Lectures on Kants Prologomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Kant lecture, Prol.

1-5 The object of the book: to pose the question of the possibility of metaphysics: My object is to persuade all those who think Metaphysics worth studying, that it is absolutely necessary to pause a moment, and, neglecting all that has been done, to propose first the preliminary question, 'Whether such a thing as metaphysics be at all possible?' (1). Why would one ask this question? Because, in fact, we dont seem to have made any progress in it. If it be a science, how comes it that it cannot, like other sciences, obtain universal and permanent recognition It seems almost ridiculous, while every other science is continually advancing, that in this, which pretends to be Wisdom incarnate, for whose oracle every one inquires, we should constantly move round the same spot, without gaining a single step. (2-3). What is metaphysics, what is Kant talking about? Metaphysics in the classical, Aristotelian sense is science of being qua being. It is also a science of the highest being. The two answers are unified insofar as what makes a being be is 1) its form and 2) the at workness (energeia) of this form in informing matter (if it is the form of a material being) or informing mind. The highest being, mind, for Aristotle, is all the forms at work. Its work is that of self-thinking, self-informing thought. Aristotle called the science first philosophy. The origin of the name metaphysics after physics is not clear. It may refer to its shelf position in the library of Alexandria. In the middle ages, the emphasis was on the being of the highest beingGod. The fact that God was independent of and creator of the world began to shift its realm from the sensible to the super sensible. It also made some philosophers believe that there was no common sense of being between God and his creatures. Others thought that there was an analogous sense of being. But what determined the common ratio was not clear. At any rate, by the time of Leibniz, metaphysics had come to definitely designate the science of the super sensible. It has becomes the science of God, of first causes, of spirit as opposed to body, of Leibnizs monads as points of Gods vision. Kant simply accepts this definition. He writes for example :

First, as concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition, its very concept implies that they cannot be empirical. Its principles (including not only its maxims but its basic notions) must never be derived from experience. It must not be physical but metaphysical knowledge, viz., knowledge lying beyond experience. It can therefore have for its basis neither external experience, which is the source of physics proper, nor internal, which is the basis of empirical psychology. It is therefore a priori knowledge, coming from pure Understanding and pure Reason. (13)

Given this definition of metaphysics, the question of its possibility become the question of the possibility of such non-empirical, non sensible cognitions. It is knowledge coming from pure Understanding and pure Reason. Such knowledge is a priori. A priori signifies prior to empirical experience and, hence, independent of it. How can something be prior to empirical experience? By making experience possible. Example: perspectival unfolding makes possible the experience of three dimensional objects. Hence, apriori, i.e., prior to any experience of three dimensional objects, I know that such objects will show themselves perspectivally Example: The experience of color demands the experience of extension and vice versa. Hence, , apriori, i.e., prior to any experience of objects I know that every colored object will be extended and every extended object will be colored. What is the origin of the a priori? The ancient metaphysical answer was that it pertained to the structures of being e.g., the forms, etc. Kants answer: The origin is the subject itself. The experiencing subject is the universal condition for the experience of objects. But the argument is not: It is subjective, therefore it is apriori, but it is apriori therefore it is subjective. Thus, not everything subjective is a priori: If I wear rose colored glasses everything will appear rose colored, but I can always take the glasses off. The point is that this subjective condition is contingent and not apriori. Those things that are apriori are non-contingent conditions for the possibility of experience.

The cognitions of such conditions make up apriori knowledge. Question: are there any examples of such apriori cognitions. Yes. Both mathematics and physics have such cognitions. They both grasp conditions of the possibility of any experience of mathematics or of physical objects. If metaphysics is possible, then, it must have apriori knowledge and must demonstrate such apriori cognitions of the possibility of the experience of its objects: God is taken as the first cause, as the prime mover, etc., human freedom, immortal souls, monads, etc. The plan of the book. To show: How is pure mathematics possible? How is pure natural science possible? How is metaphysics in general possible? How is metaphysics as a science possible? In the first, we show the nature of mathematical a priori cognitions. And show that such exist. In the second, we show the nature of pure natural science a priori cognitions. And show that such exist. In the third, we the nature of metaphysical a priori cognitions i.e., what they must be. In the fourth, we show that such cognitions are impossible and hence metaphysics as a science is also impossible. To understand these demonstrations, however, a couple of crucial distinctions have to be made. The first is between analytic and synthetic judgments. (2) According to Kant: Analytical judgments express nothing in the predicate but what has been already actually thought in the concept of the subject, though not so distinctly or with the same (full) consciousness. In other words, all they do is clarify through analysis what we mean by the subject. In this they employ the law of non-contradiction. If a predicate is really contained in a subject, it cannot be denied without contradicting the subject. Example: suppose I deny free elections in my concept of democracy by talking of guided democracy as some current leaders do. An analysis would show that this is a contradictory concept insofar as democracy involves an openness of choice. Another example: body is extended. If I deny extension to body, I contradict its concept. All analytical judgments are a priori. One does not need experience. All one needs is to analyze the concept. This holds even if the concept comes from experience. Thus, gold

is a yellow metal is analytical. This is what I mean by gold. It is inherent in the concept that I have picked up from experience. This means I will never call something plastic gold. The concept, once fixed, determines what I will experience as gold. In Kants words, all analytical judgments are apriori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, Gold is a yellow metal; for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal: it is, in fact, the very concept, and I need only analyze it, without looking beyond it elsewhere (note: white gold is not actually gold, but rather gold coated with another metal) Synthetic judgments, by contrast, require that one go outside of the concept and add something to it. I put a predicate together with the subject and have a new item. The predicate is not included in the subject, but is added to it. According to Kant, Empirical judgments are always synthetical. (16). In fact, this is what experience is. It is a synthetical performance. Synthesis comes from sun tithemi-- to put together in Greek. So I put together my various experiences of an object and say that the object is red, round, heavy, in such a such a place , etc. I add to the concept of the object whatever experience shows me. Here the judgment is synthetical and a postiori (after experience). In Kants words, The possibility of synthetical a posteriori judgments, of those which are gathered from experience, also requires no particular explanation; for experience is nothing but a continual synthesis of perceptions (26) Note: As we shall see, our experience of time involves a continuous placing together of our present and our previous presentations of the object. Kants claim: mathematics is synthetic. Thus, 7+5=12 is a synthetic proposition according to Kant. 12 is not included in the senses and 5 and 7. The only thing thought here is "their union in a single number without it being at all thought what the particular number is that unities them. (17) To get 12 I must add successively the units of the 5 to the7 given in some concrete image. The adding is a putting together. In Kants words,

The concept of twelve is by no means thought by merely thinking of the combination of seven and five; and analyze this possible sum as we may, we shall not discover twelve in the concept. We must go beyond these concepts, by calling to our aid some concrete image [Anschauung], i.e., either our five fingers, or five points (as Segner has it in his Arithmetic), and we must add successively the units of the five, given in some concrete image [Anschauung], to the concept of seven. Hence our concept is really amplified by the proposition 7 + 5 = I 2, and we add to the first a second, not thought in it. (17). Note: Bertrand Russell tried to refute Kant by showing that mathematical judgments are analytic and can all be derived from a finite set of axioms through the law of noncontradiction (he did this in his Principia Mathematica, which he wrote with Whitehead). The famous refutation of this Gdels, On Formally Indecidable Propositions in the Principia Mathematica. He showed that if mathematics is analytic, it will always generate propositions of the form If X is true, then X is false. One would then have to posit a new axiom, e.g., X is true, to break the impasse, and so on indefinitely. Kants claim is that the judgments of math are both synthetic and apriori. Their basis is the pure forms of sensibility, i.e., space and time He also claims that the judgments of a pure science of nature are both synthetic and apriori Why should we think that this is the case? Because, from a single crucial experiment, we deduce not a probability, as Hume thought, but rather a law. We assume that the relation we discovers holds universally for every observer. Kants understanding of Hume is based on reading, not the Treatise, but rather the Inquiries Concerning Human Understanding. Here, Hume backs down from his claim that mathematics is an empirical science based on our impressions. He now says it is an analytical science, based simply on analyzing relations of ideas. This text is less consistent than the Treatise since one has to ask, where did one get these ideas? Isnt it from impressions. Thus, most philosophers prefer reading the Treatise. Even in the Essays, however, Hume continues his attack on science through undermining the notion of causality. Kant, however, has a special understanding of Hume. As Kant formulates Humes problem: The question was not whether the concept of cause was right, useful, and even indispensable for our knowledge of nature, for this Hume had never doubted; but whether that concept could be thought by reason a priori, and consequently whether it possessed

an inner truth, independent of all experience, implying a wider application than merely to the objects of experience. This was Hume's problem. (4) He does, however, get closer to Humes position, when he writes: For how is it possible, says that acute man, that when a concept is given me, I can go beyond it and connect with it another, which is not contained in it, in such a manner as if the latter necessarily belonged to the former? Nothing but experience can furnish us with such connections (thus he concluded from the difficulty which he took to be an impossibility), and all that vaunted necessity, or, what is the same thing, all cognition assumed to be a priori, is nothing but a long habit of accepting something as true, and hence of mistaking subjective necessity for objective. (28). Kants response to this will be: There is a subjective necessity, but it is not psychological i.e., based on association and habit. It is rather apriori. It is based on the conditions of the possibility of experiencing objects in naturei.e., objects there not just for me but for everyone. Basically, his argument will be, if we do not assume causality apriori, experience of nature will be impossible. Kant, Prolegomena , sec. 6-13 The question, how is pure mathematics apriori possible? Mathematics is synthetic, not analytic. This means that Mathematical cognition must !irst e"hibit its concept in a #isual !orm an$ in$ee$ apriori, there!ore in a #isual !orm which is not empirical, but pure.% Thus, both empirical an$ mathematical &or pure' intuition are synthetical, but, pure intuition allow o! apriori synthetic (u$gments. )mpirical intuition *#i+., sense-perception, enables us without $i!!iculty to enlarge the concept which we !rame o! an ob(ect o! intuition *or senseperception,, by new pre$icates, which intuition *i.e., sense-perception, itsel! presents synthetically in e"perience. Pure intuition *#i+., the #isuali+ation o! !orms in our imagination, !rom which e#ery thing sensual, i.e., e#ery thought o! material qualities, is e"clu$e$, $oes so li-ewise, only with this $i!!erence, that in the latter case the synthetical (u$gment is a priori certain an$ apo$ictical, in the !ormer, only a posteriori an$ empirically

certain &.3' /hat is Kant thin-ing o!? The normal e"perience o! the geometer. 0e e"clu$es in the consi$eration o! his !igures e#ery thought o! material qualities% &.3' when he imagines them. The question, howe#er, is1 0ow is this possible? 2sn3t it the case that !or all intuition an ob(ect must !irst be gi#en. 40ow is it possible to intuit *in a #isual !orm, anything a priori4 5n intuition *#i+., a #isual sense perception, is such a representation as imme$iately $epen$s upon the presence o! the ob(ect. 0ence it seems impossible to intuit !rom the outset a priori, because intuition woul$ in that e#ent ta-e place without either a !ormer or a present ob(ect to re!er to% &.6' 7ote1 2n some sense this is con!using the issue. Kant is ta-ing the apriori as meaning e"perience be!ore any perception o! particular ob(ects. 8ut this lea$s Kant as-s1 8ut how can the intuition o! the ob(ect *its #isuali+ation, prece$e the ob(ect itsel!? &.6' 9eally, what is at issue here is the $istinction between assertions arising from e"perience an$ assertions arising with e"perience. 5ssertions that arise !rom e"perience are empirical generali+ations. They state only probabilities. 5ssertions that arise with e"perience can state necessities. Thus, the geometer $oes not ha#e no e"perience at all. 0e $oes $raw !igures. :et he un$erstan$s as e"clu$ing material qualities, i.e., ha#ing them a $e!inite si+e, etc. 0e purpose!ully abstracts !rom, or $oes not ta-e into account, these particular !eatures. /ith this pure% e"perience, he sees apriori necessities. ;or e"ample, the necessity that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. This necessity is not an empirical generali+ation. 2t $oes not become more probable each time we $raw a !igure. /e see it at once. /hat are we intuiting here? /hat is the !ocus o! our attention. Kant3s claim is that when we are $oing geometry an$ abstracting !rom the material qualities o! our !igures, our intuition !ocus on simply the !orm o! sensibility as such. 2n his wor$s, There!ore in one way only can my intuition *5nschauung, anticipate the actuality o! the ob(ect, an$ be a cognition a priori, #i+.1 i! my intuition contains nothing but the !orm o! sensibility, which in me as sub(ect prece$es all the actual impressions through which 2 am a!!ecte$ by ob(ects.% <laim1 the intuitions which pure mathematics lays at the !oun$ations o! all its cognitions an$ (u$gments which appear at once apo$ictic an$ necessary are space an$ time.% =1> &.?'

This means that @eometry is base$ upon the pure intuition o! space. 5rithmetic accomplishes its concept o! number by the successi#e a$$ition o! units in time% &ibi$.'. Thus, all the geometrical propositions are e"pressions o! the pure !orms o! sensibility with regar$ to space. 5t their bottom is pure intuition o! space. )"ample1 5 straight line $roppe$ !rom the #erte" o! a triangle intersects the opposite si$e. 2! it $i$ not two straight lines woul$ enclose a space, but my intuition o! space $enies this. )"ample, 2 pro#e two triangles equal by showing that they coinci$e. 2 see% that this coinci$ence is e"act. 2n Kant3s wor$s1 5ll proo!s o! the complete congruence o! two gi#en !igures &where the one can in e#ery respect be substitute$ !or the other' come ultimately to this that they may be ma$e to coinci$eA which is e#i$ently nothing else than a synthetical proposition resting upon imme$iate intuition, an$ this intuition must be pure, or gi#en a priori, otherwise the proposition coul$ not ran- as apo$ictically certain, but woul$ ha#e empirical certainty only. &.6' 2n other wor$s, 2 woul$ be bac- to where 0ume was in asserting that my empirical, physical impressions $o not ha#e the e"actitu$e require$ !or geometry. 2 woul$ also be in the situation o! only being able to establish probabilities, not certainties. /hat about arithmetic? 0ow $oes it accomplish its concept o! number by the successi#e a$$ition o! units in time%? 2n arithmetic, the unit is that by which things count as one. 2! your unit is an orange, you can only count oranges, i! it is !ruit, you can count oranges an$ apples. /hat is the ultimate unit, that by which e#erything one woul$ count woul$ be one. Kant3s claim1 it is the empty moment, the moment that can contain any possible content. Thus, 2 a$$ units in time through my pure intuition o! time as consisting o! empty containers o! content. Point1 /hat is this intuition o! space an$ time? 5n intuition o! the !orms o! our sensibility. 5ll ob(ects to be sensible must con!orm to such !orms. This means they concern the appearance o! things. /hat we ha#e to $o with is the !orm o! the appearing o! ob(ects, rather than any inherent !orm, any !orm o! their properties. ;or Bescartes, by contrast, space an$ time concern the primary qualities o! things, i.e., their inherent properties. Mathematics gets the worl$ as it is in itsel!. The being o! corporeal things is e"tension. 5ll the sense qualities o! the things can be re$uce$ to mathematically quanti!iable mo$es o! e"tension. Kant. Mathematics gets the worl$ only as it appears to us, that is why it is apriori. 2! it got the worl$ as it was in itsel!, it woul$ be C postiori an$ not certain

This is because 0ume is correct1 what is establishe$ by e"perience is o#erthrowable by it Thus, Kant3s argument is1 either you accept that space an$ time are !orms o! our sensibility an$ $on3t pertain to the things in themsel#es or else you gi#e up all apriori claims with regar$ to math. 2n his wor$s1 Should any man venture to doubt that these are determinations adhering not to things in themselves, but to their relation to our sensibility, I should be glad to know how it can be possible to know the constitution of things a priori, viz., before we have any acquaintance with them and before they are presented to us. Such, however, is the case with space and time. But this is quite comprehensible as soon as both count for nothing more than formal conditions of our sensibility, while the objects count merely as phenomena; for then the form of the phenomenon, i.e., pure intuition, can by all means be represented as proceeding from ourselves, that is, a priori (27) To pro#e his point he uses the e"ample o! two opposing spherical triangles &triangles that share the same base on the equator o! a sphere. These triangles are the same in the sense that e#erything you can say about one, you can say about the other. :et they cannot be ma$e to coinci$e. 0ere, then, is an internal $i!!erence between the two triangles, which $i!!erence our un$erstan$ing cannot $escribe as internal, an$ which only mani!ests itsel! by e"ternal relations in space.% Thus !rom the point o! #iew o! the pure un$erstan$ing, these mirroring ob(ects are the same, but !rom the point o! #iew o! intuition, they are not. 7ow, i! we say that the un$erstan$ing can grasp the thing in itsel! &or at least thin- it', we ha#e to say they are actually the same triangle. 8ut this implies that the intuition that grasps them as two separate things $oes not grasp them as they are in themsel#es. 2n Kant3s wor$s, These objects are not representations of things as they are in themselves, and as the pure understanding would know them, but sensuous intuitions, that is, appearances, the possibility of which rests upon the relation of certain things unknown in themselves to something else, viz., to our sensibility. 13 (27-28) Another example is the view of your hand in the mirror. It is, in every describable respect identical to the hand itself, but as a mirror image. It cannot be made to coincide with your hand, no more than your left and right gloves (which are mirror images) can coincide. 5s a !urther proo! o! the !act, he notes that in space, the part $epen$s on the whole, but in reality, the whole $epen$s on the parts. That is to say, the part is only possible through the whole, which is never the case

with things in themselves, as objects of the mere understanding, but with appearances only. Hence the difference between similar and equal things, which are yet not congruent (for instance, two symmetric helices), cannot be made intelligible by any concept, but only by the relation to the right and the left hands that immediately refers to intuition. (28( 2t is this $epen$ence on the whole, on the right an$ le!t as mirroring each other because they are on opposites si$es o! the equator o! the sphere &which counts as the whole%' that is at wor- in the e"ample o! the triangles not being able to be equal. 8ut this means that space is not reality an$ $oes not re!er to it. 2t re!ers only to the !orm o! our sensibility. /hat !ollows this $escription are three 9emar-s.% They are Kant3s response to the claims that what he is a$#ocating is a rerun o! 8er-eley3s i$ealism. The !irst remar- asserts that only by treating space an$ time as !orms o! our sensibility can geometry be ma$e secure1 2n this and no other way can geometry be made secure as to the undoubted objective reality of its propositions (29) The second remark confronts the charge of idealism. If space and time are subjective, then everything in space and time are subjective. But then, objects only exist as perceptions. And this is idealism. Kant responds by making a distinction between his transcendental idealism and Berkeleys: Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves (30). But if we know nothing of such objects, Berkeley might reply, why posit them? Kants reply is that we posit them as causes of our representations. So the last sentence continues: we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. (30) /hat we ha#e is simply a transcen$ent a!!ection% which procee$s !rom the things in themsel#es which causes the representations.

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8er-eley woul$ say1 2t is illegitimate to posit causality as connecting e"perience an$ its groun$. The groun$ is outsi$e o! e"perience, but causality is an empirical concept. 2t is base$ on the relation between e"periences. 0e woul$ also say that Kant has alrea$y a$mitte$ the ma(or part o! his argument which is that the primary qualities are all sub(ecti#e. 5!ter all, Kant $oes say1 Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)-no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay, all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance. 8ut i! primary qualities are sub(ecti#e, why posit matter? /hat is its sense? /hat wor$oes it $o? 8ut i! we cannot posit matter, is there anything outsi$e o! us? 2n the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant ta-es up this issue. 0e there asserts that !or 8er-eley, my consciousness, my sel!hoo$, is certain, but not the e"ternal ob(ects. 7ow, such ob(ects are the D, the in$i#i$ual re!erence points o! #arious sets o! perspecti#ally or$ere$ perceptions. They are $istinguishe$ !rom such. Eur e"perience o! them is outer e"perience. Now, if I cannot make the thesis object=x, I cannot unify my perceptions. I unify them by taking them as perceptions of some one thing. But if I cannot do this, I cannot have a unified consciousness. This means that I have no sense of my own existence as something that is unified, something that remains, endures over time. Such a self-consciousness piggy backs, as were, of my consciousness of the world, of its enduring as a unity over time. If we accept this, then we have to reverse Berkeleys position and say that even our inner experience is possible only on our outer experiencethat is, our experience of the X. Thus, we have to assume this X, which as an X, we cannot know, in assuming our own self-identity over time. Kant, Prologomena to Any Future Metaphysics, sections 14-26, Open Court, pp. 50-70 The question : How is a pure science of nature possible?

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What is nature: The existence of things insofar as it is determined according to universal laws. (50) The notion of nature is that of an interconnected whole that can be grasped according to the laws that connect its elements. Assumption: everything tied in with everything in nature. All the knowledge of nature must be interconnected. Thus, isolated bits of chemical information do not make a science of chemistry Chemistry begins with the table of elements. So also modern biology with Darwin, etc. Kants position: The universal laws of nature do not apply to the things themselves. If they did, they would be drawn from them. But this would gives us only empirical generalizations, probabilities Therefore such laws must come from the conditions of the possibility of objective experience. What do we mean by objective experience? Distinction between the I see judgment and the there is judgment. Kants definition of judgment: the connection (synthesis, putting together) of perceptions. Example: the cat is on the mat. I connect the perception of the cat with the perception of the mat. In a judgment of perception, the connections are my own alone In a judgment of experience, the connections are necessary and universal. Example: The I see judgments of the cat running through the room vs. the there is judgment regarding the cati.e., there is a cat running through the room In the first, I am only reporting on my perceptions, in the second I claim that everyone will make the same synthetic connection of the different perceptions, that is, everyone will see what I do. Example: Descartes wax. The judgments of perception are that it is hard, brown, smells of the field, makes a sound and then when warmed is soft, colorless, has no odor and

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makes no sound when I rap it. The judgment of experience is that the same wax remains through all these changes. There is an unchanging substance there not just for me to see, but for everyone. Humes position, by contrast, is that there is no impression of substance, therefore, all we have is a bundle of impressions, a series of I see judgments relating to ourselves alone. Kant agrees that there is no impression of the underlying substance, but still we make the judgment that that wax is the same. We add a concept, that of substance, not from experience, but from the understanding when we make the objective claim that the wax remains. To understand the judgment of experience, which makes and objective (and not merely a subjective) claim, we have to understand: The equivalence of objective and universal validity Objective validity: the judgment holds (is valid, agrees) with regard to the object Universal validity: the judgment holds (is valid) for everyone judging the object The two are equivalent since objective validity, as agreement with the object, implies the agreement of all judgments concerning the object with each other, and vice versa In Kants words: Therefore when a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments concerning the same object must likewise agree among themselves, and thus the objective validity of the judgment of experience signifies nothing else than its necessary universality of application. And conversely when we have reason to consider a judgment necessarily universal we must consider it objective also, that is, that it expresses not merely a reference of our perception to a subject, but a quality of the object. For there would be no reason for the judgments of other men necessarily agreeing with mine, if it were not the unity of the object to which they all refer, and with which they accord; hence they must all agree with one another. Therefore objective validity and necessary universality (for everybody) are equivalent terms. But having assumed that we cannot know the object in itself, Kant then reduces objective validity to universal validity. In universal validity, the connections between perceptions that give us the objects we judge about are taken as universal and necessary.

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Example: If I assert that When the sun shines on the stone, it grows warm the connection of the corresponding perceptions is assumed to be merely subjective, i.e., merely according to my experience. If, however, I assert that The sun warms the stone, the addition of the concept of sun causing the stone to become warm makes the assertion into one that holds for every experiencer. Here the connection the corresponding perceptions is asserted to be universal and necessary. Everybody will first perceive the sun shining then will perceive the stone warming up Point: the concepts of the categories (the pure concepts of the understanding) are what we add to our perceptions to move from a judgment of perception (true for me) to a judgment of experience (true for everybody). They are what we add to perceptions in order to enter into the intersubjective community. What is added is not a perception or a connection of perceptions. It is rather an interpretation of this connection. I take the connection as obtaining not just for me but for everybody. What we confront here are the categories that put us into the world that is shared with and valid for both myself and my fellow perceivers. In other words, my perceptions continue to be my own, but their connections are now interpreted as holding not just for myself but for others. At that point the object or state of affairs that they exhibit is assumed as holding also for these others. What I have to do with here is an interpretative stand that I must assume if I am to enter into an intersubjective world. Relation of table of judgments to table of concepts. The judgment defined: The union of representations in one consciousness is judgment. The function of judgment is that of uniting representations. In Kants words, The logical functions of all judgments are only various modes of uniting representations in consciousness. As for the concepts of the understanding, such as substance, cause, etc., they are the

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concepts of intuitions in general so far as these are determined by one or other of these logical functions. In Kants words, For the pure concepts of the understanding must run parallel to these [logical] functions [of judgment], and such concepts are nothing more than concepts of intuitions in general, so far as these are determined by one or other of these functions of judging, in themselves, that is, necessarily and universally. So the categorical function: S is P corresponds to the concept substance (S) which has predicates (P) The hypothetical function: If S, then P corresponds to the concept of cause, S causes P. Thus when we add the concept, for example, that of substance, to the bundle of impressions that we have of the wax, then according to Kant, we represent the intuition as determined in itself with regard to one form of judgment rather than another (here the categorical ) What we have added is a concept of that synthetic unity of intuitions which can only be represented by a given logical function of judgments. Thus, the concept of substance is a concept of a synthetic unity of intuitionsnamely, the unity of a set of intuitions as having one referent, say the table over there. This is represented by the categorical, S is P, form of judgmentnamely, This is a table. Taking this as necessary, I move to a judgment of experience. I say that there is an object out there that I see and that all other can see. Everyone will, I claim, experience a pattern of perceptions whose referent is this table. Similarly, the concept of cause is that of a synthetic (connected) unity of intuitionsone where I say that the order of intuitions is fixed. This synthesis implies the unidirectional flow of time, that is, first this perception, then this (never the reverse) in the connected chain of my perceptions. This concept is represented by the hypothetical, if P, then Q, form of judgment. Now if the order of perceptions is fixed both for me and everyone else, my judgment has universal and hence objective validity. In other words, once we do add these concepts (which are interpretative categories), then we do not just have judgments of perception, we have judgments of experience. The claims we make in our judgments concerns universal, and hence, objective validity. Such validity is a function of universal and necessary connection of the given perceptions which bring the object or state of affairs to presence. (sec. 19). Thus, I assume an interpretative stance which takes the connections I experiencee.g., those giving me some objectas necessarily experienceable by everyone else.

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This interpretation puts me in a world with others. It gives me an intersubjective context, one with intersubjective claims. Kants claim: We only enter into this common world, we only escape Humes solipsism through the addition of the categories (such as substance and cause) which he denied (since he could not find an impression corresponding to them). Kants position is that it is precisely because we cannot get them from experience, that they are apriori. They are an interpretative stances we must assume if we are to talk about public, common experience. Note: we would say that others socialize us by teaching us this stance. The child only gradually learns to take up the stancei.e., judge according to the categories. Note: The fact that judgments of experience make universal and necessary claimsi.e., the claims that everyone will experience the objects in the way that we dois what opens them up to falsification. I judgment of perception, being merely subjective, can never be falsified by others. A judgment of experiencee.g., the book is on the tablecan be since it make a claim regarding their experience as well as our own. Further points about the categories. The category of Substance corresponds to the sensations being united in some referent Causality corresponds to the sensations having a definite order (always first this, then that) in time Community is the notion of reciprocal causality Reality corresponds to sensations having some degree of vividness (cf. Humes vividness=reality). Negation corresponds to their having no vividness at all Limitation is the in-between state Possibility is the notion that appearances conform to the conditions for the possibility of experience. Thus, it is the agreement of the synthesis of appearances with the conditions of time in general Actuality (existence) is existence at some definite time Necessity is the existence at all times Quantity corresponds to the fact that phenomena in space and time are measurable (we can specify how far and how long something is) All of these correspond to specific forms of judgment. Note: Kant has explained why logic applies to reality. The forms of logic are actually the forms of synthesis and corresponding interpretations by which we get the real, i.e., the 16

objective world. Note: Since all the categories have to do with interpretations of what we perceive, they apply only to the perceptional world. The categories without experience are empty, since they have to do with our taking the connections of experience as necessarythat is, our taking them such that everyone will experience them in the same way. So how is pure science of nature possible? It is possible because it is based on the categories. Thus, the foundation of science is formed by the synthetic apriori propositions that substance is permanent, and that every event is determined by a cause according to constant laws. 15 (36) The first allows us to posit matter, the second causality. We can do this since such categories are assumed in order to speak of an objective world, if we did not assume them, we would be left with Humes solipsism. Thus, what Kant has done is to reinterpret Humes results. Hume, who is a skeptic, shows that without the categories such as cause and substance, we are solipsistic. We do not know whether there are other human beings or whether there is an objective world in which we are present together. He also shows that there are no impressions corresponding to these categories. Therefore, he assumes that we are solipsistic. He writes: I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate. Kant agrees, but says that we are not alone. There are others. Therefore the categories must obtain. He also agrees that there is no impression corresponding to them. Hence they must not be a matter of perception, but of our interpretation of perception. They are what we must assume to get out of our heads and construct a world. The assumption is that everyone else goes through the same construction. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he proves this by showing that without such an assumption, we would not have a self. The self would only be a bundle of perceptions with no central referent. Hume, of course, agrees with this, this is his picture of the self. He writes: The mind is a .kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only,

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that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is compos'd. Kant goes further. He shows that without the categories we would have no single observer of the worldthere would be no unitary observer to grasp these perceptions. Kant, Prolegomena, sections 27-39 Kant begins by stating that he is now able to remove Humes doubt: According to Hume, we cannot comprehend by reason the possibility of causality, that is, the possibility of the reference of the existence of one thing to the existence of another which is necessitated by the former. Kant remarks that this also holds for concepts of substance, of a subject that cannot itself be a predicate (Aristotle) and of community (mutual dependence). Kant agrees with Hume, they do not come from experience, there is no impression behind these concepts. But also asserts, they are not (as Hume thought) mere illusions produced in us by long habit. Rather they are what we add to experience in order to make it possible. What we add are concepts corresponding to the forms of logical judgment. Such concepts are connections of representations in our understanding, and in judgments generally Thus, the representations appear in one sort of judgment (categorical assertion, S is P) as subject in relation to predicates, in another or sort of judgment (that of the hypothetical assertion, if S then P) as ground in relation to consequences, and in a third (disjunctive assertions, either S or P, i.e., if not one then the other), as parts which constituted together a total possible cognition. Example: causality I experience A then I experience B, I do so repeatedly. But I do not yet say, A is the reason for or the cause of B To assert this, I must go beyond my experience, i.e., the connection of representations in my consciousness. I must move from a judgment of perception (I experience A then I experience B) to that of a judgment of experience (A causes B). Kant writes that if this proposition, which is merely a subjective connection of perceptions, is to be a judgment of experience, it must be considered as necessary and universally valid.

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The connection, first A then B, must be such as to hold for all experiences. This can only happen by adding the concept of necessary connection between the two representations. Thus, I add the concept of causality, which is simply the conception that this connection (first A, then B) is necessary. I thus interpret the experience of A, then B, such that the antecedent can be conjoined with the consequence according to the rule of hypothetical judgments. (ibid.). I interpret the experience such that I can say if A, then B and mean by this A causes B. Note: from this follows the applicability of logic to experience. The applicability follows since the logical forms are my interpretative schema. The point: the concepts which I add in such an interpretation serve to decipher [interpret] appearances that we may be able to read them as experience. 30 die reinen Verstandesbegriefe dienen gleichsam nur, Erschienungen zu bustabieren, um sie als Erfahrung lessen zu knnen. Kant. Prol. Sec. 30.

Appearance is appearance to me. It is private. Experience is intersubjective. The claim of a judgment of experience extends to all the observers of the same phenomena. Thus concepts, such as that of causality, are the ways we move from personal to intersubjective experience. To add such concepts is to assume that others are experiencing as one does. We can, however, never verify such concepts. To do so would be to be able to see through another persons eyesi.e., see that they are experiencing the same sequences of perceptions that we are. Since this is impossible, we simply assume these concepts. We assume that we are in an intersubjective world, a world that has its objects and our experiences of them in common. What are the concepts of the categories? They are interpretative functions, ways of deciphering the succession of appearances. We must assume them if we are to be in the world with others. The concept of cause is the interpretation that others experience the same succession of appearances as you do. Thus privately: I may first move my head one way, and then the otherthe succession of what I see is my own.

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But publicly, everyone sees my head move first in one direction and then in the next. The question that arises here is: Which comes first? Is it the assumption of necessary connection between representations or is the assumption that there are common objects out there of which we are having experience.? Kants position is that the objective world is founded on the intersubjective world which is founded on the assumption of necessary connections between experiences. Suppose, however, that we said that first the things in themselves are, then their experience exist, and insofar as this experience is founded on the things it is necessary and universal for all those who experience such things, and on this the intersubjective world is given. We have an intersubjective world insofar as we have a common world of things. The question: Where do you place the weight of your assumption--on the ontological reality of the world or on the concepts you add to your experience? Kant (showing the influence of Hume) places the weight on the concepts. I cannot start out with things. All I have are my impressions. I must add my concept to thesei.e., interpret the connections between appearance I experience as necessaryto move to a world of objects. Such concepts cannot, therefore, apply to the things themselves. Their referent is simply the appearances. They are the ways we interpret such appearances so as to make possible experiencei.e., the intersubjective-there-for-everyone experience. As Kant puts this: Our pure contents of the understanding extend to nothing but objects of possible experience, consequently to mere things of sense, and as soon as we leave this sphere these concepts retain no meaning whatsoever. Thus, cause only has meaning with regard to the succession of representations (our interpretation of this as necessary). It does not apply beyond this to things causing each other or, indeed, their causing our perceptions. (This is why Kant will only speak of a transcendent affection with regard to the relation of things affecting us). Similarly, substance only has meaning in terms of interpreting a bundle of perceptions such that they have a common referent, an X. The point is that while the ancient world assumed that being was given, Kant following Descartes and Hume, begins with our representations and makes the assumption of the necessity and universality of their connections. From this, he gains a world. But this world (including its Others) is strictly determined by his epistemological performance, that is, his activity of synthesis.

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In fact, since I only have an objective world by assuming that others necessarily synthesize as I do, I have to assume that are no others that are in this objective world who do not synthesize as I do. As opposed to this, one could argue, as Heidegger does, that one must begin with the world. To begin with the world is to begin with need. It is to begin with the dependence of the self on the world. Thus, I need the world for my projects. This is not an epistemological relation, but, in Heideggers terms, an ontological one. Here, one goes from the world to the corresponding epistemology. My being-in-the-world is one of disclosing it and, correspondingly, disclosing myself within it. In doing so, I thrust the within me, the representations, without me. They appear in the world that I disclose through my projects. Thus, paper appears in the world as paper to write on if this is my project, i.e., if I fulfill my need to write. Universality here is part of belonging to the same culture, i.e., having the same projects. Ultimately the basis of this universality is our having the same bodies and hence the same body projects such as going to the bathroom, feeding ourselves, etc. Kant now makes another point. Reflecting on why from Plato onward, people engaged in metaphysics, i.e., in thoughts that exceeded all experience, he writes: the understanding begins its aberrations very innocently and modestly. It first elucidates the elementary cognitions, which inhere in it prior to all experience, but yet must always have their application in experience. It gradually drops these limits, and what is there to prevent it, as it has quite freely derived its principles from itself? And then it proceeds first to newly-imagined powers in nature, then to beings outside nature. 35 Here, he is thinking about Plato. For Plato, the ideas were the invisible looks of things. Since the conceptual self-identities they embodied were the very being (ousia) of to be (einai), they were prior to all experience. For Plato, apriori judgments are judgments based on the ideas. Since the ideas determined being, any judgment by them both applied to being and was apriori. Kants assertion is that such ideas are apriori and determinative of nature only because they come from us, i.e., from the nature of the ways in which we connect experiences and then assume such connections are necessary. To prove Plato wrong, he will have to show that when we take the catergories (or ideas) as pertaining to the things in themselves we will inevitably run into paradoxes. Kant concludes this section by giving his answer to the initial question: how is a pure science of nature possible?

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It is possible because the understanding does not derive the laws of such a science from nature but prescribes them to nature. For example, consider the proposition, in a circle, chords drawn at right angles are cut into segments that form equal rectanglesrectangles with the same area. The question is: does this law lie in the circle or in the understanding?

Does the figure contain in itself the ground of the law? Or does the understanding, having constructed the circle according to its concepts (having defined the circle as a figure with equal radii), introduce into it this law? Kant asserts the latter: When we follow the proofs of this law, we soon perceive, that it can only be derived from the condition on which the understanding founds the construction of this figure, and which is that of the equality of the radii. (58). In other words, we are only getting out of this figure what we put into it by constructing it with equal radii The same holds with the inverse square law according to which force is inversely proportional to the inverse square of the distance. This rests on the fact that the surface area of a sphere increases according to the square of the radius. Thus, the force per unit area on the sphere must decrease according to the square of the radius. This is why no other force law is possible in the space we experience. Now what happens is that in analyzing this space, i.e., in speaking of it in terms of the area of a sphere, we are using our understanding. This is the source of the laws. Thus Kant writes: Now I ask: Do the laws of nature lie in space, and does the understanding learn them by merely endeavoring to find out the enormous wealth of meanings that lies in space; or do they inhere in the understanding and in the way in which it determines space according to the conditions of the synthetical unity in which its concepts are all centered? (59). The answer is the last option: Space is something so uniform and as to all particular properties so indeterminate, that

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we should certainly not seek a store of laws of nature in it. Whereas that which determines space to assume the form of a circle or the figures of a cone and a sphere, is the understanding, so far as it contains the ground of the unity of their constructions. (ibid.). The point: it is the necessities of the understanding and its need of consistency (as exemplified in geometry) that is the basis here. The mere universal form of intuition, called space, must therefore be the substratum of all intuitions determinable to particular objects But the unity of the objects is entirely determined by the understanding, and on conditions which lie in its own nature; and thus the understanding is the origin of the universal order of nature (ibid.). The point is that we take this amorphous space, regard it geometrically, applying the categories of sphere, radius, and surface, and then interpret it accordingly. The resulting force law was in fact inherent in this procedure. The Appendix asks: How do we know that there are only 12 categories? After all, Aristotle had only 10, other philosophers had different numbers. Kants answer is once you separate out space and time (which are inherent in Aristotles categories of time when, place where, etc.) you can see that they are all derived from a single faculty, that of judging, taken as the faculty of connecting representations. Then, all one does to look at the tables of the logicians, take these as ways of uniting representations and it becomes apparent that there are only 12 possible purely formal ways. As we shall see, the unity of the categories is founded on a single act. The Critique of Pure Reason shows that all the categories, taken as rules for the necessary connection of perceptions, can be derived from one single necessary act of consciousnessthat of the I reproduce. Kant Prolegomena, sections 40-56 Kant now takes up the question, How is metaphysics possible? His answer is that it is not possible. This is because, Metaphysics has to do with pure rational concepts, which can never be given in any possible experience. This means that The objective reality of these concepts ... and the truth or falsity metaphysical assertions cannot be discovered or confirmed by any experience. They cannot be confirmed because metaphysics employs the concepts of reason and the concepts of reason aim at the completeness, i.e., at the collective unity of all possible experience, and thereby transcend every given experience. It is precisely this that distinguishes such concepts from those of the understanding.

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The concepts of reason are, in fact, those of the understanding taken such that they transcend every given experience. Example, causality: If I want to grasp all the causes completely, then I have to have a notion of a first cause. But such a cause exceeds experience since it is not in time in the sense of having an antecedent state that could bring it about. Now reason consists of three types of syllogisms: the categorical, the hypothetical, and the disjunctive. From these we get the three ideas of reason. Sec. 43 categorical: leading to the category of substance, which leads to the rational idea of the soul as an immortal unchanging substance hypothetical: leading to the category of cause, which leads to the rational idea of a first cause disjunctive: leading to the category of community, which leads to the rational idea of the world as a complete context of the totality of what is possible, i.e., the world as the totality of possibilities. The underlying requirement of reason is that of completeness. Kant writes that pure reason ... only requires completeness of the use of the understanding in the system of experience. But then it takes this completeness which can only be a completeness of principles of the understanding and makes it a completeness of intuitions. It then posits an object corresponding to such completeness. Thus, it moves from completeness in the system of causes to positing a first cause and thence to positing God as a first cause. God is the idea invented to bring completeness to the chain of causes In Kants words, In order to represent its ideas completely, reason conceives them after the fashion of the cognition of an object ...but the object is only an idea invented for the purpose of bringing the cognition of the understanding as near as possible to the completeness represented by that idea. (sec. 44) So the completeness represented by the idea of causality appears objectified as God as first cause. We see this procedure at work in the argument: If the causal chain were infinite, given the temporal distinction between cause and effect, an infinite amount of time would have to have occurred before the present state, but then this present state would never have occurred. Therefore, there must be a first cause. Similarly, the distinction between a subject that is not a predicate and its predicates

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ultimately gives one a subject (as distinguished from all possible predicates) that is inconceivable. It isnt even in space or time. Thus, I am tempted to assert that it is absolutely unchanging (insofar as change involves space and time) Doing so, I seem to prove from the concept of a subject, which does itself not exist as the predicate of another thing, that its existence is thoroughly permanent. But this is an illusion. In calling it permanent, I am thinking of it as a substance. The notion of the substance is that of a one in many, an X or common point of reference of a series of perceptions. It endures through such a series. It has no sense apart from it. If the perceptions cease, it ceases. The same holds for the self as the subject that has perceptions. Such a subject is posited as long as there are perceptions. We cannot know if such perceptions continue after death, therefore we cannot posited the self as immortal. As Kant puts this: life is the subjective condition of all our possible experience, consequently we can only infer the permanence of the soul in life; for the death of man is the end of all experience which concerns the soul as an object of experience, except the contrary be proved, which is the very question in hand. (sec. 48.) . Question: How do I get out of these illusions? How can I make these metaphysical uses of reason display their true character? Answer: the antinomonies. We find that when we employ the concepts of the understanding beyond their use of specifying the connections in perception that give us a world, we can prove and disprove all the major metaphysical theses. We can argue conclusively that : The world has a beginning, it does not There are least material elements (atoms) in the world, there are not. There are causes through freedom, everything is determined There is a first, necessary being, there is not. To show what is at work here, Kant brings up the example of a square circle. If I posit a square circle, I can prove it to be round and not round. In Kants words, Contradictory propositions cannot both be false unless the concept which is the subject of both is selfcontradictory. Similarly for each of the antinomonies: There is a contradiction involved in this unlimited use of the concepts of the understanding, a use that makes us take them as applying beyond any possible sense graspable by the understanding So, the concept of first cause has the contradiction of positing causality (which is succession in time) and a first (which has no time before it).

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The same contraction holds for a notion of the self as a substance that is out of time and in time. A separate case: the antimony of freedom. Here, one conjoins freedom and necessity even though these apply to different spheres--the phenomenal and noumenal. Thus, the contradictory concept is that of freedom appearing in the phenomenal world. The point can be put in terms of the distinction between the judgment of experience and that of perception. To move to the judgment of experience, I have to assert the necessity of my sequence of perceptions. Only in this way can I assume that others are having the same experience as I do. I make this assumption for all public objects. Thus, for every public object I assert that nothing occurs without its cause. (This follows because causality for Kant is necessary sequence in the series of perceptions). None of this is required for the judgment of perception which concerns my internal state, i.e., my perceptions as my perceptions. Thus, the statement I will x is both a judgment of perception and an assertion of freedom. As the former, it does not contradict the judgment of experience which concerns only public objects. Neither the I, nor the will, nor the x are public objects. Thus, the X is the future state I will to bring into being. As such, it does not yet exist. It is only presence is as a motive. Motives are distinct from causes. Causes must first exist in order for their effects to then exist. Motives, by contrast, are goals. They serve as interpretative categories for our past (allowing us to see the past as a set of resources to achieve the goal). As such, they guide our present activity in its use such resources to achieve their realization. The point is that their sphere is entirely internal. As non-public, a goal is distinct from the concept of cause understood as a category of interpretation required to make something public. It is only when we speak of the causality of freedom that we then put forward a self-contradictory concept that allows the antinomies to work. It is at this point that we can prove that freedom exists and that it does not exist as we focus first on the sphere of the judgment of perception and then on the sphere of the judgment of experience. What about the objection that the events that I will appear? My freedom changes the course of events. As such, it is appearing freedom. The answer is that insofar as it is taken as publicly appearing, that is, as there for everyone, my actions are assumed to be somehow caused. I assume in advance that the sequence of perceptions that gives them has a necessity. Otherwise, I could not assume that others see the same sequence as I do. Thus, the answer is that freedom does not fit into the appearing of the public world, understood as a world there for everyone. Now, in fact, what happens is that I assume that the other person, like myself, is both free

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and unfree. In order to have an intersubjective world, I have to grasp others as subjects like myself. This means that they have to be like me in being free. As free, however, they cannot appear in the intersubjective world. In this world, I and others appear as caused. Thus, I take the other as vulnerable to the assaults of the world, as capable of being crushed by it. Yet I also take her as an free agent, as able to employ its causality to accomplish her purposes. As a causal agent, she moves objects by moving herself. While her moving objects is apparent, her self-movement is not. Objectively, the most I can imagine is a little person within her moving her. Since this fiction is untenable, I have to say that this appearance conceals an essential hiddenness. The other as free, as initiating her motion, does not appear in the objective, public world. This duality of outlook appears in court cases. One can take the objective point of view and say the person was not responsible for his actions. Circumstances caused him to do it. One can even use the insanity defense. He was caused to do the act by the (mis)functioning of his brain. One can also hold the person responsible for his actions. He should have risen above his circumstances, he should have known right from wrong, etc. Kants point is that these two perspectives are not contradictory if we realize that they belong to two different spheres: causality belongs to the public sphere, freedom belongs to the first person, private sphere, the sphere that cannot appear in the public world. With regard to this first person, private sphere, Kant does recognize that even though it is not public, there is a sense in which we cannot say that it is free. This involves my needs and desires. These tie me to the public world. Thus, if I act on my hunger to eat something, I am no more free than a hamster who does the same. To really speak of freedom, we have to our actions independently of the inclinations that spring from our needs. What is left? Reason. I can only be free by being determined by reasonSo determined, I do not have subjective grounds (inclinations) driving me to do something, but objective, rational grounds. In his words, the causality of reason would be freedom with regard to the effects in the sensuous world, so far as we can consider objective grounds, which are themselves ideas, as their determinants. For its action in that case would not depend upon subjective conditions, consequently not upon those of time, and of course not upon the law of nature, which serves to determine them, because grounds of reason give to actions the rule universally, according to principles, without the influence of the circumstances of either time or place. Kants point is that reason, as expressed in the syllogism, involves neither space nor time. The premises of a syllogism do not cause the conclusion. They are not before the conclusion in time. If I say, all As are Bs and all Bs are Cs, and I conclude, all As are Cs, all I have done is express a timeless relation of inclusion. All As are members of the class of Bs and all Bs are members of the class of Cs, therefore

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Now with regard to free action, reason gives me universal ethical lawssuch as that of the categorical imperative: Act such that your maxim of action can be considered a universal law of nature. As a universal law of nature, my maxim cannot regard my special circumstances. As applying to everyone at every time, it abstracts from any special circumstances that might determine me. It considers my action as free, that is, as freely chosen independently of such circumstances. Suppose, for example, that my maxim were to lie to gain an advantage. If this were universalized, no one would believe me. When I see this, my reason present me with the objective ground determining my action, namely: dont lie, tell the truth. With this, we have a second answer to the question of appearing freedom. Here, freedom does not appear, since its actions being guided by maxims raise to universal laws of nature are indistinguishable from the goings on of nature itself. In Kants words: For what is required for the necessity of nature? Nothing more than the determinability of every event in the world of sense according to constant laws . But I say, that the law of nature remains, whether the rational being is the cause of the effects in the sensuous world from reason, that is, through freedom, or whether it does not determine them on grounds of reason. For, if the former is the case, the action is performed according to maxims, the effect of which as appearance is always conformable to constant laws; if the latter is the case, .. the action is subjected to the empirical laws of the sensibility, and in both cases the effects are connected according to constant laws; more than this we do not require or know concerning natural necessity. This argument depends on Humes position that causality is simply constant conjunction and succession. First I experience A, then B. I then assume A causes B. For Kant, such constant conjunction is there whether I am determined causally or rationally (according to universal maxims). Therefore, from the outside, my actions will appear, by virtue of such constant conjunction, as caused. For Kant, the whole history of metaphysical speculation which involves such antinomonies discussed in todays lecture, is a proof of the validity of his critique of the pure reason involved in metaphysics. All its ideas, substance, cause, freedom, when pushed to the limit, self-contradictions. Such self-contradictions involve taking the categories as if they applied to the world in themselves rather than to the relations of our perceptions of it. Kant Prol., sec. 57-9, Scolia Kant begins with a defense of his notion of things in themselves. Having asserted that it

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would be absurd to make the categories of the understanding apply to things in themselves, he then states, But it would be on the other hand a still greater absurdity if we conceded no things in themselves, or set up our experience for the only possible mode of knowing things, our way of beholding [Anschauung] them in space and in time for the only possible way (120) Why? Kant asserts that if we did this, we would have the principles of the possibility of experience considered universal conditions of things in themselves. This is because, if there are no things in themselves, then all we have is our experience and its way of knowing. At this point, experiential objects are all there is. They become the new things in themselves. Thus, what we could not experience would not be. It would be a fiction. This is Humes procedure. Hence, Kant writes, the limits of our reason [would then] be set up as limits of the possibility of things in themselves (as Hume's dialogues may illustrate). (120-1). At this point we would dismiss things like the soul, God, freedom, as pure fictions since they are not experienceable objects. Another fact of relevance is that we can never really stop inquiring into the nature of things in themselves. This predisposition to metaphysics is inherent in our nature. This is because reason itself drives us to it. As Kant writes, experience never satisfies reason fully, but in answering questions, experience refers us further and further back, and leaves us dissatisfied with regard to their complete solution (121). Thus, the explanation of one cause by another continues endlessly. There is an the insufficiency of all physical modes of explanation to satisfy reason. (122). To grasp this insufficiency, Kant makes a distinction between limits (Schranken) and bounds (Grenzen). He writes: Bounds (in extended beings) always presuppose a space existing outside a certain definite place, and enclosing it; limits do not require this, but are mere negations. This means that as long the cognition of reason is homogeneous, definite bounds to it are inconceivable. Thus, space is always surrounded by space, time by time. This means with regard to mathematics, the enlarging of our view in mathematics, and the possibility of new discoveries are infinite. And the same is the case with the discovery of new properties of nature. (123) Kants point is that math does not draw you outside of itself, neither does physics. They keep within the bounds of their material. They only recognize limits, where the notion is

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only of negation (I have only gone this far, I could go further). Here, as Kant writes, Limits ... are mere negations, which affect a quantity, so far as it is not absolutely complete. (122) Pure reason, however, in the form of metaphysics does lead us to bounds. It leads us to ask about what is beyond experiencei.e., what happens when we cross its bounds. (123) Point put in terms of Denken vs. Erkennen All of our knowledge (Erkennen), everything we know fall under the category of appearance, "space time and the categories and, still more, all the concepts formed by empirical experience or perception have and can have no another use than to make experience possible" (120) But appearance is not reality. The notion of appearance contains the thought of the reality, of the thing in itself apart from the categories we use to represent it. We think (denken), intend this, even though we do not know it. The fact that we do think the things in themselves thus leads us to the bounds of our knowledge. The nature of such bounds are given by the transcendental ideas: the notion of the soul, of freedom, of God. As Kant writes, since the transcendental ideas have urged us to approach them, and thus have led us, as it were, to the spot where the occupied space (viz., experience) touches the void (that of which we can know nothing, viz., noumena), we can determine the bounds of pure reason. (125). We can do so since in all bounds there is something positive. (ibid.). Thus, a surface bounds space and its itself a space i.e., has a positive characterization as a space. Now with the transcendental ideas, we have an actual connection of a known thing with one quite unknown. This means that the notion of this connection must be definite, and capable of being rendered distinct. How do we do this? On the one hand, since we have to accept things in themselves and since such things are represented by the transcendental ideas (as the ideas of completion of the series of conditions), we must, Kant writes, accept an immaterial being, a world of understanding, and a Supreme Being (all mere noumena). We must because in them only, as things in themselves, reason finds that completion and satisfaction and because appearances have reference to something distinct from them (and totally heterogeneous), as appearances always presuppose an object in itself, and therefore suggest its existence whether we can know more of it or not. (ibid.).

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Thus, reason itself as well as the fact that appearance presupposes things in themselves forces us to accept the soul (the immaterial being), the world of understanding (which is the world of freedom) and the Supreme Being (God). What do you think? Do you accept the force of Kants argument? This acceptance, Kant adds, does not mean that we know these items. We can only think them. In his words, we can never know these beings of understanding as they are in themselves, yet since we must assume them as regards the sensible world, and connect them with it by reason, we are at least able to think this connection by means of such concepts as express their relation to the world of sense. (126). How are we to do this? Where is the positive content that the notion of a bound gives to such ideas? Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion argues that there cannot be any positive content. Take, for example, God. All the content we would give to this idea comes from us. It thus leads to anthropomorphism. If we strip this out, there is nothing left. As Kant relates his argument, Suppose I attribute to the Supreme Being understanding, for instance; I have no concept of an understanding other than my own, one that must receive its perceptions [Anschauung] by the senses. But if give him this form of understanding, I also give him senseseyes, ears, nose, etc. I turn God into a person. (126). But if I dont do this, and try to separate understanding from sensibility, then nothing remains but the mere form of thinking without perception [Anschauung], by which form alone I can know nothing definite, and consequently no object. (127). How do we get around this argument? Kant says that we do so by means of the notion of a boundary, which draws its positive content from that which it bounds. Thus, a surface that bounds space is itself a space. The same holds for the notion of a supreme being. He writes: if we limit our judgment merely to the relation which the world may have to a Being whose very concept lies beyond all the knowledge which we can attain within the world we then do not attribute to the Supreme Being any of the properties in themselves, by which we represent objects of experience but we attribute them to his relation to the world. (129) What we have here is a unique form of analogy. An analogy is a proportion, a is to b, as c is to d. It asserts that a has to b the same relation that c has to d. What holds it together is the concept of this relation. So when I say, the motion of the bird is to air as the motion of the fish to water, then the concept of being able to freely move up down or sideways is what binds this analogy. Humes argument is that there is no common concept linking human relations to God. Every time we introduce one, we fall into anthropomorphism.

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Kant asserts, we can speak about God without asserting our similarity to God. We can have an analogy that is based on a a perfect similarity of relations between two quite dissimilar things. (129) Examples: the physical actions of bodies where every action gives rise to an equal and opposite reaction and the juridical relation where I never can do anything to another man without giving him a right to do the same to me on the same conditions. The things are perfectly distinct, but the relations are the same. Similarly I can assert: as the promotion of the welfare of children (= a) is to the love of parents (= b), so the welfare of the human species (= c) is to that unknown [quantity which is] in God (= x), which we call love (129). Thus, it appears to me as love, but what it is actually, I dont know. I call it love not as if it had the least similarity to any human inclination, but because we can suppose its relation to the world to be similar to that which things of the world bear one another. (129). The result, according to Kant, is a symbolical anthropologism, which in fact concerns language only and not the object itself. (ibid.). His claim is that by means of this analogy there remains a concept of the Supreme Being sufficiently determined for us, though we have left out everything that could determine it absolutely or in itself; for we determine it as regards the world and as regards ourselves, and more do we not require. (130) How convincing is this? Suppose I think of God as the rational cause of the universe, engaging in the watchmaker analogy. The watch, through its artifice, points to the watchmaker. So the rationality of the world in its laws points to a rational cause. Here, according to Kant, reason is thereby not transferred as a property to the First Being in himself, but only to his relation to the world of sense The claim is: anthropomorphism is entirely avoided. For nothing is considered here but the cause of the form of reason which is perceived everywhere in the world, and reason is attributed to the Supreme Being, so far as it contains the ground of this form of reason in the world. (131) Note: the ground grounded relation is such that the ground is by definition other than the grounded. Note: A similar argument can be made with regard to substance. Substance is more than a bundle of perceptions. Although we can only know the bundle, adding to it the notion

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of an X, a common referent to each of the perceptions, we can think the thing in itself to which this referent corresponds. The sense that the bundle is appearance and that we only know appearance brings with it the notion of a corresponding reality (if we are to avoid idealism). Similarly, all the phenomena the enter into the constitution of our notion of God (taken as an X, a one in many that is distinguished from them) point beyond themselves to a corresponding reality. The reality can be thought but not known. Thus, as an in-itself, we do not attribute to the Supreme Being any of the properties in themselves by which we represent objects of experience. God is simply the intention, the Denken, that is contained in the appearance of God, i.e., his representation in terms of what can appear--viz., our experience of ourselves, our will, our understanding. The Denken passes through this to the corresponding reality without transfering to it the categories of appearance. Question: has Kant avoided the skepticism of Hume? How successful is this account? Kant affirms that the transcendental ideas generated by metaphysics have the advantage that they free our notions from the fetters of experience and from the limits of the mere contemplation of nature. The idea of the soul (the psychological idea) frees me from materialism. The cosmological idea frees me from naturalism, , which asserts nature to be sufficient for itself. Finally, reason frees itself by means of the Theological Idea from fatalism, (both as a blind natural necessity in the coherence of nature itself, without a first principle, and as a blind causality of this principle itself), and leads to the concept of a cause possessing freedom, or of a Supreme Intelligence. Thus the transcendental Ideas serve, if not to instruct us positively, at least to destroy the rash assertions of Materialism, of Naturalism, and of Fatalism, and thus to afford scope for the moral Ideas beyond the field of speculation. These considerations, I should think, explain in some measure the natural predisposition of which I spoke. The point can be put in terms of the meaning of alterity. Its most basic meaning comes from Kant. For Kant, the other is worthy of respect precisely through his not being a product of the synthesis of our conscience experiences. In Kants analysis, the others freedom, his not being subject to the causality that characterizes the appearing world, his noumenal (non-appearing) stature, his escape from the categories of the understanding (taken as categories of the synthesis of appearances), and his being worthy of respect are all equivalent expressions. The phenomenological truth behind this is that I can recognize another person as a person precisely when I recognize that this person continually escapes my presentations of him. He is other in the sense of being distinct from all the other objects I can synthesize. Thus, according to the French philosopher, Levinas, the enigma or ambiguity of the face is that it both calls forth and tears itself away from ... presence and objectivity. The calling forth occurs in the fact that I can see the face of the Other. Synthesizing my experiences, I can phenomenologically describe and objectively represent its physical features. The face, however, is not a catalogue of such features. Insofar as it is grasped as the face of another person, it is

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grasped as exceeding this. Thus, when I look at the eyes of another person, I see and I do not see. I see the eyes as features of the face. I do not see what makes them eyes--that is, their seeing. Both what they have seen and what they will see (the other persons past and future) escape me. This escape is the ongoing rupture of phenomenology, a rupture that I experience as the face, grasped as a face, continually tears itself away from my re-presentation. Insofar as the other is in me, i.e., an element of my consciousness, this rupture is also in me. It expresses itself as limitation of my ability to completely synthesize, grasp, objectify the other person. Kant, Prolegomena, Appendix The context. Kant has been accused of idealism. The man who writes the review, J. G. H. Feder, makes two claims. Summarizing Kant, he writes: All our cognitions arise from certain modifications of ourselves. What these exist in, where they come from, is ultimately completely unknown to us. ... [On this conception] of sensations as mere modifications of ourselves (on which Berkeley too chiefly builds his idealism) and of space and time [as nothing actual outside us] rests the one basic pillar of the Kantian system. Out of sensible appearances, which are distinguished from other representations only by the subjective condition that time and space are connected with them, the understanding makes objects. It makes them (in Gttingen Review, in Johann Schultz, Exposition of Kants Critique of Pure Reason, p. 171). In other words, since the understanding makes its objects, we are back in Berkeleys system. But is this is so, how do we distinguish actual experiences from dreams and mere imaginings. According to Kant, it is the coherence of waking experience, i.e., its following the rules of the understanding, that distinguishes it from dreams. Feder, in criticizing this, writes, For the author, experiences in contrast to mere imaginings or dreams, are sensible intuitions connected with the concepts of the understanding. But we confess that we do not see how the difference between the actual (wirklich) and the imagined--a distinction which is usually so easy for the understanding--can be adequately based on the mere application of the concepts of the understanding without assuming that [at least] one characteristic of the actual is found in the sensation itself. (Ibid., p. 173). The point here is that, given that existence is not a predicate (as Kant does assert), how can the fact of coherence of what we experience, which is a coherence of its predicates according to the rules of the understanding, establish the existence of the object that distinguishes the real from the imaginary. Kants difficulty is that he has asserted that the object in itself is entirely unknown. But if

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it is, we cannot really refer to it to distinguish dreams from reality. All we can talk about are the qualities of what we experience, that is, their coherence. But such coherence of predicates does not capture existence. Kant in his reply does not address these criticisms directly. Instead he makes what at first is a curious claim: The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: All cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason is there truth. The assertion is that in the traditional idealism, one treats the claim of the senses and experience, the claim that they actually reach a world out there, as false. You assert that you only achieve truth by an intellectual understanding. Note: for Kant this is, first of all, Descartess claim. Descartes asserts that properly speaking, I dont see the same wax. I understand that it is the same. In Kants eyes, he is asserting a kind of intellectual intuition. Thus, according to Descartes in the Meditations, I bring a piece of wax close to the fire. Before it was cold, hard, smelled of honey, made a sound when I rapped it. Now, "its magnitude increases, it becomes liquid and hot, and can hardly be touched" (see Descartes, Meditations, tr. Cress, p. 65). When you knock on it, "it does not emit any sound." In short, its color, odor, sound, and shape changes. How do I know that it is the same? According to Descartes, I judge that the wax remains. I grasp it as the same through a judgment by the mind. For Kant, this is tantamount to a form of intellectual intuition. He thus sees it as a part of a history of idealism that goes back to Parmenides assertion that the changes that we see with our senses are illusionary, that we can see (understand) that being is one and unchanging. This tradition also includes Platos claim that the reality of the world, the forms, are not grasped by the senses, but through a kind of mental vision. One can also include here the view of modern science that the reality of the world consists of the mathematical formulas that describe it, that its experiential presence has to be transformed into these formulas if we are to get it in itself. Kants position, he claims, is the reverse of this form of idealism. His position is: All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth. The claim is that truth is in experience, that is, in its apriori forms. Thus, Kants distinction between transcendent and transcendental idealism. The former proceeds beyond all experience, the latter refers to the conditions of the possibility of experience.

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Here, as Kant writes: the word transcendental does not signify something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible| (p. 107) Kant uses this distinction to differentiate his transcendental idealism from Platos. Plato inferred from our cognitions a priori (even from those of geometry) another intuition different from that of the senses (namely, an intellectual intuition), because it never occurred [to him] ... that the senses themselves might intuit a priori. (108) Thus, for Kant, instead of Platonic forms that we grasp through intellectual intuition, we have apriori forms of experience (forms that make the senses themselves intuit apriori). Certainty does not come from the forms (or the ideas) understood as patterns or models of reality, which reality participates in and cannot contradict. It comes from the forms of experience themselves. Experience itself has forms which make it possible. What we have here is a reinterpretation of Platos forms as forms of experience, and intellectual intuition (which grasps the ideas) as senses that must proceed according given formsnamely those of the understanding. Having dealt with Cartesian idealism, Kant then distinguishes his position from Berkeleys idealism. For Berkeley there are no objects out there supplying us with the material for experience. For Kant, however, we need a transcendent affection to supply us with such material. This follows since the forms are forms for experience. As such, they do not supply our experience, they only interpret it. Sensuous experience must be given for them to inform it. What about the objection that the understanding cannot supply us with a criterion to distinguish imaginary from real experience Behind this is Kants doctrine that existence is no real predicate. As he puts this in the Critique of Pure Reason, in the mere concept of a thing no mark of its existence is to be found (A225/B272). Kants reply is that the presence of sensation does this. He writes in the Critique Space itself, with all its appearances, as representations, is, indeed, only in me, but nevertheless das Reale, that is, the material of all objects of outer intuition, is actually given in this space, independently of all imaginative invention (A375). In other words, over and beyond the coherence of my predicates, which gives me the possibility that what I am experiencing is real, I have given to me the material of the objects of outer intuitionthat is the actual sensations.

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This harks back to the distinction between reality and negation in the table of categories. Sensations insofar as they have a degree (between no intensity and a maxim) fall under the category of quantity. Reality corresponds to having some degree Negation corresponds to having no sensations at all. Thus his answer is that the positing of existence comes not from the understanding, but from the sensuous material that it informs. Aristotle, incidentally, asserts the same thing. Having asserted that the individual existent cannot be definedsince the predicates cannot capture the individual existencehe says that it can only be grasped directly through its perceptual presence. Of interest here is the other division of the concepts: that of modality. As we recall, Possibility is the notion that appearances conform to the conditions for the possibility of experience. Thus, it is the agreement of the synthesis of appearances with the conditions of time in general Actuality (existence) is existence at some definite time Necessity is the existence at all times What makes existence at some definite time is the presence of sensations. Such presence however points to the external reality supplying the perceptions. Thus, the difference with Berkeley is that Berkeley, to distinguish the real from the imaginary, has to say that the perceptions that we take to be of real objects are given by God. The perceptions that we take to be imaginary are given to us by ourselvesi.e., by our imaginations. For Kant, however, to perceive objects is to inform sensations. It is to connect experiences according to the categories. It is not to provide oneself with these experiences and it is not to be provided by God with them. He would also ask, if there are no objects out there, if, as Berkeley says, all I have are my perceptions, how would one distinguish perception and its object? The object is red, is the perception red? The object is three feet long, is the perception three feet long? For Kant, this difficulty disappears insofar as we distinguish perception as an act from perception as an object and assert that the act of perceiving is our using our categories to connect our experiencesi.e., give them some common referent. The result of the action is the perceived object.

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