purely conceptual development of the theory of the numbers as an abstract structure requires a more powerful logic than Kant had at his
disposal. Cf. the closing remarks of Essay 4 of this volume.]
53
Cf. Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, pp.138139, and Youngs discussion of
calculation in Kant on the Construction of Arithmetical Concepts, esp. II.
54
Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the Robert Leet Patterson conference on Kants philosophy of mathematics at Duke University in March 1983 and
at colloquia at Columbia University and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in May 1983 and March 1984 respectively. I am indebted for
their comments to all three audiences. The questioning of Jerrold J. Katz and others
at the Graduate Center concerning the relation of ideas of whole and part to space
and time influenced the final version considerably. I wish to thank Dieter Henrich
for helpful conversation, and I owe a special debt to Carl Posy, without whom the
essay would not have been written.
68
3
REMARKS ON PURE NATURAL SCIENCE
KANT
involving only pure concepts, or logical truths, or analytic propositions, in which evidently only the third can involve empirical concepts
essentially.
Pure natural science must on any account involve essentially concepts that are in some sense empirical. About matter, the subject of the
Metaphysical Foundations, Kant could hardly be more explicit. In explaining in the Preface what he means by calling his investigation metaphysical, Kant contrasts the transcendental part of the metaphysics of
nature with metaphysics of nature in a more special sense. His remarks about the latter suggest the model of nonpure a priori knowledge I have just sketched: it occupies itself with the special nature of
this or that kind of things, of which an empirical concept is given in
such a way that, besides what lies in this concept, no other empirical
principle is needed for cognizing the things (4:470). In the next sentence he mentions the empirical concept of matter. Whatever Kant
means by pure natural science, in the case of physical science (which
seems to be the only genuine case), it will be a development of the special metaphysics of physical nature that is the official subject of the
Metaphysical Foundations and is based on the empirical concept of
matter.
The sense in which the concept of matter is empirical is controversial, as we will see. Even if we do not disturb the apparent straightforwardness of Kants account, a terminological inconsistency emerges, in
that pure natural science either itself contains or depends on propositions that in the sense of B3 are not pure.2 One might be tempted to
suppose that the distinction Kant makes between transcendental and
special metaphysics of nature turns on the absence in the former and
presence in the latter of empirical concepts. This would seem to contradict B3, where the example proposition, Every alteration has a cause,
is said to be not pure because alteration is a concept that can only be
2
It is well known that this inconsistency surfaces in the Introduction itself: Kants
example of an impure a priori proposition is Every alteration has a cause. But
that very statement is referred to soon after as a pure a priori proposition (B45).
In replying to a critic who pointed out the inconsistency, Kant says that pure is
ambiguous, and that in B3 it meant with no admixture of anything empirical
and in B5 dependent on nothing empirical (ber den Gebrauch teleologischer
Prinzipien in der Philosophie, 8:183184, my translation). I do not find the second characterization at all clear. At all events Kants emphasis in B45 is on necessity and strict universality.
70
See also B1718. The German writers I have in mind are Peter Plaass, Kants
Theorie der Naturwissenschaft; Lothar Schfer, Kants Metaphysik der Natur; and
Hansgeorg Hoppe, Kants Theorie der Physik. (I am indebted to Ralf Meerbote for
calling the latter two works to my attention and correcting my all-too-uncritical
reliance on Plaass.) German writers have stressed the connection between the
Metaphysical Foundations and the Opus Postumum; in addition to Hoppe I might
mention the very interesting article by Burkhard Tuschling, Kants Metaphysische
Anfangsgrnde der Naturwissenschaft und das Opus postumum. Tuschling maintains that early in the work reported in the Opus Postumum Kant abandoned some
of the central theses of the Metaphysical Foundations. In preparing this essay, I have
not attempted the enormous task of delving into such matters.
71
KANT
72
world. Of course, descriptions of motion have implications about acceleration and therefore about the distribution of forces. Thus, even if
the role of the empirical is minimized, as it is on Plaasss hypothesis,
some significant attenuation of the a priori character of fundamental
physics seems unavoidable, along the lines Kitcher suggests.
At this point we might mention Kitchers suggestion that the empirically legitimized concepts that enter into what he calls quasi a
priori knowledge might be concepts we have prior to the construction
of theories, and thusunless one supposes them to be innateconcepts
of a commonsense character. I confess this seems un-Kantian in spirit
and at odds with Kants explanations of the concepts of matter and
motion, which tend rather to connect them with technical notions of his
philosophy. The picture Kitcher suggests is probably an improvement
on Kants, in that one begins theory construction with rough and ready
concepts, which are modified as theory construction proceeds.
Kitchers notion of the quasi a priori has another difficulty, of a
kind faced by many interpretations of the relation of the Critique and
the Metaphysical Foundations. For it is not easy to see how the attenuation of apriority that Kitcher discerns in the latter work is completely
escaped by the Dynamical Principles of the Critique. As we have seen,
Kant holds that the objective reality of the concept of alteration which
occurs in his principle of causality can only be established by experience. Again, it may seem that the empirical element is trivial, in that
virtually any experience will reveal change. But what Kant specifically
means is alteration of the state of a substance; he is actually operating
with a distinction like that between a real and a mere Cambridge
change.8 But then the identification of objective changes is a theoryladen matter; in particular, uniform motion in a straight line is not a
change of the state of the moving body and therefore does not require a
cause, while acceleration is a change of state (A207n/B252n). The consideration involved is quite general: in order to identify objective change,
we must categorize what is given so that the states of the objects that
are said to change are singled out.
At this point one might object that on the basis of a single experience we can be sure that something alters; what is then more theoryladen is the identification of the object that changes, its location in
one substratum rather than another. I am not sure how to spell this out
8
Ibid., p.97.
73
KANT
Ibid., pp.9899.
Walker, Status of Kants Theory of Matter, p.593. Hoppe regards the statement we are considering here as not at all a critical result, but rather a residue of
tradition, not overcome by transcendental philosophy (Kants Theorie der Physik,
p.64, my translation).
10
74
KANT
(italics added).12 Kant himself lays himself open to such a causal interpretation of the a priori in characterizing a priori knowledge as knowledge that is independent of experience (see, for example, B3). Pressing
a causal interpretation would wreak havoc with transcendental philosophy as Kant understands it. I believe that this aspect of Kitchers
understanding of the a priori does little work in his preceding essay.
What matters is the identification of certain key conceptions and modes
of argumentation as a priori.
In finding the argument of the Metaphysical Foundations mainly
unsuccessful, Kitcher is in agreement with many earlier commentators.13 Although I do not intend to challenge this conclusion, I believe
a more positive account of the relation of the Analytic of Principles
and the main parts of the Foundations is possible. I also take issue with
portions of Kitchers diagnosis of the weaknesses of Kants argument.
In any sustained attempt at Kantian reconstruction, there is a risk
that one of the main actors in the drama of Kants philosophy will
be left out. In Kitchers reconstruction I miss the categories. Kitcher
chooses the Dynamics for detailed discussion. Architectonically, the
categories that should be at work there are those of quality. These are
murky notions even in the Critique; it is not too surprising that Kitcher
does not find the connection.14 If we turn to the Mechanics, however,
we find a clear enough connection of the propositions with principles
12
Cf. Kitcher, How Kant Almost Wrote Two Dogmas of Empiricism, p.218.
Kitcher is more explicitly psychologistic and causal in A Priori Knowledge,
where, however, he is not primarily concerned to interpret Kant. He does refer to
the explication there offered as having Kantian psychologistic underpinnings.
Historically, Kant has been appealed to both for and against psychologism; my
own inclination, in contrast to Kitchers, is toward an antipsychologistic interpretation. In view of the attention Kitcher pays in How Kant Almost Wrote Two
Dogmas to Kants equation of the necessary and the a priori and the difficulties
that gives rise to, I might hazard the conjecture that it is just to escape a psychologistic causal interpretation of the a priori that Kant gives so much emphasis to this
equation. Consider the following passage, which closely anticipates the definition
of a priori truth given by Frege at the beginning of the Grundlagen: If we have a
proposition which in being thought is thought as necessary, it is an a priori judgment; and if, besides, it is not derived from any proposition except one which also
has the validity of a necessary judgment, it is an absolutely a priori judgment (B3).
13 And, if Tuschling is right (see note 3), with Kant himself.
14 A more positive account of this connection is given by Schfer, Kants Metaphysik
der Natur.
76
for the categories of relation. On the other hand, we find a more fundamental source of weakness in the arguments than a mere architectonic prohibition of the use of mathematics.
The conservation of matter (Proposition 2 of the Mechanics) is obviously an application of the First Analogy, the law of inertia (Proposition 3) of the Second Analogy, and the equality of action and reaction
in the communication of motion (Proposition 4) of the Third Analogy.
The force of application in this context is problematic. In each case,
Kants argument rests on a particular interpretation of a categorial
concept.
The key step in Kants proof of the conservation of matter is this
passage: Hence the quantity of the matter according to its substance is
nothing but the multitude of the substances of which it consists. Therefore the quantity of matter cannot be increased or diminished except
by the arising or perishing of new substance of matter (4:542). Kant
has already identified quantity of matter with the number (Menge) of
its movable parts (4:537), and undertaken to motivate this interpretation by appeal to the notion of substance. He emphatically rejects
(4:539540) the notion that matter should have a degree of moving
force with given velocity (that is, momentum) which can be taken as an
intensive quantity. This idea in turn seems to rest on the identification of
matter as substance in space:
But the fact that the moving force which matter possesses in its
proper motion alone manifests its quantity of substance rests on
the concept of substance as the ultimate subject (which is not a
further predicate of another subject) in space; for this reason this
subject can have no other quantity than that of the multitude of
its homogeneous parts, being external to one another. (4:541)
We may see Kant as dealing with the following sort of problem:
How are we to make sense of the notion of substance in spacethat is,
to make judgments involving this category in application to our actual
outer intuitions? The schematization of the category in terms of time
does only part of the work. Even if one takes as inevitable the identification of substance in space (Descartess extended substance) with
matter, it is another step to think of an extended portion of matter as
consisting of parts that are themselves substances. Kant may have had
in mind arguing that they must be substances because they are subjects
77
KANT
of motion; that is, once one has identified extended substance as the
movable in space, it will follow that the subject of motion must be a
substance. But the best result this consideration can accomplish is to
force the question back to one concerning the idea that motion must be
the fundamental determination of something that affects the outer
senses (see above). Indeed, there seems to be a factor in the interpretation of the category of substance in the context of space that is not
deduced from the pure category and the nature of space itself. Where
time instead of space is involved, this is exactly what happens in the
schematism of the categories; Kants argument requires something like a
second schematization of the category in terms of space.
This point is perhaps clearer when we turn to the connection between the Second Analogy and the law of inertia. In Kants proof
(4:543) he simply assumes that motion (in effect, uniform motion in a
straight line) is a state and that therefore only acceleration is an alteration in the sense of a change of state (as he explicitly states in the Critique, A207n/B252n). Without some such assumption there is no way to
advance from the principle of causality to Kants conclusion. Without
an assumption of this general form, we are unable to apply the category of causality to matter and motion.
Commentators often represent Kant as concerned in the Metaphysical Foundations with the mathematizability of phenomena, in other
words, concerned with showing that a mathematical theory of the
physical world can be constructed and elaborating a philosophical account of how this is possible. In so doing, Kant interprets the categories of substance and causality in quantitative and spatial terms. Pure
natural science might develop what Kitcher calls a projected order of
nature in the form of a mathematical model of a world in space and
time conforming to the Kantian categories. On any interpretation,
Kants conception of a scheme of this kind leaves much to experience.
But Kant did not show convincingly that even his basic interpretations
of the categories were not optional.
Here is a brief sketch of a picture of a priori science somewhat different from Kitchers. One might single out certain concepts because
they involve only space, time, very general categories, and fundamental
and abstract notions concerning our cognitive faculties. Obviously, a
theory sketched in terms of such concepts has highly general application
if it even approximates the truth. Indeed, a problem with such a theory
might be finding a handle for empirical verification and falsification.
78
79
4
TWO STUDIES IN THE RECEPTION OF
KANTS PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC
The present essay takes its point of departure from a thought I have
had at various times in thinking about interpretations of Kants philosophy of mathematics in the literature, in particular that offered
by Jaakko Hintikka. That was that if the interpretation is correct,
shouldnt one expect that to show in the way that Kants views were
understood by others in the early period after the publication of the
first Critique? That reflection suggests a research program that might
be of some interest, to investigate how Kants philosophy of mathematics was read in, say, the first generation from 1781. I have not undertaken such a project. However, I will make some comments about two
examples of this kind. In doing so I havent always kept my eye on
Kant, because the figures involved are of interest in their own right.
The first is Johann Schultz (17391805), the disciple of Kant who was
professor of mathematics in Knigsberg. The second is Bernard Bolzano
(17811848), who in an early essay of 1810 offered a highly critical
discussion of Kants theory of construction of concepts in intuition. In
one way, I think the result of this little experiment is negative, in that it
does little toward settling disputed questions about the interpretation
of Kant. On the other hand, I think it brings out some problems of Kants
views that could be seen either at the time he wrote or not long after.
We might recall some of the disagreements in the literature on Kants
philosophy of mathematics. One might see these as arising from challenges to a traditional and natural view, that what is synthetic in mathematical truths is entirely reflected in axioms from which they are derived. In opposition to this tradition, E.W. Beth and Jaakko Hintikka
offered proposals according to which the most essential role of intuition is in certain mathematical inferences, which can now be captured
by first-order quantificational logic. Hintikka offered a controversial
80
I
Let me turn now to Schultz. Schultz is explicit about some mathematical matters about which Kant is not. This has made him of value to
interpreters of Kant, but it has led to disagreement about the extent to
which what he says reflects Kants views or work or is original with
him. The view I defended many years ago is that there is no convincing
reason to believe that the mathematical material that Schultz brings to
bear in defending Kant, where it is not found in Kants writings, is not
original with him.3 On the whole I still uphold this view; see the appendix to this essay. But in any case my present strategy is to treat
Schultz as a figure in his own right and ask how he understood Kant.
Although his Prfung der kantischen Kritik der reinen Vernunft 4 is not
1
For my own presentation of different views on this issue, see the postscript to my
Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, pp. 142147. However, my most considered
view is presented in I of The Transcendental Aesthetic (Essay 1 of this volume).
[See also the Postscript to Part I.]
2
More recent work on Kants philosophy of mathematics has in many ways moved
beyond these issues. However, it is about them that I will interrogate Schultz and
the early Bolzano.
3
Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, pp.121123. I was criticizing Gottfried Martins dissertation, subsequently published in expanded form as Arithmetik und
Kombinatorik bei Kant. I cant forbear to comment that chapter 6 of that book
[absent from the dissertation] seems to me to show distinct influence from my essay, although Martin does not cite it. (I had sent him a copy before publication.) It
was added by the translator to the bibliography of the translation.
4
Much of part II is devoted to replies to articles in Eberhards Magazin; the systematic discussion of the Aesthetic that the reader might expect is not presented.
81
KANT
specifically a work on the philosophy of mathematics, that subject occupies a prominent place in it, no doubt in part because the author was
a mathematician, and in part because it deals almost entirely with the
Introduction and the Aesthetic.5
A natural question to put to Schultz is how he understood the term
Anschauung, what was his conception of intuition. So far as I could
determine, there isnt an explicit discussion of the meaning of this term
in the Prfung. That leaves not as clear as one would wish where he
stands on the singularity and immediacy of intuition. Kants discussion
of mathematical proof brings out the importance of the singularity of
intuitions, and the third argument of the Metaphysical Exposition of
the Concept of Space is generally read as arguing that the original representation of space is singular, although in the characterization of intuition at the beginning of the Aesthetic only the immediacy criterion is
mentioned. The fourth argument seems to be to the effect that the
representation is immediate, but as we have noted the force of this in
Kants philosophy of mathematics has been controversial.
What can be found in Schultz bearing on these questions is disappointing. The most informative passage is probably the following:
If, however, the representation of space is . . . not a product of
any concept, but an immediate representation, that, as e.g. the
representation of color, precedes the concept and must first offer
to the understanding the material for the formation of the concept, then it [the representation of space] is undeniably a sensible
representation, or, as Kant very suitably calls it, an intuitive
representation, [an] intuition. (Prfung, I, 5859)
This passage does not emphasize at all the singularity of intuition and
indeed would by itself be compatible with an understanding of intuition as not essentially singular. Such a reading of Schultz might be encouraged by the fact that he often argues for the necessity of intuition
in geometry by observing that some terms in geometry must be primitive. He is critical of Euclids notorious definitions of basic notions
Translations from this work are my own, although passages from part I devoted to
arithmetic are translated in the translation of Martin.
5 I was struck by the fact that the phrase Philosophie der Mathematik occurs in
the preface to part II (p.v). But it already occurs in the Critique, A730/B758.
82
like point and remarks that leading mathematical works of his time do
not make any use of them. However, in the passage in which he says
this, he does say of the representation that the geometer has of points,
lines, surfaces, and solids that he has created them from no general
concept, but he rather presupposes them as something immediately
known to him (Prfung, I, 55). Also, he argues that concept formations in geometry presuppose the representation of space, with the latter pretty clearly understood as singular. But immediate for him seems
to have the meaning of something like not derived or given. He
doesnt bring up the contrast between sensible intuition and intellectual intuition. In Kants own writing, one can certainly distinguish a
logical from an epistemic use of immediate, where the former occurs
in the characterization of intuition at A320/B377, where a concept is
said to relate to an object mediately, by means of a mark that several
things can have in common, and the latter is at work, for example,
when Kant describes certain propositions as immediately certain. I
havent located a passage in the Prfung where the logical use is clearly
in play. But that is in the main due to his not articulating the distinction.
There is one passage bearing on the matter in Schultzs earlier Erluterungen ber des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft
of 1784. In talking of the contrast of intuitions and concepts at the
beginning of his exposition of the Aesthetic, Schultz says that concepts
are representations that are referred to the object only mediately, by
the aid of other representations (pp.1920 of the 2nd ed.). This last
phrase might have been suggested by A320. But it is not really very
explicit and is less rather than more informative than Kants own characterization in that place. As regards Schultzs view, however, this earlier passage should dispose of the idea that he did not regard intuitions
as essentially singular.6
As was first brought out by Martin, Schultz offers axioms and postulates for arithmetic and uses them in his argument for the claim that
arithmetical judgments are synthetic. Interesting as this is, it was unsatisfying to me in my earlier work because it left Schultz with little to say
about the evident difference from Kants point of view between arithmetic and geometry. Schultz could not have simply missed Kants claim
6
It seems possible that Schultz at one time attended Kants lectures on logic. But I
do not know of definite evidence on the matter.
83
KANT
plied to come from elsewhere, in the first instance from geometry but
not only from geometry. Arithmetic and algebra are quite independent of the specific nature of the objects whose magnitudes are to be
calculated (113). They merely provide operations . . . and concepts . . .
for manipulating any magnitudes there may be (ibid.). This general
character must already be possessed by the singular propositions (such
as 7 + 5 = 12) on which Kant focuses attention, so that it is not itself
sufficient to make what for us would be truth-value-bearing propositions not such for Kant. Evidently the idea is that the associative, commutative, and related laws function as rules of inference. Given that
genuine propositions must occur as premises and conclusions of these
inferences, the question of their soundness can hardly be evaded, at
least once attention is called to them as Schultz did.
In her discussion of algebra, Lisa Shabel seems to attribute to Kant
the view that in the case of the application of algebraic methods to a
geometric problem, it will in the end always be possible to cash in the
result of the algebraic manipulations by a geometric construction. That
would allow algebraic rules to have a nonpropositional character, but
then their soundness would be a problem for particular domains of application. It would be solved for the case of applications to Euclidean
geometry by the well-known constructions of arithmetic operations.
Beyond this geometric setting, how generally was this problem solved
in the eighteenth century?
Schultz distinguishes general from special mathematics; instances
of the latter are concerned with a specific kind of quantum, as is
geometry.
In contrast, general mathematics abstracts completely from the
different qualities of quanta, so it deals only with quanta as such
and their quantity, and it only examines all the possible ways of
combining the homogeneous, by which the magnitude of a quantum in general is generated and can be determined.10
Schultz then describes addition and subtraction as the two main ways
of generating quantity by combining the homogeneous. Multiplication as iterated addition he seems to regard as derivative, although essential to giving a number as answering the question how many times
(Prfung, I, 214215).
10
KANT
Because this work is almost unknown, I have included a fair amount of quotation from it.
12
Verschieden (diversa).
13
Einerlei (eadem).
14
Dinge heien gleichartig, homogen, so fern man auf das sieht, was in ihnen einerley ist; ungleichartig, heterogen, so fern man auf das sieht, was in ihnen verschieden ist.
15
Die Bestimmung, wie vielmal zur Erzeugung eines Dinges ein ihm gleichartiges
mit sich selbst verknpft werden mu, heit eine Gre oder Quantitt.
16
Ein Ding, in welchem Quantitt statt findet, heit eine Gre, ein Quantum.
All these quotations are from p.2.
86
through a number. Therefore all further generations of quantities except general addition and subtraction rest on numbers.
Since, however, every number is again a quantum that is generated from numbers, the general theory of quantities, except for
general addition and subtraction, consists merely in the science
of numbers or arithmetic.17
Schultz assumes something that Kant does not state and conflicts
with the view that arithmetic has no axioms. That is that a science that
deals generally with quantity, applying, as Friedman says, to whatever
quanta there may happen to be, will have general principles statable
as propositions. But one of the principles (his first postulate) is that
quanta can be added:
To transform several given homogeneous quanta through taking
them together successively into a quantum, that is into a whole.18
Since it gives a closure property, this seems to put a constraint on what
quanta there are.19 The same would be said of the second postulate:
17
Allein hiedurch wird das Quantum noch nicht als Quantum, d.i. in Ansehung
seiner Quantitt bestimmt, sondern diese erfordert die Bestimmung, wie vielmal
eben dasselbe Gleichartige mit sich selbst verknpft werden mu, um das Quantum zu erzeugen (4). Die Bestimmung des Wievielmal aber ist nur durch eine Zahl
mglich. Also beruhen, ausser der allgemeinen Addition und Subtraction, alle brigen Grenerzeugung auf Zahlen. Da aber jede Zahl wieder ein Quantum ist, da
aus Zahlen erzeugt wird, so besteht die allgemeine Grenlehre, ausser der allgemeinen Addition und Subtraction, blo in der Zahlwissenschaft oder Arithmetik
(9, p.3).
18
Mehrere gegebene gleichartige Quanta durch ihr successives Zusammennehmen
in ein Quantum, d.i. in ein ganzes zu verwandeln (Anfangsgrnde, p.32 7). A different formulation occurs in Prfung, I, 221.
19
Kant, in his draft of comments on Kstners essays in Eberhards Philosophisches
Magazin, makes a comment that relates to Schultzs first postulate. He says of the
statement that a line can always be extended,
That does not mean what is said of number in arithmetic, that one could increase
it, always and without end, by the appending of other units or numbers (for the
appended numbers and quantities that are thereby expressed are possible by themselves, without its being the case that they may belong to a whole with the previous
ones). (20:420)
Schultz takes this comment into his review almost without change, although it may
appear to conflict with his first postulate. Kants main point, however, is the contrast with geometry: there is no presupposition of something like space within
which a line can be extended. The claim seems to be that the appended numbers
87
KANT
are possible independently of belonging to any whole such as space with those to
which they are appended.
20
Jedes gegebene Quantum in Gedanken ohne Ende zu vermehren und zu vermindern (Anfangsgrnde, p.40).
It seems reasonable to regard Schultzs postulates as prior to his axioms of
arithmetic, but in the Prfung the axioms are stated first. However, the postulates
do come first in the Anfangsgrnde.
21
Prfung, I, 221. Schultz held this even of infinite quantities (ibid., I, 224).
22
Schultzs argument that his axioms of commutativity and associativity are needed
to derive 7 + 5 = 12 occurs on pp.219220, just after the statement of the axioms.
23
Ein Quantum a durch irgend eine Zahl n multiplizieren, heit ein Quantum p finden,
das aus dem Quanto a auf eben die Art erzeugt wird, als die Zahl n aus der Zahl 1.
88
KANT
seem to say that one is possible, and he uses the example as a reason
for assuming associativity and commutativity as axioms.25 So I dont
think that Schultz rejects the idea of proving such propositions, and he
clearly did not go along with Kants regarding them as postulates.
Schultz clearly saw something that Kant did not acknowledge, that
proofs in arithmetic, and therefore in higher mathematics built on it,
require general principles. Even if the procedural rule interpretation
gives Kant a stronger position than it seems to me it does, one quickly
comes to the proof of general theorems, as Kant hardly denies. Though
mathematical induction had been identified as a distinctive method of
proof a long time before, the whole problem posed by rules of inference in mathematics really only came to consciousness some time later.
On the whole, the Kantian way of thinking was not favorable to this
consciousness-raising. Kant may have seen clearly that the existing
logic was not adequate to mathematical inference. There is in modern
formulations a trade-off between axioms and rules of inference, so that
with at least some principles (most familiarly induction) there is a
choice as to whether to formulate them as axioms or as rules. Arithmetic is a clear case where one cannot just rely on constructions (which
we could formulate as existence axioms) and parametric reasoning
that could be rendered by propositional logic with operations on variables and function symbols. Schultz identified associativity and commutativity as principles that had to be used. Beyond saying (apparently
under Kants prodding) that they are synthetic, he does not offer a
25
Longuenesse gives a reason why Kant would have rejected the Leibnizian proof,
apparently even as improved by Schultz. I have had some difficulty understanding
her argument. The key statement is probably
Addition does not owe its laws of associativity and commutativity to its temporal
condition, but to the rules proper to the act of generating a homogeneous multiplicity. Thus the proof of Mathematik Herder [Ak. 29, 1:57CP] was both useless
and deceptive, for its validity was derived from the very operation whose validity it
was supposed to ground. (op. cit., p.282)
I dont have an argument to the effect that Kant did not think of the matter in the
way Longuenesse claims. But why should one not try to state the rules she refers to
precisely and derive some from others? Then one can see if the circularity suggested
by the second quoted remark actually obtains. Longuenesse might reply that this
procedure is incompatible with denying that the rules in question express properties of an object rather than pertaining to the very act of generating quantity.
But Kant did apparently think that such acts could be represented symbolically
and enter into reasoning in algebra.
90
II
My second example is an early writing by Bernard Bolzano, Beitrge
zu einer begrndeteren Darstellung der Mathematik, published in
1810, only six years after Kants death.26 This essay contains an appendix on Kants conception of construction of concepts in intuition, to
which attention was drawn not long ago by a French writer, the late
Jacques Laz, whose Bolzano critique de Kant comments on it extensively. Bolzano has often been mentioned as a pioneer in a way of
thinking about logic and mathematics that in the long run undermined
many aspects of a Kantian view. What is of interest to us, however, is
his understanding of Kant at a time that was still historically close to
that of Kant.
Early in the main text of the Beitrge (I 6, p.9), Bolzano expresses
the view that there is an internal contradiction in the concept of pure
or a priori intuition. The argument must be contained in the early sections of the appendix. In 1 Bolzano writes that Kant posed the
question: What is the ground that determines our understanding to
attach to a subject a predicate that is not contained in the concept of
the subject?
And he believed he had found that this ground could be nothing
other than an intuition, which we connect with the concept of
the subject, and which at the same time contains the predicate.
What he says about Kants concept of intuition is brief; he describes it
as representation of an individual. In 4, speaking for himself, he describes intuition as the representation occupying the place of X in judgments of the form I perceive X, where clearly there is no room for a
priori intuition. Evidently the object of a perception is a representation;
26
KANT
See the main text, II 15, p.76. Bolzano in this text holds a theory of perception
according to which the existence of an outer object has to be inferred from my
representations, just the theory that Kant opposes in the Refutation of Idealism.
28
Laz appears to attribute this view to Bolzanos interpretation of Kant; see op.
cit., p.74.
92
30
93
KANT
Bolzanos simplification means that he does not reach the point at which Schultz
had to appeal to commutativity, and therefore we do not see whether Bolzano
knew how to avoid that assumption.
32
Later, in Wissenschaftslehre 305, Bolzano does argue that 7 + 5 = 12 is analytic. He relies on an explanation of a sum as a totality . . . in the case of which no
order of the parts is considered and parts of parts are regarded as parts of the
whole. He says explicitly that associativity is analytic; evidently he would have
said the same about commutativity. His argument could be criticized on grounds
like those on which, according to Laywine, Kant and Lambert, Lambert criticized Wolff: associativity and commutativity are in effect packed into the definition
of addition.
94
Although this matter is hardly at issue in the present essay, see Laywine, Kant and
Lambert, for Lamberts disagreement with Kants view, and Beiser, Mathematical
Method, for an interesting history of Kants thesis in post-Kantian idealism.
95
KANT
34
This point is well made, with earlier examples than those I mention, in Rusnock,
Was Kants Philosophy of Mathematics Right for Its Time?, pp.433435. Regarding the main argument of Rusnocks paper directed against Friedman, it
should be said that it concerns Friedmans assessment of Kants philosophy of
mathematics given his interpretation, not the interpretation itself.
96
Appendix
The investigation made here of Johann Schultzs work and views offers
an occasion to reconsider a question originally raised by Martin, what
the revision might have been that Schultz made in part I of the Prfung
after receiving Kants letter of November 25, 1788 commenting on his
draft and then discussing it with him. It is clear that the draft maintained that such arithmetic statements as 7 + 5 = 12 are analytic and
thus that Kant succeeded in convincing Schultz on this point. Martin
makes the further claim that the mathematical material relevant to this
issue, the axioms and postulates stated in the published Prfung, were
not in the draft and were either contributed by Kant or worked out in
discussion between Kant and Schultz.35 As noted above, I questioned
this claim in Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, pp.121123. My view
was and is that Schultz could well have argued that the axioms are analytic, as Leibniz did in the case of commutativity.36 It also seems a priori
unlikely that Kant would have proposed axioms that would contradict
his own thesis (reaffirmed in the letter) that arithmetic has no axioms.
Concerning the postulates, matters are somewhat more complicated. The idea that arithmetic might have postulates of the sort that
Schultz states was not original with either Kant or Schultz, since similar principles are regarded as such in Lamberts Anlage zur Architectonic (1771, 76).37 It could also have been more difficult for Schultz
to admit postulates, in formulation somewhat modeled on Euclids,
35
Martin, Arithmetik und Kombinatorik, p.65. Martin makes the further claim
that in the latter case the axioms should be credited to Kant since he would
doubtless have had the leadership in these discussions. That this would be so
about a mathematical matter is surely far from evident, particularly since in proposing his axioms Schultz contradicts Kants claim that arithmetic has no axioms.
36
See Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic, p.123n.13.
37
See Laywine, Kant and Lambert, to which I am indebted on this point.
97
KANT
and still argue that they are analytic. Therefore the conjecture that they
were already in the manuscript on which Kant was commenting on is
less likely. Kant certainly knew Lamberts book, and one possibility is
that he pointed out its relevance to Schultz. But it is also possible that
Schultz was directly influenced by Lambert, who introduces his postulates without invoking an analytic-synthetic distinction.38
Evidently we do not have firm evidence concerning either the axioms or the postulates.39 The view that both were added at the last
minute does not square well with Schultzs remark at the beginning of
the preface to the Anfangsgrnde that the book is the work of a laborious reflection of many years.
Why should one revisit this question, when it apparently cannot be
resolved definitively? One reason would be Martins broader thesis, that
books by disciples of Kant presented arithmetic axiomatically, and that
this had an influence on subsequent developments leading in the end to
the late nineteenth-century axiomatization of arithmetic. This thesis
and the work beyond Schultzs that he cites would be worth further examination. Schultzs disagreement with Kant about whether arithmetic
has axioms is a reason independent of the above discussion for giving
Schultz a more autonomous role in this development than Martin credits him with. Martin himself cites another indication of this: In 1791
Kants pupil J.S. Beck defended as one of the theses for his habilitation,
It can be doubted whether arithmetic has axioms.40 Even if Becks intention was to defend Kants position, the formulation leads Martin to
conclude that this was a matter of dispute in the Kantian school.
Martin makes another interesting observation about Schultz, which
is apart from the main concerns of this essay but which connects him
with Bolzano. He says that Schultz was quite clear on the point that
arithmetic, in particular of irrational numbers, and infinitesimal calcu38
Martin points out that postulates of arithmetic also occur in the earlier Neues
Organon (1764); see the quotations in Arithmetik und Kombinatorik, p.52, from
Alethiologie 26 and 74.
39
Batrice Longuenesse seems confused on this matter, surprising in so careful a
scholar. She writes (Kant and the Capacity to Judge, p.280) that Martin had seen
the manuscript on which Kant comments in his letter, a claim for which I can find
no warrant in Martins text. Although she cites my criticism of Martin, she adopts
without comment a claim that I questioned, that the mathematical material in the
Prfung was not present in the earlier draft.
40
Martin, Arithmetik und Kombinatorik, p.65.
98
lus should be cut loose from all geometric accessories (1972, p.111).41
He is relying on the fact that Schultz puts these subjects in general
mathematics and explicitly says that its proofs should be conducted
independently of geometry (Anfangsgrnde 21, pp.1011). This aspiration may give Schultz some historical importance. It may be a reason
why Bolzano in citing this work says of Schultz that he deserves much
credit for the foundation of pure mathematics.42
41
Martin attempts to trace this attitude of Schultz back to Kant as well. He does
not mention the letter to A. W. Rehberg of September 1790, which is at least a
problematic text for this view.
42
I 5, Russs translation.
A rough version of this essay was presented to the conference on Kants
Philosophy of Mathematics and Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago, on
April 28, 2001. I am greatly indebted to Daniel Sutherland and Michael Friedman
for their organization of this stimulating event and to them, Lisa Shabel, W.W. Tait,
and others for their comments. I dont claim to have done justice to the points
raised. Shabel in particular convinced me of the relevance of Schultzs mathematical
works, although I have been able to consult only the Anfangsgrnde (1790), which
I consider the most relevant to my theme. I am also much indebted to the editors
for suggestions.
99
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
100
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
between them, since otherwise it would be possible to point to representations that, according to Kant, satisfy one criterion but not the
other. What proved to be more controversial was the claim that immediate relation to objects means that the object of an intuition is in
some way directly present to the mind, as in perception.3 The question
of what the immediacy of intuitions consists in is revisited in the Postscript to that essay, in the discussion of a view of Robert Howell.4 Although I wrote there that the controversy had convinced me that my
interpretation of the immediacy criterion was not so evident as I had
thought, I did not make as clear as it should be where I then stood.
The discussion of intuition in Essay 1 of this volume expresses a
position that I still largely hold. It is admitted there that in the definition as expressed at A320/B377 immediate means not mediate,
that is, not by means of marks that several objects can have in common.
That may be the most basic meaning of the immediacy criterion. However, neither I nor the others who had written on the subject up to that
time admitted the possibility of marks that are not possibly common to
several objects. That Kant admitted such marks was documented later
by Houston Smit.5 But even with this correction, if that is all that Kant
means by immediate, it is hard to understand some aspects of Kants
basic logical expositions, for example the remarks about the necessary
connection of concepts and judgment in the section on the logical use
of the understanding (A6769/B9294). I believe it is such considerations that lead Batrice Longuenesse to write: Kants characterization of intuition as immediate representation essentially means, I
think, that intuition does not require the mediation of another representation in order to relate to an object.6 Although this may be suggested by the characterization of immediacy at A320/B377, it does not
seem to me to be directly implied by it.7
3
Ibid., p.112. Graciela De Pierris (Review of Guyer, p.655) quotes a remark to the
same effect from The Transcendental Aesthetic (p. 10) without noting that it is
there described as an earlier proposal of mine. Friedman quotes the same remark
(Geometry, Construction, and Intuition, p.169) but notes in a footnote that it refers back to Kants Philosophy of Arithmetic. The changes in my views reflected in
the later essay are not especially important for the comments they wish to make.
4
Ibid., pp.144145.
5
Kant on Marks and the Immediacy of Intuition.
6
Kant and the Capacity to Judge, p.220n.15.
7
Other writers have expressed still different ideas of what immediacy amounts to.
For example, Lorne Falkenstein seems to understand immediate as something
101
KANT
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
why those things should be true of arithmetic was the starting point of
the essay.
The brief discussion of geometry in III of Essay 1 in this volume
does not take a position in this controversy, but what is said is compatible with the Russell-Friedman view, and in Essay 4 I say that the controversy is largely settled in its favor. The acceptance of the view that
intuition plays an essential role in mathematical inference still leaves
the question of its role in grounding the initial steps in mathematical
proofs, in geometry construction postulates, axioms, and definitions.
Furthermore, although influential advocates of the Russell-Friedman
view have also held a purely logical interpretation of Kants concept of
intuition, that interpretation is not essential to the claim that intuition
plays an essential role in inferences.
Friedmans later writings on this subject deal almost entirely with
geometry. He has come to agree that intuition in mathematics does have
a phenomenological dimension,8 and since he has in no way given up
the view that the role of intuition extends to inferences, it follows that
he agrees that this issue is to some degree independent of the one concerning the nature of intuition. It should be added that there was never
a dispute as to whether intuition has a logical dimension, which the
singularity criterion ensures.
It is somewhat difficult to locate what disagreement there may be
between the views expressed in Essay 1 and those in Friedmans later
writings. Friedman undoubtedly gives a larger role to considerations
from geometry, but there would be no disagreement with the claim
that, in the Aesthetic, it is not only in the Transcendental Expositions
that Kant relies on geometry. Broadly speaking, my treatment of the
Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Space has phenomenological considerations standing more on their own feet than they do in
Friedmans account. But although geometry is not as much present as it
is in Friedmans reading, it is not completely absent either. I will consider only one case, the claim in the fourth argument that Space is
represented as an infinite given magnitude (B40) and that in the third
argument that the representation of a single space is prior to that of
spaces. Appealing to a passage in the Dissertation, I wrote, There is a
phenomenological fact to which he is appealing: places, and thereby
8
Synthetic History Reconsidered, pp.586, 592; see also his Geometry, Construction, and Intuition.
103
KANT
104
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
points where an argument requires appeal to it, Kant is at least implicitly relying on mathematics.
The matter is complicated by the fact, brought out by Emily Carson, that Kant maintains that geometry must presuppose a given space
that is infinite, within which the spaces generated by geometrical construction proceed.12 So it appears to be Kants view that the infinity of
space is prior to geometry. I think the texts Carson cites show that the
infinity of space does have a certain priority. Evidently the geometer
must have this representation, if it is presupposed in geometric practice. Kants language indicates that he thinks that the geometer will be
conscious of it.13 One thing Friedman was concerned to deny is that we
have a full insight into the infinity of space independent of geometry. It
is not clear that this follows from these texts, since Kants argument for
the claim that such a space must be presupposed in the practice of
geometry itself relies on descriptions of geometric procedure. Consider
the following passage quoted by Carson:
To say, however, that a straight line can be continued indefinitely
means that the space in which I describe the line is greater than
any line which I might describe in it. Thus the geometer grounds
the possibility of his task of increasing a space (of which there
are many) to infinity on the original representation of a single,
infinite, subjectively given space.14
One might take the statement that the geometer grounds the possibility of indefinite continuation of a line on the original representation of
an infinite space as meaning that the geometer has to appeal to something about that representation in justifying his own claims. But in general Kant takes geometry to be able to proceed without buttressing from
philosophy. It seems more likely that Kant means that the ground of the
possibility of continually increasing a space is the single, infinite, subjectively given space, but that this is revealed by philosophical reflection
12
105
KANT
One might add, as Katherine Dunlop suggests, that the metaphysician undertakes to show how we can have the representation of an infinite space, a task that
is foreign to the geometer.
16
See first of all The Role of Magnitude in Kants Critical Philosophy.
17
On the translation of this passage, see Sutherland, Role of Magnitude,
p.418n.12. Kant makes clear that this is the definition of magnitude in the sense of
quantum, not quantitas. Sutherland also notes that Kant speaks of intuition in
general, so that at the level of explaining the notion of magnitude he is not assuming our particular forms of intuition.
106
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
See Sutherland, Kants Philosophy of Mathematics, also his Kant on Arithmetic, Algebra, and the Theory of Proportions, pp. 555557, and, with respect
toFreges criticism of the units view of number, his Arithmetic from Kant to
Frege.
19
The idea is explored with respect to arithmetic in Rechter, Syntheticity, Intuition, and Symbolic Construction, pp.185192.
20
Kant and the Exact Sciences, pp.113114.
107
KANT
implies that any objects for algebra would have to arise in applications,
such as in geometry.21 The methods of algebra are on her view essentially
tools for solving problems; in principle the problems can arise in any domain of magnitudes, but in practice the primary domains are those of
arithmetic and geometry. In her paradigm examples, the final stage of the
solution is a geometric construction. As noted in Essay 4, she is largely
silent about arithmetic.
A question that Shabels view raises is whether Kant is entitled
to say that algebra contains synthetic a priori judgments, or indeed
whether there are any properly algebraic truths. Early in his letter to
Schultz of 1788, Kant identifies general arithmetic (algebra) and
general theory of quantity (allgemeine Grenlehre) and describes
the former as an amplifying science, which is central to pure mathematics (10:555). Kant had held similar views since the pre-critical
period.22 Sutherland, citing this and a great deal of other evidence,
concludes that according to Kant algebra does have objects, namely
magnitudes. That accords with the views just cited of Friedman and
Shabel, since the objects that arise in application will be magnitudes.
Since the magnitudes involved can be continuous, it is a little misleading on Kants part to refer to algebra as general arithmetic. However, that may be just the generality that Kant has in mind.23 It appears that the fact that magnitudes can be geometrically represented is
enough to give algebra the foundation in intuitive construction that
Kants general remarks about mathematics require. But Sutherlands
examination of a wide range of Kantian texts and their background,
particularly in the Greek mathematical tradition, does not make out
in detail how this is.
The case concerning arithmetic is harder. Kant undoubtedly claims
that there are synthetic a priori judgments in arithmetic, and he frequently talks of numbers. In Essay 2 I remark that Kant tends not to
distinguish, for a given number n, between a multiplicity with cardinal number n and the number n itself (p.58 above). Sutherland and
William Tait have pointed out that an ambiguity of this kind goes back
21
108
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
Sutherland, Kant on Arithmetic, p.535; Tait, Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind, 9. Both are probably indebted to Stein, Eudoxus and Dedekind.
25
Sutherland, Kant on Arithmetic, 5.2.
109
KANT
That would be in line with Longuenesses statement that the principles of arithmetic, unlike the principles of geometry, are not dictated by the formal intuition
that is its object, but are contained in the very act of constituting quantity or magnitude (Kant and the Capacity to Judge, p.281).
However, in arguing that the general theory of quantity is science of numbers,
Schultz writes that every number is itself a quantum (Anfangsgrnde, p.3, quoted
above, p.87). It is likely that he is identifying a number with a multiplicity of that
number of elements.
27
See Prfung, I, 223.
110
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
28
KANT
The texts I chiefly relied on were the letters to Schultz of 1788 and
that to Rehberg of 1790. But the translation I gave of a key passage in
the former letter can be improved. Kant wrote,
Die Zahlwissenschaft ist, unerachtet der Succession, welche jede
Konstruktion der Gre erfodert, eine reine intellektuelle Synthesis, die wir uns in Gedanken vorstellen. (10:557)
It would have been better to render unerachtet der Succession as not
considering the succession instead of in spite of the succession (see
Essay 2).29 It thus appears that there is a certain abstraction involved in
taking the science of numbers to be a pure intellectual synthesis.
There still seems to be a difference with the position of 1781, but
we may not be able to be sure what the difference is. One could read
the letter to Schultz as saying that time is a subjective condition of
carrying out mathematical construction (and thus arriving at mathematical knowledge) and also a constraint on the application of mathematics,
but the content of arithmetic is quite independent of our particular
forms of intuition. Some remarks in the letter to Rehberg that I called
attention to would support this reading.
In philosophy, for example in the first part of the B Deduction, Kant
allows himself to reason about intuition in general in abstraction from
our particular forms of intuition. It might solve problems for him, for
example the puzzlement expressed above about arithmetical propositions, if he admitted such reasoning into mathematics itself. But whenever the opportunity to say that presents itself, he pretty clearly rejects
it, and indeed it would not have fit well into his general philosophy to
allow that mathematical reasoning could be about intuition in general,
independently of our particular forms. In particular, would it be compatible with his conception of mathematical reasoning as involving construction of concepts in pure intuition?
Although the matter arises only briefly in Essay 4, I will comment
on one more issue, the Leibnizian proofs of arithmetical identities and
what might have been Kants attitude toward them. As noted above,30
29
POSTSCRIPT TO PART I
7 + 5 = 7 + (4 + 1) = (7 + 4) + 1
(2)
7 + 4 = 7 + (3 + 1) = (7 + 3) + 1
(3)
7 + 3 = 7 + (2 + 1) = (7 + 2) + 1
(4)
7 + 2 = 7 + (1 + 1) = (7 + 1) + 1 = 8 + 1 = 9
(5)
(6)
(7)
KANT
successively adds units to it.32 Although it is less explicit and does not
note the use of associativity and commutativity, the proof in Herders
notes has the same structure.
Longuenesse notes the parallel between the early proof and the procedure of the Critique, but the difference she discerns leads her to make
the remarks about Kants probable attitude to the proof that are discussed critically above (Essay 4, note 25). The question I raised there still
stands: If there are rules proper to the act of generating a homogeneous
multiplicity, why should one not state them as general rules and derive
some from others? Kant may well have sensed that the time was not ripe
for arithmetic to be treated axiomatically. But he seems to have avoided
giving any account at all of general propositions in arithmetic.33
32
Cf. Longuenesses comments on the proof in Herders notes, op. cit., pp.279280.
I am greatly indebted to Katherine Dunlop and Daniel Sutherland for comments
on an earlier version of this Postscript. They are not responsible for failures on my
part to take adequate account of their comments.
33
114
PART II
5
SOME REMARKS ON FREGES
CONCEPTION OF EXTENSION
For example Shoenfield, Mathematical Logic, pp.238240; Boolos, The Iterative Conception of Set; Wang, From Mathematics to Philosophy, ch. 6. [See now
also Shoenfield, Axioms of Set Theory.]
2
Such a conception seems to underlie the widely held view that the naive or
intuitive conception of set is expressed by the (inconsistent) universal comprehension schema. It seems to be expressed by W. V. Quine in Set Theory and Its
Logic, esp. pp.12, and in The Roots of Reference. [For discussion see VI of Essay 7 of Mathematics in Philosophy. However, the influence of this view, already in
decline in 1976, has declined still further since then.]
117
I
There are a number of passages in Freges writings where he discusses
a concept of set explained along the lines of the first suggestion. Curiously, he does not comment on Cantors explanations.4 But at the
beginning of the Grundgesetze (pp. 13) he criticizes Dedekind; the
same issue is discussed at greater length in an unfinished paper of
1906 on an essay by Schoenflies on the paradoxes.5 The ideas of both
these comments can be traced back to criticisms in the Grundlagen of
views according to which a number either is itself a set, multitude,
or plurality (p. 38), or attaches to an agglomeration of things
3
118
(Aggregat).6 Frege always understands an Aggregat as something composed of parts. Therefore it has two insufficiences as a bearer of number: first, it seems to be spatio-temporal and thus would leave unaccounted for the fact that non-spatio-temporal things can be numbered;
second, what is composed of parts is not so composed in a unique way.
Hence different possible decompositions of a whole into parts would
give rise to different numbers. Thus an agglomeration as such does not
have a definite number.
In the Grundlagen, Frege does not have in view the mathematical
concept of set, but rather a number of perhaps not very precise ordinary concepts. Some of these might now be regimented by means
of the concept of set, others by a modern logic of the whole-part relation such as Lsniewskis mereology or the Leonard-Goodman calculus of individuals. Frege tends always to interpret them in the latter
sense.
Frege interprets Dedekind as holding that his systems (i.e., sets)
consist of their elements. Dedekind accepted the conclusion that a system with one element would be indistinguishable from the element itself.7 Because of extensionality (which Dedekind explicitly affirms) this
can be true only for individuals and one-element sets: otherwise an object
x and its unit set {x} must be distinguished because they do not have
the same elements. Frege does not raise this difficulty but rather raises
the point (parallel to one he made about the agglomeration theory of
number) how there can be a null set:
If the elements constitute the system, then where the elements
are abolished the system goes with them.8
An empty concept has on the other hand no difficulty, and in view of
the fundamental difference of concepts and objects, a concept under
6
Foundations, pp.2930, from a quotation from Mill, System of Logic, bk. III, ch.
xxiv, 5. Agglomeration is apparently translated Aggregat in the translation
Frege cites (by J. Schiel; see ibid., p.9), but the term Aggregat is used by Frege with
the same meaning in discussions without reference to Mill. I have used Mills agglomeration rather than aggregate throughout as an English version of it since
the latter is often used as a synonym for set or class.
7 Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?, par. 3.
8 Grundgesetze, 1:3. The German reads, Wenn die Elemente das System bilden, so
wird das System mit den Elementen zugleich aufgehoben.
119
which exactly one object falls cannot be confused with the object
itself.
That the extension of such a concept must be distinct from the object is not evident on Freges conception of extension. In fact, the conventional identification he makes between the two truth-values and
certain extensions had the consequence that those are their own unit
classes, and he suggests that such an identification be made for all objects that are given independently of Wertverlufe.9
This consideration would weaken the force of Freges argument
against Dedekind, unless we interpret him to mean that Dedekinds conception does not ever provide for a distinction between an object and
its unit set, in which case it will fail in those cases where extensionality
requires such a distinction. Frege does not go so far as to interpret
Dedekind as taking sets to be agglomerations. In the discussion of
Schoenflies he goes into a similar issue at greater length. There Frege
says that the word Menge can be taken in two ways, which are
most clearly expressed by the words agglomeration and extension
(Begriffsumfang).
But frequently these conceptions do not occur in their pure form,
but mixed together and this makes for unclarity. The aggregative
(aggregative) conception is the first to offer itself, but the requirements of mathematics pull towards the opposite side, and
so confusions easily arise.10
Characteristic of an agglomeration is the presence of relations which
make parts into a whole; the examples (except perhaps for a corporation) are all spatio-temporal. Moreover, the parts of a part are parts
of a whole. This has of course the consequence that decomposition is
not unique, which was in the Grundlagen a fatal obstacle to taking agglomerations as bearers of number. Frege finds the notion of agglomeration not precise enough to be a mathematical concept, a view which
perhaps has been refuted by later developments. But these developments have also made even clearer that the notion is different from
that of set.
9
10
120
Frege devotes the last completed part of the paper to making clear the
distinction of an extension from an agglomeration. From the plan (p.191)
he evidently intended to go on to discuss the notions of Inbegriff . . .
System, Reihe, Menge, Klasse. It is natural to conjecture that he viewed
any account of the last two that sought to distinguish either notion
from that of extension as a mixture of the concepts of extension and
agglomeration, and therefore as unclear, if not incoherent.
It thus appears that Frege did not see any foundation to the idea,
central to the sort of explanation of the concept of set according to our
first suggestion that is used to block the well-known paradoxes, that
the elements of a set must be given prior to the formation of the set.
The only interpretation of this idea that Frege considered would be
that a set consists of its elements, a view which he evidently took to be
derived from the notion of agglomeration so that the model for it would
have to be the manner in which a whole consists of parts.
On the other hand, he does say that an extension simply has its being (Bestand) in the concept.11 It is clear that the model for this cannot
be the part-whole relation. Could it give rise to a priority of the elements of an extension to the extension? Only, it seems, if there is a priority of the objects falling under a concept to a concept.
It seems that Frege could get help from Russell. The above statement
is one Russell could have subscribed to, taking concepts as propositional functions and extensions as classes. According to Russell, a propositional function presupposes its arguments, that is, the elements of its
range of significance, not the arguments of which it is true. The arrangement of classes in a hierarchy of types is, in Russells account, a
consequence of this principle.12
It may be that Russell has here tacitly introduced the concept of
set that Frege rejects: is not the range of significance of propositional
functions of lowest type a totality consisting of objects which is not explained by Russells own explanations of classes by way of propositional
11
NS, p.199, trans. p.183. Cf.: On the other hand, what constitutes the being of
the conceptor of its extensionare not the objects that fall under it but its
marks (Merkmale), that is, the properties that an object must have in order to fall
under the concept (Grundgesetze, 2:150, my translation). This latter passage calls
into question the view that Fregean concepts are not at all akin to intensional
entities.
12
Principia Mathematica, 1:16, 54.
121
functions? I shall not examine here whether this charge is true. There is
another more direct conflict into which the proposed Russellian rescue
would have placed Frege. Frege held that the range of significance of
any concept-expression is absolutely all objects. Since the extension of
a concept is an object, the Russellian principle would make the extension of a concept prior to the concept, contrary to the priority of concepts to extensions that Frege affirms more explicitly.
The simplest way out for Frege would no doubt be to deny that extensions are really objects, that is, in effect to adopt a no-class theory.
For Frege, this would be less complicated than it was for Russell: his
logic was full (impredicative) second-order logic, which he seems never
to have been tempted by the paradoxes to abandon. However, he
would have had to give up either the identification of numbers with
extensions, crucial to his logicism, or his thesis that numbers are objects. Dropping the identification of numbers with extensions is in fact
the solution that Frege adopted at the end of his life, in the fragments
of 19241925, but that went with rejecting extensions altogether (see
below).
A concept, according to Frege, is a function which has a value (the
True or the False) for any object whatever as argument. Could Frege
have dropped this view and approached the paradoxes on the basis of
a Russellian idea that a function presupposes its arguments, but that
its Wertverlauf need not be among those arguments? This is of course
exactly the situation in set theory for a function defined on a set, where
we can take the Wertverlauf to be the function as a set of ordered pairs.
Such a step could hardly have failed to drive Frege in a direction
deeply uncongenial to his previous thought. Consider a simple quantification xFx. If Fx denotes a function that is not defined for certain
arguments, then that it is true of these arguments is not implied by
xFx. The latter cannot say of absolutely every object that it is F.
Indeed, such absolute generality could be expressed only by a form of
quantification not analyzed by Freges logical theory, perhaps by a
systematic ambiguity of the quantifier parallel to such ambiguities as
arise in Russells original theory of types. A similar ambiguity would
have to attach to such predicates as x = y that apparently apply to
absolutely all objects.13
13
II
I want now to make some remarks concerning the evolution of Freges
views on the concept of extension after he learned of Russells paradox. The evidence known to me14 shows a gradually increasing skepticism, so that the rejection of extensions in 1924 does not come out of
the blue.
In the correspondence with Russell of 19021904 and the appendix
to volume 2 of the Grundgesetze, he does not consider that extensions
might be given up or so restricted that his analysis of number would
have to be abandoned. He did consider the idea that Wertverlufe
might be treated as second-class objects (uneigentliche Gegenstnde).15
He apparently rejected this idea, before proposing to Russell the way
out of the appendix. The subsequent fate of the Way Out in his thinking is obscure; it is not mentioned explicitly in the Nachgelassene
Schrifien or in his publications after 1903.
However, in the plan for the critique of Schoenflies Frege speaks of
concepts that agree in their extension, although this extension falls
under one of the concepts but not the other.16 This might be interpreted as presupposing the Way Out. However, this seems unlikely in
the light of Freges analysis of the paradox in the appendix to volume 2
definite type index. But in Russells metalanguage it is essential to the general explanation he gives of the interpretation of the theory. This issue is independent of
the difference between the simple and the ramified theory of types.
14
I have seen only part of Freges still unpublished correspondence. [But see Essay
6 in this volume.]
15
Letter to Russell, September 23, 1902; Grundgesetze, 2:254255.
16
Begriffe, die im Umfange bereinstimmen, obwohl dieser Umfang unter den
einen fllt, nicht aber unter den anderen. NS, p.191, my translation.
123
Grundgesetze, 2:260.
Ibid.
19
Philip E.B. Jourdain, The Development of the Theories of Mathematical Logic
and the Principles of Mathematics: Gottlob Frege. The notes are reprinted in Kleine
Schriften. Apart from its containing these valuable notes, Jourdains article deserves
recognition as the most accurate account of Freges work by another which had
appeared up to that time. Of course Jourdain owed to Russell his appreciation of
Freges importance. The notes are presumably translations by Jourdain of German
originals, but the originals appear to be lost (see KS, p.334).
Note added in proof. In a letter dated March 22, 1976, I. Grattan-Guinness
informs me that he has found that the German originals of Freges notes to Jour18
124
essay Logik in der Mathematik is a case in point.22 Neither the notion of extension nor the idea of a reduction of arithmetic to logic is
mentioned. Frege takes up again the polemical discussion of others
views on numbers, with a discussion of Weierstrass. In the Grundgesetze
Frege had criticized the attempts of mathematicians to create objects
by definition, and he claims that his axiom about Wertverlufe will
serve all the purposes that such creations are intended to serve.23 This
issue is not raised in Logik in der Mathematik. He is even noncommittal about the question whether induction needs to be a purely
mathematical axiom or can be reduced to logic.24
Rudolf Carnap reports in his autobiography on three courses of
lectures by Frege that he attended in the winter semester of 19101911,
the summer semester of 1913, and the summer semester of 1914.25 The
last was called Logik in der Mathematik and its content evidently
paralleled that of the essay of that title. The first course was given at
about the time at which the notes for Jourdain were written. The role
of the notion of extension in the first two courses is not too clear from
Carnaps account. Concerning Russells paradox he writes, I do not
remember that he ever discussed in his lectures this antinomy and the
question of possible modifications of his system in order to eliminate
it.26 That might suggest that Frege had simply presented the original
system of Grundgesetze, which seems somewhat unlikely in view of
Freges rigorous standards: it is hard to imagine him presenting a system he knew to be inconsistent without even mentioning the problem.
Carnap believed that Frege thought some solution could be found, but
here he refers to the appendix to volume 2 of the Grundgesetze, written some years before, rather than to the lectures.27
22
126
Carnap does say, Toward the end of the semester Frege indicated that
the new logic to which he had introduced us, could serve for the construction of the whole of mathematics.28 (He is referring to the first course.)
But none of the information Carnap gives about the 1913 course directly
shows that a construction of numbers on the basis of extensions was part
of it. The remark that Carnap cites certainly indicates that in 1911 Frege
believed in such a construction, but on the whole Carnaps recollection
gives some, but not very decisive, confirmation to the view that Frege
concentrated almost entirely on what could be done with fundamental
Logic independently of the notion of extension.
In Logik in der Mathematik Frege had emphasized the lack of
agreement among mathematicians about what the objects of arithmetic are and the unclarity of their statements so long as no adequate account of these objects was given. But the matter was left there. The
same point is made briefly in Aufzeichnungen fr Ludwig Darmstaedter (1919), but there follows a series of questions, which call in
question even the doctrine that numbers are objects. A statement of
number is a statement about a concept which therefore applies to this
Carnap says that his own view of the nature of arithmetic is chiefly based on what
I learned from Frege.
Study of Carnaps notes should shed some further light on these issues. The
above material from Carnaps letter is included by permission of Professor Bynum.
[For discussion of the now published notes see the Postscript.]
28
Carnap, Intellectual Autobiography, p.5.
127
concept a second-level concept. These second-level concepts are ordered in a series, and there is a rule which for each one will give the
next one.
But still we do not have in them the numbers of arithmetic; we do
not have objects, but concepts. How can we get from these concepts to the numbers of arithmetic in a way that cannot be
faulted? Or are there simply no numbers in arithmetic? Could the
numerals help to form signs for these second level concepts, and
yet not be signs in their own right?29
The notes end there. Frege evidently no longer relies on extensions as
the objects of arithmetic, but still the idea of extension is not explicitly
mentioned, even to question or reject it.
In the most extended of the fragments of 19241925, expressions
of the form the extension of the concept a are given as examples of
the tendency of language to create proper names to which no object
corresponds. Of the expression the extension of the concept fixed star
he says:
Because of the definite article, this expression appears to designate an object; but there is no object for which this phrase could
be a linguistically appropriate designation. From this has arisen
the paradoxes of set theory which have dealt the death blow to
set theory itself. I myself was under this illusion when, in attempting to provide a logical foundation for the numbers, I tried
to construe numbers as sets.30
In my view, this rejection of extensions and of logicism is the end of
an evolution which, after the initial shock of the paradox, proceeded
more or less continuously. It is the positive theory of number, the attempt
to construct numbers by geometrical means, that is the more radical
new departure in the last fragments.
In the latter context Frege writes, From the geometrical source of
knowledge flows the infinite in the genuine and strictest sense of this
29
30
128
word.31 That Frege here means actual rather than potential infinity
is probable.32 In spite of his Kantian view of geometry, Frege does not
seem in the last fragments to have come any closer to the constructivistic
view of the infinite that is characteristic of other Kantian views of mathematics in the twentieth century. Some years before, Frege endorsed an
argument of Cantors to the effect that potential infinity presupposes
actual.33
In his letters to Dedekind of 1899, Cantor approaches the paradoxes
by distinguishing among multiplicities between the consistent (sets)
and inconsistent.34 A multiplicity is inconsistent if it is contradictory for
all its elements to be together. That is to say, it cannot be consistently
conceived except as a potential totality. Cantors proposal seems inconsistent with the view Frege endorsed.
A conception of the totality of sets and other absolutely infinite totalities along the lines intimated by Cantor is widely held today. Cantor
could adopt it in response to the paradoxes more readily than Frege because his concentration on the sequence of ordinals and cardinals brought
home to him how the totality of sets must burst the bounds of any overall
grasp we might seek to have of it. Set theory as such clearly did not much
move Frege; his interest in the concept of extension was motivated by
concerns of general logic and of the foundations of classical arithmetic
and analysis.35
31
Ibid., p.293, trans. p.273. The German reads, Aus der geometrischen Erkenntnisquelle fliesst das Unendliche im eigentlichen und strengsten Sinne des
Wortes.
32 As Kaulbach says in the introduction to NS, p.xxxii.
33 Review of Cantor, p.163, in the review cited in note 4 above. Cf. Cantor, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, pp.410411. I have not been able to identify the precise
passage of Cantor Frege has in mind.
34 Cantor, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p.443.
35 I do not know of any remarks by Frege on any paradox other than Russells, in
particular on Cantors or Burali-Fortis. But on ordinal numbers cf.: We do not
yet have a general view of the significance which order types would then acquire
for mathematics. They would perhaps enter into an intimate connection with the
rest of mathematics and exert a fertilizing influence on it (wirken befruchtend auf
sie ein). I would not want to exclude this possibility (Review of Cantor, p.165,
trans. p.181).
[It is not strictly true that Frege comments on no other paradoxes, because he
does remark on what we would call the sorites paradox. But he seems to regard it
as a simple fallacy.]
129
130
POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY 5
Since the two essays on Frege reprinted here were written, a lot has
happened in the study of Frege and the development of his ideas. But I
will limit the scope of my postscripts to developments that bear directly on what is said in these essays.
The first part of the present essay is structured around two ideas of
what a set may be, Freges conception of extension and the conception
of a set as constituted by its elements. I explored such ideas further in
systematically motivated writings, beginning with What is the iterative conception of set?1 The suggestion made above that neither offers
by itself the basis of a complete account of the nature of sets, in particular adequate to make plausible the standard axioms of set theory, is
developed and defended in chapter 4 of Mathematical Thought and Its
Objects. By then I distinguished two versions of the second conception: sets as collections, in some way directly constituted by their elements, and sets as pluralities, where the idea is motivated by plural
constructions in natural language. However, the second of these is not
especially relevant to Frege. As should be clear from chapters 3 and 4
of the book just mentioned, I now attach less significance to conceptions of the nature of sets than I did in the mid-1970s.
The second half of the essay is devoted to tracing the development
of Freges view of the notion of extension from his learning of Russells
paradox to his death. Tyler Burge filled in the story from the Foundations
of Arithmetic to 1903.2 In the appendix to volume 2 of Grundgesetze,
Frege writes that he has never concealed from himself the fact that his
1
Basic Law V is not as evident as the other basic laws of his system or as
evident as must really be demanded of a logical law.3 Burge analyzes two
well-known passages from the Foundations, which seem to cast doubt
on Freges commitment to the use of the notion of extension of a concept in defining cardinal number. In the first (p.80n.), Frege says that
he believes that in the definition for the extension of the concept we
could write simply the concept. In the second, from his summing up
of the book, Frege writes concerning his definition,
In this we take for granted the sense of the expression extension
of the concept. This way of overcoming the difficulty will not
win universal applause, and many will prefer to remove the
doubt in question in another way. I attach no decisive importance to bringing in the extension of a concept. (p.117)4
Burge argues in essence that these passages do show uncertainty on
Freges part about his reliance on extensions and on the sort of inference
that later would be justified by Basic Law V. About the first and more
extensive passage, however, he adopts the view that Frege is not there
suggesting something substantively different from relying on extensions. I would put the matter thus: As Frege emphasized later, the concept F designates an object. Since Frege worked with an extensional
language, the concept F will obey the same laws as the extension of
the concept F . Thus a basis for distinguishing them is lacking.
There is some evidence that Frege did consider alternatives to relying
on extensions about the time of the Foundations.5 Given what happened
after the discovery of Russells paradox, both in Freges own thought
and in the work of others attempting to revive and develop logicism, it
is not surprising that Frege did not find another promising direction or,
apparently, attempt to pursue alternatives very far.
Burges analysis gives confirmation to a retrospective comment by
Frege made in 1910. In a note to Jourdains article on his work, after
the remarks quoted above (p.125), Frege writes:
Frege refers to the preface to volume 1, p.vii, which does not explicitly say that
Basic Law V is not as evident as it should be but does note that it is the place where
the soundness of his system is most likely to be questioned.
4
I follow Burges modifications of Austins translations, Frege on Extensions of
Concepts, p.274.
5
Ibid., pp.280282.
132
POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY 5
Only with difficulty did I resolve to introduce classes (or extensions of concepts), because the matter did not seem to me quite
secureand rightly so, as it turned out. The laws of numbers are
to be developed in a purely logical manner. But numbers are objects, and in logic we have only two objects, in the first place: the
two truth-values. Our first aim, then, was to obtain objects out
of concepts, namely, extensions of concepts or classes. By this I
was constrained to overcome my resistance and to admit the
passage from concepts to their extensions.6
That might suggest a more charitable attitude toward Freges response
to Cantors review of the Foundations than is adopted by William Tait,
so far as I know the only person to have discussed the exchange at
length.7 Tait, building on his own study of Cantors Grundlagen einer
allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre of 1883,8 argues persuasively that
Cantor saw the fatal flaw in Freges approach, which came fully to light
with Russells discovery that the system of Grundgesetze is inconsistent.
The key passage (quoted by Tait) is the following:
He [Frege] entirely overlooks the fact that the extension of a concept in general may be quantitatively completely indeterminate.
Only in certain cases is the extension of a concept quantitatively
determinate. Then it has, if it is finite, a definite number, or, in the
case it is infinite, a definite power.9
The cases of quantitative indeterminacy that Cantor had in mind were
very likely, as Tait says, the totalities of cardinals and ordinals. We
dont know how carefully Frege studied Cantors monograph; the two
citations he gives are not very informative on this point.10 A careful
reader would have seen that Cantors view of the matter was as Tait says.
But it is not at all obvious how Frege could have incorporated it into his
6
Jourdain, Development, p.251n.69. For the German original see WB, p.121.
Jourdain translates Begriffsumfnge as extents of concepts; I have substituted
the now standard extensions.
7
Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind, pp.243246.
8
See his Cantors Grundlagen and the Paradoxes of Set Theory.
9
Cantor, Review of Grundlagen, p.440 in Gesammelte Abhandlungen, translation
from Tait, Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind, p.244.
10
Foundations, pp.74, 97. The first refers to the definition of equality of power (in
his own language, cardinal number) in terms of one-to-one correspondence, the
second to Cantors introduction of transfinite numbers.
133
However, it has often occurred to me that Halle and Jena, where Cantor and
Frege lived, were not far away from each other. Why did they not meet to discuss
the matter more thoroughly?
I might remark that some readers of Cantors review have interpreted him to be
saying that according to Frege the number belonging to the concept F is the extension of the concept F. That would of course be incorrect. Tait does not mention this
interpretation, and it is not relevant to his point. This reading of Cantor was probably encouraged by Freges statement in his reply (Erwiderung):
These remarks would fit very well, and I would recognize them as wholly justified,
if it followed from my definition, for example, that the number of moons of Jupiter
was the extension of the concept moon of Jupiter.
Freges conditional way of putting the matter suggests that he himself did not read
Cantor in this way. (This translation from Freges reply is my own.)
134
POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY 5
lessness, forewarned against by Cantor in 1883 and again, explicitly, in his review of 1885. (p.246)12
One could object, as suggested above, that it was not directly the assumption that every concept has an extension that Cantor warned
against. How reckless Freges assumption was in the context of the time
is not so easy to say; a deep student of Cantors discussion of the transfinite would not have made it, but how many such students were there,
apart from Cantor himself? Even Dedekind, in par. 66 of Was sind und
was sollen die Zahlen?, gave an argument that assumed as a set something that by our lights (and already Cantors) was not.13
History has vindicated Cantor. If one asks what Frege should have
done, had he fully understood Cantors point, it is hard to see that any
measure would have been successful that would have preserved his
logicism. The neo-Fregean solution grew out of analyses of Freges own
arguments leading up to his definition of cardinal number. It can thus
be argued that it would have been the best option for Frege himself.
However, even its adherents do not claim that the main axiom of Frege
arithmetic, the so-called Humes Principle, is a logical principle.
The idea that Frege was a tragic victim of fate survives Taits analysis, even if we grant the charge of recklessness. But we should recall
that according to tradition, tragic heroes are brought down by a tragic
flaw in a heroic character. Frege did make logicism a precise thesis, chiefly
by his development of second-order logic. He also made it a falsifiable
thesis, and it was not just bad luck that his thesis was falsified. Opinions
will differ about what the decisive tragic flaw was. Tait probably thinks
that Freges way of reading his contemporaries, which is the main target
of his paper, would be an important part of the story. In this he is probably right.
To turn to the second part of the paper: One piece of evidence I
relied on was Rudolf Carnaps statements about the lectures of Frege
that he attended in the period 19101914. In the meantime his shorthand notes have been transcribed and published. We can thus partly
12
Few today would accept the claim that the contradiction was already implicit
in mathematical thought. But it should be remembered that such a view was
rather widely held in the early twentieth century.
13 To be sure, Dedekinds argument, attempting to prove that there is an infinite set,
was not as central to his enterprise as Basic Law V was to Freges.
135
resolve the puzzles that Carnaps statements gave rise to. The third of
the lecture courses Carnap attended was Logik in der Mathematik in
the summer semester of 1914. Freges own text for those lectures has
survived and was published in Nachgelassene Schriften, as noted above.
As noted there, Frege concentrated in these lectures on what could be
done with his fundamental logic, a version of second-order logic,
without introducing the notion of extension. Thus he bypassed the whole
problem of the paradox. But it may not have been especially relevant
to the aim of that course.
My conjecture that Frege followed the same policy in the lectures
Begriffschrift I and Begriffschrift II is confirmed by Carnaps notes.
The first series deals with truth-functional logic and the beginnings of
quantificational logic, and the idea that mathematics might be developed within the logic being developed is not even suggested.14 In Begriffschrift II Frege turns quickly to mathematical examples, starting
with the continuity of a function, showing how to define them in his
formal language. He gives two proofs, the second rather lengthy (of the
uniqueness of the limit of a function as its argument approaches infinity), stating explicitly a number of simple mathematical theorems that
are assumed. But he says nothing about how these theorems might be
proved or what assumptions would be needed to prove them. As Gabriel points out in his introduction (p.v), Frege uses only Basic Laws
IIII and the rules of inference from Grundgesetze, and the notion of
extension is not introduced. He does, however, point out that an expression of the form the concept . . . designates an object, but that is
only in informal remarks.
Why was Carnap convinced that Frege never gave up logicism? It
was not on the basis of discussion with Frege; he remarked that Freges
lecturing style precluded discussion, and it appears that he never
exchanged a word with Frege.15 Freges silence in the lectures about the
14
Thus the notes do not bear out Carnaps statement quoted above (p.127) that at
the end of Begriffschrift I Frege indicated that the logic he had introduced could
serve for the construction of the whole of mathematics. The same would be true of
Begriffschrift II.
15
Carnaps friend Wilhelm Flitner, who attended Begriffschrift I with Carnap,
explicitly says this; see Erinnerungen, p.127, quoted in Kreiser, Frege, p.277, and
in English in Reck and Awodey, Freges Lectures, p.22.
In 1921 Carnap did write a (now lost) letter to Frege, asking for a copy of ber
Begriff und Gegenstand. See WB, p.16.
136
POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY 5
137
6
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
there is an introduction giving a brief identification of the correspondent and information about the occasion of the exchange, with some
discussion (varying in extent) of the content of the correspondence.
The notes supply numerous useful references. The editing of the whole
is done with exemplary thoroughness and attention to detail. With
the correspondence with P.E.B. Jourdain, the book also includes the
German text of Freges notes to Jourdains expository article on his
work.8
It goes without saying that this publication enlarges or corrects our
picture of Freges thought on many points. However, it contains few
surprises, even for someone whose knowledge of Frege is confined to
what is published. With some exceptions, these texts do not have the
same importance as those collected in Nachgelassene Schriften. Some
of the letters have been published previously, and published work on
Frege contains considerable discussion of some of the correspondence.
In particular, this is true of the exchanges with Hilbert and Russell,
which are the most extensive and informative of what survives. Some
of the correspondence with Hilbert was published in the 1940s by
Max Steck.9 I shall not try to add here to what has been written about
the Frege-Hilbert controversy.10 The Russell correspondence has also
been previously discussed,11 and Russells opening letter, which announced his paradox, and Freges reply are well known.12 I shall add
some comments about their correspondence below.
Preussischer Kulturbesitz). [The latter is as of 1982; it is now Staatsbibliothek zu
BerlinPreussischer Kulturbesitz.]
See Veraart, op. cit., pp.6061. Relevant details are given in the editors introduction and other editorial apparatus of WB.
8
The Development of the Theories of Mathematical Logic and the Principles of
Mathematics: Gottlob Frege. The article is reprinted in full as an appendix to WB.
The notes in English, with an indication of context, were reprinted in KS. The history of the German text is complicated (see the note in WB, pp.114115). However, since the Frege Archive contained two copies of a draft, Angelellis statement
that the notes were known only in the English version published by Jourdain
(KS, p.334) was misleading even on the basis of information available at the time
(1967).
9
See the reprints in KS, pp.395442.
10
For example Resnik, Frege-Hilbert Controversy, and Kambartel, Frege und
die axiomatische Methode.
11
Sluga, Frege und die Typentheorie.
12
They appeared in English in van Heijenoort, From Frege to Gdel, pp.
124128.
140
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
On the closely related question of the development of his views on the concept
of extension, see my Some Remarks on Freges Conception of Extension (Essay
5 of this volume) and also below.
14
[Of course, letters of Frege to Wittgenstein were found after all. See the Postscript to this essay.]
15
Since the pamphlet was published instead by H. Pohle, perhaps Frege obtained
better terms.
141
16
On the context in which this example arises, see the discussion below of the
corrspondence with Russell.
142
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
in which the sentence All thoughts in the class M are true is in a doubly indirect context.17
In two letters to Husserl in 1906, Frege makes remarks relevant to
the question when two expressions have the same sense. In the first he
says that equipollent sentences express the same thought (p.102, trans.
p.67). Frege is commenting on a paper which Husserl had sent, in which
Husserl criticized a claim of Anton Martys to the effect that If A then
B and Not both A and not B agree in sense.18 Frege asserts that they
do, on the ground of their truth-functional equivalence.19
In a text written in the same year, Frege applies the term equipollence to the relation of two sentences A and B that obtains when
whoever recognizes the content of A as true must without further ado (ohne weiteres) also recognize that of B as true, and conversely, whoever recognizes the content of B as true must also
immediately (unmittelbar) recognize that of A, where it is presupposed that there is no difficulty in grasping the contents of A
and B. (NS, p.213, trans. p.197)
Here also he makes clear that equipollent sentences express the same
thought. In the second letter Frege gives another criterion:
In order to decide whether the sentence A expresses the same
thought as the sentence B, only the following method seems to me
to be possible, where I assume, that neither of the two sentences
contains a logically evident part (Sinnbestandteil). If both the assumption that the content of A is false and that of B is true, and
the assumption that the content of A is true and that of B false,
lead to a logical contradiction, which can be determined without
knowing whether the content of A or B is true or false, and without using other than purely logical laws, then nothing can belong to the content of A, insofar as it can be judged true or false,
which would not also belong to the content of B. . . . Equally,
under our assumption, nothing can belong to the content of B,
17
21
144
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
pose that Husserl learned the distinction from this source. This is evidently not so; Frege is commenting on a similar scheme in papers Husserl had sent him.22
Anyone who has pondered Husserls relation to Frege will be struck
and probably shocked by the remark about Frege which Husserl wrote
to Scholz in 1936 (best left untranslated): Er galt damals allgemein als
ein scharfsinniger, aber weder als Mathematiker noch als Philosoph
fruchtbringender Sonderling.23
This appears to express Husserls own view in his old age, but in
earlier times he had expressed himself more warmly about Frege; see
the praise of the Grundlagen in his 1891 letter (p.99, trans. pp.6465)
or the recommendation of Funktion und Begriff in a review published
in 1903 (AR, p.202). The editor of the Frege-Husserl correspondence,
Gottfried Gabriel, suggests that Husserls remark to Scholz implies a
refusal to acknowledge a significant influence of Frege on him.24
22
These included Husserls review of Schrders Vorlesungen ber die Algebra der
Logik and Der Folgerungskalkl und die Inhaltslogik, both reprinted in AR. See
for example the passage from the review, AR, pp.1112, cited by J.N. Mohanty in
his discussion of this issue in Husserl and Frege: A New Look at Their Relationship, p.53. That Frege is not the source for Husserls making this distinction was
remarked on by Dagfinn Fllesdal, An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers, p.421. Professor Fllesdal informs me that the same remark
occurred in an earlier version of the paper published in Norwegian in 1962.
23
Cited on p.92. For the full text of the letter, see Veraart, op. cit., p.104.
24
However, in 1935 Andrew Osborn asked Husserl about Freges influence on the
abandonment of psychologism; Husserl is reported to have concurred but also
to have mentioned Bolzano. See Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, p.463. I owe this
reference to Fllesdal.
I do not know whether the question of the reverse influence has been discussed.
One could not expect much, in view of the maturity of Freges views when Husserl
began to publish significant work. Husserls sending Frege his review of Schrder
seems to have stimulated the latter to carry through his own plan to write a critique of Schrder (see p.94 and Frege, Kritische Beleuchtung einiger Punkte in E.
Schrders Vorlesungen ber die Algebra der Logik, in KS). Possibly Husserl stimulated Frege to clarify his position on the issue of the time between Inhaltslogik
and Umfangslogik (roughly, the intensional and extensional point of view); see
Ausfhrungen, NS, pp.128136, trans. pp.118125. Husserl was basically intensionalist (see Der Folgerungskalkl und die Inhaltslogik); Frege gave points
to both sides but is of course at bottom extensionalist. (On this aspect of Husserl,
I am indebted to my student Nathaniel S. Heiner.)
A more speculative question is whether Frege read the Logische Untersuchungen and whether it may have influenced his late writings. So far as I know, there is
no direct evidence that he knew the book. The title and a little of the content of his
145
Apart from the question of influence, there are undoubtedly important convergences between Frege and Husserl. But one should keep in
mind their limitations. In the 1891 letter, Husserl expresses regret that
he has not had time to form a clear picture of the nature and extent of
your original Begriffschrift (p.99, trans. p.64). In my opinion, Husserl never shows a grasp of quantificational logic and its significance,
although his program of a pure theory of manifolds can be read as
prophetic of model theory.25 Russells On denoting of 1905 is in this
respect in advance of everything Husserl wrote on the philosophy of
logic. More fundamentally, in spite of his good opinion of Funktion
und Begriff, Husserl could have benefited from greater appreciation of
the treatment of predication that goes with Freges theory of functions
and objects.26
last series of published essays are suggestive. The thought goes more deeply than
Freges earlier writings into the relation of thoughts to ideas and the mind generally; more specifically, it takes account of indexical expressions, which Frege had
not done in the earlier writings, but which Husserl discusses in the Logische Untersuchungen (1st Investigation, 26; hereafter cited as LU). However, the Logik of
1897 (NS, pp.137163, trans. pp.126151) contains both an extended discussion
of the relation of thoughts to the subjective and some remarks about indexicals. It
is evidently a prototype of Freges Logische Untersuchungen.
Moreover, Frege could also have borrowed this title from a book of Trendelenburg, of whose existence he probably knew; see Sluga, Gottlob Frege, p.49.
25
LU, Prolegomena, 6971.
26
Cf. the telling criticisms of Husserls treatment of predication in Ernst Tugendhat, Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie, esp. lectures
9 and 10. This admirable and lucid book deserves to be better known among
English-speaking philosophers. [The publication of an English translation does not
seem to have made it much better known.]
Something like Freges unsaturatedness occurs in another place in the Logische Untersuchungen, in Husserls conception of nonindependent parts (3rd Investigation, 8 ff.). This conception is applied to the theory of meaning when
Husserl discusses nonindependent meanings (4th Investigation, 56), where
Husserl even uses the Fregean term ergnzungsbedrftig (vol. 2/1, p.309). Husserl
seems to miss construing such meanings as functions, because according to his
general conception a nonindependent content is something that can only exist as
part of a larger whole (ibid., p.311). But it should be pointed out that in talking of
senses Frege also used the language of whole and part. Since for Husserl a nonindependent part is connected with the other parts by a law (ibid.; cf. 3rd Inv. 10),
there seems to be an intrinsic correspondence between nonindependent parts and
functions. When the Polish logicians such as Ajdukiewicz came to develop Husserls conception of logical grammar into what is now called categorial grammar,
they readily interpreted certain categories in functional terms.
146
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
Russells letters were among those given by Alfred Frege to the Preussische Staatsbibliothek (see note 6 above). Russell gave Freges letters to Scholz, who responded
to Russells request for copies by sending him photocopies (see WB, p.200), which
then survived although the originals were lost.
In keeping with its importance, the correspondence is provided with an extended analytical introduction and especially helpful notes by the editor, Christian
Thiel.
147
Russell states the paradox for classes by saying that there is no class
as a whole (als Ganzes) of classes that are not elements of themselves.
From this I conclude that under certain circumstances a definable set
does not form a whole (p.211, trans. p.131). He is very likely thinking in terms of the distinction made in the Principles between a class
as many and a class as one;28 this seems clear from what he says
when he returns to the matter in the letter of July 10, 1902:
A class which consists of more than one object is in the first instance not one object, but many. Now an ordinary class does
form one whole; for example the soldiers form the army. But this
seems to me not to be a necessity of thought; however it is essential if one is to use the class as a proper name. Therefore I think
I may say without contradiction that certain classes (more exactly, those defined by quadratic forms)29 are only multiplicities
(Vielheiten) and do not form wholes at all. Therefore false propositions and even contradictions arise when one views them as
unities. (pp.219220, trans. p.137)
In the background here are surely Cantors informal explanations of
the concept of set, for example the definition of 1895 of a set as any
collection M into a whole of definite, well-distinguished objects of our
intuition or our thought.30 The term Vielheiten is of course just the
term that Cantor uses in his own discussion of the paradoxes in his
1899 correspondence with Dedekind,31 and Russells remark that paradoxical class abstracts define mere multiplicities that do not form unities parallels Cantors own statements in the correspondence about
inconsistent multiplicities. It is very doubtful that in 1902 Russell
knew the Cantor-Dedekind correspondence, although a couple of years
later he must have learned something of its content from Jourdain. The
theory of limitation of size discussed by Russell in 1906 is, I think,
Cantors proposal of 1899 filtered through Jourdains understanding
of it.32
28
148
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
Freges reply (July 28) contrasts a class with a system, that is, a
whole consisting of parts, in much the same terms as in his 1906 draft
Uber Schoenflies: Die logischen Paradoxien der Mengenlehre, but in
some respects more explicitly and vividly.33 Russell declares himself
convinced by Freges criticism (August 8), and indeed the conception of a
class as consisting of its elements does disappear from the surface of Russells thought on the subject. But characteristically he says:
I still lack altogether the direct intuition, the direct insight into
what you call Werthverlauf; it is necessary for logic, but for me
it remains a justified hypothesis. (p.226, trans. pp.143144)
It is fairly far along in the correspondence (Freges letter of October 20,
1902) that Frege proposes the solution to the paradox that he presents
in the appendix to volume 2 of Grundgesetze, which has come to be
known as Freges Way Out. Russell seems to find it intuitively unconvincing, though in his first reply he says it is probably correct (p.233,
trans. p.151).34 He raises some questions (pp.233, 238, trans. pp.151,
155) but the discussion of the proposal is not extensive. Soon Russell is
pursuing another line (see below). One could perhaps sum up Russells
unease by saying that intuitively the extension F() of the concept F
should have as its elements exactly those objects x for which F(x)
holds, but the Way Out allows that F( F()) hold, but F() is never an
element of itself.35
33
149
More prominent in the letters are ideas related to the simple theory
of types.36 Today, that theory seems to us a very simple and natural
way of avoiding the set-theoretic paradoxes, and the interpretation of
superficially different systems of set theory draws on the same hierarchical conception of sets or classes. It is perhaps something of a puzzle
that the simple theory of types was so slow to emerge clearly from the
research and discussion prompted by the paradoxes. The idea of it occurred to Russell very early on (letter of August 8, 1902; cf. Principles,
appendix B), and not only to Russell: the same idea is set forth in a
letter to Frege by Alwin Korselt in 1903 (p.142, trans. pp.8687).
There seems to have been some difficulty on the part of both Frege
and Russell in actually envisaging a full theory on this basis. Frege interpreted the proposal as implying that classes are second-class improper
objects, because they cannot be arguments of all first-level functions
(p.228, trans. p.145); cf. Grundgesetze, 2:254255, trans. pp.128129).
Both parties seem to have had in mind at this stage what is now called a
cumulative theory. Particularly when one considers functions as well as
predicates, Frege found the complexity of the hierarchy daunting.
Frege assumes that the distinction between a function and its course
of values will be maintained in such a theory. There would then be an
elaborate hierarchy of objects. Functions would have to be of different
types because of the types of the objects that they take as arguments.
Clearly Frege assumed that quantification over functions was still needed,
so that the theory would have an additional complexity over and above
that of modern formulations of the simple theory of types, which (in
their extensional forms) either replace quantification of function and
predicate places entirely by quantification over classes or functions-asobjects, or quantify function or predicate places directly and thus bypass and step from a concept to its extension, or from a function to its
course of values. The latter type of theory could be seen as a development of Freges basic logic without the addition of extensions, by allowing functions of arbitrary levels, thus iterating Freges own step from
first- to second-level functions.
Such a theory recalls Russells later idea of a no-class theory, and
indeed something like it is the idea that distracts Russell from Freges
classes. For example the class {x: x is a proper class} would have number 0 although the predicate x is a proper class is true of something.
36
Cf. Sluga, Frege und die Typentheorie.
150
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
Way Out. On May 24, 1903, he writes that he thinks he has discovered
that classes are completely superfluous (p.241, trans. p.158). However, Russell uses function symbols without their argument places and
does not seem to have in mind the hierarchy of levels of functions that
would be required. The result is that this proposal is shot down by Frege
in his reply (pp.243245, trans. pp.160162), which, since it was made
a year and a half later, finds Russell already convinced (p. 248, trans.
p. 166). What one might call Fregean type theory (i.e., th order
predicate logic, or, if one wishes, a corresponding theory of functions)
does not really come to the consciousness of either correspondent.37
We have not yet considered Russells own reason for rejecting at
this point his first proposal of a type theory. It is well known that later
he thought that the introduction of the ramified theory was necessary
in order to handle the semantic paradoxes. In the correspondence, he
presents an interesting paradox which is also stated in the same connection in the Principles (p. 527). Let m be a class of propositions.
Then p(p m p) expresses their logical product. This proposition can belong to the class m or not. Let w be the class of propositions
of this form which do not belong to the associated class m, i.e.,
w = {p : m[p = q(q m q). p m]}.
Then if r is the proposition p(p w p), one has r w if and only if
r w (p.230, trans. p.147).
This paradox can certainly be stated in a form of the simple theory
of types that allows quantification of sentence places. The latter can do
37
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
40
Church, A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation. For the paradox
see Myhill, Problems Arising in the Formalization of Intensional Logic, and
Anderson, Some New Axioms for the Logic of Sense and Denotation: Alternative (0). Anderson shows that the difficulty still affects Churchs revised version
of Alternative (0); see Church, Outline of a Revised Formulation, pp.149153.
41
In the discussion of denoting, ch. 5.
153
NS, p.197, trans. p.181; the context is a discussion of the view that a set consists of its elements. See my Some Remarks on Freges Conception of Extension,
p.268 [Essay 5, p.120 in this volume].
43
ber Sinn und Bedeutung, pp.2526 (KS, pp.143144).
44
It should be remarked that probably Freges discussion of this issue was never
sent to Jourdain; what is probably the second draft of Freges reply to Jourdains
letter (dated January 28, 1914) is devoted entirely to Freges difficulties with Principia Mathematica, which concerned use and mention, the notion of a variable,
and the notion of a propositional function. It seems that Frege was prevented by
the obscurities he found from reading very far into the book.
154
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
difficulties for the view that proper names are directly referential. Russell would no doubt appeal to his view that ordinary proper names are
not logically proper names. Nowadays we might begin by distinguishing an epistemic from other notions of sense.45
Other Points on Number and Extension. The publication of the German text of Freges notes to Jourdains article gives me the occasion to
amplify and to some extent correct my remarks46 on Freges statement
in the notes that the class is something derived, whereas in the concept we have something primitive.47 The German for something primitive is etwas Ursprngliches, which unlike Jourdains English does
not suggest the contrast of primitive and defined. I failed to notice a
text of 1896 where Frege had already spoken of extensions as derived.
Commenting on Peanos view of classes, he says:
For him, the class appears at first as it does for Boole as something
primitive (etwas Ursprngliches), which is not to be reduced further. But in 17 of the Introduction I find a designation x Px
for a class of objects which satisfy certain conditions, which have
certain properties. The class appears here, therefore, relative to
the concept as derived (das Abgeleitete), it appears as extension
of a concept, and I can declare myself quite in accord with that,
although I do not much like the notation x Px.48
That classes (extensions) are derived from concepts would certainly be
implicit in Freges conception of them from the beginning. Apart from
the above citation, it is pointed to fairly explicitly in the Grundgesetze
(1:23; 2:150). What is added in 1910 is the emphasis on a distinction
between fundamental logic, which does not depend on the concept
of extension, and a further-developed logic, that is also derived, to
which arithmetic belongs. Even this is expressed tentatively: We can
perhaps regard Arithmetic as a further developed Logic.
The sense in which classes are derived seems primarily ontological.
It seems that in 1910 Frege did not have an exact conception of the
45
155
implications of this for the status of the laws of classes and therefore of
the logistic thesis, but the logistic thesis is given a weaker sense than he
gave it before he learned of Russells paradox.
The picture of the late development of Freges views is somewhat
clouded by a rather mysterious draft of a letter to Karl Zsigmondy reacting to an address given by the latter in 1918. The form is that of a genetic
explanation of a conception of a cardinal number as a class of numerically equivalent sets. But Frege plays along with the idea that a number
attaches to a heap, the sort of conception vehemently criticized in the
Grundlagen. The notion of class as extension of a concept, and the
doubts about that notion expressed about the same time in Aufzeichnungen fr Ludwig Darmstaedter,49 are not mentioned.
I am not sure what to make of this text. It is probably unfinished.
My conjecture is that he is presenting somewhat ironically an explanation of an illusion, which possibly he intended to go on to expose more
directly. The view Frege develops is evidently suggested to him by what
is expressed by Zsigmondy in a passage of his address cited by the editor, but there are differences.50
An ironical note appears at the beginning; Frege says that his efforts
to clarify the concept of number apparently ended in complete lack of
success, which, however, caused the question not to rest in his mind
although I am, so to speak, officially no longer concerned with
the matter.51 And this work, which has gone on in me independently of my will, has suddenly and surprisingly shed full light
on the question. (p.270, trans. p.176)
In the next paragraph, the idea that number is a heap is set forth in
an ironical tone. The text ends as follows:
49
NS, pp.273277, esp. pp.276277, trans. pp.256257. Cf. Essay 5 of this volume, pp.127128.
50 P.269n.3. Where Zsigmondy talks of sets (Mengen), Frege talks of heaps (Haufen).
And Zsigmondy does not take the last step of dropping the distinction between a
number and a class of numerically equivalent sets.
It would be instructive to confront Freges draft with the full text of Zsigmondys address, but I have not succeeded in obtaining it. [See now the Postscript to
this essay.]
51 [Here Frege doubtless alludes to his retirement, which occurred officially on his
70th birthday, November 8, 1918. See Kreiser, Frege, p.519.]
156
FREGES CORRESPONDENCE
52
POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY 6
Certainly the most important development concerning Freges correspondence in the period since the present essay was written is the discovery and publication of Freges letters to Ludwig Wittgenstein. A lot
has been written about Wittgensteins relations with Frege and the influence on him of Freges work, and I will not attempt to summarize it
or add to it. Wittgenstein had had more than one meeting with Frege
between 1911 and 1913, although testimony differs about the time and
circumstances of the first meeting.1 But the earliest of the lost letters
that Scholz had acquired is dated October 22, 1913, and the earliest of
the surviving letters of Frege to Wittgenstein is dated October 11,
1914, when Wittgenstein was already in the Austrian army and serving
at the front in Poland.
I will not comment on these letters in any detail. Those written during the war bring to light Freges nationalism and support of the German and Austrian war effort, as well as his pleasure that Wittgenstein
was able to carry on some scientific work under the conditions of fighting in a war.2 The later letters express Freges reaction to the manuscript of the Tractatus. He evidently had difficulty making his way past
the opening sentences of that work; he misses any argument, does not
find their sense at all clear, and attempts to explicate them using his
own conceptual apparatus.
158
POSTSCRIPT TO ESSAY 6
Wittgensteins forwardness contrasts with the attitude that Rudolf Carnap expressed to Gnther Patzig in 1967. Patzig had asked if Carnap, when he returned
to Jena after the war and after reading Freges principal writings, had sought Frege
out and, in particular, let him know how important he found his writings. Carnap
replied that this had not occurred to him and that he would have felt it as presumption for an unknown doctoral student to visit a Herr Geheimrat and as it
were tap him on the shoulder and say how important he found his works. That
was just not done. (From a letter of Patzig to Lothar Kreiser, November 15, 1988,
quoted in Kreiser, Frege, p.277n.5.) In fact Frege had the title Hofrat, not the more
prestigious Geheimrat.)
To judge from his reported response to Patzig, Carnap may have misjudged
Freges character. The eminent scholar Gersom Scholem attended Freges Begriffschrift lectures a few years later and was much impressed by Freges completely
unpompous manner and its contrast with that of the philosopher Rudolf Eucken.
(See Scholem, Walter Benjamin, p.66, quoted in Kreiser, op. cit., p.469.)
159
Zum Wesen des Zahlbegriffs und der Mathematik. I wish to thank Professor
Friedrich Kambartel for providing me with a copy of this text. It has occurred to
me that Frege may never have intended to send an actual letter.
5
Ibid., pp.4344.
6
Ibid., pp.4748; cf. the quotation in WB, p.269n.3.
160
7
BRENTANO ON JUDGMENT AND TRUTH
1. Introduction
It is well known that Brentano classified psychical phenomena as
presentations, judgments, and phenomena of love and hate. Presentations are presentations of objects, although their objects may not exist.
One might say roughly that presentations are the vehicles of content,
but a presentation is not propositional in form and does not embody
any stance of the subject toward the content in question. Judgments
are affirmations or denials of presentations. Thus they are based on
presentations but are not a species of them. It is of course judgments
that are true or false. Phenomena of the third class are also based on
presentations, and like judgments also embody a stance of the subject
toward the content in question. Brentano sometimes characterizes this
as Gefallen oder Mifallen, which might be rendered roughly as a proor con-attitude. Such attitudes can also be correct or incorrect, an idea
that is the starting point of Brentanos ethics. However, phenomena of
love and hate will play almost no role in what follows. The threefold
classification is presented in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
in 1874 and Brentano held to it for the remainder of his career.
The common-sense idea of a judgment is that it is an instance of
someone judging something; where what is at issue is truth or falsity,
the agent comes to a belief one way or the other.1 It should follow that
a judgment would incorporate what Frege called force, in this case the
agents stance toward the truth or falsity of the proposition judged to
be one or the other. But it follows that many sentences that occur as parts
1
It is this case that Brentano calls judgment, although in ordinary language judging is often appraisal as to value, as for example the judging of figure-skating or
other performances.
161
tomorrow.5 A judgment that it will not rain tomorrow does not differ
in force from a judgment that it will rain tomorrow; where they differ is
in the thought that is judged to be true. In Brentanos view, in contrast,
rain tomorrow might well express a certain presentation; the judgment that it will rain tomorrow affirms this presentation, while the
judgment that it will not rain tomorrow denies it.6
To carry through Brentanos view, it would be necessary to represent all complexity of content as belonging to the presentation judged.
Brentanos theory of judgment can be viewed as a brave attempt to
carry through a view of this kind. Much of his effort in discussion of
judgment is in attempts to do justice to the various forms of complexity that arise from the complex logical form of sentences.
In its original form, Brentanos view of judgment implies that in a
sense all judgments are existential judgments or negations of existential
judgments. This peculiarity of his view of judgment influenced his
thought on truth at an early point and led to a particular line of questioning of the traditional idea of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus, the
root of what has come to be called the correspondence theory of truth,
already adumbrated in the 1889 lecture that is the opening essay in
the compilation Wahrheit und Evidenz. Brentano was not the only
or even the most influential philosopher to question the correspondence theory at the time, but his criticisms had distinctive features. In
late writings he sketched as a positive view an epistemic conception.
The discussion below of Brentanos views on truth will concentrate on
these aspects.
For example Die Negation, pp.152155. There is no reason to think that Brentano individually is Freges target; he is not referred to in Freges extant writings.
6 Apparently Brentano does not distinguish terminologically between affirming a
presentation and affirming its object, so that affirming rain tomorrow and affirming the presentation are expressed by the same word, generally anerkennen.
164
ing that Pegasus does not exist would be in Brentanos language his
denying or rejecting Pegasus; the case is exactly parallel to that of
unicorns.
The difficulty an account such as Brentanos faces is how to represent judgments that involve compounding, particularly sentential combination such as that embodied by (1). This issue already arises in
Brentanos first development in the 1874 Psychology, where he sketches
an explanation of the syllogistic forms. Brentanos view immediately
gives a distinctive place to existential statements, A exists, where A is
a term, since to judge that is just to affirm A. Thus his view immediately removes the temptation to treat exists in such statements as a
predicate, even a logical but not real predicate, as Kant did.7
The most direct way of looking at the syllogistic forms from the
point of view of modern logic yields the result that categorical propositions are equivalent either to existential propositions or negations of
such, since we have:
All A are B is equivalent to There are no As that are non-Bs.
No A are B is equivalent to There are no As that are Bs.
Some A are B is equivalent to There are As that are Bs or
There are ABs.
Some A are not B is equivalent to There are As that are
non-Bs or There are A non-Bs.
These readings can go directly into Brentanian terms: To judge that
all A are B is to deny As that are non-Bs; to judge that no A are B is to
deny As that are Bs; to judge that some A are B is to affirm As that are
Bs; to judge that some A are not B is to affirm As that are non-Bs.
Essentially these readings are given by Brentano in Psychology.8 He
draws a number of conclusions that modern logicians have drawn,
such as that the inferences from A to I and from E to O are not valid,
7
and that certain traditionally accepted syllogisms are not valid, although they become so if an existential premise is added.9
Second, the readings make clear that already at this level Brentanos
account requires some principle for the combination of terms or presentations. The first is basically conjunction, so that given A and B we
have As that are B. A second would be negation applied to terms: as
they stand, the readings involve an internal negation in addition to
the negation embodied in negative judgment, i.e., denial. Some of the
neatness of the theory is lost by admitting term negation in addition to
denial. Brentano does not address this issue in Psychology, but as we
shall see he was uncomfortable with term negation and did develop
some ideas for eliminating it.
Brentano in one place at least admits disjunctive terms, so that we
can also allow judgments that affirm or deny A-or-Bs.10 At any rate, if
term negation is applicable to compound terms, then any truth-functional
combination of terms can be expressed as a term.
Two problems would remain before Brentanos theory could yield
the expressive power of first-order logic. First, one would have to accommodate truth-functional combination of closed sentences. If we
make the assumption about terms of the last paragraph, that would be
sufficient to generate a logic with expressive power equivalent to that
of monadic quantificational logic, since in monadic logic nested quantification can be eliminated. Second, one would have to have a treatment of many-place predicates and polyadic quantification.
If Brentano had developed the second, he would have been one of the
founders of mathematical logic, which he neither was nor claimed to be.
The question whether this can be done in the framework of a Brentanian
theory of judgment is one external to Brentano himself. Term logics that
are equivalent to first-order logic have been developed, but they involve
devices that were not thought of in Brentanos time even by mathematical
logicians. It would have been necessary for Brentano to consider manyplace predicates on the same footing as one-place predicates. His remarks
9
on relations take in only binary relations, and there he holds the unusual
view that only the first place of a binary relation is direct or referential
(modo recto in Brentanos terminology); on this subject see 4 below.
We can remain closer to Brentano in considering how the first question might be addressed. This has been treated in some detail by Roderick Chisholm.11 Consider first the simplest case, judging that p and q.
One might say that S judges that p and q if he (simultaneously) judges
that p and judges that q. But as Chisholm points out, that would not be
sufficient, since S might not put the two together. Suppose first that both
judgments are affirmative, so that S accepts A and accepts B. Brentano
admitted conjunctive objects, objects consisting of an A and a B. Call
them A-and-Bs. Ss accepting A-and-Bs has the requisite property of
committing S both to As and to Bs in a single judgment. One might
object that S is committed to more, to another object, precisely the Aand-B. That would be so if we think of it as a set having an A and a B
as elements. If these objects are distinct non-sets, then the pair set must
be distinct from both of them.
Brentano did not think of conjunctive objects as sets, at least not as
set theory has come to think of them. It is well known that given either
the empty set or a single individual, one can generate an infinite sequence
of sets by successive application of the forming of pair sets. Brentano
considers and rejects an argument for such generation beginning with
two apples. A key step that he rejects is that a pair of apples is something in addition to the original two apples:
Someone who has one apple and another apple does not have a
pair of apples in addition, for the pair which he has simply means
the one apple and the other taken together. So what people wanted
to do was to add the same thing to itself, which is contrary to the
concept of addition. . . . The pair is completely distinct from either
of the two apples which make it up, but it is not at all distinct
from both of them added together.12
Particularly the last remark suggests that Brentano thinks of the pair as
the mereological sum, and some of his remarks about pluralities parallel
11
12
167
See Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil (hereafter cited as LRU), pp.122123.
169
KPP 194. Translation, from Origin, p.107, modified. This remark occurs in a
footnote added in 1889 to Miklosich ber subjektlose Stze (1883).
16 So far as I know Brentano does not address directly the problem how to understand simple judgments of the form there are non-As or there are no non-As. The
obvious idea is to take them as judgments of the form there are [are no] things that
are non-As. Then in the negative case, the elimination of the term negation would
pose the same problem as that noted in the text for the A form.
17 KPP 165166, trans. p.296.
18 Ibid., 165, trans. p.295.
19
Chisholm, Brentanos Theory of Judgment, p.24.
170
have been replaced by others. So theres no particular cow that I accept. However, it seems that, say, judging that some cows are not white
involves accepting a cow and denying of that cow that it is white. How
can that be if there is no particular cow that I accept, and so a fortiori
none that I judge not to be white?
We could render such a double judgment as affirming an x that is a
cow and denying of x that it is white. The x would have to be in some
way indeterminate. Brentano does not put the matter this way, and I am
not sure that it accords with his views; for example it represents even the
subject term in such a judgment as a predicate. What he says that bears
on the question is obscure, as for example this explanation of the I form:
Looked at more closely, it signifies a double judgment, one part
of which affirms the subject, and, after the predicate has been
identified in presentation with the subject, the other part affirms
the subject which had been affirmed all by itself in the first part,
but with this additionwhich is to say that it ascribes to it the
predicate P.22
What is it for the predicate to be identified in presentation with the
subject? It appears that Brentano means what is explained in his last
dictation, included in the 1924 edition of Psychology. There he states
that there are presentations
which are unified only through a peculiar kind of association,
composition, or identification, as, for example, when one forms
the complex concept of a thing which is red, warm, and
pleasant-sounding.23
A little later he elaborates by saying, When we say, a red warm thing,
the two things presented in intuitive unity are not totally identified but
identified only in terms of the subject.24 What seems to be needed is
some version of the content-object distinction: In a double judgment,
the predicate is identified with the subject in being affirmed or denied
22
172
of an object that the subject is presupposed to apply to. But that would
restate the formulation of the last paragraph and not clarify it.
We have concluded that Brentanos ideas for reducing negation to
denial and thus for avoiding Freges conclusion that negation belongs
to the content of a judgment rather than being a mode of judgment itself are inadequate for the purpose and not entirely clear in themselves.
Before leaving the subject I will comment on some remarks about term
negation in the same essay from the 1911 Psychology that we have been
considering. If negative terms are admitted, then it seems that negation
is simply allowed as an operator on terms. Nonetheless Brentano regards
term negation as introducing a kind of fiction, the fiction of negative
objects. He seems to think such a fiction involved in the everyday understanding of negative terms:
This fiction . . . is a commonplace to the layman; he speaks of an
unintelligent man as well as an intelligent one, and of a lifeless
thing as well as of a living thing. He looks on attractive thing
and unattractive thing, red thing, and non-red things,
equally, as words which name objects.25
One might well ask, why not? In the sense in which red thing names
anything, it names those things that are red, and then surely non-red
thing names those things that are not red. Brentano does not give an
argument, but it is very likely that red thing names a general presentation, and he may think that such a general presentation as would be
named by non-red thing would be a negative object. The general background is discussed in 5 below.
4. Modes of Presentation
A quite different aspect of Brentanos treatment of complex judgments
belongs actually to his account of presentations. That is that he distinguishes modes of presentation (Modi des Vorstellens).26 The major distinctions subsumed under these headings are what he calls temporal
modes and the distinction between direct and oblique (modus rectus and
25
26
173
174
a relation like earlier than does not require the existence of both
terms.31 Of course it follows that it doesnt require the existence (now)
of either. The battle of Blenheim was earlier than the battle of Waterloo, although both are past and so do not exist on Brentanos view.
What is relevant to his view of judgment is that a temporal mode is an
additional complication to the logical form of a judgment. If I judge that
the battle of Waterloo occurred, I affirm it in a past mode. If I judge
that the presidential election of 2004 will occur, I affirm it in a future
mode. Clearly much more complex combinations are possible. However,
it is only affirmation of present existence that is affirmation in the strict
sense.32 He seems to hold that other temporal modes are varieties of the
oblique mode. I will not, however, pursue the question how Brentano
develops or might have developed the conception of temporal modes.
31
32
176
See notes 36 and 37, LRU 312. Note 37 intimates that 30 comes from supplementary essay XII of Psychology, but that is accurate only for the last part.
36 Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, p.348.
37 For a historically informed and much more detailed treatment of Brentanos
views on individuation and his relation to nominalism, see Brown, Immanence
and Individuation.
38 Section numbers in the text below refer to this essay; this will enable the reader
to locate a passage either in the German WE or the English.
177
42
Peter Simons comments that the admission of such objects was an innovation in
the 1880s. Since it was abandoned with the turn to reism, it would be characteristic
only of the middle period of Brentanos thought. It should be noted that the problem of nonbeing to which Brentano responded at this point is one concerning judgment (or on other theories propositions), roughly the problem how something
could be true without there being anything in virtue of which it is true. It should
thus be distinguished from the problem posed by presentations of objects that do
not exist, which led to Meinongs theory of objects. Cf. Jacquette, Brentanos Concept of Intentionality.
180
Oskar Kraus, Brentanos disciple and editor, clearly reads this as a reductive definition; see WE xxiiixxv, trans. xxivxxv. I would wish for more evidence before
taking it that way, but for convenience I will refer to it as a definition.
184
46
185
the sense of leaving no unfulfilled components, in which, again, the object is given completely (38).49 Such evident positing has an objective
correlate, which he says is being in the sense of truth (Sein im Sinne
der Wahrheit), an echo of Aristotle that is no doubt derived from Brentano. This reliance on a strong concept of evidence to explain the notion of truth makes Husserl vulnerable to the type of objection made by
Ehrenfels. What his reponse to it amounts to is that with respect to any
positing act final fulfillment (or cancellation through conflict between
what is intended and what is given) is in principle possible.
Husserls own view of outer perception created a difficulty for this
view. Even in the Logische Untersuchungen his position was that outer
perceptions always contain unfulfilled intentions, because in perception the object is always incompletely given. At the time he seems to
have thought that the impossibility of complete fulfillment of outer perception was only impossibility for us, and that in an appropriately ideal
sense complete fulfillment is possible. By the time of Ideen I in 1913, he
had changed his mind, and he states there that it belongs to the essence
of outer objects that they can be given only from a perspective and thus
incompletely (4344); not even God could overcome the inadequacy
of outer perception. Nonetheless he writes that complete givenness of
the object is predelineated as an Idea in the Kantian sense (143);
complete givenness is approached as a kind of limit by an infinite continuum of perceptions of the same object in harmony with one another.
It seems that truth itself will have to be adjusted to the fact that evidence
in the strong sense also has the character of a Kantian idea.50
Let us return to Husserls statement of Prolegomena 50 that A is
true is equivalent to It is possible that someone should judge with evidence that A. This formulation is somewhat more perspicuous than
the formulations of Brentano and Kraus. If we accept that it might be
impossible to judge with evidence either that A or that not-A, then what
we have is a violation of the law of excluded middle. Since the intuitionist challenge to classical mathematics of L.E.J. Brouwer, of which
the first steps were taken during Brentanos lifetime, the idea that the
49
In the same section Husserl allows that evidence admits of levels and degrees,
but this applies to what he calls the more lax and less epistemologically significant
concept of evidence.
50
We do not deal here with the later evolution of Husserls views on these matters,
which move further from the view of the Logische Untersuchungen. See Fllesdal,
Husserl on Evidence and Justification.
187
law of excluded middle might be given up or qualified has become familiar to us, and it is one of the possibilities that has to be considered in
developing an epistemic conception of truth. The most straightforward
way of carrying this out would be to adopt something like the Husserlian formulation and declare that, if it is not possible to judge with evidence with regard to A, then A is neither true nor false. If evidence is
interpreted as entailing the degree of certainty that Brentano takes it
to, and we measure possibility by the actual capabilities of the human
mind, that will lead to a counterintuitive result, for example that ordinary empirical judgments are neither true nor false.
The development of epistemic conceptions of truth in the twentieth
century has proceeded differently. Intuitionism, which offers the most
rigorous and thorough development, is primarily a view about mathematics. We could translate Brouwers view into Brentanos language by
saying that A can be said to be true only when one judges with evidence that A. Unlike Brentano, Brouwer does not think it makes sense
to talk about truth with regard to blind judgments. But rather than
allow truth-value gaps, Brouwer interprets negation so that one can
judge that not-A if one knows that an absurdity results from the supposition that one has a proof of A, that is, that one can judge with evidence
that A.51 It follows that it is impossible for neither A nor not-A to be
true, but it does not follow that either A or not-A is true.
Although the idea has been advanced of extending the intuitionistic
approach to logic and truth in general, this program has not been carried out, and the problem of certainty that we have been discussing is a
serious obstacle to it. In intuitionism, possession of a proof of A guarantees the truth of A. But in most domains of knowledge even very
strong evidence for a statement A might be called in question by additional evidence. The result is that although epistemic conceptions of
truth have been found attractive by many philosophers, there is no canonical development of it for the empirical domain corresponding to
intuitionism for the mathematical. Many writers have, following Charles
Sanders Peirce and Husserl, taken what is true to be what is evident
under highly idealized conditions.
51
52
I am indebted to Dagfinn Fllesdal, Kai Hauser, Peter Simons, and the editor for
helpful comments.
189
8
HUSSERL AND THE LINGUISTIC TURN
Cited hereafter as LU. I will give page references to the second German edition
and to J.N. Findlays translation of that edition (cited as F), which I will quote
with some modifications. The differences from the first edition, though important
for many purposes, play no role in my discussion.
2
This was pointed out to me by Abraham Stone.
3
Gibt es ein materiales Apriori?
4
Cited hereafter as O.
190
also in the origins of the gulf between analytical and so-called continental philosophy. From this double point of view Husserl is clearly of
particular interest. In his early period his thinking was close enough to
Freges so that they could at least have exchanges with one another. Yet
Husserl was the founder of the phenomenological movement, at one time
the paradigm of continental philosophy at least in the eyes of Englishspeaking philosophers, and which is certainly a major source of subsequent continental philosophy. Dummett locates the beginning of the
gulf in Husserls transcendental turn of 19051907 and its published
manifestation in Ideas I in 1913.5
I
Dummetts Origins is guided by a particular conception of what is fundamental to analytical philosophy, a conception which frames his assessment of Husserls significance for the history of analytical philosophy
and his more detailed discussions of Husserl. It also frames Dummetts
more extensive and, as one would expect, more sympathetic discussion
of Frege. Dummetts starting point is a thesis concerning what he calls
the philosophy of thought; he says that what distinguishes analytical
philosophy is the belief, first, that a philosophical account of thought
can be attained through a philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensive account can only be so attained (O, p.4).
He doesnt even attempt to propose an explanation of the term thought
that wouldnt be tendentious between the different analytical philosophers adhering to this view. Instead he relies heavily on Frege, whose
use of thought has roughly the meaning of proposition in Englishlanguage philosophy.
I shall make only a few remarks about the question of how accurate
Dummetts characterization of analytical philosophy is, with reference
to the different periods of its history.6 And I shall distinguish two ways
of objecting to it. First, Dummett holds that what has long been called
the linguistic turn is the essence of analytical philosophy. Second, he
5
I will give page references to the original German edition; they are included in the
two Husserliana editions and in F. Kerstens translation. My quotations will largely
follow that translation.
6
With respect to early analytical philosophy (by which I mean roughly the period
from Frege through the publication of Wittgensteins Tractatus), see Hyltons review of Origins.
191
offers a very specific statement about what the linguistic turn is, a
statement dependent on his conception of a philosophical account of
thought, the search for which is a program he himself has followed
and has found inspiration for in Frege. Some counterexamples to Dummetts characterization would impugn only the latter, more specific formulation, not the more general idea that the linguistic turn is the fundamental move distinguishing analytical philosophy, however difficult
it might be to give an adequate general statement of what the linguistic
turn is.7 In fact, the idea that a certain kind of reflection on language is
fundamental to much of philosophy does in my view characterize quite
well one important period in the history of analytical philosophy, that
of its rise to dominance in the English-speaking world, roughly from
the early 1930s to the early 1960s.8 But the critical discussions of
Dummetts book have argued rather convincingly that his characterization does not fit the wider history.9
Dummett contends that Husserl exemplified a philosophical development essential to the prehistory of analytic philosophy, namely the
extrusion of thoughts from the mind. According to Frege, thoughts
are not constituents of the stream of consciousness; they exist independently of being grasped by a subject (O, p.22). A similar view was held
earlier by Bernard Bolzano, whose influence Husserl acknowledges.
Just this step is taken by Husserl, first in his polemic against psychologism in the first volume (1900) of the Logische Untersuchungen. The
result is what has been called a platonist theory of meaning. Evidently
Dummett considers this theory a fundamental step on the road to ana7
Thus Herman Philipse questions whether Wittgenstein, not only a paradigm analytical philosopher but one to whom Dummett appeals, would embrace the idea of
a comprehensive philosophical account of thought; see Husserl and the Origins of
Analytical Philosophy, p.167. In commenting on my APA paper, Dagfinn Fllesdal remarked that Quine, surely an exemplar of the linguistic turn, is skeptical
about the very idea of thought as Dummett conceives it; cf. Fllesdal, Analytic
Philosophy, p.195.
8
The terminus a quo is chosen in part because the 1930s saw the beginning of the
Oxford tradition of analytical philosophy as well as the emigration of leading logical positivists to the United States. Around 1960 the idea that analysis of language should displace metaphysics began to lose its hold. Another development
of that time was the growing influence of Rawls, which ended analytical moral
philosophers almost exclusive concentration on metaethics.
9
On early analytical philosophy, see Hylton, Review of Origins, and more generally Philipse, Husserl and the Origins.
192
lytical philosophy. The reason is apparently that the ontological mythology that such a view involves gives rise to dissatisfaction that leads naturally to the linguistic turn. According to Dummett,
One in this position has therefore to look about him to find something non-mythological but objective and external to the individual mind to embody the thoughts which the individual subject
grasps and may assent to or reject. Where better to find it than in
the institution of a common language? (O, p.25)
Dummett projects a highly idealized picture of how analytical philosophy originated, first through the extrusion of thoughts from the
mind and then by the step just indicated to the linguistic turn. Husserl
took the first of these steps but not the second. Dummett sees in this a
respect in which Husserl has positive importance for the history of analytical philosophy. But he sees Husserls failure to take the second step
as one of the roots of the separation between continental and analytic
philosophy.
Now had Dummett said nothing more of a positive nature about
Husserls relevance to the history of analytical philosophy, then Peter
Hylton would be justified in finding Dummetts claim for Husserls
importance seriously overstated.10 Dummett, however, implicitly makes
another claim, with which I entirely agree. This is, roughly, that Husserl is of great interest as an object of comparison. The point is not to
issue a call for an exercise in comparative philosophy. Rather, Frege
and Husserl worked at a time when there was no such schism as the later
analytical-continental one, and the problems faced by each were similar
(O, p.4). Although the actual debates between them were limited, they
might have been much greater.11
I would, somewhat speculatively, enlarge Dummetts case in the
following way. There were two late nineteenth-century scientific developments that had very great importance for the development of
10
Hylton, op. cit. Hylton writes as if the issue were whether Husserl is a precursor of analytic philosophy, a claim he attributes to Dummett. I think that frames
the question of Husserls relevance too narrowly, at least if one works with a conception like Dummetts of what analytical philosophy is, or even with Hyltons
contrasting understanding of what is essential in early analytical philosophy.
11
For example if Frege had been a little younger when LU appeared and had not
gone through the period of greatest discouragement in his life in the years just
afterward.
193
philosophy. One was the beginning of modern logic and (more broadly
but a little less directly) the nineteenth-century transformation of mathematics, both decisive for early analytical philosophy in ways by now
well known. The other was the development of scientific psychology,
originally institutionally united with philosophy, but gradually emancipated from it. Many of the important founders of experimental psychology were psychologist-philosophers, the exemplary and most influential
case being Wilhelm Wundt. The development of experimental psychology went hand-in-hand with the development of a more sophisticated
philosophical psychology. Brentanos contribution was mainly here,
although he was a strong proponent of the growth of experimental
psychology and through the work of pupils exercised a strong indirect
influence on it as well.
Husserl was perhaps the only major figure in philosophy who was
formed intellectually by both the mathematical and the psychological
currents of the time, as is illustrated by the fact that his principal
mentors were Weierstrass and Brentano.12 Unlike Frege, he was able
to see the issues surrounding psychologism from both sides. Although,
at least in the Logische Untersuchungen, he does in a way extrude
thoughts from the mind, he never at any time separates the issues
concerning the nature of thoughts from the philosophy of mind.
What Frege says about such matters combines rather traditional
elements, such as a conception of ideas hardly differing from that
of classical empiricism, with elements derived from or worked out
inconnection with his logic. Although Frege has the notion of grasping a thought (or, more generally, a sense), he says little about what
this is. Husserl, for better or for worse, always connects what he has
to say about meaning with a much larger story about mind and
consciousness.
Although I am not qualified to engage seriously in the enterprise
myself, I applaud the efforts of recent scholars such as Kevin Mulligan
and Barry Smith to give developments in psychology an important
place in the history of philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The attempt to develop a philosophical psychology by a
12
II
I provide these historical remarks as stage-setting for what is our
proper concern, themes in Husserl that relate him in an interesting way
to analytical philosophy as Dummett characterizes it. Our focus will be
Dummetts question, Why did Husserl not take the linguistic turn? And
more generally, What separates Husserl from analytical philosophy, in
particular in Ideas I? Dummetts answer to the first question is that
Husserls introduction of the noema, which Dummett sees as involving
the generalization of the notion of meaning to all acts, made the linguistic turn impossible.14
This answer poses a difficulty for Dummetts historical picture, since
the essentials for the generalization of meaning to all acts are already
present in the Logische Untersuchungen. Acts are intentional experiences. And intentional experiences are distinguished by the peculiarly
intentional relation to an object that for Brentano was distinctive of
mental phenomena. A point Dummett himself emphasizes is that
linguistic expressions, on actual occasions of use, are meaningful by
virtue of accompanying meaning-conferring acts on the part of the
speaker. The meaning on that occasion of the expressions the speaker
uses is a function of these acts, which themselves have semantical properties. The Fifth Investigation is devoted to exploring these matters for
acts in general. All acts have matter and quality, which are analogous
13
16
196
made privately, in response to the perception?17 Husserl explicitly refrains from bringing in at this point the complications of expressing the
judgment verbally. The contrast Husserl makes between the full noema
that is at issue when we take the judgment exactly as it is conscious
in this experience and the judgment that concerns formal logic implies, for the reasons just given, that we should not expect full identity
of sense between them (pp.195196). The contrast Husserl explicitly
makes, however, is not one of sense but one drawing on other dimensions of the noema.
Before going further, we have to consider the connection of the concept of noema with Husserls transcendental idealism. That the introduction of the noema coincided with the transcendental turn is, for
Dummett, a reason for locating the beginning of the gulf between analytical and continental philosophy in the development leading to Ideas I.
This could not be because idealism as such is alien to analytical philosophy; it is not. But it can hardly be disputed that Husserls version
of idealism is alien to early analytical philosophy. Even those who dispute the interpretation (held by Dummett) of Frege as a thoroughgoing
realist will agree that there is no place in Freges philosophy for a transcendental ego and its constitution, whatever that elusive Husserlian
term means. And of course Russell and Moore explicitly reacted against
British idealism. Although there are echoes of transcendental philosophy in Wittgensteins Tractatus, here too the upshot is quite different
from that in Husserl, as for example in Wittgensteins statement that
solipsism in the end coincides with pure realism (5.64).
Thus we need to ask, How far is Husserls conception of the noema
bound up with idealism? It is certainly explained in a way that presupposes the phenomenological reduction, at least in 88 of Ideas I, where
Husserl uses the example of perceiving with pleasure a blooming apple
tree. The explanation of the conception includes the equation of the
perceptual sense (noematic sense) with the perceived as such, of judging with the judged as such, and so on (p. 182), equations that
have given rise to much controversy among Husserls interpreters. Husserl wants to describe the fact that, when the positing of the world and
of particular objects in a perception or a thought has been bracketed, it
17
still remains a perception of, or a thought of, its objects. In his example
of perceiving with pleasure a blooming apple tree, the transcendent
tree itself is bracketed. And yet, so to speak, Husserl writes,
everything remains as of old. Even the phenomenologically reduced perceptual experience is perception of this blooming apple tree, in this garden, etc., and likewise the reduced liking is a
liking of this same thing. (Ideas I, pp.195196)
In the natural attitude, when I see the tree, I take it for granted that
it is really there; in Husserls terms from the Logische Untersuchungen,
positing belongs to the quality of my act. In Ideas I, Husserl uses the
term thetic character. It belongs to my perceptual consciousness of
the tree to take it to be really there. This is to say both more and less
than that I believe the tree to be really there: more because it is part of
perceptual consciousness; less because, although my perception may
posit the tree, I may because of other knowledge distrust it and believe
the tree is not really there. Since this positing is a moment of the perception itself, it does not disappear with the reduction; it is just put
out of action.18 But what Husserl emphasizes at this point is that what
he is calling the sense of the perception is not bracketed.19 It is not in
any case posited in the act itself but, rather, in the phenomenologists
reflection, despite his not being entitled to make any positing regarding
the outer world. Since it is the sense of a perception, it must be the sense
that the perception has independently of whether its positing is bracketed, and independently of what judgments are made on the basis of it.
(If there are such judgments, they too are potential fodder for phenomenology, although in that case what is put out of action is an essential
element of what makes them judgments as opposed to propositional
acts of other kinds.)
On my reading, it is clearly not necessary to undertake the phenomenological reduction in order to talk of the meaning of acts, and in the
passage that has concerned me Husserl says explicitly that obviously
the perceptual sense belongs to the phenomenologically unreduced perception (perception in the sense of psychology) (Ideas I, 89, p.184).
18
For this reason, I think that Husserls purpose in bringing in the reduction at this point is to emphasize that the sense of our acts survives it,
and the reduction makes it possible to engage in reflections having as
objects only objects that either are really immanent in consciousness or
are meanings of them (in the broad sense including thetic character as
well as sense, but not including reference). The conception of the noema is thus at least to a certain degree independent of the reduction
and of transcendental idealism.
Husserl in Ideas I is, to be sure, more distant from analytical philosophy than he was in the Logische Untersuchungen. What is responsible
for this is not, I think, the generalization of meaning to all acts, which
I have argued is already present in the Logische Untersuchungen. Nor
is it the further development of this generalization in Husserls theory
of the noema. Instead it is, I propose, the Cartesianism underlying the
transcendental reduction. There is a step from the generalization of
meaning to the reduction, but it requires a highly contestable assumption about meaning. Roughly, this assumption is that it is possible to
express and to explicate the meaning of our acts, even on a quite global
level, without making any presuppositions about reference. In 89 of
Ideas I, Husserl describes statements about external reality as undergoing through the reduction a radical modification of sense (p.183).
Bringing to bear Freges theory of indirect reference,20 we could describe this reduction as consisting in our putting our whole description of the world into one big intensional context, where what is designated is not the ordinary reference of the words but their sense. This
description must assume, however, that these senses do not presuppose, for their very existence and identity, reference to external reality.
In particular, it must be assumed that there are no Russellian or
object-dependent thoughts about external reality, which by their
very nature involve reference to particular objects, often in the immediate environment. Another sort of assumption I have in mind, however, is even stronger than the rejection of such thoughts. For meaning
might be dependent on external reference in a more global or diffuse
way. For example, it might be that we could not entertain the thoughts
we do without an existing external world. Or, short of the nonexis20
In fact Husserl echoes Freges theory in this passage, though probably not consciously, in using words such as plant and tree in quotes to indicate the modification of their meaning (p.184).
200
tence of the external world, it might be that we could not entertain the
thoughts we do about the world if they were radically false. Such a
more global dependence of meaning on reference does not imply the
existence of Russellian thoughts as they are usually understood. But it
is incompatible with the contestable assumption about meaning that
leads from Husserls generalization of meaning to his reduction.
The Cartesian tenor of Husserls justifications of the reduction in
Ideas I as well as in other texts, such as his Cartesian Meditations,
clashes with at least the most characteristic views among analytical
philosophers. At the time of Ideas I, Husserls transcendental idealism
probably also clashed with more widely held views in British and
American philosophy; that was after all a time of reaction against idealism and the revival of realism.21 I would suggest, however, that it is
only later developments that make this clash a step on the way to the
gulf between analytic and continental philosophy. As regards Husserls
own thought, such a gulf is always limited by his adherence to rather
traditional scientific ideals. I would further suggest that we cant very
meaningfully speak of continental philosophy in anything like the
sense current since the Second World War before Heideggers Sein und
Zeit (1927) and other work of the 1920s, such as that of Jaspers.22
Moreover, we must consider that Husserls transcendental idealism did
not find wide acceptance and was not maintained in anything very
close to Husserls form by the most influential later phenomenological
philosophers.
21
Husserl gave lectures in London in 1922. There does not seem, though, to have
been much understanding between him and the British philosophers he met. See
Spiegelberg, Husserl in England.
22
Consider Husserls own comment, referring to his preface to the first English
translation of Ideas I, which appeared in 1931:
No account is taken, to be sure, of the situation in German philosophy (very different from the English), with its philosophy of life [Lebensphilosophie], its new
anthropology, its philosophy of existence, competing for dominance. Thus no
account is taken of the reproaches of intellectualism or rationalism which
have been made from these quarters against my phenomenology, and which are
closely connected with my version of the concept of philosophy. In it I restore
the most original idea of philosophy, which, since its first definite formulation
by Plato, underlies our European philosophy and science and designates for it a
task that cannot be lost. (Nachwort zu meinen Ideen, p.138 of reprint; my
translation)
201
III
On Dummetts reading, Frege parallels Kant in distinguishing between
sensibility and understanding, between the faculty of sensation and
that of thought. Where Frege takes the linguistic turn, he applies it to
the study of thoughts. He has quite a bit to say about ideas (Vorstellungen), taking as prominent examples ideas which Kant would have
called sensible, in particular sense-impressions. But Frege makes no use
of a connection between ideas and language to get at the structures of
ideas. This is not only, though, because ideas have subjects as bearers,
for so do propositional attitudes, but Freges writings contain serious
suggestions as to how to understand the structure of propositional attitudes by way of an analysis of sentences expressing them.
This simple observation is relevant to the question whether Husserls generalization of meaning precluded the linguistic turn. For the
generalization, that is, the extension of the notion of meaning beyond
its application to language, is most in evidence when it is applied in
domains whose relation to a domain of thought is not simple or straightforward. Husserl repeatedly brings up examples from either perception
or imagination. Dummett evidently believes that attributing something
like a sense to perceptions is incompatible with the linguistic turn (O,
p.27). The question is, Why? An inadequate answer would be that a
philosopher who believes that perception involves something fundamentally different from thought could not take the linguistic turn. For
Frege and a large number of subsequent analytic philosophers, including Dummett himself, who certainly do take the linguistic turn, also
accept the Kantian distinction between perception and thought.23
Inany event, the acceptance of this distinction does not obviously go
against Dummetts axiomatic characterization of the linguistic turn:
that thought can and must be analyzed in terms of language. So we must
seek further to see where and how Husserl might have violated Dummetts axioms.
Thoughts as Frege understood them are propositional, and Freges
steps toward the linguistic turn are thus bound up with the context
principle. Translated into the terms of an inquiry into thought, the principle says that there is no such thing as thinking of an object save in
the course of thinking something specific about it (O, p. 5). One
23
might say that, at least in the domain of thought, intentionality is fundamentally propositional. As for perception, according to Frege, something non-sensible is necessary for perception to represent an outside
world. Discussing Freges view of perception, Dummett argues that this
non-sensible must be a complete thought and, at least in most cases,
a judgment (O, p.97). That would give a handle to the linguistic turn,
though not one developed by Frege. We are, however, still left with the
sensible element, in Freges case the sense-impressions. For Frege himself that remained an obstacle, because in his view ideas are incommunicable. The notion that there is something incommunicable in sensory
experience dies hard, as is shown by contemporary controversies about
qualia. But is it clear that every philosophical view about such incommunicability is incompatible with Dummetts axioms of analytical philosophy? To show this, we would have to show that sense-impressions
or qualia or whatever either belong to the domain of thought or else
do not exist.
However this may be, Dummetts claim that it is Husserls generalization of meaning that precludes him from taking the linguistic turn
raises other issues than those about sense-impressions.24 Let us pursue
the matter of Husserls view of the perceptual noema. Dummett attributes to Husserl the view that the noematic sense of acts in general is
expressible in language, a view developed by Fllesdals pupils, particularly Smith and McIntyre in Husserl and Intentionality. It seems that
such expression should give us the same kind of handle on the noematic
sense of perceptions as we have on the structure of thoughts. That
would call in question Dummetts claim that Husserls attribution of
sense to perceptions precludes him from adopting the twin axioms of
the analytical tradition.
Husserl describes the noematic sense of a perception as the perceived as such; one way of saying what this involves would be to say
that it is the sense that would be expressed by the subject in saying
what he perceives. Clearly any one statement would express this sense
very incompletely. So the sense would have to be taken to be expressible in the sense that the subject is able to express, through more and
more detailed description, everything contained in it. Full expression
could be an infinite task. Moreover, there is a criterion of the accuracy
24
In fact, Dummett is almost silent on Husserls notion of hyletic data and does
not rest any of his case on it.
203
to be explicable as the truth of a judgment or proposition contained within the noematic sense; but we do not know how the
constituent meanings combine to constitute a state of affairs as
intentional object, since they are not, like Freges senses, by their
very essence aimed at truth. (O, p.116)
Perception, according to Husserl, is an act directed to the object
perceived; if we can attribute to it sense and reference, the reference, if
it exists, will be just the object perceived. It thus seems that what the
sense would have to aim at is reference to this object, something
quite different from truth.
Husserl has a reply to Dummetts objection, a reply drawing on a
dimension of his philosophy that Dummett does not treat in Origins or
elsewhere, though it has some relevance to his own views. There is
something a meaning-intention aims at, what Husserl calls fulfillment,
which is achieved when the object of the act is given. The schema of
intention and fulfillment is central to Husserls account of meaning, in
particular in application to nonlinguistic cases like perception. In external perception the object is given, leibhaft gegeben in Husserls famous phrase. That case has, however, a special complexity because external perception always contains unfulfilled intentions toward aspects
of the object that are not properly speaking perceived, such as the back
and the inside of an opaque object. A full description of the meaning of
a perception would have to describe both what is bodily present and
what would fulfill the unfulfilled intentions in the perception.
The intention-fulfillment schema generalizes not the relation of propositions to truth, but their relation to verification. In fact, in Husserls
discussion of truth, much of what he says suggests a verificationist
view.25 This is of interest because there is a line of descent from Husserl
to Heytings explanation of the intuitionistic meaning of the logical
connectives, and from there to much of what Dummett himself has written about an anti-realist program in the theory of meaning. It seems to
me that, to be consistent with his own views, Dummett has to take the
difficulty with Husserls generalization of the notion of meaning to lie
25
See LU, 6th Investigation, 3639. These sections treat complete verification,
however, as only an ideal possibility, and even that possibility is later called into
question by the thesis of Ideas I that the inadequacy of perception of transcendent
objects is essential to them. These issues are instructively discussed in chapter 3 of
Gail Soffer, Husserl and the Question of Relativism.
205
IV
Now let us consider the delicate question of whether fulfillment of a
perception (or perhaps of any act) can properly be considered to be, in
Dummetts terms, the verification of judgments or propositions contained in the noematic sense (O, p. 116, quoted above). Husserls
view was that perceptions are nominal and not propositional acts;
an expression in language of their senses would, I have suggested, be
given by saying what is perceived. That would be done more faithfully
to Husserls intention by using noun phrases rather than sentences.
Furthermore, Husserl distinguishes the positing involved in perception
from that in judgment. The former positing might be compared to using
a singular noun phrase with the presupposition that it designates something, though we should not rush to the conclusion that some proposition to the effect that the phrase designates something, or of the form
P exists, where P is the phrase in question, is part of the noema of the
act. Still Husserl seems to regard perception as attributing properties to
the perceived object.
206
It is instructive to consider a passage in Ideas I, 124, the same section Dummett adduces to justify attributing to Husserl the thesis that
noematic senses are expressible (O, p.114). Husserl writes:
For example: an object is present to perception with a determined
sense, posited monothetically in the [thus] determined fullness.
As is our normal custom after first seizing upon something perceptually, we effect an explicating of the given and a relational
positing which unifies the parts or moments singled out perhaps
according to the schema, This is white. This process does not
require the minimum of expression, neither of expression in
the sense of verbal sound, nor of anything like a verbal signifying. But if we have thought or asserted, This is white, then a
new stratum is co-present, unified with the purely perceptual
meant as meant.
In the next paragraph of 124 (quoted by Dummett), Husserl writes,
Expression is a remarkable form, which allows itself to be adapted
to every sense (to the noematic nucleus) and raises it to the realm of
logos, of the conceptual and thereby of the universal.
The new stratum, evidently conceptual, must be what prompts
Dummetts comment that the noematic sense can be expressed linguistically, but is not, in general, present as so expressed in the mental
act which it informs (O, p.114). In the passage I have quoted, Husserl does not use noun phrases to express the sense, as I have suggested
he might have done; rather he uses a sentence. That seems to me, however, not the essential point. It seems that neither the sentence, This is
white, nor a noun phrase like this white thing gives quite accurately
even that part of the meaning of the perception it is meant to render.
On Husserls conception, nominal acts are simpler than propositional
acts; nominal acts simply intend an object, whereas a synthesis connecting such references is necessary for judgment. Moreover, it is by
expression that the conceptual and universal are brought in. The
reference to explicating parts or moments also suggests that it may
be Husserls view that what is meant perceptually is the objects particular moment of whiteness, not that it is white.26 If that is so, then the
26 This is the view taken by Kevin Mulligan in his rich and illuminating article
Perception. His interpretation refers, however, to the Logische Untersuchungen
207
expression in language does not quite give the perceptual sense, since
that aspect is not explicitly preserved in the linguistic expression. But
elsewhere (for example at the end of 130), Husserl does say that the
noema contains predicates. That seems to be his dominant view in
Ideas I. If there is equivocation, it is in response to a genuine philosophical difficulty, which, though its particular formulation may be an artifact
of Husserls apparatus and commitments, also arises in other philosophical discussions of perception. The difficulty is how perceptual consciousness is related to belief and judgment. One is reminded of the debate of
recent years about whether there is a nonconceptual content of experience, with Gareth Evans and Christopher Peacocke taking the affirmative side and John McDowell the negative.27 More simply put, Does
the statement that someone sees that this is white report what he sees,
or rather report a judgment he makes on the basis of what he sees?
It is not clear to me how Husserl reconciles the view that nominal acts
are inherently simpler than propositional acts with the view of perception as attributing properties to the object and therefore as presumably
involving the subject in something that, if not exactly judgment, at least
has the content that x is F. And the source of my unclarity is not only, I
think, the limitations of my knowledge of Husserl.
Let me first consider the view that Mulligan finds in Husserls earlier writings. In fact, it is not directly inconsistent with the interpretation of Ideas I that I have favored, according to which the noema of an
act attributes properties to the object. For it is a view about the objects
of perceptual acts. According to this view, perception of a white object
will contain a perception of its color moment. If the subjects attention
is directed to the color moment, however, things will be in a way reand Husserls 1907 lectures, Ding und Raum, so to texts earlier than the Ideas.
Still, that Husserl continued to hold this view in later years is indicated by his
account of the genesis of perceptual judgment in Erfahrung und Urteil; see
below.
27
See Evans, Varieties, ch. 5; Peacocke, Study of Concepts; and McDowell, Mind
and World, lecture 3. The discussion in Origins of the consciousness of animals
seems to be responding to this debate, and Dummett mentioned McDowells
view in his reply to my APA paper. I have found it difficult to place Husserls
position on these issues. Mulligan clearly interprets the earlier Husserl as being
on Evanss side, and the conception of pre-predicative experience in Erfahrung
und Urteil does look to tend in that direction. But the fact that the noema is very
much in the background in that work makes it difficult to draw any definitive
conclusion.
208
The view that the perceptual moment is not derivative from the property seems
to me more plausible in itself and probably as an interpretation of Husserl. Consider
an object that is red in a particular way, say one that is scarlet. If its color moment
derives from the property, then it seems it will need to have both a moment of redness and a moment of scarletness, and these would have to be distinguished. But I
do not find any phenomenological basis for such a distinction.
209
Let us attack again the distinction between perception and perceptual judgment. We can certainly distinguish between seeing a white object, say a white sheet of paper, and seeing of the sheet that it is white,
or seeing that there is a sheet of white paper present. Now I may see a
white sheet of paper without in any way identifying it as such, for example if the lighting conditions deceive me as to its color and for some
other reason I also do not detect its being paper. In that case only another person, or I myself in the light of later knowledge, can say that I
see (or saw) a sheet of white paper. For this reason, we normally take
x sees y to be a straightforward predicate, with whatever replaces
y as purely referential. But in the normal case, our perception is of a
sheet of white paper in an intentional sense; on the interpretation we
have been following, we could use the phrase a sheet of white paper
to render part of the noematic sense of the perception. In this situation
we see it as a sheet of white paper. For Husserl, that the conception of
the noema as attributing properties such as these does not imply that
we judge that the paper is white, as perhaps we do when we express
our perception by making a remark to that effect, should be clear from
the above-quoted passage from 124 of Ideas I. Reserving the locution
see that the paper is white for the case where there is a judgment
would preserve Husserls view of perception as a nominal and not a
propositional act.29
I offer these observations in order to clarify the distinction between
the noematic sense of a perception and the content of a perceptual judgment. But I still have to consider the question of the simplicity of perception. Our inclination would be to think of predicates in a more or
less Fregean way, as sentences with empty argument places, so that, if
our perception has the content a white sheet of paper, that perception would presuppose x is white and x is a sheet of paper. But we
should not assume that Husserl thought of predicates in this way.
In his account in Erfahrung und Urteil, the clearest difference between the pre-predicative level of perceptual experience and the level
at which predicative judgment emerges is that the attribution of properties to the object at the former level is implicit and only becomes
29
The suggestion of using a distinction between seeing as and seeing that in this
connection was made to me in conversation by Pierre Keller, to whom I am much
indebted here.
211
One difference between Husserls discussion and the contemporary one is that
he does not emphasize what does or does not belong to the space of reasons,
though I think the question is not entirely absent from his work.
212
Dagfinn Fllesdal suggested in conversation that the greater simplicity of perception is a matter of its thetic character. I think these remarks express some of what
he had in mind; I would have liked, however, to pin the idea down more precisely.
213
to show that there too the linguistic turn would provide the key. Ironically, although Husserls philosophy of perception may be the part of
his work that has most attracted analytical philosophers,32 it is a domain where the linguistic turn as Dummett formulates it seems to encounter limits.33
32
That is certainly true of Fllesdal and his pupils and also of Mulligan.
The present essay is descended from one written for a symposium on Michael
Dummetts Origins of Analytical Philosophy at the meeting of the Central Division
of the American Philosophical Association in Pittsburgh on April 26, 1997, with
Richard Cartwright as co-symposiast. That essay concentrated on what Dummett
had to say about Husserl. The further work leading to the present essay owes much
to Dummetts constructive and interesting reply on that occasion and to comments
by Jason Stanley. Dagfinn Fllesdal also commented in detail on a presentation of
the same essay at the University of Oslo, and he has made other helpful suggestions. I am indebted to Pierre Keller both for written comments on an intermediate
version and for a helpful discussion. Much of the writing of the present version
was done during a visit to the University of Oslo, to which I am indebted for hospitality and support, in particular again to Dagfinn Fllesdal. I am grateful to the
editors for the many improvements they have proposed.
33
214
BIBLIOGRAPHY
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In general, this bibliography and the references in the various essays follow the
same conventions as in my previous books, Mathematics in Philosophy and Mathematical Thought and Its Objects. Works are cited by author and title only, the
latter sometimes abbreviated. The following principles govern citations:
1. Works of an author are listed alphabetically by title rather than chronologically, to facilitate locating an entry.
2. In the essays, books are cited in the latest edition listed in this bibliography,
unless explicitly stated otherwise.
3. For articles, reprintings in collections of the authors own papers are listed,
but reprintings in anthologies are not. Where there is a collection of the
authors papers, reference is to the reprint in the collection.
4. For two authors I observe special conventions: In the case of Kant, see the
Note to Part I. In the case of Frege, as explained in Essay 5, writings
published in his lifetime are cited in the original pagination.
Allison, Henry E. The Kant-Eberhard Controversy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
. Kants Transcendental Idealism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1983. 2nd ed., revised and enlarged, 2004.
Anderson, C. Anthony. Some New Axioms for the Logic of Sense and Denotation:
Alternative (0). Nos 14 (1980), 217234.
Awodey, Steve, and Carsten Klein (eds.). Carnap Brought Home: The View from
Jena. Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 2004.
See also Reck and Awodey.
Baum, Manfred. The B-Deduction and the Refutation of Idealism. Southern
Journal of Philosophy 25 (supplement) (1987), 89107.
Beaney, Michael (ed.). The Frege Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Beck, Lewis White. Can Kants Synthetic Judgments Be Made Analytic? KantStudien 47 (1956), 168181. Reprinted in Studies in the Philosophy of Kant
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).
Beiser, Frederick C. The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.
. Mathematical Method in Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. In Domski and
Dickson, pp.243258.
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Domski, Mary, and Michael Dickson (eds.). Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science. Chicago and
La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 2010.
Dummett, Michael. Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1993.
Earman, John. World Enough and Space-Time. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1989.
Euler, Leonhard. Rflexions sur lespace et le tems. Mmoires de lacadmie des
sciences de Berlin, 1748. Reprinted in Opera omnia, Series tertia, vol. 2 (Geneva
1942), pp.376383.
Evans, Gareth. The Varieties of Reference. Edited by John McDowell. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1982.
Ewald, William (ed.). From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of
Mathematics. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Ewing, A.C. A Short Commentary on Kants Critique of Pure Reason. London:
Methuen, 1938. 2nd ed. 1950.
Falkenstein, Lorne. Kants Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental
Aesthetic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Flitner, Wilhelm. Erinnerungen, 18891945. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 11. Paderborn: Schoningh, 1986.
Fllesdal, Dagfinn. Analytic Philosophy: What Is It and Why Should One Engage
in It? Ratio n.s. 9 (1996), 193208.
. Husserl on Evidence and Justification. In Robert Sokolowski (ed.),
Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition: Essays in Phenomenology, pp. 107129. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy,
vol. 18. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988.
. Husserls Notion of Noema. The Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969),
680687.
. An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers. In R.E.
Olson and A. M. Paul (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia,
pp.417430. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.
Frede, Michael, and Lorenz Krger. ber die Zuordnung der Quantitten des
Urteils und der Kategorien der Quantitt bei Kant. Kant-Studien 61 (1970),
2849.
Frege, Gottlob. The Basic Laws of Arithmetic. Translated and edited with an introduction by Montgomery Furth. Translation of opening parts of Grundgesetze
and of the appendix to volume 2. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1964. (The original pagination is given in the margins.)
. Begriffschrift und andere Aufstze. Edited by Ignacio Angelelli. Hildesheim:
Olms, 1964.
. Briefe an Ludwig Wittgenstein. Edited by Allen Janik, with a commentary by Christian Paul Berger. Grazer philosophische Studien 33/34 (1989),
133.
. Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. Edited by Brian
McGuinness. Translated by Max Black and others. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.
. Conceptual Notation and Related Articles. Edited by Terrell Ward Bynum.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
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Veraart. Volume 2 of Nachgelassene Schriften und Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel. Edited by Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel, and Friedrich Kaulbach. Hamburg: Meiner, 1976. Partly translated as Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence.
See also Beaney.
Friedman, Michael. Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science. In
Guyer, Cambridge Companion to Kant, pp.160199.
. Geometry, Construction, and Intuition in Kant and His Successors. In
Sher and Tieszen, pp.186218.
. Kant and the Exact Sciences. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1992.
. Kant on Concepts and Intuitions in the Mathematical Sciences. Synthese
84 (1990), 213257. Reprinted with revisions as chapter 2, Concepts and
Intuitions in the Mathematical Sciences, of Kant and the Exact Sciences.
. Kants Theory of Geometry. Philosophical Review 94 (1985), 455486.
Reprinted with revisions as chapter 1, Geometry, of Kant and the Exact
Sciences.
. The Metaphysical Foundations of Newtonian Science. In R. E. Butts
(ed.), Kants Philosophy of Physical Science, pp. 2560. Dordrecht: Reidel,
1986. Reprinted as chapter 3 of Kant and the Exact Sciences.
. A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, Heidegger. Chicago and La Salle,
Ill.: Open Court, 2000.
. Synthetic History Reconsidered. In Domski and Dickson, pp.571813.
Gabriel, Gottfried. See Frege.
Gabriel, Gottfried, and Wolfgang Kienzler (eds.). Frege in Jena: Beitrge zur Spurensicherung. Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1997.
Gdel, Kurt. Collected Works, vol. 3: Unpublished Essays and Lectures. Edited by
Solomon Feferman, John W. Dawson Jr., Warren Goldfarb, Charles Parsons,
and Robert M. Solovay. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Guyer, Paul (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992.
. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
. Kants Intentions in the Refutation of Idealism. Philosophical Review 92
(1983), 329383.
Harper, William. Kant on Incongruent Counterparts. In James Van Cleve (ed.),
The Philosophy of Right and Left: Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature
of Space. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993.
Hintikka, Jaakko. Kantian Intuitions. Inquiry 15 (1972), 341345.
. Kant on the Mathematical Method. The Monist 51 (1967), 352375.
Reprinted in Knowledge and the Known.
. Kants New Method of Thought and His Theory of Mathematics. Ajatus 27 (1965), 3747. Reprinted in Knowledge and the Known.
. Kants Transcendental Method and His Theory of Mathematics. Topoi 3
(1984), 99108.
. Knowledge and the Known: Historical Perspectives on Epistemology. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974.
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Smith, Norman Kemp. A Commentary to Kants Critique of Pure Reason. London: Macmillan, 1918. 2nd ed. 1923.
Soffer, Gail. Husserl and the Question of Relativism. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991.
Spiegelberg, Herbert. Husserl in England: Facts and Lessons. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 1 (1970), 417. Reprinted in Husserl, Shorter
Works, pp.5466.
Stein, Howard. Eudoxus and Dedekind: On the Ancient Greek Theory of Ratios
and Its Relation to Modern Mathematics. Synthese 84 (1990), 163211.
Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kants Critique of Pure Reason.
London: Methuen, 1966.
Sutherland, Daniel. Arithmetic from Kant to Frege: Numbers, Pure Units, and the
Limits of Conceptual Representation. In Michela Massimi (ed.), Kant and
Philosophy of Science Today. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 63.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
. Kant on Arithmetic, Algebra, and the Theory of Proportions. Journal of
the History of Philosophy 44 (2006), 533558.
. Kants Philosophy of Mathematics and the Greek Mathematical Tradition. Philosophical Review 113 (2004), 157202.
. The Point of Kants Axioms of Intuition. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly
86 (2005), 135159.
. The Role of Magnitude in Kants Critical Philosophy. Canadian Journal
of Philosophy 34 (2004), 411432.
Tait, W.W. Cantors Grundlagen and the Paradoxes of Set Theory. In Sher and Tieszen, pp.269290. Reprinted in The Provenance of Pure Reason, pp.252275.
. Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind: On the Concept of Number. In Tait
(ed.), Early Analytic Philosophy, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein: Essays in Honor
of Leonard Linsky, pp. 213248. Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court,
1997. Reprinted in The Provenance of Pure Reason, pp.212251.
. The Provenance of Pure Reason: Essays in the Philosophy of Mathematics
and Its History. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Thompson, Manley. Singular Terms and Intuitions in Kants Epistemology. Review of Metaphysics 26 (19721973), 313343.
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(1989), 168189.
Tieszen, Richard. See Sher and Tieszen.
Tugendhat, Ernst. Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976. Translated by P.A. Gorner as Traditional
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COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Essay 1 appeared in Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 62100, copyright 1992 by
Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission of the publisher and editor.
Essay 2 appeared in Topoi, vol. 3 (1984), pp.109121, copyright 1984 by D.
Reidel Publishing Company, and is reprinted by kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.
Essay 3 appeared in Allen W. Wood (ed.), Self and Nature in Kants Philosophy
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), copyright 1984 by Cornell University, and is reprinted by permission of the editor and Cornell University Press.
Essay 4 appeared in Mary Domski and Michael Dickson (eds.), Discourse on a New
Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science (Chicago
and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 2010), copyright 2010 by Carus
Publishing Company, and is reprinted by permission of the editors and publisher.
Essay 5 appeared in Matthias Schirn (ed.), Studien zu Frege I: Logik und Philosophie der Mathematik (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1976), pp.265277, and is
reprinted by permission of the editor and publisher.
Essay 6 appeared as Review Article: Gottlob Frege, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, in Synthese, vol. 52 (1982), pp. 325343, copyright 1982 by D. Reidel
Publishing Company, and is reprinted by kind permission of Springer Science and
Business Media.
Essay 7 appeared in Dale Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp.168196, copyright 2004
by Cambridge University Press, and is reprinted by permission of the publisher and
editor.
Essay 8 appeared in Juliet Floyd and Sanford Shieh (eds.), Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001). Copyright was retained by the author. The essay is reprinted by permission
of the editors and Oxford University Press.
231
INDEX
233
INDEX
Benacerraf, Paul, 31
Beth, E. W., 26, 8081, 93, 102
Bolzano, Bernard, 80, 9199; on a priori
intuition, 9192, 94, 97; on associative
law of addition, 9495; Beitrge zu einer
begrndeteren Darstellung der Mathematik, 91, 9596; on construction of
number in time (see Construction); on the
distinction between representation and
what is represented (see Representation);
on intuition (see Intuition); logical
platonism, 95; on necessary judgments,
92; on necessity as a property ofjudgments (see Necessity); on pure intuition
(see Intuition); Rein analytischer Beweis,
96; on representation (see Representation); on the role of pure intuition in
mathematics (see Intuition); 7 + 5 = 12,
93, 192; on time and arithmetic,
9394
Brentano, Franz, 161189, 194, 195; on
concepts, 175176; modes of presentation, 173175; reism, 163, 175; on truth,
175189. See also Evidence, Brentanos
view of; Judgment (Brentano); Truth,
correspondence theory of
Brittan, Gordon, 71, 102
Brouwer, L. E. J., 188189
Buchdahl, Gerd, 71
Burge, Tyler, 131132
Calculation, 67
Cantor, Georg, 5153, 62, 118, 133135,
148; on consistent and inconsistent
multiplicities, 129; correspondence with
Dedekind, 129, 148; Grundlagen einer
allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, 133;
quantitative determination ofextensions, 134; Tait on Cantor, 133134; on
the totality of sets, 129, 133134. See
also Set and element
Cardinality. See Number; Set and element
Carnap, Rudolf, 142, 190; on Frege,
126127, 135136; Logical Syntax, 137
Carson, Emily, 105
Categories, 45, 72, 76, 78; categories of
quantity (see Quantity); categories of
234
INDEX
Eberhard, J. A., 44
Ehrenfels, Christian von, 185
Empirical content, 72
Equality of action and reaction, 71, 77
Erscheinungen, 34. See also Appearances
Euclid, 82, 97; Euclidean constructions (see
Construction); Euclidean geometry (see
Geometry); Euclidean space (see Space)
Euler, Leonhard, on space, 19
Evans, Gareth, 208, 212
Evidence, Brentanos view of: characterization of truth in terms of, 184; difficulties
of the characterization, 185
Existence, 44; existence at a definite time,
44; existence statements, 81; Wirklichkeit, 44, 47
Experience, 28, 72, 73, 78; analogies of
experience, 44; formal conditions of
experience, 45; objects of experience, 38;
outer experience, 75
Extension, Freges conception of, 117137;
as derived in relation to concepts, 121,
155156. See also Predicate; Russell,
Bertrand; Set and element
Extensionality, 119120, 124
Feature (Merkmal), 7
Finite, 63; finite iteration (see Time); finite
ordinals, 63; successive repetition, 62, 63
First Analogy, 77. See also Quantity
Fllesdal, Dagfinn, 195n, 213n
Forces, distribution of, 73
Form of appearances of outer sense, 29
Form of intuition. See Intuition
Frege, Gottlob, 63, 64, 117160, 190,
202203, 212; on arithmetic (seeArithmetic); Aufzeichnungen fr Ludwig
Darmstaedter, 127, 156; Ausfhrungen
ber Sinn und Bedeutung, 142; Basic
Laws, 132, 136; Begriffschrift, 124125,
136; Booles rechnende Logik und die
Begriffschrift, 141; cardinal number (see
Number); Carnap on Frege, 126127,
135136; on classes (see Classes); on
concepts (see Concepts [Frege]); context
principle, 213; on Dedekind (see
Dedekind, Richard); Die Grundlagen der
235
INDEX
236
INDEX
237
INDEX
238
INDEX
239
INDEX
240
INDEX
241
INDEX
Time (continued)
number, 66; as a pure image of quanta,
60; relation to arithmetic, 58, 65; relation
to number, 58; schematization of the
category of substance in terms of time,
77; as a subjective condition of apprehension, 58; succession in time, 95; successive addition, 60, 104, 114; successive
enumeration, 66; successive repetition,
62, 63; temporal conditions (conditions
of time), 57, 66; temporal content of the
notion of number (see Number); unity of
the manifold of space and time (see
Unity)
Totality. See Quantity
Transcendental Deduction, 45, 63, 84
Transcendental Exposition of the Concept
of Space, 11, 21, 27, 30, 103
Transcendental Exposition of the Concept
of Time, 11, 28, 103
Transcendental idealism, 33, 35, 36, 40,
41,58, 61; Husserls conception of
andcontrast with early analytical
philosophy, 198199. See also Distortion
Picture; Intensional view of appearances
and things in themselves; Subjectivist
view
Triangle, 20, 2426, 36, 4345, 59, 107,
109
Truth, correspondence theory of, 164;
Brentanos early questioning of, 178180;
virtual abandonment of, 181183
Types: cumulative theory of types, 150;
Frege on types (see Frege, Gottlob);
Korselt on types (see Korselt, A. R.);
Russell on types (see Russell, Bertrand);
simple theory of types, 150151
242