Notes on <Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason> - Unknowable objects (The Dialectic)

2020-07-07 0 views

Beyond the land of truth

Analytic implies that the limits of knowledge coincide with the limits of experience, and claims of transcendent metaphysics are unfounded.

In the Dialectic Kant provides a critique of transcendent metaphysics.

Kant does not simply reject non-empirical objects as meaningless, he affirms that they are thinkable, and our scope of thought exceeds that of our knowledge.

Our interest in transcendent ideas are only fulfilled, Kant believes, in the perspective of moral consciousness.

Knowledge of the bounds of knowledge

Transcendental idealism entails that we must represent our knowledge as having limits both in negative and positive sense. It is possible for us to cognize the bounds of knowledge, even though they are not empirical, and even though we cannot grasp them from their other side because they belong to experience as its ‘highest ground’.

Transcendent metaphysics is taking the task of marking the bounds of knowledge.

Transcendental illusion: reason’s ideas of the unconditioned

Illusion that is transcendental - or as Kant also calls it dialectical - is what results when principles not meant for use outside experience are employed as if they were.

The faculty of reason

Kant’s explanation turns on his conception of reason as a power distinct from the understanding. In the Dialectic reason refers to an independent conceptual faculty whose primary function is to engage in reasoning of a special type, namely ‘mediate’ or syllogistic inference.

Reason must refer ultimately to the totality of the conditions for conditioned objects, which is the same as to say that it must refer to an unconditioned totality. For all intents and purposes, reason’s search for the unconditioned may be identified with the demand that explanation should be pressed to its limits: as it may be put, reason is concerned with discovering ultimate explanations for things - that which needs no explanation or explains itself - in contrast with the circumscribed, conditional explanations associated with the understanding’s employment of concepts to the end of constituting objects.

Reason thus transforms itself from a purely formal, merely logical faculty, into a ‘transcendental’ faculty intended for a ‘real use’.

Reason as regulative (The Appendix to the Dialectic)

The notion that the ideas of reason are concepts which it is right for us to have, but which there is no scope for employing in judgements, suggests a kind of futility in reason. The legitimate use of reason is regulative as opposed to constitutive.

Giving unity to knowledge is the job of reason: just as the understanding works on the manifold of sensibility, so reason, which has the understanding as its immediate object, works on the understanding’s manifold of judgements to create the unity of a system. In concrete terms, what this amounts to is that reason provides the understanding with certain rules or methodological imperatives, called by Kant ‘maxims’.

The dialectical inferences of transcendent metaphysics (The Paralogisms, The Antinomy, The Ideal of Pure Reason)

The Paralogisms I

The first form that transcendental illusion takes is illusion about the self. Rational psychology. is a branch of transcendent metaphysics which claims to be able to know that the self is an indivisible and immaterial substance, an incorruptible and immortal soul. Rational psychology tries to answer the question What constitutes the thing which thinks? Reasoning is as follows:

  1. That which is the subject of judgement and cannot be predicated of anything else is substance.
  2. I as a thinking being am always the subject of my thoughts.
  3. Therefore I am a substance (in which my thoughts inhere).

The error is in an equivocation over subject, a confusion of the logical sense of the term with its extra-logical, object-involving sense. For Kant, “I” must occupy subject-position in any judgment, it’s the logical sense of subject, but it does not follow that it should be subject in a non-logical sense.

In the legitimate use of the inference, object O is already given, but the premise (1) does not say about the conditions of the object to be given, and inference from representations to object is not valid.

A different critique in the second edition is that rational psychology confuses analytic judgments with synthetic judgments when thinking I as a substance.

Second paralogism is the the self is a simple(indivisible) substance. However, unity of thought does not imply the unity of the thinker, except in the analytic sense that a being that thinks must not be composite in a way that is inconsistent with the unity of the thought. The unity of the “I” is again merely logical. Because “I” is completely empty, we suppose that it is simple.

Third paralogism is saying “I” refers to a person, a substance that has consciousness of its identity throughout time and change. The inference from the fact that I am conscious of my identity throughout the time that I am conscious at all involves a confusion of logical with non-logical use of concept of identity. Unity of consciousness across time is fully compatible with changes in the identity of underlying substance and there is no legitimate inference from unity of apperception to that of a permanent thing across time.

The fourth paralogism converts the truth that I distinguish my own existence as a thinker from that of other things outside me, including my body into the claim that my existence is independent of my body. The fact that things outside me in space are ones that I think of as distinct from myself is an analytic matter, but it is a synthetic matter that I might exist without them.

The only kind of knowledge that we can have of ourselves is empirical, and it cannot decide the kinds of matters that rational psychology is concerned with.

The confusions are, as Kant puts it, the ‘determining’ with the ‘determinable’ self, the self as condition of all judgement with the self as intuited object of cognition.

The Antinomy I

The second form of transcendental illusion, illusion about the world, expressed in the branch of transcendent metaphysics that Kant calls rational cosmology, has a more complex structure than transcendental illusion about the self: it is two-sided, and each side of the illusion contradicts the other.

Reason, in pursuit of the unconditioned, accordingly forms the idea of the absolute totality of the conditions for appearances. The problem is that we cannot experience the world in its totality. Similar to Paralogism, the problem of Antinomy is that it is legitimate to form the ideas, but illegitimate to assert that the world exists as such. This part is also called rational cosmology.

Kant’s strategy in the Antinomy is accordingly not to try to show directly that reason is outside its rights in claiming the reality of its ideas, but instead to grant for the sake of argument its right to do so, and then to show that reason on that assumption contradicts itself.

The four antinomies

| | Thesis | Antithesis | | :————-: | :————-: | :—-: | | First Antinomy | The world has a beginning in time and a limit in space | The world has no beginning in time and is unlimited in space | | Second Antinomy | Every composite substance is composed of simple parts which set an ultimate limit to its possible division | no such things as simple parts exist, and that everything that exists is infinitely divisible | | Third Antinomy | there exists an absolutely spontaneous and ‘original’ causality of freedom, a cause of all causes, which originates the causality of nature | there is no freedom and that everything takes place according to the laws of nature, implying the infinity of the causal series | | Fourth Antinomy | there belongs to the world, either as a part of it or as its cause, a being that exists necessarily and supplies the ground for all contingent existents | There is no necessary being either within or outside of the world, the series of existential condition is exhaustively contingent |

It’s natural to view antinomies as quarrels between rationalists and empiricists. Kant also divided antinomies into two groups, first two are called mathematical, because they are connected with quantity or magnitude, last two are dynamical, since they are concerned with causality and existence.

Kant’s proofs of the theses and antitheses

All proofs are in the form of reductio: they assume the opposite of what they seek to prove and aim to show that an absurdity follows.

Later we will see how Kant uses transcendental idealism to solve the antinomies.

The Ideal I

The third form of transcendental illusion is found in the doctrines of theology. The idea of God is produced from the idea of something that contains all reality within itself (‘omnitudo realitatus’) and has the highest degree of reality (‘ens realissimum’) - the idea of the highest being. Rational theology, like all transcendent metaphysics, expresses reason’s search for the unconditioned, and reason requires the existence of an absolutely necessary being.

Kant distinguishes three arguments for the existence of God. (1). the ontological argument, (2). the cosmological argument (3). the argument from deign.

The arguments for God’s existence

Ontological argument claims that “God exists” is analytic. Kant begins by making the plain point that to deny something’s existence is not to contradict anything in its concept, but to say of the concept that it has no object, and is thus not contradictory. Kant also proceeds to make his deeper, well-known criticism that existence is not a real predicate.

The difference between cosmological argument and fourth antinomy is God in cosmological argument is outside of the world. Kant said for the cosmological argument to be true we must claim the ontological argument to be true first, since God is highest being and cosmological argument is talking about absolutely necessary being. Ontological argument has been refuted so this does not hold either.

The argument of design tries to infer God’s existence from the order and purposiveness which it claims to discover empirically in the world. The most the argument can show is that something about what causes there to be order in the materials composing the world, not what brings them into existence, which is insufficient for the concept of God, all it does is indicate an analogy between that unknown cause and human intelligence. This argument covertly appeals to the other two and thus ultimately on ontological argument.

Kant’s case against theology turns ultimately on his claim that existence is not a real predicate. This view is enshrined in modern logic (Frege and Russell) and not often disputed.

Transcendental idealism in the Dialectic I : the dissolution of theoretical reason’s contradictions (The Paralogisms, The Antinomy)

The Paralogisms II

First, Kant claims that the argument between materialism and dualism concerning the ontological status of the self or soul is dissolved since the self cannot be known to be simple or to exist independently from outer objects. But the corollary of the fact that the self cannot be known to be immaterial is that it cannot be known to be material either: since I cannot affirm that I am a substance, I cannot affirm that I am a substance either identical with or distinct from my body; there cannot be any such knowledge of my relation to my body.

Self cannot be “outwardly intuited” so it can’t be material. To enquire about the thinking subject would be to ask how it is independently from how we represent it, asking the thing in itself. So the irresolvable argument between dualist and materialist is from their common transcendental realist assumption that soul and body are things in themselves. In the context of transcendental idealism, the question whether the thinking subject is matter is illegitimate.

Second the problem of interaction between mind and body disappears in the perspective of transcendental idealism, the problem concerns how two things of different ontological kinds can interact. (How our minds can affect our bodies in action, and bodies affect our minds in perception.) Kant rejects dualism, he also rejects materialism, and cannot therefore adopt the solution to the problem afforded by the materialist claim that the world is ontologically homogeneous.

Kant affirms that, if minds and bodies are things in themselves, then their interaction poses an insuperable problem: if the material world consists of things in themselves, constitutionally separate from the thinking subject, then it is indeed unintelligible that they should give rise to representations in us. But for Kant, all that the heterogeneity of mind and matter consists in is that they are two species of appearance, mind consisting of objects of inner sense and matter of objects of outer sense: they differ not ‘inwardly’ but in their mode of appearing. And if material bodies are mere appearances, the problem of interaction is soluble: the issue is no longer how substances of different kinds may commune, but how ‘the representations of inner sense’ are connected with ‘the modifications of our outer sensibility’. Mind is related to matter in the way that the thinking subject is related to outer objects, a relation explained in Kant’s transcendental theory of experience.

The Antinomy II

Why does reason shoot off in opposite directions in cosmology?

In cosmological contexts there are two ways of conceiving the unconditioned, one is a particular member of the series of conditions, one which conditions all the others, but is itself unconditioned and so closes the series. Or it can be identified with the entire series of conditions, in which all members are conditioned, but the whole of which is unconditioned. The full explanation has to do with the different demands of reason and the understanding.

Rational cosmology is working with empirical materials, which means understanding is also involved. The totality that reason seeks is consequently subject to two constraints: it must harmonize with reason’s own demand for totality, but also, since the totality in question involves a synthesis according to rules, with the understanding.

Now the problem is that the totalities demanded by each faculty are incongruent: those demanded by reason, expressed in the thesis (the world’s having a beginning, etc.) exceed what the understanding deems possible, and (the world’s being infinite in time, etc.), are inadequate to satisfy, those demanded by the understanding, expressed in the antitheses, the demands of reason.

Kant claims that the judgments are contrary but not contradictory since their common presupposition is false. Kant calls them dialectical. For example, the judgements that X has a good smell and that X has a bad smell form a dialectical opposition if X has in fact no smell at all.

The first antinomy assumes the world is determined in its magnitude, if that assumption is rejected, it is possible to deny both. Under transcendental idealism, “world is determined in its magnitude” can be rejected. The solution to the first antinomy thus consists in saying that what is given is only that the regress of spatio-temporal conditions is to be extended indefinitely: ‘we must always enquire for a still higher member of the series, which may or may not become known to us through experience’, and ‘should never assume an absolute limit’. Beyond this regulative truth, there is nothing to be said about the magnitude of the world.

Kant’s general view, then, is that transcendental realism lies behind the assumption which generates cosmological contradiction. Kant’s Critical solution destroys ‘the illusion which sets reason at variance with itself’, the underlying illusion that there is such a thing as the cosmos, that the world exists as a whole.

The Antinomy’s proof of transcendental idealism

  1. If transcendental realism is true, then the world exists as a whole
  2. If the world exists as a whole, then it can be proved to be both a finite whole and an infinite whole. (from antinomies)
  3. Therefore, contradictions are derivable from transcendental realism.
  4. Therefore, transcendental realism is false.
  5. Therefore, transcendental idealism is true.

The proof rests on two things: the inescapability of transcendental realism’s commitment to there being a truth of the matter in cosmological contexts and the validity of the proofs of the antinomies. The first is relatively uncontroversial. The second is much more doubtful, the general view is that the proofs of the antinomies are not watertight in the way that Kant regards them as being. For one thing, they are firmly cast in his own philosophical vocabulary and contain premises directly reflecting his own philosophical views and for each antinomy some more or less ad hoc set of assumptions can always be drawn up which will allow contradiction to be avoided.

However, the weakness of antinomy doesn’t mean we can’t derive transcendental idealism, it can still be derived if we can establish that their only possible solution is Critical.

Kant requires it only to be possible for pure reason to arrive at contradictions in cosmology, and this is read as a record of the natural disposition of human reason, From the point of view of this weaker claim, it is beside the point that reason may be able to fix its assumptions in such a way as to avoid contradiction in cosmology.

What the transcendental realist would need to do, in order to turn the postulation of an unknown fact of the matter into a philosophical solution, is to supplement it with an account of why the truth is something that our reason cannot make properly conceivable to itself. However, in transcendental realism, it can mean nothing to say that “limits of our reason” is too “narrow”. To allow cosmological problems to be considered in subjective reflexive terms we need to begin the Critical path.

The contradiction can be explain in transcendental idealism in three set of terms:

  1. Kant shows the antinomies to be generated through different manners of conceiving the unconditioned in response to the demands of different cognitive powers.
  2. cosmological contradiction is shown to reflect a confusion of appearances with things in themselves. any defense of the thesis must contradict the nature of experience, whilst any defense of the antitheses will implicitly attribute a false self-subsistence to the realm of appearance.
  3. the Critical perspective allows the failure of rational cosmology to get the world into focus to be traced back to its failure to grasp the boundedness of human knowledge, a corollary of its underlying transcendental realist conception of the world.

It is to be noted that, had the Antinomy’s argument for transcendental idealism succeeded in the way envisaged by Kant, it would have delivered Kant’s problematic ontological denial - his claim that things in themselves cannot be spatio-temporal. The Antinomy would have shown that being spatio-temporal is incompatible with being a determinate totality.

Transcendental idealism in the Dialectic II : the dissolution of theoretical reason’s contradictions (The Paralogisms, The Antinomy)

Transcendental idealism plays a further role in the Dialectic, beyond its application to relieve theoretical reason of conflict: it safeguards ideas which have significance for morality and religion, by relocating them outside the context of theoretical reflection, in which they are endangered.

The Paralogisms III

Kant’s rejection of transcendent metaphysics seems to destroy the fact of personal immortality, however, Kant claims that the possibility - though not the fact - of personal immortality is secured by Critical philosophy.

  1. Paralogism has shown that materialism cannot be known to be true since there can be no reason to think that the existence of thought depends on matter and no reason to think that we come to an end when our bodies come to an end
  2. Immortality does not presuppose dualism, the thought that the ‘I’ is independent of its embodiment requires, not that its constitution be mental or ‘spiritual’, in the sense of being composed of the same ‘stuff’ as inner appearances, but simply that we be able to think ourselves beyond experience, i.e. the thought of an intelligible world.

Although Critique does not give me reason for thinking that I will persist after the destruction of my body , I may find justification of practical reason (in second Critique). It lies in our sense that our reason has a purpose pertaining to the ‘order of ends’ revealed in the moral law.

The third antinomy: human freedom

Kant argues that what he calls ‘practical freedom’, the power of rational agency that we attribute to human beings and not to animals, presupposes ‘transcendental freedom’, the absolutely spontaneous, empirically unconditioned power of beginning an empirical causal series disputed in the third antinomy. It does so because practical freedom or rational agency is a power of acting according to judgements of what ought to be the case, and ought judgements have no place in the empirical world.

‘Ought’ expresses a kind of necessity and of connection with grounds which is found nowhere else in the whole of nature. The understanding can know in nature only what is, what has been, or what will be. We cannot say that anything in nature ought to be other than what in all these time-relations it actually is. When we have the course of nature alone in view, ‘ought’ has no meaning whatever. It is just as absurd to ask what ought to happen in the natural world as to ask what properties a circle ought to have. (A547/B575)

Dynamical antinomies are resolved in a different manner than the mathematical antinomies(rejecting both thesis and antithesis). It is possible for both thesis and antithesis to be true, and for transcendental illusion to be regarded as lying in their appearance of incompatibility. The unconditioned whose reality is in dispute is ‘heterogeneous’ with the series of conditions, which is not true of the mathematical antinomies.

Transcendental idealism allows us to conceive empirical events in general, by virtue of their status as mere appearance, as having both empirical and non-empirical causes. An event may be caused by something which is not appearance, as well as having causes in the realm of appearance.

Applied to ourselves, this model yields a double conception of human agency. A human action is, on the one hand, the free, empirically unconditioned effect of the self qua thing in itself (intelligible or noumenal self), and so a product of intelligible causality or causality of reason, manifesting intelligible character. And, on the other hand, it is the effect of the self qua appearance (empirical or phenomenal self), whereby it is conditioned and determined empirically, and manifests empirical character.

Kant’s account of freedom evaluated

Kant’s account of freedom poses the question: does intelligible causality coexists with determinism in the empirical realm, making his position a novel form of compatibilism, or whether it intervenes at points of empirical indetermination, incompatibilistically.

Compatibilism poses the question of the efficacy of reason and incompatiblism undoes the claimed reconciliation with natural causality.

Transcendental idealism translates the mysteriousness of human freedom into something at least negatively comprehensible, giving our ignorance of its nature rational form. On these grounds it may be held that the account of freedom in the third antinomy is at least on the right track, and that the next steps should be, first, to provide a deduction of freedom, and, second, to reduce the gap between freedom and nature. Kant attempts these tasks in his second and third Critiques respectively.

The fourth antinomy: God

Kant’s solution to the fourth antinomy (A559-65/B587-93) mirrors his solution to the third. The idea of an absolutely necessary being is handled in the same way as the idea of transcendental freedom.

The Ideal II

The Ideal shows that the concept of God, once separated from the transcendental realism of rational theology, does not in any way conflict with the claims of natural science or obstruct the pursuit of empirical knowledge and concluded that atheism is every bit as unjustified as the claims of theology. Science depends on the regulative employment of reason, so to appeal to science in support of atheism would be to cut science off from its own intellectual source.

The fact that the intelligible world is not a possible object of our theoretical cognition does not give us the slightest reason to believe that it does not exist.

Go back to Notes on Critique of Pure Reason