Notes on <Kant's Transcendental Idealism> - The First Analogy
The initial problem for any interpretation of the First Analogy is to determine what the argument is intended to prove. This is not as simple a matter as one might suppose.
The First Analogy is really concerned with the necessary conditions of all time determination, and not merely with the conditions of the possibility of time measurements.
The situation is further complicated by Kant’s combining this general thesis about necessity of the permanent as a condition for all time determination with a thesis about change. He argues that all “change” among appearances must be conceived and experienced as an alteration of a substance that endures. First Edition Principles states: “All appearances contain the permanent substance as the object itself, and the transitory as its mere determination, that is, as a way in which the object exists” (A182). In Second Edition Kant goes further, asserting that the quantum of substance remains constant in the universe.
In the first section, I will argue that the move from relative to absolute permanence is sounds and that the claim about the permanence of the quantum of substance in the Critique is in order and must be distinguished sharply from the principle of conservation of matter. In the second section, I briefly consider the question of the coherence of Kant’s conception of substance.
The Second Edition Argument
“In all change of appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is neither increased nor diminished” (B224). We’ll first cite the entire argument and then comment on each step.
The argument consists in seven distinct steps. These steps, in turn, can be grouped to four parts, each of which constitutes a sub-argument. 1-4 contends that something at least relatively permanent is required as a substratum or backdrop in relation to which change can be experienced. 5 argues that every change of appearances must be regarded as the change of state of this substratum. 6 asserts that this substratum must be absolutely, not simply relatively, permanent. 7 maintains that the quantity of this permanent substratum remains constant throughout all change.
The Backdrop Thesis
[Step 1.] All appearances are in time; and in it alone as substratum (as permanent form of inner intuition), can either coexistence or succession be represented.
The initial step of the argument re-affirms the temporality of all appearances. The foundational role of time for all appearances is now expressed by characterizing it as “substratum”. This is a key term in the overall argument, and its appearance here serves to prepare the way for the eventual introduction of the concept of substance.
[Step 2.] Thus the time in which all change of appearances has to be thought remains and does not change; for succession or coexistence can only be represented in it as its determinations.
The claim that time is unchangeable or permanent is really equivalent to the claim that it retains its identity as one and the same time throughout all change. The thesis of the unity of time, its identity through all change, is central to the whole argument: it makes it possible to link substance directly to time and to argue that schema of substance is necessary for a determinate representation of time.
[Step 3.] Time cannot by itself be perceived.
The unperceivability of time is a common and essential premise of the argument of each of the Analogies. Like the preceding two steps it is a consequence of the analysis of the Transcendental Aesthetic. This premise is significant because it both defines the problem to be resolved and points to the direction in which the solution is to be found. It accomplishes the former by eliminating the possibility of determining the objective temporal relations of appearances by referring them to “time itself”. Since this manner of determining time-relations rests on the assumption that time is some sort of experientially accessible object or quasi object, it is ruled out by this premise. It accomplishes the latter because it makes clear that the temporal relations of appearances can be determined only by considering the appearances themselves and the rules for their connection in consciousness.
[Step 4.] Consequently there must be found in the objects of perception, that is, in the appearances, the substratum which represents time in general; and all change or coexistence must, in being apprehended, be perceived in this substratum, and through relation of the appearances to it.
This makes explicit the obvious and already noted implication of the preceding step: that the unperceivability of time makes it necessary to presuppose some perceptually accessible model for time itself as a condition of the possibility of determining the temporal relations of appearances. In the First Edition, Kant identifies the model, or “substratum” with “the object itself” (A182-83/B227). The point is that this model or object must embody the permanence that has already been attributed to time itself. An enduring, perceivable object is required to provide the backdrop or frame of reference by means of which the succession, coexistence and duration of appearances in a common time can be determined.
Form Substratum to Subject, or the “All Change is Alteration” Thesis
[Step 5.] But the substratum of all that is real, that is, of al that belongs to the existence of things, is substance; and all that belongs to existence can be thought only as a determination of substance.
Taking Paton’s interpretation, “all that belongs to existence” means changing appearances which have determinate positions in time. On this reading, Kant is claiming that all these appearances must be regarded as states or determinations of substance. There is certainly no warrant for taking “substance” to be something absolutely permanent. But still this thesis takes us beyond the Backdrop Thesis. The present claim is that all changes of appearances must be experienced as alterations in the states of the relatively permanent entities.
To support the claim, first it is crucial to become clear about the meaning of Wechsel. It is a kind of change in which one item is replaced by another, so it’s better to translate that as replacement change.
For this permanent is what alone makes possible the representation of the transition from one state to another, and from not-being to being. These transitions can be empirically known only as changing determinations of that which is permanent. [A188/B231]
The references in these sentences to the representation of transition and to empirical knowledge indicate that the required argument must turn on an appeal to the condition of the possibility of the conception or experience of a replacement change.
The assignment of the successively represented states of affairs to an enduring substratum functions as the rule through which we think a replacement change. To think such a change is just to connect one’s perceptions according to the rule. This makes it into a transcendental condition of the experience of a replacement change.
Unfortunately Kant didn’t spell out the argument in the First Analogy.
From Relative to Absolute Permanence
[Step 6.] Consequently the permanent, in relation to which alone all time relations of appearances can be determined, is substance in the appearance, that is, the real in appearance, and as the substrate of all change remains ever the same.
Up to this point, the argument has shown only that one must include in one’s ontology enduring, re-indentifiable entities which function as substrata of change. The next step is to demonstrate that some of these entities are absolutely permanent. Only by this Kant can establish the objective reality of the schema of the pure concept of substance. The criticism here is the move to absolute permanence is unwarantted.
What must be proven is that there is something substantial in things, something that does not come into or go out of existence. It seems more reasonable to construe him to be claiming that such changes can be experienced in alterations only of something truly substantial that persists throughout all change.
The argument required at this stage is on the necessary unity or identity of time as a condition of the unity of experience. It proceeds by applying the “all replacement change is alteration” principle to the enduring entities or substance candidates whose necessity has been established in the preceding step. We have already seen that the conception of the replacement change requires that both states of affairs be linked to an identical subject as its successive determinations. But an absolute coming-into or passing-out of existence would be an occurrence in which these conditions would not pertain. And there would be no way in which the emergence of this new state of affairs could be connected empirically with the preceding time, such an occurrence would cause a rupture in the unity of time, and therefore the unity of experience. Kant summarized this in [A188-89/B231-32]
Kant does not claim that the coming into or passing out existence is self-contradictory. However, if such an “event” were to occur, we should lose that which can alone represent the unity of time, namely, the identity of the substratum. And they need to relate to two different times. And there is no contradiction is the thought of a number of times (or spaces) that are not part of a single time. The impossibility lies in the nature of human sensibility, our form of intuiting.
The key to the argument of absolute permanence lies in the identification of substance with the matter of which the things are composed. This identification is necessary in order to have a subject or substratum of which one can predicate the changes which occur when enduring physical objects come into or pass out of existence. This is a strictly transcendental claim which tells us nothing about the nature of the matter.
The Quantity of Substance
[Step 7.] And as it is thus unchangeable in its existence, its quantity in nature can be neither increased nor diminished.
Kant here asserts that the permanence of substance entails the conservation of its quantity in the universe.
Major objection here is Kant is making a move from transcendental to empirical considerations. In particular he’s attempting to deduce the principle of the conservation of mass in Newtonian mechanics. However, the argument is still a transcendental-level argument.
In the Critique Kant does not offer an explicit argument to take us from 6 to 7. But it’s easy to see from the text. How do we characterize the matter in a transcendental account? Kant answers the question in the Architectonic of Pure Reason, where he characterizes matter as “impenetrable, lifeless extension”[A848/B876]. The point is that the only property of the matter in a transcendental sense is the occupation of space.
This matter is indeterminate in the methodological sense that no properties other than the occupation of space can be legitimately assigned to it in a transcendental account. The only category available for its conception is quantity. Therefore the permanence of matter must be conceived as the permanence of its quantity, which is what is claimed in step 7.
Kant’s Conception(s) of Substance
Common critics said Kant has two conceptions of substance: s1. something that can function as a subject or bearer of attributes s2. something sempiternal (permanent).
A two-step analysis is required to make sense out of the schema of substance. First we noted that re-identifiability throughout a given period of time (relative permanence) is a necessary condition for anything in time that is to function as the real subject of a categorical judgment. But this is not enough to establish the schema which requires absolute permanence. In order to do that, it’s necessary to raise the question: What need to be assumed about something in time that must always be regarded as subject and never as property of anything else? The answer is that such a subject must be assumed to be re-identifiable throughout all change, which is equivalent to being permanent.
It seems clear that s2 is the conception of substance Kant is arguing for, and that s1 plays only a provisional, dialectical role in this argument.