Notes on <Kant's Transcendental Idealism> - The Refutation of Idealism
The Refutation of Idealism contained in the Second Edition of the Critique is frequently regarded as the appendage to the Transcendental Deduction. The goal of the argument is to refute the skeptic by demonstrating that the reality of “objective experience”, or the applicability of the concept of an object in the “weighty” sense is a necessary condition of the consciousness of one’s identity through time as a subject of experience.
The analysis of the argument is divided into three parts. The first introduces some general considerations in support of this line of interpretation. The second analyzes the argument itself. The third deals with a possible skeptic response about self-knowledge.
Some General Considerations
The dominant line of interpretation, which links Refutation of Idealism with Transcendental Deduction, is derived from that fact that both arguments turn on a presumed correlation between self-consciousness and the consciousness of objects. Both argues that the latter is a condition of the possibility of the former. The problem of this interpretation is that it neglects the fact that the terms of the correlation are quite different in the two cases.
In the first part of Transcendental Deduction, Kant argues for a correlation between the transcendental unity of apperception and an object in the judgmental or logical sense. He claims that this transcendental unity is itself objective, that is, a unity which inherently involves the representation of an object. Just as the concept of object involved here is logical or judgmental, so the unity of consciousness or self-consciousness is purely formal. It is simply the unity which allows for the possibility of the consciousness of an identical “I think” accompanying all my representations.
In the Refutation of Idealism, Kant’s concern is to establish a correlation between empirical self-consciousness, described as the “consciousness of one’s existence as determined in time” or “inner experience” and the experience of objects in space, or “outer experience.” The thesis he argues for is that “the mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence, proves the existence of objects in space outside me” (B275). There are two forms of “material idealism” which denying this possibilities of experiencing objects in space. One the “dogmatic” variety, attributed to Berkeley, does this by denying the very possibility of spatial objects. The other, the “problematic idealism” of Descartes, which is the real target of the Refutation of Idealism, merely denies that we can have immediate experience, and therefore certainty, regarding the existence of such objects. Its basic claim is that “there is only one empirical assertion that is indubitably certain, namely, that ‘I am’“(B274). It follows that the existence of anything distinct from the mind and its contents can be established only by inference. The problem is that any such inference can itself be called into questions. Kant completely ignores the problem of other minds and focuses only on a skepticism about an external physical world.
Kant’s analysis of Cartesian positions shows that the root of problem lies in its assumption regarding self-knowledge. The Cartesian skeptic conflates the consciousness of the completely determinate, non-individuated I of apperception, the existence of which is given in the very act of thought, with the determinate awareness of a particular existing subject, which is given in empirical self-consciousness. In short, the skepticism conflates apperception and inner sense.
Once the distinction between these two forms of self-consciousness is clearly drawn, the certainty which presumably survives the Cartesian project of radical doubt is properly attributable only to the former, which does not itself counts as genuine self-knowledge, then the doctrine that self-knowledge is possible independently of a knowledge of things in space loses its main support. And since the Cartesian will not deny the reality of self-knowledge, he is forced to give up his skepticism.
Kant argues that empirical, not “intellectual” self-consciousness presupposes the actual experience of objects in space, it shows that Kant did not regard such experience, or the consciousness of objects in the “weighty” sense, as a necessary condition of apperception.
Kant’s Argument
The argument consists of five steps.
Step 1
I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time.
This is the premise that must be accepted by the Cartesian skeptic and that is supposed to generate the reductio. One question that arises is that whether this conscious should be identified with the mere awareness or with the actual empirical knowledge of the self and its states. Equally important is the question of what exactly one is supposed to be conscious of when one is conscious of one’s existence as determined in time. The first concerns the epistemic status of this form of consciousness, and the second its actual content.
It seems relative clear that the consciousness here involves actual self-knowledge instead of mere self-awareness. Textual support can be found in B275. Kant’s concern is the conditions of the possibility of making such judgments of inner sense. It is this possibility that Cartesian simply assumes, without any consideration of its necessary conditions.
If the consciousness of one’s existence in time is equated with inner experience, then it must consist in the mind’s knowledge of its own representations taken as “subjective objects”. These “subjective objects” are experienced as they “exist objectively in time”. In other words, they are experienced as mental occurrences, which are nonetheless all datable in the single objective time of the phenomenal world. The mind or self on this view is conscious of itself just as the owner of this sequence of representations, the subject of this particular mental history. This gives the subject its own identity as an empirical subject.
Step 2
All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception.
This premise refers to the Backdrop Thesis of the First Analogy. This thesis maintains that because of the unperceivability of time, it is necessary to presuppose some perceptual surrogate for time itself as a condition of the possibility of determining the temporal relations of phenomena. If there were nothing that endured then we could not become aware of either the coexistence or succession of phenomena in a common, objective time.
Step 3
But this permanent cannot be an intuition in me. For all grounds of determination of my existence which are to be met within me are representations; and as representations themselves require a permanent distinction from themselves, in relation to which their change; and so my existence in time wherein they change may be determined.
Kant realized that the failure to mention intuition left open an obvious move for Cartesian: claiming that the thinking subject is itself the required permanent entities, and that the existence of its states can be determined in time by being referred to it.
Kant acknowledges that we have the thought but not the intuition of such a subject, and that it must be conceived always as subject and never as predicate of anything else. We do have something permanent in us, the I itself. However the point is that because this representation is a thought and not an intuition, it does not refer to anything determinate which can itself serve to determine the existence of the self and its states in time.
All that we inwardly intuit is the appearing of our own representations. There is no additional intuition of a subject to which they appear. Since each of these appearings is a fleeting occurrence, inner intuition or experience does not provide anything capable of determining the existence of the subject in time. We cannot “look within” for the permanent that is required in order to determine our existence in time.
Step 4
Thus perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me; and consequently the determination of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things which I perceive outside me.
Having eliminated inner intuition or experience as a possible source of this permanent, Kant here turns to the only remaining candidate; namely, outer intuition. Since “outside me” must be taken in the empirical sense in order to characterize something intuited, and since space is the form of outer sense, the implication is that permanence must pertain to an object or objects in space. It certainly follows that the capacity to represent such objects is a necessary condition of the possibility of determining my existence in time. But if he is to refute the Cartesian skeptic, Kant must show that I actually experience or perceive such objects. The essential point is that whether in a particular instance I am experiencing or merely imagining is itself an empirical question, which can be intelligibly raised only against a presupposed background of actual experience. It is the latter that the skeptics denies and which Kant’s argument tries to establish. He said “All that we have sought to prove is that inner experience in general is possible only through outer experience in general” (B278-79)
But has he prove it? It confronts us in the text as a bald assertion without a trace of justification.
If one considers the official argument of the Critique, it seems possible to find two distinct lines of argument, which Kant himself never carefully distinguishes. Moreover, only one of these provides the basis for an adequate response to the skeptic, and even this one must be developed well beyond the point at which Kant leaves it. Next I’ll begin with the manifestly inadequate one.
This argument turns on the nature of outer sense. Its basic premise is that “outer sense is already a relation of intuition to something actual outside me.” Since no one will deny that we have an outer sense, all that is necessary to refute the Cartesian skeptic is to demonstrate the incoherence of the suggestion that we might merely believe or imagine ourselves to have an outer sense. Kant regards this as equivalent to the claim that we have merely an outer imagination but not an outer sense. He responded to this in a footnote:
It is clear, however, that in order even to imagine something as outer, that is, to present it to sense in intuition, we must already have an outer sense, and must thereby immediately distinguish the mere receptivity of an outer intuition from the spontaneity which characterizes every act of imagination. For should we merely be imagining an outer sense, the faculty of intuition, which is to be determined by the faculty of imagination, would itself be annulled. [B276-277]
Here Kant talks about the incapacity of the imagination, either of itself or with the assistance of inner sense to produce the representation of space or of things in space. Therefore, the mere fact that we have outer representations is taken as proof that we have an outer sense.
For the inadequacy of the argument, for one thing, the contention that we could not even imagine about outer objects unless we had an outer sense is similar to one which Descartes himself entertains and rejects in the First Meditation. For another, it seems to be hopelessly intertwined with Kant’s faculty psychology: it rests upon some dubious claims about the capacity of particular faculties to produce particular species of representations. Moreover, even if, for the sake of argument, they are accepted, the possibility still remains open that our representations of outer things are the results of some unknown “hidden faculty”.
Fortunately, the second line of argument provides a more promising basis for a critique of such a position. It is based upon a premise to which the idealist is presumably committed: I am conscious of my existence as determined in time, or, I have inner experience. Kant also talks about this in the preface [Bxl n.]
The main point here is that the consciousness of one’s existence as determined in time is a genuine bit of empirical knowledge: it involves the knowledge of existence of a particular thinking subject and of the temporal order of its states. The subject is conscious of these states as its own, and through the consciousness of the determinate temporal order of these states it can determine its own existence in a single, universal time.
It is assumed that the Cartesian skeptic accepts the genuineness of such consciousness. It follows that the skeptic cannot doubt the reality of whatever can be shown to be a necessary condition of the possibility of this experience. We have seen in step 2, however, that the determination of time, and therefore the existence of anything in time, presupposes the perception of something permanent in space. Therefore, the skeptic cannot consistently doubt the reality of this perception; more precisely, he cannot doubt that he actually intuits enduring objects in space.
Step 5
Now consciousness (of my experience) in time is necessarily bound up with consciousness of the (condition of the) possibility of this time-determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the existence of things outside me, as the condition of the time-determination. In other words, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me.
This marks the final step of the argument. It really does little more than make explicit the conclusion already arrived at. The key point is that inner experience involves not merely a bare awareness of one’s representations, but also the consciousness of one’s existence as determined in time. The argument has shown that this consciousness requires a reference to something permanent, and that is permanent must be located in space. It therefore not only shows in a general way that the possibility of inner experience is conditioned by outer experience, it also shows that inner experience is, in fact, always correlated with outer experience. Because the objects of both forms of experience exist in a single, universal time. Thus the Cartesian is in error in granting epistemic priority to inner experience or, to self-knowledge.
The Return of the Skeptic
The argument seems to suffer from at least one major defect: it rests on the premise that we are conscious of our existence as determined in time, or equivalently, it presupposes the reality of inner experience. Kant cannot be criticized for making this assumption. Nevertheless the fact that he does so raises the obvious question about the relevance of the argument to a more radical form of skepticism. Such a skepticism would doubt the reality of outer experience. It would doubt both outer and inner experience. Unless this form of skepticism can be refuted, the most that can be claimed for Kant’s argument is that it shows that one cannot both assume the reality of inner experience and doubt that of outer experience.
In this section, Henry Allison argues the key first premise of the Refutation of Idealism is not subject to the typical skeptical challenge to the reliability of memory, because it does not itself rest upon any assumptions about the self’s knowledge of its past states. He further argued that attempts to undermine it by raising doubts about the reality of time or the ownership of mental states are too no avail.