Notes on <Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics> - How is Metaphysics in Generals Possible

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Section 40 - 45

Kant distinguishes concepts of reason and concepts of understanding. Concepts of understanding are immanent, which means they refer to experience, whereas concepts of reason extend to the completeness, i.e., the collective unity of the whole of possible experience, are transcendent. Hence only concepts of understanding needs categories, reason contains in itself the basis for ideas.

All the pure cognitions of the understanding are such that their concepts can be given in experience and their principles confirmed through experience; by contrast, the transcendent cognitions of reason neither allow what relates to their ideas to be given in experience, nor their theses ever to be confirmed or refuted through experience.

The concepts of reason contain first the idea of the complete subject, second the idea of the complete series of conditions, and third the determination of all concepts in the idea of a complete sum total of the possible. The first idea was psychological, the second cosmological, the third theological. The entire dialectic of pure reason is divided into the paralogism, the antinomy, and finally the ideal of pure reason.

Pure reason does not, among its ideas, have in view particular objects that might lie beyond the field of experience, but it merely demands completeness in the use of the understanding in the connection of experience. This completeness can, however, only be a completeness of principles, but not of intuitions and objects.

Reason can be mislead to extend their use beyond all experience to things themselves, they can only represent a thing in general, as mere logical functions. Objects of this kind are called noumena, e.g. substance or a cause. Such predicates are attributed to these objects as serve only to make the law- fulness of experience possible, and yet they are nonetheless deprived of all the conditions of intuition under which alone experience is possible, as a result of which the above concepts again lose all significance.

i. Psychological ideas (46-49)

Pure reason demands that for each predicate of a thing we should seek its appropriate subject, but that for this subject, which is in turn necessarily only a predicate, we should seek its subject again, and so forth to infinity.

Now it does appear as if we have something substantial in the consciousness of our self (the thinking subject), and indeed have it in immediate intuition; for all the predicates of inner sense are referred to the I as subject, and this I cannot again be thought as the predicate of some other subject. But I is not a concept at all, but only a designation of the object of inner sense insofar as we do not further cognize it through any predicate. It can only be the referring of inner appearances to their unknown subject.

This thinking self (the soul), as the ultimate subject of thinking, which cannot itself be represented as the predicate of another thing, may now indeed be called substance: but this concept nonetheless remains completely empty and without any consequences, if persistence cannot be proven of it. Persistence, however, can never be proven from the concept of a substance as a thing in itself, but only for the purposes of experience.

If, therefore, we want to infer the persistence of the soul from the concept of the soul as substance, this can be valid of the soul only for the purpose of possible experience, and not of the soul as a thing in itself and beyond all possible experience. But life is the subjective condition of all our possible experience: consequently, only the persistence of the soul during life can be inferred, for the death of a human being is the end of all experience as far as the soul as an object of experience is concerned.

I am, by means of outer appearances, just as conscious of the reality of bodies as outer appearances in space, as I am, by means of inner experience, conscious of the existence of my soul in time – which soul I cognize only as an object of inner sense through the appearances constituting an inner state, and whose being as it is in itself, which underlies these appearances, is unknown to me.

Objective reality can only be achieved when we consider space as a form of sensibility to use instead of things existing outside of us.

ii. Cosmological ideas (50-54)

Cosmological idea always finds its object only in the sensible world and needs no other world than that whose object is an object for the senses, and so, thus far, is immanent and not transcendent. The cosmological idea expands the connection of the conditioned with its condition so greatly that experience can never match it.

The antinomy contains four theses together with its antitheses.

If we think the appearances of the sensible world are things in themselves, then the conflict of theses and antitheses, which can be established through equally evident, clear proofs can not be reconciled.

The concepts we discussed in the antinomy can never be given in any experience, think about how do we decide through experience whether the world has existed for eternity or has a beginning? Whether matter is infinitely divisible or is constituted of simple parts.

But why do we have these antinomy? Kant proposes that it’s because the concepts is itself contradictory. He gives an example of propositions about square circle, both propositions that square circle is square or circle are false. The conclusion is nothing at all is thought when we think about square circle. Kant claims that this is the case with antinomy. In this case the concept itself is empty, e.g. the concept of world, matter etc.

Proof of why the first and second antinomy occurs(mathematical antinomy)

Now if I ask about the magnitude of the world with respect to space and time, for all of my concepts it is just as impossible to assert that it is infinite as that it is finite. For neither of these can be contained in experience. Therefore the magnitude of the world, determined one way or the other, must lie in itself, apart from all experience. However, the sensible world is just a sum total of appearances, whose existence and connection takes place only in representation. From this it follows that, since the concept of a sensible world existing for itself is self-contradictory, any solution to this problem as to its magnitude will always be false, whether the attempted solution be affirmative or negative.

The same holds for the second antinomy.

Proof of why the third and fourth antinomy occurs(dynamical antinomy)

In the first (mathematical) class of antinomy, the falsity of the presupposition consisted in the following: that something self-contradictory (namely, appearance as a thing in itself) would be represented as being unifiable in a concept. But regarding the second, namely the dynamical, class of antinomy, the falsity of the presupposition consists in this: that something that is unifiable is represented as contradictory.

Consequently, while in the first case both of the mutually opposing assertions were false, here on the contrary the assertions, which are set in opposition to one another through mere misunderstanding, can both be true.

If the objects of the sensible world were taken for things in them- selves, and the previously stated natural laws for laws of things in themselves, contradiction would be inevitable. In the same way, if the subject of freedom were represented, like the other objects, as a mere appearance, contradiction could again not be avoided, for the same thing would be simultaneously affirmed and denied of the same object in the same sense. But if natural necessity is referred only to appearances and freedom only to things in themselves, then no contradiction arises if both kinds of causality are assumed or conceded equally.

freedom must, in relation to the appearances as events, be a faculty of starting those events from itself, without the causality of the cause itself having to begin, and hence without need for any other ground to determine its beginning. But then the cause, as to its causality, would not have to be subject to temporal determinations of its state, i.e., would not have to be appearance at all, it would have to be taken for a thing in itself, and only the effects would have to be taken for appearances. Therefore nature and freedom will be attributable without contradiction to the very same thing, but in different respects, in the one case as appearance, in the other as a thing in itself.

All actions of rational beings, insofar as they are appearances, are subject to natural necessity; but the very same actions, with respect only to the rational subject and its faculty of acting in accordance with bare reason, are free.

The fourth antinomy is removed in a similar manner as the third. If only the cause in the appearances is distinguished from the cause of the appearances insofar as the latter cause can be thought as a thing in itself, then these two propositions can very well exist side by side. Both propositions can be true: that there is no cause of the sensible world whose existence is absolutely necessary and this world is nonetheless connected with a necessary being as its cause. The inconsistency of these two propositions resting solely on the mistake of extending what holds merely for appearances to things in themselves, and in general of mixing the two of these up into one concept.

iii. Theological idea (55)

The third transcendental idea is the ideal of pure reason. Here reason does not start from experience but instead breaks off entirely from experience and descends from bare concepts of what would constitute the absolute completeness of a thing in general. Here the bare pre-supposition of a being that, although not in the series of experiences, is nonetheless thought on behalf of experience, for the sake of comprehensibility in the connection, ordering, and unity of that experience is easy to distinguish from the concept of the understanding.

General note to the transcendental ideas (56)

The transcendental ideas express the peculiar vocation of reason, namely to be a principle of the systematic unity of the use of the understanding. But if one takes reason, which is only regulative, to be constitutive, and expand the ideas of reason transcendently, then this is a mere misunderstanding in judging the true vocation of our reason and its principles.

Conclusion - On determining the boundary of pure reason

Our principles, which limit the use of reason to possible experience alone, could accordingly themselves become transcendent and could pass off the limits of our reason for limits on the possibility of things themselves, if a painstaking critique did not both guard the boundaries of our reason even with respect to its empirical use, and set a limit to its pretensions. We cannot provide, beyond all possible experience, any determinate concept of what things in themselves may be. But we are nevertheless not free to hold back entirely in the face of inquiries about those things.

Mathematics refers only to appearances, and that which cannot be an object of sensory intuition, like the concepts of metaphysics and morals, lies entirely outside its sphere. There is therefore no continuous progress and advancement toward those sciences. Natural science will never reveal to us the inside of things, i.e., that which is not appearance but can nonetheless serve as the highest ground of explanation for the appearances.

Natural science should indeed reject it and ought by no means bring it into the progression of its explanations, but should always base its explanations only on that which can belong to experience as an object of the senses and which can be brought into connection with our actual perceptions in accordance with laws of experience.

Metaphysics, in the dialectical endeavors of pure reason does lead us to the boundaries. Metaphysics, perhaps more than any other science, is, as regards its fundamentals, placed in us by nature itself, and cannot at all be seen as the product of an arbitrary choice, or as an accidental extension from the progression of experiences. The sensible world is nothing but a chain of appearances connected in accordance with universal laws, which therefore has no existence for itself; it truly is not the thing in itself, and therefore it necessarily refers to that which contains the ground of those appearances, to beings that can be cognized not merely as appearances, but as things in themselves.

If we do not attribute the supreme being in themselves any properties by which we think the objects of experience, we avoid dogmatic anthropomorphism; but we attribute those properties, nonetheless, to the relation of this being to the world, and allow ourselves a symbolic anthropomorphism, which in fact concerns only language and not the object itself.

If I say that we are compelled to look upon the world as if it were the work of a supreme understanding and will, I actually say nothing more than: in the way that a watch, a ship, and a regiment are related to an artisan, a builder, and a commander, the sensible world is related to the unknown – which I do not thereby cognize according to what it is in itself, but only according to what it is for me, that is, with respect to the world of which I am a part.

This type of cognition is cognition according to analogy and it signifies a perfect similarity between two relations in wholly dissimilar things. By means of this analogy there still remains a concept of the supreme being sufficiently determinate for us, though we have omitted everything that could have determined this concept unconditionally and in itself, for we determine the concept only with respect to the world and hence with respect to us. We thereby admit that the supreme being, as to what it may be in itself, is for us wholly inscrutable and is even unthinkable by us in a determinate manner.

The expression suitable to our weak concepts will be: that we think the world as if it derives from a supreme reason, as regards its existence and inner determination; whereby we in part cognize the constitution belonging to it (the world) itself, without presuming to want to determine that of its cause in itself, and, on the other hand, we in part posit the basis of this constitution (the rational form of the world) in the relation of the highest cause to the world, not finding the world by itself sufficient thereto.

In this way the difficulties that appear to oppose theism disappear, in that to Hume’s principle, not to drive the use of reason dogmatically beyond the field of all possible experience, we conjoin another principle that Hume completely overlooked, namely: not to look upon the field of possible experience as something that bounds itself in the eyes of our reason.

A critique of reason indicates the true middle way between the dogmatism that Hume fought and the skepticism he wanted to introduce instead – a middle way which we are advised to determine for ourselves as it were mechanically, is one that can be determined precisely, according to principles.

The result of entire Critique is that reason, through all its a priori principles, never teaches us about anything more than objects of possible experience alone, and of these, nothing more than what can be cognized in experience. But this limitation does not prevent reason from carrying us up to the objective boundary of experience - namely, to the relation to something that cannot itself be an object of experience, but which must nonetheless be the highest ground of all experience.

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